FBI Targets Citizens While Al Qaeda Moves In

Washington, DC (TLS). The news this evening is fast-moving and constantly changing on the subject of counterterrorism and the move of Al Qaeda into the U.S. In the interest of making sense out of the constant barrage of stories emerging all at once, it is of vital importance to connect the dots and look at the various points at which all of these stories intersect.

First, the White House has called an urgent meeting of all of the government's agency heads for this Thursday in the Situation Room. The subject is intelligence reports--reliable intelligence--that indicate Al Qaeda has plans to plant a terrorist cell within the U.S.

That same intelligence also indicates there is a chance that such a cell has already been planted.

Similar pieces of intelligence surface on a regular basis as a matter of course. The fact that the White House is moving quickly on this particular piece of intel only heightens how seriously the government's counterterrorism apparatus is taking the latest threat.

This is NOT just another bit of terrorist 'chatter.'

Second, as The Liberty Sphere reported last week, sources within the Department of Homeland Security indicate that Islamic terrorists are planning a so-called 'summer spectacular' attack on America at some point before Autumn.

Despite Michael Chertoff's initial reaction to the disclosure of secret Homeland Security documents that describe the attack, i.e., 'there is no credible intel that indicates the U.S. is in danger of an imminent terrorist attack,' Chertoff appeared to back off from that initial assessment today.

According to Chertoff, 'I have a gut feeling we may be in for a major terrorist attack this summer.'

Perhaps Chertoff decided that his initial claim made him look exceedingly deceptive, particularly in light of the fact that certain news organizations had copies of the secret documents.

Third, instead of adequately preparing the country and its law enforcement agencies for the likelihood of such an attack, the FBI instead has been targeting ordinary U.S. citizens, 'mining' them for information that may link them to terrorist activity.

The problem has been a woefully flawed process of determining which citizens may be a threat, leading to law-abiding citizens being tagged as potential terror threats, placed on surveillance and watch lists, and placed on the no-fly lists of airlines.

Congress is now in the process of investigating these breaches of Constitutional rights--one of the few things Congress has done right this year.

In spite of the obvious Constitutional questions raised by the practice of 'mining' citizens by the FBI, the more critical issue at stake here is that the more the FBI uses precious time and manpower to conduct frivolous and legally-questionable activity, the less time and resources it has to manage the real threat posed by Al Qaeda's move into the U.S.

Several links are made available below in order for readers to research the issue for themselves. My friends, we are facing perilous times at present. Get informed, and get prepared.

Click here for more info on Al Qaeda's move into the U.S.:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/07/al-qaeda-cell-i.html

Click here for the story on Chertoff's sudden acknowledgement that we are at risk for a summer spectacular terrorist attack:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070710/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/summer_terror_threats_8

Click here for the disturbing story of the FBI's collection of data from citizens, which can be 'mined' for terror risk:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070711/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/fbi_data_mining