Atlas Shagged

Terrorist Plot Allegedly Hatched by Muslims in US Prison

For some time U.S. officials have been concerned about a possible connection between prison gangs and terrorists. In California last month, Levar Washington, a paroled convict who served time for assault and robbery at Folsom State Prison, was arrested for a series of gas station robberies in the Los Angeles area. The money Washington took during the robberies was allegedly intended to finance several planned attacks on California targets on September 11th of this year. While incarcerated, Washington converted to a form of Islam practiced by a prison group called Jamiyyat Ul Islam Is Saheeh or JIS, translated as The Assembly of Authentic Islam. He reportedly swore allegiance to al-Qaida.

Link: VOA News.

If you've got a nuke, we've got a problem.

How easy would it be to smuggle nuclear-weapons (or their components) into the U.S.?  Quite easy, apparently.

The federal government's efforts to prevent terrorists from smuggling a nuclear weapon into the United States are so poorly managed and reliant on ineffective equipment that the nation remains extremely vulnerable to a catastrophic attack, scientists and a government auditor warned a House committee on Tuesday. ...

Dirty bombs, crude devices that widely spread low levels of radiation, are relatively easy to detect. But highly enriched uranium, a crucial ingredient in a nuclear bomb, could easily be shielded with less than a quarter-inch of lead, making it "very likely to escape detection by passive radiation monitors" now installed at ports and border stations, Benn Tannenbaum, a physicist and senior program associate at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, testified....