Inside al Qaeda

Strategy Page:

Getting agents into Islamic terrorist organizations has proved very difficult. There are several reasons for this. First of all, most terrorists come from cultures where the language spoken (Arabic, for example) is difficult to learn, and there are not many speakers of these languages that could otherwise qualify for a job in the CIA or FBI. Then there are the problems with background checks. Islamic terrorists are big on background checks. Not only do they know how to use Google, but they will also, eventually, send someone to your "hometown" to ask questions. The CIA has discovered that, Google alone has made it much more difficult to create "legends" (the fake background information agents require). But the discovery that al Qaeda will even send people out to check legends, was really scary. With all that, al Qaeda is also very patient, and is willing to wait years, before giving a new guy more access to top people, and more important information.

...
The post goes on to say that it turns out that some in the organization can be bought. This is probably true on some levels, but it has resulted in any of them claiming the reward for turning in Zawahiri or bin Laden.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t...
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more