Chicago Daily Observer

The recent revelation that the FBI has received information about “possible holiday terror attacks on Chicago and Los Angeles shopping malls” has caused some alarm, even though, as the Chicago Sun-Times points out, ”[t]he FBI downplayed” the warning, while an FBI spokesman told the L.A. Times that “There is no information to state this is a credible threat.” According to the L.A. Times, “a declassified version of an intelligence report” detailing possible threats was “distributed to thousands of law enforcement agencies across the country” and—surprise, surprise—was quickly leaked to the media, which slipped into panic mode. (TV stations need to keep their ratings up during the writers’ strike, after all.)

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko explained that, “Out of an abundance of caution, and for any number of other reasons, raw intelligence is regularly shared within the intelligence and law enforcement communities—even when the value of the ... Read More...

The conviction of former Chicago gang member José Padilla on August 16, 2007, has stirred up great controversy. Even some who understand the threat that radical Islam poses to the security of the American people have argued that the treatment of a U.S. citizen as an “enemy combatant” was a legally dubious action on the part of the federal government, and Padilla’s conviction of “conspiracy to murder, kidnap, and maim persons in a foreign country,” when no such murders, kidnappings, or maimings have taken place, moves federal law into uncharted legal territory.

From the beginning, however, the true significance of Padilla’s arrest at O’Hare International Airport on May 8, 2002, has been lost in the debates about civil liberties and the extent (if any) of Padilla’s connections to Al Qaeda. If, as many counterterrorism experts are arguing, the case of Derrick Shareef—who planned to wage “violent jihad” on the largest ... Read More...

On December 8, 2006, the FBI and federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald announced the arrest of Derrick Shareef, a 23-year-old convert to Islam. Though black, Shareef had not converted to the Nation of Islam but to mainstream Islam—“the religion of peace.” He was arrested in the parking lot of the East State Street Wal-Mart in Rockford, Illinois, after he attempted to purchase a handgun and grenades from an undercover FBI agent. Shareef intended to use the weapons to launch an assault on CherryVale Mall, the largest shopping center in the Rockford area, at the height of the Christmas shopping season.

At the time of Shareef’s arrest, Fitzgerald and others had claimed that he had acted alone. But Shareef turned out to be the tip of the iceberg. The FBI used his arrest to gather the information necessary to obtain an arrest warrant for Paul Hall, a.k.a. Hassan Abujihaad—another ... Read More...