The version I posted is from a private newswire service where I work. There is NO ONLINE URL to that version.
Bing or Google for several more versions. All that I found could not be posted. It took an incredible amount of time to edit this post so that it could be posted. Despite being tagged as an except it is not. I am free to use stories from my newswire.
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I have an idea:
Why can't the so called "Palestinians" move to Jordan? It was, after all, part of the original territory known as "Palestine" and amazingly they speak the same language.
2. The “Mandate for Palestine” Document
1920 - Original territory assigned to the Jewish National Home
1922 - Final territory assigned to the Jewish National Home
The ICJ, in noting it would briefly analyze “the status of the territory concerned,” and the “Historical background,” fails to cite the true and relevant content of the historical document, the “Mandate for Palestine.”1
The “Mandate for Palestine” [E.H., the Court refers to as “Mandate”] laid down the Jewish right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an entitlement unaltered in international law and valid to this day.
The legally binding Mandate for Palestine document, was conferred on April 24 1920, at the San Remo Conference and its terms outlined in the Treaty of Sevres on August 10 1920. The Mandate’s terms were finalized on July 24 1922, and became operational in 1923.
In paragraphs 68 and 69 of the opinion, ICJ states it will first “determine whether or not the construction of that wall breaches international law.” The opinion quotes hundreds of documents as relevant to the case at hand, but only a few misleading paragraphs are devoted to the “Mandate.” Moreover, when it comes to discussing the significance of the ‘founding document’ regarding the status of the territory in question – situated between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, including the State of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza – the ICJ devotes a mere 237 murky words to nearly 30 years of history when Great Britain ruled the land it called Palestine.
All the more remarkable, the ICJ thinks that the “Mandate for Palestine” was the founding document for Arab Palestinian self-determination!
The ICJ’s faulty reading of the “Mandate.”
“Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. At the end of the First World War, a class ‘A’ Mandate for Palestine was entrusted to Great Britain by the League of Nations, pursuant to paragraph 4 of Article 22 of the Covenant, which provided that: ‘Certain communities, formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire, have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized, subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone.’”2
The judges choose to speak of “Palestine” in lieu of the actual wording of the historic document that established the Mandate for Palestine – “territory of Palestine.”3 The latter would demonstrate that “Palestine” is a geographic designation, and not a polity. In fact, Palestine has never been an independent state belonging to any people, nor did a Palestinian people, distinct from other Arabs, appear during 1,300 years of Muslim hegemony in Palestine under Arab and Ottoman rule. Local Arabs during that rule were actually considered part of and subject to the authority of Greater Syria (Suriyya al-Kubra).
The ICJ, throughout its lengthy opinion, chooses to speak incessantly of “Palestinians” and “Palestine” as an Arab entity, failing to define these two terms and making no clarification as to the nature of the “Mandate for Palestine.”
Palestine is a geographical area, not a nationality.
Below is a copy of the document as filed at the British National Archive describing the delineation of the geographical area called Palestine:
PALESTINE
INTRODUCTORY.
POSITION, ETC.
Palestine lies on the western edge of the continent of Asia between Latitude 30° N. and 33° N., Longitude 34° 30’ E. and 35° 30’ E.
On the North it is bounded by the French Mandated Territories of Syria and Lebanon, on the East by Syria and Trans-Jordan, on the South-west by the Egyptian province of Sinai, on the South-east by the Gulf of Aqaba and on the West by the Mediterranean. The frontier with Syria was laid down by the Anglo-French Convention of the 23rd December, 1920, and its delimitation was ratified in 1923. Briefly stated, the boundaries are as follows:
North. – From Ras en Naqura on the Mediterranean eastwards to a point west of Qadas, thence in a northerly direction to Metulla, thence east to a point west of Banias.
East. – From Banias in a southerly direction east of Lake Hula to Jisr Banat Ya’pub, thence along a line east of the Jordan and the Lake of Tiberias and on to El Hamme station on the Samakh-Deraa railway line, thence along the centre of the river Yarmuq to its confluence with the Jordan, thence along the centres of the Jordan, the Dead Sea and the Wadi Araba to a point on the Gulf of Aqaba two miles west of the town of Aqaba, thence along the shore of the Gulf of Aqaba to Ras Jaba.
South. – From Ras Jaba in a generally north-westerly direction to the junction of the Neki-Aqaba and Gaza Aqaba Roads, thence to a point west-north-west of Ain Maghara and thence to a point on the Mediterranean coast north-west of Rafa.
West. – The Mediterranean Sea.
Like a mantra, Arabs, the UN, its organs and now the International Court of Justice have claimed repeatedly that the Palestinians are a native people – so much so that almost everyone takes it for granted. The problem is that a stateless Palestinian people is a fabrication. The word ‘Palestine’ is not even Arabic.4
In a report by His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Council of the League of Nations on the administration of Palestine and Trans-Jordan for the year 1938, the British made it clear: Palestine is not a State but is the name of a geographical area.5
The ICJ Bench creates the impression that the League of Nations was speaking of a nascent state or national grouping – the Palestinians who were one of the “communities” mentioned in Article 22 of the League of Nations. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Mandate for Palestine was a Mandate for Jewish self-determination.
It appears that the Court ignored the content of this most significant legally-binding document regarding the status of the Territories.
Paragraph 1 of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations reads:
“To those colonies and territories which as a consequence of the late war have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which formerly governed them and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world, there should be applied the principle that the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization and that securities for the performance of this trust should be embodied in this Covenant.”6
The Palestinian [British] Royal Commission Report of July 1937 addresses Arab claims that the creation of the Jewish National Home as directed by the Mandate for Palestine violated Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, arguing that they are the communities mentioned in paragraph 4:
“As to the claim, argued before us by Arab witnesses, that the Palestine Mandate violates Article 22 of the Covenant because it is not in accordance with paragraph 4 thereof, we would point out (a) that the provisional recognition of ‘certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire’ as independent nations is permissive; the words are ‘can be provisionally recognised’, not ‘will’ or ‘shall’: (b) that the penultimate paragraph of Article 22 prescribes that the degree of authority to be exercised by the Mandatory shall be defined, at need, by the Council of the League: (c) that the acceptance by the Allied Powers and the United States of the policy of the Balfour Declaration made it clear from the beginning that Palestine would have to be treated differently from Syria and Iraq, and that this difference of treatment was confirmed by the Supreme Council in the Treaty of Sevres and by the Council of the League in sanctioning the Mandate.
“This particular question is of less practical importance than it might seem to be. For Article 2 of the Mandate requires ‘the development of self-governing institutions’; and, read in the light of the general intention of the Mandate System (of which something will be said presently), this requirement implies, in our judgment, the ultimate establishment of independence.
“(3) The field [Territory] in which the Jewish National Home was to be established was understood, at the time of the Balfour Declaration, to be the whole of historic Palestine, and the Zionists were seriously disappointed when Trans-Jordan was cut away from that field [Territory] under Article 25.” [E.H., That excluded 77 percent of historic Palestine – the territory east of the Jordan River, what became later Trans-Jordan.]7
The “inhabitants” of the territory for whom the Mandate for Palestine was created, who according to the Mandate were “not yet able” to govern themselves and for whom self-determination was a “sacred trust,” were not Palestinians, or even Arabs. The Mandate for Palestine was created by the predecessor of the United Nations, the League of Nations, for the Jewish People.8
The second paragraph of the preamble of the Mandate for Palestine therefore reads:
“Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine … Recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country ...”9 [italics by author].
The ICJ erred in identifying the “Mandate for Palestine” as a Class “A” Mandate.
The Inernational Court of Justice also assumed that the “Mandate for Palestine” was a Class “A” mandate,10 a common, but inaccurate assertion that can be found in many dictionaries and encyclopedias, and is frequently used by the pro-Palestinian media. In paragraph 70 of the opinion, the Court erroneously states that:
“Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. At the end of the First World War, a class [type] ‘A’ Mandate for Palestine was entrusted to Great Britain by the League of Nations, pursuant to paragraph 4 of Article 22 of the _Covenant …”11 [italics by author].
Indeed, Class “A” status was granted to a number of Arab peoples who were ready for independence in the former Ottoman Empire, and only to Arab entities.12 Palestinian Arabs were not one of these ‘Arab peoples.’ The Palestine Royal Report clarifies this point:
“(2) The Mandate [for Palestine] is of a different type from the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon and the draft Mandate for Iraq. These latter, which were called for convenience “A” Mandates, accorded with the fourth paragraph of Article 22. Thus the Syrian Mandate provided that the government should be based on an organic law which should take into account the rights, interests and wishes of all the inhabitants, and that measures should be enacted ‘to facilitate the progressive development of Syria and the Lebanon as independent States’. The corresponding sentences of the draft Mandate for Iraq were the same. In compliance with them National Legislatures were established in due course on an elective basis. Article 1 of the Palestine Mandate, on the other hand, vests ‘full powers of legislation and of administration’, within the limits of the Mandate, in the Mandatory”13, 14 [italics by author].
The Palestine Royal Report highlights additional differences:
“Unquestionably, however, the primary purpose of the Mandate, as expressed in its preamble and its articles, is to promote the establishment of the Jewish National Home.
“(5) Articles 4, 6 and 11 provide for the recognition of a Jewish Agency ‘as a public body for the purpose of advising and co-operating with the Administration’ on matters affecting Jewish interests. No such body is envisaged for dealing with Arab interests.15
“48. But Palestine was different from the other ex-Turkish provinces. It was, indeed, unique both as the Holy Land of three world-religions and as the old historic homeland of the Jews. The Arabs had lived in it for centuries, but they had long ceased to rule it, and in view of its peculiar character they could not now claim to possess it in the same way as they could claim possession of Syria or Iraq”16 [italics by author].
Identifying the “Mandate for Palestine” as Class “A” was vital to the ICJ.
There is much to be gained by attributing Class “A” status to the Mandate for Palestine. If ‘the inhabitants of Palestine’ were ready for independence under a Class “A” mandate, then the Palestinian Arabs that made up the majority of the inhabitants of Palestine in 1922 (589,177 Arabs vs. 83,790 Jews)17 could then logically claim that they were the intended beneficiaries of the Mandate for Palestine – provided one never reads the actual wording of the document:
1. The “Mandate for Palestine”18 never mentions Class “A” status at any time for Palestinian Arabs.
2. Article 2 clearly speaks of the Mandatory as being:
“responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home” [italics by author].
The Mandate calls for steps to encourage Jewish immigration and settlement throughout Palestine except east of the Jordan River. Historically, therefore, Palestine was an ‘anomaly’ within the Mandate system, ‘in a class of its own’ – initially referred to by the British as a “special regime.”19
Political rights were granted to Jews only.
Had the ICJ Bench examined all six pages of the Mandate for Palestine document, it would have also noted that several times the Mandate for Palestine clearly differentiates between political rights – referring to Jewish self-determination as an emerging polity – and civil and religious rights, referring to guarantees of equal personal freedoms to non-Jewish residents as individuals and within select communities. Not once are Arabs as a people mentioned in the Mandate for Palestine. At no point in the entire document is there any granting of political rights to non-Jewish entities (i.e., Arabs) because political rights to self-determination as a polity for Arabs were guaranteed in three other parallel Class “A” mandates – in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Again, the Bench failed to do its history homework. For instance, Article 2 of the Mandate for Palestine states explicitly that the Mandatory should:
“… be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion” [italics by author].
Eleven times in the Mandate for Palestine the League of Nations speaks specifically of Jews and the Jewish people, calling upon Great Britain to create a nationality law “to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine.”
There is not one mention of the word “Palestinians” or the phrase “Palestinian Arabs,” as it is exploited today. The “non-Jewish communities” the Mandate document speaks of were extensions (or in today’s parlance, ‘diaspora communities’) of another Arab people for whom a separate mandate had been drawn up at the same time: the Syrians that the International Court of Justice ignored in its so-called “Historical background” of the Mandate system.20
Consequently, it is not surprising that a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, stated in his testimony in 1937 before the Peel Commission:
“There is no such country [as Palestine]! Palestine is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries, part of Syria.”21
The term ‘Palestinian’ in its present connotation had only been invented in the 1960s to paint Jews – who had adopted the term ‘Israelis’ after the establishment of the State of Israel – as invaders now residing on Arab turf. The ICJ was unaware that written into the terms of the Mandate, Palestinian Jews had been directed to establish a “Jewish Agency for Palestine” (today, the Jewish Agency), to further Jewish settlements, or that since 1902, there had been an “Anglo-Palestine Bank,” established by the Zionist Movement (today Bank Leumi). Nor did they know that Jews had established a “Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra” in 1936 (today, the Israeli Philharmonic), and an English-language newspaper called the “The Palestine Post’”in 1932 (today, The Jerusalem Post) – along with numerous other Jewish Palestinian institutions.
Consequently, the ICJ incorrectly cites the unfulfilled Mandate for Palestine and the Partition Resolution concerning Palestine as justification for the Bench’s intervention in the case. The ICJ argues that as the judicial arm of the United Nations, the International Court of Justice has jurisdiction in this case because of its responsibility as a UN institution for bringing Palestinian self-determination to fruition! In paragraph 49 of the opinion, the Bench declares:
“… the Court does not consider that the subject-matter of the General Assembly’s request can be regarded as only a bilateral matter between Israel and Palestine …[therefore] construction of the wall must be deemed to be directly of concern to the United Nations. The responsibility of the United Nations in this matter also has its origin in the Mandate and the Partition Resolution concerning Palestine.22 This responsibility has been described by the General Assembly as ‘a permanent responsibility towards the question of Palestine until the question is resolved in all its aspects in a satisfactory manner in accordance with international legitimacy’ (General Assembly resolution 57/107 of 3 December 2002.) …” the objective being “the realization of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people” [italics by author].
To the average reader without historical knowledge of this conflict, the term “Mandate for Palestine” sounds like an Arab trusteeship, but this interpretation changes neither history nor legal facts about Israel.
Had the ICJ examined the minutes of the report of the 1947 “United Nations Special Committee on Palestine,”23 among the myriad of documents it did examine, the learned judges would have known that the Arabs categorically rejected the Mandate for Palestine. In the July 22, 1947 testimony of the President of the Council of Lebanon, Hamid Frangie, the Lebanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, speaking on behalf of all the Arab countries, declared unequivocally:
“… there is only one solution for the Palestinian problem, namely cessation of the Mandate [for the Jews]” and both the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate are “null and valueless.” All of Palestine, he claimed, “is in fact an integral part of this Arab world, which is organized into sovereign States (with no mention of an Arab Palestinian State) bound together by the political and economic pact of 22 March 1945”24 [E.H., the Arab League].
Frangie warned of more bloodshed:
“The Governments of the Arab States will not under any circumstances agree to permit the establishment of Zionism as an autonomous State on Arab territory” and that Arab countries “wish to state that they feel certain that the partition of Palestine and the creation of a Jewish State would result only in bloodshed and unrest throughout the entire Middle East”25 [italics by author].
This is not the only document that would have instructed the judges that the Mandate for Palestine was not for Arab Palestinians. Article 2026 of the PLO Charter, adopted by the Palestine National Council in July 1968 and never legally revised,27 and proudly posted on the Palestinian delegation’s UN website, states:
“The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void.”28
The PLO Charter adds that Jews do not meet the criteria of a nationality and therefore do not deserve statehood at all, clarifying this statement in Article 21 of the Palestinian Charter, that Palestinians,
“… reject all solutions which are substitutes for the total liberation of Palestine.”
It is difficult to ignore yet another instance of historical fantasy, where the ICJ also quotes extensively from Article 13 of the Mandate for Palestine with respect to Jerusalem’s Holy Places and access to them as one of the foundations for Palestinian rights allegedly violated by the security barrier. The ICJ states in paragraph 129 of the Opinion:
“In addition to the general guarantees of freedom of movement under Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, account must also be taken of specific guarantees of access to the Christian, Jewish and Islamic Holy Places. The status of the Christian Holy Places in the Ottoman Empire dates far back in time, the latest provisions relating thereto having been incorporated into Article 62 of the Treaty of Berlin of 13 July 1878. The Mandate for Palestine given to the British Government on 24 July 1922 included an Article 13, under which:
“All responsibility in connection with the Holy Places and religious buildings or sites in Palestine, including that of preserving existing rights and of securing free access to the Holy Places, religious buildings and sites and the free exercise of worship, while ensuring the requirements of public order and decorum, is assumed by the Mandatory…” Article 13 further stated: “nothing in this mandate shall be construed as conferring … authority to interfere with the fabric or the management of purely Moslem sacred shrines, the immunities of which are guaranteed.”29
In fact, the 187-word quote is longer than the ICJ’s entire treatment of nearly three decades of British Mandate, which is summed up in one sentence, and is part of the ICJ rewriting of history:
“In 1947 the United Kingdom announced its intention to complete evacuation of the mandated territory by 1 August 1948, subsequently advancing that date to 15 May 1948.”30
The Preamble of the Mandate for Palestine, as well as the other 28 articles of this legal document, including eight articles which specifically refer to the Jewish nature of the Mandate and discuss where Jews are legally permitted to settle and where they are not, appear nowhere in the Court’s document.31
Origin of the “Mandate for Palestine” the ICJ overlooked.
The Mandate for Palestine was conferred on April 24 1920, at the San Remo Conference, and the terms of the Mandate were further delineated on August 10 1920, in the Treaty of Sevres.
The Treaty of Sevres, known also as the Peace Treaty, was settled following World War I at Sevres (France), between the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), and the Principal Allied Powers.
Turkey relinquished its sovereignty over Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Palestine, which became British mandates, and Syria (Lebanon included), which became a French mandate.
The Treaty of Sevres was not ratified by all Turks, and a new treaty was renegotiated and signed on July 24 1923. It became known as the Treaty of Lausanne.
The Treaty of Sevres in Section VII, Articles 94 and 95, states clearly in each case who are the inhabitants referred to in paragraph 4 of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations.32
Article 94 distinctly indicates that Paragraph 4 of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations applies to the Arab inhabitants living within the areas covered by the Mandates for Syria and Mesopotamia. The Article reads:
“The High Contracting Parties agree that Syria and Mesopotamia shall, in accordance with the fourth paragraph of Article 22.
Part I (Covenant of the League of Nations), be provisionally recognised as independent States subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone …” [italics by author].
Article 95 of the Treaty of Sevres, however, makes it clear that paragraph 4 of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations was not to be applied to the Arab inhabitants living within the area to be delineated by the Mandate for Palestine, but only to the Jews. The Article reads:
“The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22, the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country …”
Historically, therefore, Palestine was an ‘anomaly’ within the Mandate system, ‘in a class of its own’ – initially referred to by the British Government as a “special regime.”
Articles 94 and 95 of the Treaty of Sevres, which the ICJ never discussed, completely undermines the ICJ’s argument that the Mandate for Palestine was a Class “A” Mandate. This erroneous claim renders the Court’s subsequent assertions baseless.
The ICJ attempts to overcome historical facts.
In paragraph 162 of the Advisory Opinion, the Court states:
“Since 1947, the year when General Assembly resolution 181 (II) was adopted and the Mandate for Palestine was terminated, there has been a succession of armed conflicts, acts of indiscriminate violence and repressive measures on the former mandated territory” [italics by author].
The Court attempts to ‘overcome’ historical legal facts by making the reader believe that adoption of Resolution 181 by the General Assembly in 1947 has present-day legal standing.33
The Court also seems to be confused when it states in paragraph 162 of the opinion that “the Mandate for Palestine was terminated” – with no substantiation [E.H., Unless the Court has confused the termination of the British Mandate over the territory of Palestine with the Mandate for Palestine document] as to how this could take place, since the Mandates of the League of Nations have a special status in international law and are considered to be “sacred trusts.” A trust – as in Article 80 of the UN Charter – does not end because the trustee fades away. The Mandate for Palestine, an international accord that was never amended, survived the British withdrawal in 1948 and is a binding legal instrument, valid to this day (See Chapter 9: “Territories – Legality of Jewish Settlement”).
The Court affirmation of the present validity of the Mandate for Palestine is evident in paragraph 49 of the Opinion:
“… It is the Court’s view that the construction of the wall must be deemed to be directly of concern to the United Nations. The responsibility of the United Nations in this matter also has its origin in the Mandate [for Palestine] …”
Addressing the Arab claim that Palestine was part of the territories promised to the Arabs in 1915 by Sir Henry McMahon, the British Government stated:
“We think it sufficient for the purposes of this Report to state that the British Government have never accepted the Arab case. When it was first formally presented by the Arab Delegation in London in 1922, the Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Churchill) replied as follows:
“That letter [Sir H. McMahon’s letter of the 24 October 1915] is quoted as conveying the promise to the Sherif of Mecca to recognize and support the independence of the Arabs within the territories proposed by him. But this promise was given subject to a reservation made in the same letter, which excluded from its scope, among other territories, the portions of Syria lying to the west of the district of Damascus. This reservation has always been regarded by His Majesty’s Government as covering the vilayet of Beirut and the independent Sanjak of Jerusalem. The whole of Palestine west of the Jordan was thus excluded from Sir H. McMahon’s pledge.
“It was in the highest degree unfortunate that, in the exigencies of war, the British Government was unable to make their intention clear to the Sherif. Palestine, it will have been noticed, was not expressly mentioned in Sir Henry McMahon’s letter of the 24th October, 1915. Nor was any later reference made to it. In the further correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sherif the only areas relevant to the present discussion which were mentioned were the Vilayets of Aleppo and Beirut. The Sherif asserted that these Vilayets were purely Arab; and, when Sir Henry McMahon pointed out that French interests were involved, he replied that, while he did not recede from his full claims in the north, he did not wish to injure the alliance between Britain and France and would not ask ‘for what we now leave to France in Beirut and its coasts’ till after the War. There was no more bargaining over boundaries. It only remained for the British Government to supply the Sherif with the monthly subsidy in gold and the rifles, ammunition and foodstuffs he required for launching and sustaining the revolt”34 [italics by author].
The Washington Post’s Dana Priest has another phone book’s worth of terrifying revelations about our national security/police/prison state. One that really chills given the FBI’s track record is the “vast repository” the Bureau is building that “stores the profiles of tens of thousands of Americans and legal residents who are not accused of any crime. What they have done is appear to be acting suspiciously to a town sheriff, a traffic cop or even a neighbor.”
This country has devolved from a nation of laws to a nation of men.
Instead of the Constitution and Bill of Rights being the fountainhead of rights and protections afforded to US citizens, we are in the thrall of the ghosts of Code Napoleon Law, under which all accused (and now don't even have to be accused) are guilty until proven innocent.
I'm a published sacred choral composer, and no threat to anyone; the only radical thing I do once is a while is require a singer to sing an augmented 4th!
However, that having been said, I am appalled at the June Supreme Court Decision which literally criminalizes free speech in behalf of non-violent advocacy.
http://ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/supreme-court-ruling-criminalizes-speech-material-support-law-case
I have not only the right, under the First Amendment to the Constitution, to peacefully and logically criticize my country's government when I believe it to be headed in a wrong direction; I also have the moral responsibility to do this.
I have watched successive administrations over decades paint various other countries as the "villains du jour" to achieve various geopolitical outcomes that had nothing to do with the safety or security of We the People.
Therefore, as a responsible American, I cannot be silent when I see a war ignited against a country like Iraq (for the oil and to please Israel) or Afghanistan (for the installation of pipelines with which to control Eurasian oil).
If quietly and logically pointing out the truth makes me and those like me "criminals", I guess the next piece of music I need to compose is a "Requiem for the United States of America"; because that country, which I loved and respected because of the fundamental rights and protections it provided under the law, no longer exists.
Monday, December 20, 2010; 1:40 AM
BY: Dana Priest + William M. Arkin
Nine years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators.
The system, by far the largest and most technologically sophisticated in the nation's history, collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.
The government's goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, which is in charge of terrorism investigations in the United States.
Other democracies - Britain and Israel, to name two - are well acquainted with such domestic security measures. But for the United States, the sum of these new activities represents a new level of governmental scrutiny.
This localized intelligence apparatus is part of a larger Top Secret America created since the attacks. In July, The Washington Post described an alternative geography of the United States, one that has grown so large, unwieldy and secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs or how many programs exist within it.
Today's story, along with related material on The Post's Web site, examines how Top Secret America plays out at the local level. It describes a web of 4,058 federal, state and local organizations, each with its own counterterrorism responsibilities and jurisdictions. At least 935 of these organizations have been created since the 2001 attacks or became involved in counterterrorism for the first time after 9/11.
(Search our database for your state to find a detailed profile of counterterrorism efforts in your community.)
The months-long investigation, based on nearly 100 interviews and 1,000 documents, found that:
* Technologies and techniques honed for use on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan have migrated into the hands of law enforcement agencies in America.
* The FBI is building a database with the names and certain personal information, such as employment history, of thousands of U.S. citizens and residents whom a local police officer or a fellow citizen believed to be acting suspiciously. It is accessible to an increasing number of local law enforcement and military criminal investigators, increasing concerns that it could somehow end up in the public domain.
* Seeking to learn more about Islam and terrorism, some law enforcement agencies have hired as trainers self-described experts whose extremist views on Islam and terrorism are considered inaccurate and counterproductive by the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies.
* The Department of Homeland Security sends its state and local partners intelligence reports with little meaningful guidance, and state reports have sometimes inappropriately reported on lawful meetings.
Counterterrorism on Main Street
In cities across Tennessee and across the nation local agencies are using sophisticated equipment and techniques to keep an eye out for terrorist threats -- and to watch Americans in the process. Launch Gallery »The need to identify U.S.-born or naturalized citizens who are planning violent attacks is more urgent than ever, U.S. intelligence officials say. This month's FBI sting operation involving a Baltimore construction worker who allegedly planned to bomb a Maryland military recruiting station is the latest example. It followed a similar arrest of a Somali-born naturalized U.S. citizen allegedly seeking to detonate a bomb near a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Ore. There have been nearly two dozen other cases just this year.
"The old view that 'if we fight the terrorists abroad, we won't have to fight them here' is just that - the old view," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told police and firefighters recently.
The Obama administration heralds this local approach as a much-needed evolution in the way the country confronts terrorism.
However, just as at the federal level, the effectiveness of these programs, as well as their cost, is difficult to determine. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, does not know how much money it spends each year on what are known as state fusion centers, which bring together and analyze information from various agencies within a state.
The total cost of the localized system is also hard to gauge. The DHS has given $31 billion in grants since 2003 to state and local governments for homeland security and to improve their ability to find and protect against terrorists, including $3.8 billion in 2010. At least four other federal departments also contribute to local efforts. But the bulk of the spending every year comes from state and local budgets that are too disparately recorded to aggregate into an overall total.
The Post findings paint a picture of a country at a crossroads, where long-standing privacy principles are under challenge by these new efforts to keep the nation safe.
The public face of this pivotal effort is Napolitano, the former governor of Arizona, which years ago built one of the strongest state intelligence organizations outside of New York to try to stop illegal immigration and drug importation.
Napolitano has taken her "See Something, Say Something" campaign far beyond the traffic signs that ask drivers coming into the nation's capital for "Terror Tips" and to "Report Suspicious Activity."
She recently enlisted the help of Wal-Mart, Amtrak, major sports leagues, hotel chains and metro riders. In her speeches, she compares the undertaking to the Cold War fight against communists.
"This represents a shift for our country," she told New York City police officers and firefighters on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary this fall. "In a sense, this harkens back to when we drew on the tradition of civil defense and preparedness that predated today's concerns."
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From Afghanistan to Tennessee
On a recent night in Memphis, a patrol car rolled slowly through a parking lot in a run-down section of town. The military-grade infrared camera on its hood moved robotically from left to right, snapping digital images of one license plate after another and analyzing each almost instantly.
Suddenly, a red light flashed on the car's screen along with the word "warrant."
"Got a live one! Let's do it," an officer called out.
The streets of Memphis are a world away from the streets of Kabul, yet these days, the same types of technologies and techniques are being used in both places to identify and collect information about suspected criminals and terrorists.
The examples go far beyond Memphis.
* Hand-held, wireless fingerprint scanners were carried by U.S. troops during the insurgency in Iraq to register residents of entire neighborhoods. L-1 Identity Solutions is selling the same type of equipment to police departments to check motorists' identities.
* In Arizona, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Facial Recognition Unit, using a type of equipment prevalent in war zones, records 9,000 biometric digital mug shots a month.
* U.S. Customs and Border Protection flies General Atomics' Predator drones along the Mexican and Canadian borders - the same kind of aircraft, equipped with real-time, full-motion video cameras, that has been used in wars in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan to track the enemy.
The special operations units deployed overseas to kill the al-Qaeda leadership drove technological advances that are now expanding in use across the United States. On the front lines, those advances allowed the rapid fusing of biometric identification, captured computer records and cellphone numbers so troops could launch the next surprise raid.
Here at home, it's the DHS that is enamored with collecting photos, video images and other personal information about U.S. residents in the hopes of teasing out terrorists.
The DHS helped Memphis buy surveillance cameras that monitor residents near high-crime housing projects, problematic street corners, and bridges and other critical infrastructure. It helped pay for license plate readers and defrayed some of the cost of setting up Memphis's crime-analysis center. All together it has given Memphis $11 million since 2003 in homeland security grants, most of which the city has used to fight crime.
"We have got things now we didn't have before," said Memphis Police Department Director Larry Godwin, who has produced record numbers of arrests using all this new analysis and technology. "Some of them we can talk about. Some of them we can't."
One of the biggest advocates of Memphis's data revolution is John Harvey, the police department's technology specialist, whose computer systems are the civilian equivalent of the fancier special ops equipment used by the military.
Harvey collects any information he can pry out of government and industry. When officers were wasting time knocking on the wrong doors to serve warrants, he persuaded the local utility company to give him a daily update of the names and addresses of customers.
When he wanted more information about phones captured at crime scenes, he programmed a way to store all emergency 911 calls, which often include names and addresses to associate with phone numbers. He created another program to upload new crime reports every five minutes and mine them for the phone numbers of victims, suspects, witnesses and anyone else listed on them.
Now, instead of having to decide which license plate numbers to type into a computer console in the patrol car, an officer can simply drive around, and the automatic license plate reader on his hood captures the numbers on every vehicle nearby. If the officer pulls over a driver, instead of having to wait 20 minutes for someone back at the office to manually check records, he can use a hand-held device to instantly call up a mug shot, a Social Security number, the status of the driver's license and any outstanding warrants.
The computer in the cruiser can tell an officer even more about who owns the vehicle, the owner's name and address and criminal history, and who else with a criminal history might live at the same address.
Take a recent case of two officers with the hood-mounted camera equipment who stopped a man driving on a suspended license. One handcuffed him, and the other checked his own PDA. Based on the information that came up, the man was ordered downtown to pay a fine and released as the officers drove off to stop another car.
That wasn't the end of it, though.
A record of that stop - and the details of every other arrest made that night, and every summons written - was automatically transferred to the Memphis Real Time Crime Center, a command center with three walls of streaming surveillance video and analysis capabilities that rival those of an Army command center.
There, the information would be geocoded on a map to produce a visual rendering of crime patterns. This information would help the crime intelligence analysts predict trends so the department could figure out what neighborhoods to swarm with officers and surveillance cameras.
But that was still not the end of it, because the fingerprints from the crime records would also go to the FBI's data campus in Clarksburg, W.Va. There, fingerprints from across the United States are stored, along with others collected by American authorities from prisoners in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan.
There are 96 million sets of fingerprints in Clarksburg, a volume that government officials view not as daunting but as an opportunity.
This year for the first time, the FBI, the DHS and the Defense Department are able to search each other's fingerprint databases, said Myra Gray, head of the Defense Department's Biometrics Identity Management Agency, speaking to an industry group recently. "Hopefully in the not-too-distant future," she said, "our relationship with these federal agencies - along with state and local agencies - will be completely symbiotic."
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The FBI's 'suspicious' files
At the same time that the FBI is expanding its West Virginia database, it is building a vast repository controlled by people who work in a top-secret vault on the fourth floor of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in Washington. This one stores the profiles of tens of thousands of Americans and legal residents who are not accused of any crime. What they have done is appear to be acting suspiciously to a town sheriff, a traffic cop or even a neighbor.
If the new Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative, or SAR, works as intended, the Guardian database may someday hold files forwarded by all police departments across the country in America's continuing search for terrorists within its borders.
The effectiveness of this database depends, in fact, on collecting the identities of people who are not known criminals or terrorists - and on being able to quickly compile in-depth profiles of them.
"If we want to get to the point where we connect the dots, the dots have to be there," said Richard A. McFeely, special agent in charge of the FBI's Baltimore office.
In response to concerns that information in the database could be improperly used or released, FBI officials say anyone with access has been trained in privacy rules and the penalties for breaking them.
But not everyone is convinced. "It opens a door for all kinds of abuses," said Michael German, a former FBI agent who now leads the American Civil Liberties Union's campaign on national security and privacy matters. "How do we know there are enough controls?"
The government defines a suspicious activity as "observed behavior reasonably indicative of pre-operational planning related to terrorism or other criminal activity" related to terrorism.
State intelligence analysts and FBI investigators use the reports to determine whether a person is buying fertilizer to make a bomb or to plant tomatoes; whether she is plotting to poison a city's drinking water or studying for a metallurgy test; whether, as happened on a Sunday morning in late September, the man snapping a picture of a ferry in the Newport Beach harbor in Southern California simply liked the way it looked or was plotting to blow it up.
Suspicious Activity Report N03821 says a local law enforcement officer observed "a suspicious subject . . . taking photographs of the Orange County Sheriff Department Fire Boat and the Balboa Ferry with a cellular phone camera." The confidential report, marked "For Official Use Only," noted that the subject next made a phone call, walked to his car and returned five minutes later to take more pictures. He was then met by another person, both of whom stood and "observed the boat traffic in the harbor." Next another adult with two small children joined them, and then they all boarded the ferry and crossed the channel.
All of this information was forwarded to the Los Angeles fusion center for further investigation after the local officer ran information about the vehicle and its owner through several crime databases and found nothing.
Authorities would not say what happened to it from there, but there are several paths a suspicious activity report can take:
At the fusion center, an officer would decide to either dismiss the suspicious activity as harmless or forward the report to the nearest FBI terrorism unit for further investigation.
At that unit, it would immediately be entered into the Guardian database, at which point one of three things could happen:
The FBI could collect more information, find no connection to terrorism and mark the file closed, though leaving it in the database.
It could find a possible connection and turn it into a full-fledged case.
Or, as most often happens, it could make no specific determination, which would mean that Suspicious Activity Report N03821 would sit in limbo for as long as five years, during which time many other pieces of information about the man photographing a boat on a Sunday morning could be added to his file: employment, financial and residential histories; multiple phone numbers; audio files; video from the dashboard-mounted camera in the police cruiser at the harbor where he took pictures; and anything else in government or commercial databases "that adds value," as the FBI agent in charge of the database described it.
That could soon include biometric data, if it existed; the FBI is working on a way to attach such information to files. Meanwhile, the bureau will also soon have software that allows local agencies to map all suspicious incidents in their jurisdiction.
The Defense Department is also interested in the database. It recently transferred 100 reports of suspicious behavior into the Guardian system, and over time it expects to add thousands more as it connects 8,000 military law enforcement personnel to an FBI portal that will allow them to send and review reports about people suspected of casing U.S. bases or targeting American personnel.
And the DHS has created a separate way for state and local authorities, private citizens, and businesses to submit suspicious activity reports to the FBI and to the department for analysis.
As of December, there were 161,948 suspicious activity files in the classified Guardian database, mostly leads from FBI headquarters and state field offices. Two years ago, the bureau set up an unclassified section of the database so state and local agencies could send in suspicious incident reports and review those submitted by their counterparts in other states. Some 890 state and local agencies have sent in 7,197 reports so far.
Of those, 103 have become full investigations that have resulted in at least five arrests, the FBI said. There have been no convictions yet. An additional 365 reports have added information to ongoing cases.
But most remain in the uncertain middle, which is why within the FBI and other intelligence agencies there is much debate about the effectiveness of the bottom-up SAR approach, as well as concern over the privacy implications of retaining so much information on U.S. citizens and residents who have not been charged with anything.
The vast majority of terrorism leads in the United States originate from confidential FBI sources and from the bureau's collaboration with federal intelligence agencies, which mainly work overseas. Occasionally a stop by a local police officer has sparked an investigation. Evidence comes from targeted FBI surveillance and undercover operations, not from information and analysis generated by state fusion centers about people acting suspiciously.
"It's really resource-inefficient," said Philip Mudd, a 20-year CIA counterterrorism expert and a top FBI national security official until he retired nine months ago. "If I were to have a dialogue with the country about this . . . it would be about not only how we chase the unknowns, but do you want to do suspicious activity reports across the country? . . . Anyone who is not at least suspected of doing something criminal should not be in a database."
Charles Allen, a longtime senior CIA official who then led the DHS's intelligence office until 2009, said some senior people in the intelligence community are skeptical that SARs are an effective way to find terrorists. "It's more likely that other kinds of more focused efforts by local police will gain you the information that you need about extremist activities," he said.
The DHS can point to some successes: Last year the Colorado fusion center turned up information on Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-born U.S. resident planning to bomb the New York subway system. In 2007, a Florida fusion center provided the vehicle ownership history used to identify and arrest an Egyptian student who later pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorism, in this case transporting explosives.
"Ninety-nine percent doesn't pan out or lead to anything" said Richard Lambert Jr., the special agent in charge of the FBI's Knoxville office. "But we're happy to wade through these things."
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Expert training?
Ramon Montijo has taught classes on terrorism and Islam to law enforcement officers all over the country.
"Alabama, Colorado, Vermont," said Montijo, a former Army Special Forces sergeant and Los Angeles Police Department investigator who is now a private security consultant. "California, Texas and Missouri," he continued.
What he tells them is always the same, he said: Most Muslims in the United States want to impose sharia law here.
"They want to make this world Islamic. The Islamic flag will fly over the White House - not on my watch!" he said. "My job is to wake up the public, and first, the first responders."
With so many local agencies around the country being asked to help catch terrorists, it often falls to sheriffs or state troopers to try to understand the world of terrorism. They aren't FBI agents, who have years of on-the-job and classroom training.
Instead, they are often people like Lacy Craig, who was a police dispatcher before she became an intelligence analyst at Idaho's fusion center, or the detectives in Minnesota, Michigan and Arkansas who can talk at length about the lineage of gangs or the signs of a crystal meth addict.
Now each of them is a go-to person on terrorism as well.
"The CIA used to train analysts forever before they graduated to be a real analyst," said Allen, the former top CIA and DHS official. "Today we take former law enforcement officers and we call them intelligence officers, and that's not right, because they have not received any training on intelligence analysis."
State fusion center officials say their analysts are getting better with time. "There was a time when law enforcement didn't know much about drugs. This is no different," said Steven W. Hewitt, who runs the Tennessee fusion center, considered one of the best in the country. "Are we experts at the level of [the National Counterterrorism Center]? No. Are we developing an expertise? Absolutely."
But how they do that is usually left up to the local police departments themselves. In their desire to learn more about terrorism, many departments are hiring their own trainers. Some are self-described experts whose extremist views are considered inaccurate and harmful by the FBI and others in the intelligence community
Like Montijo, Walid Shoebat, a onetime Muslim who converted to Christianity, also lectures to local police. He too believes that most Muslims seek to impose sharia law in the United States. To prevent this, he said in an interview, he warns officers that "you need to look at the entire pool of Muslims in a community."
When Shoebat spoke to the first annual South Dakota Fusion Center Conference in Sioux Falls this June, he told them to monitor Muslim student groups and local mosques and, if possible, tap their phones. "You can find out a lot of information that way," he said.
A book expanding on what Shoebat and Montijo believe has just been published by the Center for Security Policy, a Washington-based neoconservative think tank. "Shariah: The Threat to America" describes what its authors call a "stealth jihad" that must be thwarted before it's too late.
The book's co-authors include such notables as former CIA director R. James Woolsey and former deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, along with the center's director, a longtime activist. They write that most mosques in the United States already have been radicalized, that most Muslim social organizations are fronts for violent jihadists and that Muslims who practice sharia law seek to impose it in this country.
Frank Gaffney Jr., director of the center, said his team has spoken widely, including to many law enforcement forums.
"Members of our team have been involved in training programs for several years now, many of which have been focused on local law enforcement intelligence, homeland security, state police, National Guard units and the like," Gaffney said. "We're seeing a considerable ramping-up of interest in getting this kind of training."
Government terrorism experts call the views expressed in the center's book inaccurate and counterproductive. They say the DHS should increase its training of local police, using teachers who have evidence-based viewpoints.
DHS spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said the department does not maintain a list of terrorism experts but is working on guidelines for local authorities wrestling with the topic.
So far, the department has trained 1,391 local law enforcement officers in analyzing public information and 400 in analytic thinking and writing skills. Kudwa said the department also offers counterterrorism training through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which this year enrolled 94 people in a course called "Advanced Criminal Intelligence Analysis to Prevent Terrorism."
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A lack of useful information
The DHS also provides local agencies a daily flow of information bulletins.
These reports are meant to inform agencies about possible terror threats. But some officials say they deliver a never-ending stream of information that is vague, alarmist and often useless. "It's like a garage in your house you keep throwing junk into until you can't park your car in it," says Michael Downing, deputy chief of counterterrorism and special operations for the Los Angeles Police Department.
A review of nearly 1,000 DHS reports dating back to 2003 and labeled "For Official Use Only" underscores Downing's description. Typical is one from May 24, 2010, titled "Infrastructure Protection Note: Evolving Threats to the Homeland."
It tells officials to operate "under the premise that other operatives are in the country and could advance plotting with little or no warning." Its list of vulnerable facilities seems to include just about everything: "Commercial Facilities, Government Facilities, Banking and Financial and Transportation . . ."
Bart R. Johnson, who heads the DHS's intelligence and analysis office, defended such reports, saying that threat reporting has "grown and matured and become more focused." The bulletins can't be more specific, he said, because they must be written at the unclassified level.
Recently, the International Association of Chiefs of Police agreed that the information they were receiving had become "more timely and relevant" over the past year.
Downing, however, said the reports would be more helpful if they at least assessed threats within a specific state's boundaries.
States have tried to do that on their own, but with mixed, and at times problematic, results.
In 2009, for instance, after the DHS and the FBI sent out several ambiguous reports about threats to mass-transit systems and sports and entertainment venues, the New Jersey Regional Operations Intelligence Center's Threat Analysis Program added its own information. "New Jersey has a large mass-transit infrastructure," its report warned, and "an NFL stadium and NHL/NBA arenas, a soccer stadium, and several concert venues that attract large crowds."
In Virginia, the state's fusion center published a terrorism threat assessment in 2009 naming historically black colleges as potential hubs for terrorism.
From 2005 to 2007, the Maryland State Police went even further, infiltrating and labeling as terrorists local groups devoted to human rights, antiwar causes and bike lanes.
And in Pennsylvania this year, a local contractor hired to write intelligence bulletins filled them with information about lawful meetings as varied as Pennsylvania Tea Party Patriots Coalition gatherings, antiwar protests and an event at which environmental activists dressed up as Santa Claus and handed out coal-filled stockings.
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'We have our own terrorists'
Even if the information were better, it might not make a difference for the simplest of reasons: In many cities and towns across the country, there is just not enough terrorism-related work to do.
In Utah on one recent day, one of five intelligence analysts in the state's fusion center was writing a report about the rise in teenage overdoses of an over-the-counter drug. Another was making sure the visiting president of Senegal had a safe trip. Another had just helped a small town track down two people who were selling magazine subscriptions and pocketing the money themselves.
In the Colorado Information Analysis Center, some investigators were following terrorism leads. Others were looking into illegal Craigslist postings and online "World of Warcraft" gamers.
The vast majority of fusion centers across the country have transformed themselves into analytical hubs for all crimes and are using federal grants, handed out in the name of homeland security, to combat everyday offenses.
This is happening because, after 9/11, local law enforcement groups did what every agency and private company did in Top Secret America: They followed the money.
The DHS helped the Memphis Police Department, for example, purchase 90 surveillance cameras, including 13 that monitor bridges and a causeway. It helped buy the fancy screens on the walls of the Real Time Crime Center, as well as radios, robotic surveillance equipment, a mobile command center and three bomb-sniffing dogs. All came in the name of port security and protection to critical infrastructure.
Since there hasn't been a solid terrorism case in Memphis yet, the equipment's greatest value has been to help drive down city crime. Where the mobile surveillance cameras are set up, criminals scatter, said Lt. Mark Rewalt, who, on a recent Saturday night, scanned the city from an altitude of 1,000 feet.
Flying in a police helicopter, Rewalt pointed out some of the cameras the DHS has funded. They are all over the city, in mall parking lots, in housing projects, at popular street hang-outs. "Cameras are what's happening now," he marveled.
Meanwhile, another post-9/11 unit in Tennessee has had even less terrorism-related work to do.
The Tennessee National Guard 45th Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team, one of at least 50 such units around the country, was created to respond to what officials still believe is the inevitable release of chemical, biological or radiological material by terrorists.
The unit's 22 hazardous-materials personnel have the best emergency equipment in the state. A fleet of navy-blue vehicles - command, response, detection and tactical operations trucks - is kept polished and ready to roll in a garage at the armory in Smyrna.
The unit practices WMD scenarios constantly. But in real life, the crew uses the equipment very little: twice a year at NASCAR races in nearby Bristol to patrol for suspicious packages. Other than that, said Capt. Matt Hayes, several times a year they respond to hoaxes.
The fact that there has not been much terrorism to worry about is not evident on the Tennessee fusion center's Web site. Click on the incident map, and the state appears to be under attack.
Red icons of explosions dot Tennessee, along with blinking exclamation marks and flashing skulls. The map is labeled: "Terrorism Events and Other Suspicious Activity.
But if you roll over the icons, the explanations that pop up have nothing to do with major terrorist plots: "Johnson City police are investigating three 'bottle bombs' found at homes over the past three days," one description read recently. ". . . The explosives were made from plastic bottles with something inside that reacted chemically and caused the bottles to burst."
Another told a similar story: "The Scott County Courthouse is currently under evacuation after a bomb threat was called in Friday morning. Update: Authorities completed their sweep . . . and have called off the evacuation."
Nine years after 9/11, this map is part of the alternative geography that is Top Secret America, where millions of people are assigned to help stop terrorism. Memphis Police Director Godwin is one of them, and he has his own version of what that means in a city where there have been 86 murders so far this year.
"We have our own terrorists, and they are taking lives every day," Godwin said. "No, we don't have suicide bombers - not yet. But you need to remain vigilant and realize how vulnerable you can be if you let up."
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this story.