Three men in German, Islamic militants, have been arrested as suspects in a large scaled plot to attack an air base at Ramstein and the Frankfurt international airport, all frequented by Americans.
According to the New York Times:They were planning massive attacks,” the German federal prosecutor, Monika Harms, said at a news conference, outlining a vast six-month investigation. She said that the suspects had amassed huge amounts of hydrogen peroxide, the main chemical used to manufacture the explosives used in the suicide bombings in London in July 2005.
Ms. Harms said the two German suspects were converts to Islam who had trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan. They had amassed 1,500 pounds of hydrogen peroxide to make explosives, which they had hidden and were preparing to move when they were arrested on Tuesday afternoon. Officials said they also had military grade detonators.
“This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings,” Jörg Ziercke, head of the German Federal Crime Office, said. Mr. Ziercke said the suspects belonged to a radical Islamic group with “close links” to Al Qaeda.
German officials were visibly relieved by the arrests, which they said were a six-month investigation involving 300 people from the police and prosecutor’s office. On Wednesday, police raided 41 houses and apartments across Germany, seizing computers and other evidence.
Also, remember all the fuss about the NSA law and Fisa, which ended up being passed?
We brought you the fact sheet on FISA, along with the President's statement, we showed you just this morning that the Senate approved and passed the bill that was acceptable to protect us, a in the latest post from HCdl, we asked what Congress has managed to do to believe they deserve a pay raise, when they have had this request on their desks since April and only now are getting around to it.
Nancy Pelosi has done everything she could to stall having to vote on this, but finally they have gotten around to it and People like Glenn Greenwald are throwing a temper tantrum because they are so mad that Congress and the Senate are doing what is right, despite having had to be dragged kicking and screaming to be forced to consider OUR PROTECTION.
Information gained through a U.S. wiretapping program much criticized by civil liberties advocates helped authorities foil attack plots last week in Germany and Denmark, top U.S. intelligence officials said on Monday.
U.S. Director of Intelligence Michael McConnell said the surveillance program had made "significant contributions" in discovering and breaking up a suspected plot in Germany to bomb American installations. He cited them as a reason that the U.S. Congress should reject attempts to restrict it.
More from CNET News:
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell credited Congress's much-criticized update of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act last month with making "significant contributions" that ultimately allowed the U.S. government to aid German investigators. The apprehensions targeted what were described as Islamic militants plotting attacks against sites regularly visited by Americans.
McConnell spoke at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing here, which was designed to assess threats against the United States and the state of the government's various antiterrorism operations on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Alongside him were Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, National Counterterrorism Center head John Redd and FBI Director Robert Mueller.
The top intelligence coordinator warned senators that the nation will "lose 50 percent of our ability to track, understand and know what terrorists are doing" if Congress fails to enshrine permanently the legal changes, which broadened the National Security Agency's power to eavesdrop on phone calls, e-mail messages and other Internet traffic with limited court oversight.
NYT:
That ability to listen in on the plotters’ conversations “allowed us to see and understand all the connections” they had with a breakaway cell of a Central Asian terrorist group, the Islamic Jihad Union, operating in Germany, said the official, Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence.
“Because we could understand it, we could help our partners through a long process of monitoring and observation, realizing that the perpetrators had actually obtained explosive liquids, hydrogen peroxide, which they would condense, or try to condense to an explosive,” Mr. McConnell said.
Mr. McConnell’s disclosure to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee was the first public confirmation that the American authorities cooperated closely with the German authorities, sharing intercepts of e-mail messages and telephone calls between Germany and both Pakistan and Turkey, which tipped off the German authorities to the plot last fall.
These intelligence programs are tools in this war on terror. Tools to stop terror attacks, not only in the U.S., but across the world.
When someone is trying to kill you, you utilize every single tool at your disposal. If you are in a gunfight, you do not bring a knife, you bring a bigger gun.
It is our Governments responsibility to keep us, Americans, safe from terror attacks like the ones we suffered on 9/11. If they did not utilize every tool in their arsenal and we did get attacked again, whose fault would it be?
By the same token, if any politicians, from either side of the aisle, try to take away any of those tools, and they succeed, and then we are attacked again... I know whose fault that will be.
We consistently hear from the ACLU and members of the left about our liberties being taken away from them, but not one, and I have asked multiple people, have been able to point to one negative impact on their lives.
They could not name one time that these laws have affected them negatively.
Unless you are consorting with terror groups or terrorists themselves, then it won't affect you and your rights should never trump my rightto be safe.
We can still live out lives the same way we have and we can also use every tool in the toolbox to protect ourselves.
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