Daily Archives: December 17, 2013

Was Wichita airport bomb suspect a victim of entrapment?

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loewenSince the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the government has mounted a number of investigations in which undercover FBI agents or informers have posed as co-conspirators with suspects who get charged with trying to carry out plots.

It has spawned a national debate about whether the suspects are really terrorists or just easily manipulated people who become victims of entrapment. With the arrest of Terry Lee Loewen at Wichita Mid-Continent Airport on Friday, that national debate has come to the Air Capital of the World.

Loewen, a 58-year-old avionics technician, has been charged in an alleged plot to use his airport access to try to drive a car bomb onto the tarmac to inflict maximum deaths. Two FBI employees posed as people engaging him or helping him to carry out the attack, a criminal complaint said. Loewen didn’t find out he had been fooled until he tried to carry out the attack with what was inert material, not high explosives, the court document said.

A letter to the editor in Tuesday’s Eagle typifies the entrapment argument: “The FBI has a pattern of seeking out naive, harmless, disaffected individuals and using them to orchestrate a crime. … Terry Lee Loewen has been entrapped along with others in these phony plots,” wrote Don Anderson of Winfield.

Read more at The Wichita Eagle

Senate confirms Obama pick Jeh Johnson as Homeland Security secretary

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It should be noted that the Senate thwarted a filibuster attempt by Republicans under the new rules prior to the vote for this previously unknown Obama campaign contributor.

johnsonThe Senate approved Jeh Johnson as the fourth Homeland Security secretary, giving him the reins at a department that, more than a decade after its creation, is still unstable and trying to figure out its role in the massive federal bureaucracy.

The 78-16 vote gives President Obama a solid victory, filling a major Cabinet post that has remained empty since Janet A. Napolitano left in September.

“In Jeh, our dedicated homeland security professionals will have a strong leader with a deep understanding of the threats we face and a proven ability to work across agencies and complex organizations to keep America secure,” Mr. Obama said in a statement released soon after the vote. “I look forward to Jeh’s counsel and sound judgment for years to come.”

Moments after the Johnson confirmation, Democrats set up a vote on another contentious Homeland Security nomination in Alejandro Mayorkas, Mr. Obama’s selection to be deputy secretary of the department, even though Mr. Mayorkas is facing an internal department investigation.

Mr. Johnson brings the shortest list of qualifications to the job of any of the secretaries, having served only as a top lawyer in the Defense Department.

Read more at the Washington Times

Special Report: How China’s weapon snatchers are penetrating U.S. defenses

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2013-12-17T222147Z_2_CBRE9BG15ZK00_RTROPTP_2_BREAKOUT-STINGBy John Shiffman and Duff Wilson

OAKLAND, California (Reuters) – Agents from Homeland Security sneaked into a tiny office in Oakland’s Chinatown before sunrise on December 4, 2011. They tread carefully, quickly snapping digital pictures so they could put everything back in place. They didn’t want Philip Chaohui He, the businessman who rented the space, to learn they had been there.

Seven months had passed since they’d launched an undercover operation against a suspected Chinese arms-trafficking network – one of scores operating in support of Beijing’s ambitious military expansion into outer space.

The agents had allowed a Colorado manufacturer to ship He a type of technology that China covets but cannot replicate: radiation-hardened microchips. Known as rad-chips, the dime-sized devices are critical for operating satellites, for guiding ballistic missiles, and for protecting military hardware from nuclear and solar radiation.

It was a gamble. This was a chance to take down an entire Chinese smuggling ring. But if He succeeded in trafficking the rad-chips to China, the devices might someday be turned against U.S. sailors, soldiers or pilots, deployed on satellites providing the battlefield eyes and ears for the People’s Liberation Army.

Entering He’s office at 2:30 that December morning, the agents looked inside the FedEx boxes. The microchips were gone. The supervisor on the case, Greg Slavens, recoiled.

“There are a bunch of rad-chips headed to China,” Slavens recalls thinking, “and I’m responsible.'”

Read more at Yahoo!