The Islamic Infiltration: Inside Our Government, Armed With Our Secrets...

[T-Rock]

These Are Not The Terrorists You Are Looking For - move along now...

-"Radical Islam's influence over our government and access to our national security secrets".-

http://www.pjtv.com/video/Bill_Whittle_Investigates/The_Islamic_Infiltration%2C_Part_1%3A_Inside_Our_G overnment%2C_Armed_With_Our_Secrets/2930/;jsessionid=abcK_9EAXO8JRfTfhxPys

http://www.pjtv.com/video/Bill_Whittle_Investigates/The_Islamic_Infiltration%2C_Part_2%3A_From_Influen ce_to_Insurrection/2934/;jsessionid=abcK_9EAXO8JRfTfhxPys

[Arctic]

IMHO, China, Russia and the Cyber battlefield are more of a concern then the few Jihadists in Government. :munchin

[T-Rock]

Why tow a narrative as opposed to orienting on facts?
(~2:50 -5:35 part1)

I don’t deny or doubt China and Russia are a threat yet while our country is at war, why do we allow Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood to help drive our agenda on how we combat the terrorist threat, and to help drive our agenda on how to prosecute this war ?
(6:00-10:30 part1)

It just doesn’t make any sense to me, it’s akin to having allowed an avowed group of Nazis participate in our war planning strategy against the Nazis during WW II - discounting the Nazi ability to communicate our intentions to other Nazis…:(

The Holy Land Foundation documents mentioned in the above video can be found below - simply mind boggling:
http://www1.nefafoundation.org/hlfdocs2.html

I still haven’t really heard a solid answer regarding Hesham Islam :confused:
http://www.investigativeproject.org/591/questions-for-the-pentagon

[HowardCohodas]

IMHO, China, Russia and the Cyber battlefield are more of a concern then the few Jihadists in Government. :munchin

You are pretty new here so I don't know your communication style, but I surely hope you are kidding.

[Team Sergeant]

IMHO, China, Russia and the Cyber battlefield are more of a concern then the few Jihadists in Government. :munchin

China and Russia are not threats to this country.

Tell me how "many" islamic jihadists did it take to send this country into a tailspin?

19

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TS

[The Reaper]

IMHO, China, Russia and the Cyber battlefield are more of a concern then the few Jihadists in Government. :munchin

I believe that the threat within is greater than the threat from the outside.

TR

[Warrior-Mentor]

...the threat within is greater...


I agree.

Why tow a narrative as opposed to orienting on facts?
(~2:50 -5:35 part1)

...why do we allow Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood to help drive our agenda on how we combat the terrorist threat, and how to prosecute this war ?
(6:00-10:30 part1)

It just doesn’t make any sense to me, it’s akin to having allowed an avowed group of Nazis participate in our war planning strategy against the Nazis during WW II - discounting the Nazi ability to communicate our intentions to other Nazis…:(

Insane, isn't it?

Despite the slightly cheesy format, the two experts in the videos you posted are absolutely credible - I know both of them and will vouch for their backgrounds.

The Holy Land Foundation documents mentioned in the above video can be found below - simply mind boggling:
http://www1.nefafoundation.org/hlfdocs2.html

NEFA is a great resource. For those not familiar, NEFA stands for Nine Eleven Finding Answers.

NEFA Home Page: http://www.nefafoundation.org

It's easy to sign up for their alerts...

I still haven’t really heard a solid answer regarding Hesham Islam :confused:
http://www.investigativeproject.org/591/questions-for-the-pentagon

You are raising great questions.

[Sigaba]

IMHO, China, Russia and the Cyber battlefield are more of a concern then the few Jihadists in Government. :munchinYou are pretty new here so I don't know your communication style, but I surely hope you are kidding.Does it have to be a question of either/or? Bush the Younger's formulation for GWOT focused on rouge states giving terrorists access to WMDs. But what about other forms of collaboration?

FWIW, the following article is from the on line edition of the Los Angeles Times. Source is here (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-google-china15-2010jan15,0,4780901,print.story).Chinese hackers pose a growing threat to U.S. firms
Escalating cyber attacks on Google and other companies alarm government officials who say the U.S. may be powerless to stop the online industrial espionage.

By Jessica Guynn

January 15, 2010

The scale and sophistication of the cyber attacks on Google Inc. and other large U.S. corporations by hackers in China is raising national security concerns that the Asian superpower is escalating its industrial espionage efforts on the Internet.

While the U.S. focus has been primarily on protecting military and state secrets from cyber spying, a new battle is being waged in which corporate computers and the valuable intellectual property they hold have become as much a target of foreign governments as those run by the Pentagon and the CIA.

"This is a watershed moment in the cyber war," James Mulvenon, director of the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis at Defense Group Inc., a national-security firm, said Thursday. "Before, the Chinese were going after defense targets to modernize the country's military machine. But these intrusions strike at the heart of the American innovation community."

The attacks on Google and several dozen other companies have alarmed government officials and lawmakers who warned that the U.S. may already be losing the battle to protect the nation's besieged cyber infrastructure.

"The recent cyber intrusion that Google attributes to China is troubling and the U.S. government is looking into it," White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said Thursday.

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Menlo Park), a senior member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, called China a pervasive hacker. "This behavior is unacceptable. We used to use the term 'highway robbery.' This is high-tech robbery."

The cost has been huge, according to a recent study by a congressional advisory panel, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. While it is hard to quantify the value of the intellectual property that is stolen by the Chinese each year -- because many businesses do not like to report getting hacked -- Dan Slane, chairman of the commission, estimated it was in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Hacker strategy

Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, a Bethesda, Md., security firm, said Chinese hackers target Western companies with an approach dubbed "1,000 grains of sand," meaning they go after every piece of information in search of competitive intelligence. Most companies keep silent about the attacks, but they draw heavy scrutiny from law enforcement officials.

"The odds of the 25 biggest companies in California not being fully compromised by the Chinese is near zero," Paller said. "That is true of companies across the country."

China defended its Internet policies at a news conference Thursday. Jiang Yu, spokeswoman for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said China's Internet is open and welcomes foreign companies. She also said Chinese law prohibits hacker attacks but declined to say whether the Chinese government is bound by the law.

Google on Tuesday revealed that it had fallen prey to a series of cyber attacks originating from China. The Mountain View, Calif., Internet giant said it believed the attackers wanted access to the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. But the incursions, which also included theft of intellectual property, raised the possibility that the hackers were also attempting economic espionage.

Google took the bold stance of making the attacks public, catching the Chinese government off guard. The company's defiance of the world's most populous country stunned observers. It also prompted questions about the scope and nature of the attacks.

"For a big multinational company to consider leaving a critical market means the overall damage to its operation and assets is likely to be greater than the benefits," said Oded Shenkar, a professor of business management at Ohio State University and the author of "The Chinese Century." "Google is not only making a human rights statement; my educated guess is that there is much more to it than that."

It is unclear exactly where the attacks came from, and Google was careful not to directly accuse the Chinese government of orchestrating them. But Chinese cyber spying has been a persistent problem for years with dozens of attacks on commercial, government and military targets, analysts say.

A growing menace

The attacks against the U.S. are ramping up, according to the congressional U.S.-China commission, which noted in October that Chinese espionage was "straining the U.S. capacity to respond."

The report focused on an attack on one company, concluding that it was supported and possibly choreographed by the Chinese government. The report also alleged that China's military, the People's Liberation Army, is responsible for aspects of cyber spying and has created cyber warfare units.

McAfee Labs, which has analyzed the attacks on Google and other companies, said Thursday that the hackers had deployed highly sophisticated "advanced persistent threats" that in the past were primarily used against governments. The attacks targeted individuals with known access to valuable corporate information.

Google may have been particularly vulnerable because all of its technology is online and networked, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

On Wednesday, Google said it would improve security for Gmail users by encrypting data to its servers. Such steps are crucial for Google, whose business hinges on its ability to protect its users' privacy and maintain their trust, said Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal.

"Commercial organizations can rarely defend themselves against sophisticated government attacks," said Phil Lieberman, chief executive of Lieberman Software, a Los Angeles security software firm.

Last week, a Santa Barbara software maker filed a $2.2-billion lawsuit against the Chinese government and several Chinese technology firms, accusing them of conspiring to steal and disseminate the U.S. firm's Internet filtering technology.

The Los Angeles law firm representing Cybersitter in the lawsuit said Thursday that it was besieged by similar cyber attacks originating in China. On Monday evening its lawyers began receiving 10 different Trojan horse e-mails designed to retrieve information from its computers, said Gregory Fayer, an attorney at Gipson Hoffman & Pancione. The law firm has turned over the e-mails to the FBI, which is investigating, Fayer said.

After Google's announcement, Adobe Systems Inc. and Rackspace Hosting Inc. also reported attacks.

A national priority

Early last year, President Obama identified protecting computer networks in the private and public sectors as a national security priority. But bureaucratic infighting among law enforcement and intelligence agencies and disagreements with business interests about the role of government in controlling the Internet delayed naming a White House cyber-security "czar."

In December, Obama appointed Howard Schmidt, a former chief security executive at Microsoft with 31 years' experience in law enforcement and the military, to the post.

How to protect the nation's cyber infrastructure, largely in private sector hands, from alleged state-sponsored attacks has become a matter of intensifying debate in Washington, analysts say.

The U.S. has no formal policy for dealing with such attacks. Renewed attention could help shape policy and smooth passage of legislation, analysts said.

"This highlights a core dilemma for the U.S. cyber strategy," Mulvenon said. "What can the U.S. government do to defend Google? Really not very much."
The report by the Economic and Security Review Commission is available here (http://www.uscc.gov/researchpapers/2009/NorthropGrumman_PRC_Cyber_Paper_FINAL_Approved%20R eport_16Oct2009.pdf).

[HowardCohodas]

Does it have to be a question of either/or? Bush the Younger's formulation for GWOT focused on rouge states giving terrorists access to WMDs. But what about other forms of collaboration?


As a nation we have frequently underestimated the dangers of a fifth column over the more obvious dangers. One of the great things that George Bush did was publicly and aggressively address the rouge states, but he also aggressively addressed the fifth column dangers. I can't say the same for our current President.

Unfortunately, political correctness is an enabler of fifth column dangers that even a 9/11 event could not ameliorate.

[Sigaba]

As a nation we have frequently underestimated the dangers of a fifth column over the more obvious dangers.Do you have specific examples in mind?Unfortunately, political correctness is an enabler of fifth column dangers that even a 9/11 event could not ameliorate.When have considerations of domestic politics not shaped America's conduct during a war?

[HowardCohodas]

Do you have specific examples in mind?When have considerations of domestic politics not shaped America's conduct during a war?

This dialog seems more to be dueling monologues where I point you that the sky is blue and you reply that water is wet.

So, let me try to make my point more explicitly. I thought my reference to a "fifth column" would help the focus. A "fifth column" is defined to be "a group of people who clandestinely undermine a larger group, such as a nation, from within, to the aid of an external enemy." Now, if you want an example besides the title of this thread (The Islamic Infiltration: Inside Our Government, Armed With Our Secrets...) I suggest you read "Witness (http://www.amazon.com/Witness-Whittaker-Chambers/dp/0895267896/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263729007&sr=8-2)" by Whittaker Chambers.

Of course domestic politics shapes a country's conduct. However, my point was about the relative potential danger of a "few jihadists" vs. country actors. I think a few jihadists within the government holds more potential danger than country actors. An understanding of asymmetric warfare is helpful here. Not understanding their potential danger leads to ideas stated here that country actors are of more concern. I find this a fatal attitude. Furthermore, I posit that rampant political correctness exacerbates the problem.

My position is that fifth column efforts are more danger to us than country actors from their very nature, i.e. clandestine.

[Richard]

So what would one suggest we call the House Committe On Internal Security* this time? :confused:

Richard's $.02 :munchin

* Nee Overman Committee, Fish Committee, Special Committee on Un-American Activities.

[HowardCohodas]

So what would one suggest we call the House Committe On Internal Security* this time? :confused:

Richard's $.02 :munchin

* Nee Overman Committee, Fish Committee, Special Committee on Un-American Activities.

Something subtle like "Select Committee on Finding and Recommending for Prosecution Traitors to America." It's important to obfuscate it's true purpose. ;)

[Sigaba]

Entire post.The fact that you decline the opportunity to provide specific examples to back up your generalizations speaks for itself.

Or is your reference to Whitaker Chambers--a person whose reputation has not held up well under the scrutiny of researchers--an example of the fifth column in action? (The recent works on VENONA, the Rosenbergs, and the KGB's operations in the U.S. might be more fitting examples.)

[HowardCohodas]

The fact that you decline the opportunity to provide specific examples to back up your generalizations speaks for itself.

Or is your reference to Whitaker Chambers--a person whose reputation has not held up well under the scrutiny of researchers--an example of the fifth column in action? (The recent works on VENONA, the Rosenbergs, and the KGB's operations in the U.S. might be more fitting examples.)

Congratulations. You win. Intelligent dialog with you is beyond my gifts.

[Marina]

So what would one suggest we call the House Committe On Internal Security* this time? :confused:

DHS US-VISIT with oversight by 68 congressional committees :D

even though that program is just for foreign nationals coming in - like the underwear bomber

The US internal security piece is seriously lacking. With everyone surprised that the agencies weren't integrating their databases (connecting the dots) with UW bomber, perhaps the public is more receptive to the government tracking / combining more personal information.

What ever happened to Total Information Awareness that got sidelined a couple of years ago because of concerns about civil liberties? Domestic CI is a difficult balance between personal privacy (individual rights) and national security. Is any agency really responsible for domestic CI? Not that I know of. LE and ARNG do internal security for individual states, but no federal agency has authority across the whole US. As big as DHS is, they will likely end up lightly, but insidiously policing internal security just because they have access to so much of the relevant resources.

Like TR and HowardCohodas, I believe that we underestimate the dangers of a fifth column. Yes, the threat of extremist Muslims and Arab revolutionaries is incipient but they are motivated and lethal. Just look at Britain.

I'm no expert on Verona, but recall a primary example of infiltration is the COMINTERN and the US communist party during the Cold War. Espionage was a regular activity of the American CP. It's goal was to promote communism and the ideology of the Soviet Union through political means (front groups) in the US. They infiltrated and subverted exploitable groups that included assets like sympathetic US communists.

What is that quote about empires rot from within? Overreach and complacency, etc.

[HowardCohodas]

The US internal security piece is seriously lacking. With everyone surprised that the agencies weren't integrating their databases (connecting the dots) with UW bomber, perhaps the public is more receptive to the government tracking / combining more personal information.


Our intelligence agencies are not talking to each other either human to human or computer to computer. So let's fix it with the Director of National Intelligence. With a staff exceeding 3,000 and still growing, we hope to gain efficiency and effectiveness. Give me a break. :(

Early in my IT career I read a book titled "The Mythical Man-Month" whose central theme is that "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later". Likewise, adding layers of bureaucracy to a bureaucracy that is not working cannot make it more efficient or more effective.

As a side note, one of the best ideas that came out of this work is that there are many processes that cannot be improved by adding more manpower. For example, even though it might be fun to try, you cannot make a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.

Also we used to say frequently "The flogging will continue until morale improves" although I cannot recall the origins of this.

[Marina]

Our intelligence agencies are not talking to each other either human to human or computer to computer. So let's fix it with the Director of National Intelligence. With a staff exceeding 3,000 and still growing, we hope to gain efficiency and effectiveness.

Hey Howard, I agree the right technology rightly applied could integrate information that would strengthen our internal security. But that was tried with TIA and got shot down by the civil libertarians.

The really crazy thing is, marketing companies and financial companies and Google already collect more personal information about us than most of us probably even know.

How can critics kick the govt for not connecting the dots when the public will not tolerate a TIA-like integration?

Now, is the DNI the one to control personal information about US citizens? Probably not. The FBI, ah no - remember COINTELPRO. CIA, no. Maybe IRS, no way! So it's DHS. Can you imagine? They can't even manage their own agency.

In the tradeoff between what is technically feasible and what is politically palatable, technology loses to politics. Individual liberty out weights collective security.

So, if we've already made that choice, why invest hundreds of billions in half-measures and gi-nor-mous bureaucracies? We can't child proof the whole USA.

I think the govt's hilarious over-reaction to the pantybomber was a moment of clarity for many.

[T-Rock]

I think the govt's hilarious over-reaction to the pantybomber was a moment of clarity for many.

I hope it was…a moment of clarity that is…

Yasir Qadhi, who headlined the 2008 US-Funded (our tax dollars) Counter-Radicalization Strategy Conference, and who CNN holds up as an example of “moderate Islam”, sees Western society as incompatible with Islam and seethes with hatred for non-Muslims and the West.

This best illustrates what is happening in the war of ideas and deception, Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab attended Yasir Qadhi’s Al Maghrib Institute - note the Taqiyaa:

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/02/mainline-islamic-stuff-is-violent-jihad-christmas-ball-bombers-summer-with-a-moderate-muslim-us-lead.html

http://www.investigativeproject.org/1768/when-a-radical-directs-anti-radicalization