In the years between Hitler’s rise to pow­er and World War Two, thou­sands of Ger­mans left Ger­many. Most of them did so to get away from Hitler. How­ev­er, a small num­ber of these peo­ple were real­ly spies mask­ing as free­dom lov­ing Ger­mans flee­ing Hitler. Some came with their fam­i­lies, oth­er mar­ried Amer­i­can cit­i­zens. They and their fam­i­ly from Ger­many would would soon be as Amer­i­can as apple pie with no one ever guess­ing their true nature. I see some­thing like this with Mus­lims com­ing to Europe, Amer­i­ca and Cana­da. Most are what they seem to be: good peo­ple flee­ing from evil. But not all. And that’s the prob­lem. Big­ots like Don­ald Trump want to blame all Mus­lims. While the left, is not even inter­est­ed in the ques­tion of a bad Mus­lim. So noth­ing about The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and what they are real­ly about in the media because that would seem big­ot­ed. So take your pick: Mus­lims are all good or Mus­lims are all bad. Nev­er mind that Mus­lims are just like any oth­er peo­ple, most­ly good with a few bad apples.

There’s noth­ing quite like a ter­ror­ist attack to sud­den­ly con­nect those close­ly-spaced dots you’ve been star­ing at for months

The New York Times
In Brus­sels Bomb­ing Plot, a Trail of Dots Not Con­nect­ed

By ANDREW HIGGINS and KIMIKO DE FREYTAS-TAMURA
MARCH 26, 2016

BRUSSELS — The stench of chem­i­cals ema­nat­ing from the sixth-floor apart­ment made the own­er of the build­ing gag. Oth­er odd hap­pen­ings at the most­ly emp­ty hous­ing block in north­ern Brus­sels prompt­ed an anx­ious res­i­dent in the area to alert the police. A taxi dri­ver who picked up three young men at the block smelled a nox­ious odor leak­ing from their curi­ous­ly heavy lug­gage as he drove them to Brus­sels Air­port.

But not until 7:58 on Tues­day morn­ing did these and oth­er strange and, at least in ret­ro­spect, alarm­ing dots come togeth­er to form a clear pic­ture of what had been going on for more than two months in the dilap­i­dat­ed but spa­cious top-floor apart­ment at 4 Max Roos Street in the Brus­sels bor­ough of Schaer­beek.

It was then that two home­made bombs — con­fect­ed from mal­odor­ous and high­ly volatile chem­i­cals in the liv­ing room of the apart­ment — explod­ed in the check-in area of the air­port, fol­lowed an hour lat­er by anoth­er at a busy sub­way sta­tion. Togeth­er, the attacks killed 31 peo­ple.

A third bomb was found unex­plod­ed at the air­port, but the two that were det­o­nat­ed blew holes in the roof and maimed scores of peo­ple as they wait­ed to check their bag­gage.

On Sat­ur­day, the air­port was still closed, a huge and macabre crime scene instead of a glob­al cross­roads and the main entry point to the “cap­i­tal of Europe,” a city that hous­es the head­quar­ters of the Euro­pean Union and NATO.

Act­ing with unchar­ac­ter­is­tic — and still unex­plained — swift­ness, Bel­gian secu­ri­ty forces sealed off the area around the apart­ment in Schaer­beek with­in 90 min­utes of the air­port attack. The author­i­ties attrib­uted their speedy reac­tion to a tip-off from the taxi dri­ver.

But the dri­ver was said to have alert­ed the police only after a pho­to­graph of the sus­pects in the attacks was released hours lat­er, rais­ing ques­tions about whether the police had per­haps already had the build­ing in their sights but, for some rea­son, had not moved in and smashed through the front door to the sixth-floor apart­ment until it was too late.

“There were inves­ti­ga­tions before and after the events” of Tues­day, Alexan­dri­no Rodrigues, the own­er of the build­ing, said in an inter­view, sug­gest­ing that the police had sus­pi­cions before the attacks and had not entire­ly ignored the report from a con­cerned neigh­bor. “You can’t catch a rab­bit with­out know­ing where it lives,” he added.

A small, idio­syn­crat­ic and proud­ly placid coun­try, Bel­gium has none of the long and bloody entan­gle­ments in Mus­lim lands that have made the Unit­ed States and neigh­bor­ing France such obvi­ous tar­gets for glob­al jihad. Yet with its large com­mu­ni­ties of often poor and poor­ly inte­grat­ed Mus­lim immi­grants and its own deeply root­ed divi­sions of lan­guage, geog­ra­phy and pol­i­tics, Bel­gium finds itself at the cen­ter of Europe’s strug­gle with ter­ror­ism and a glar­ing exam­ple of the obsta­cles block­ing the way.

How the lengthy prepa­ra­tions for Tuesday’s attacks — by mil­i­tants who either were or should have been on the author­i­ties’ radar and, in some cas­es, with ties to the Novem­ber attacks in Paris — could go unde­tect­ed has stirred dis­may and anger from politi­cians and also the pub­lic, as well as from allies in Europe and beyond.

“Why such repeat­ed dys­func­tions?” Mar­co Van Hees, a mem­ber of the Bel­gian Par­lia­ment, asked the inte­ri­or min­is­ter and two oth­er min­is­ters who were sum­moned on Fri­day to explain the fail­ure. “We are cer­tain­ly not deal­ing here with just a glitch, a lit­tle bug, but a deep struc­tur­al prob­lem.”

That Bel­gium has a seri­ous prob­lem with jihadist mil­i­tan­cy has been clear for years, par­tic­u­lar­ly since Jan­u­ary of last year, when the police raid­ed a ter­ror­ist hide­away in the east­ern town of Verviers and foiled what the author­i­ties said was a major plot. That suc­cess, how­ev­er, masked rather than solved the prob­lem, which explod­ed with bru­tal hor­ror in Paris, when mil­i­tants, many of them Bel­gians, killed 130 peo­ple with guns and with bombs made in the Brus­sels dis­trict of Schaer­beek, the same area that would lat­er house the bomb-mak­ing work­shop on Max Roos Street.

How was it pos­si­ble, mem­bers of Par­lia­ment asked, that two of the sui­cide bombers in the Brus­sels attacks, Ibrahim el-Bakraoui and his younger broth­er Khalid, both res­i­dents on Max Roos Street since the begin­ning of the year, had man­aged to go unde­tect­ed for so long? And all this despite a record of vio­lent crime in Bel­gium and, in the case of the old­er broth­er, a clear warn­ing from Turkey in June that he was on his way back to Europe after being arrest­ed as a sus­pect­ed ter­ror­ist while on his way to Syr­ia?

And was it real­ly true, the law­mak­ers demand­ed, that the author­i­ties had received a pre­cise tip in Decem­ber about the pos­si­ble where­abouts of Salah Abdeslam, the only known sur­vivor among the ter­ror­ists respon­si­ble for the Paris attacks, who was final­ly cap­tured in Brus­sels on March 18? He was found at the address cit­ed in the Decem­ber tip-off, which had not been act­ed on because it had not been passed up the police chain of com­mand.

Jan Jam­bon, the inte­ri­or min­is­ter, told leg­is­la­tors that he could not com­ment because an inquiry was under­way into who had known what and when about the pos­si­ble loca­tion of Mr. Abdeslam, who until his cap­ture on March 18 had been Europe’s most want­ed man.

At the hear­ing on Fri­day, ques­tions were also raised about whether the Brus­sels attacks could have been avoid­ed if Mr. Abdeslam had been sub­ject­ed to exten­sive and tough ques­tion­ing imme­di­ate­ly after his arrest. Instead, he was ques­tioned a full day lat­er, and then only about the Paris attacks. Insist­ing he was only a bit play­er in Belgium’s jihadist net­work, he gave no infor­ma­tion about any impend­ing attack, the author­i­ties said.

The Bel­gian fed­er­al prosecutor’s office issued a state­ment on Fri­day say­ing that Mr. Abdeslam, who was shot in the leg dur­ing his arrest, was not ques­tioned imme­di­ate­ly because of his need for med­ical treat­ment.

In a sign the Bel­gian author­i­ties had the Bakraoui broth­ers in their sights before they car­ried out their attacks, inter­roga­tors pre­sent­ed Mr. Abdeslam with pho­tographs of the sib­lings after his cap­ture and asked if he knew them. Accord­ing to excerpts from the March 19 inter­ro­ga­tion obtained by Le Monde, Mr. Abdeslam firm­ly denied know­ing the men who three days lat­er would sub­ject Brus­sels to its blood­i­est attack since World War II. The Bel­gians dropped the mat­ter.

Whether Mr. Abdeslam knew about the attacks being planned for Brus­sels is still not known, but he cer­tain­ly knew at least some of the mil­i­tants who car­ried them out. The most notable was Najim Laachraoui, 24, who grew up in Schaer­beek and is thought by inves­ti­ga­tors to have run the bomb-mak­ing ate­lier on Max Roos Street and an ear­li­er work­shop on Hen­ri Bergé Street where explo­sives were assem­bled for the Paris attacks.

Mr. Laachraoui’s DNA was found on at least two sui­cide vests used in Paris, pro­vid­ing the most defin­i­tive link so far between the ter­ror­ist plots in Paris and Brus­sels.

In Sep­tem­ber, while using a false iden­ti­ty card, he was stopped along with Mr. Abdeslam at the Hun­gar­i­an-Aus­tri­an bor­der, but was not detained. He then rent­ed a house in Auve­lais, Bel­gium, that was used by the Paris attack­ers.

Mr. Laachraoui, like Mr. Abdeslam and the sus­pect­ed archi­tect of the Paris attacks, Abdel­hamid Abaaoud, is a vet­er­an of the con­flict in Syr­ia. He trav­eled there in Feb­ru­ary 2013, help­ing to blaze a jihadist trail that has since been tak­en by hun­dreds of oth­er young Mus­lims from Bel­gium, Europe’s biggest source of jihadist fight­ers rel­a­tive to pop­u­la­tion size.

Bernard Cler­fayt, the may­or of Schaer­beek, said he had known Mr. Laachraoui had gone to Syr­ia but had been at a loss about how to respond. Think­ing that Mr. Laachraoui would not return to Bel­gium, he said the Schaer­beek bor­ough had struck him off the elec­toral roll in 2015 but had been pow­er­less to do more.

Unlike Molen­beek, which has been swamped by the police since the Paris attacks and was the tar­get of raids dur­ing the hunt for Mr. Abdeslam, Schaer­beek offers a mix of wealthy and immi­grant neigh­bor­hoods, a diver­si­ty that until the attacks here had spared it from intense scruti­ny as a jihadist base.

...

Mr. Rodrigues, the building’s own­er, said he saw Mr. Laachraoui vis­it the build­ing two or three times a week. Bought last year by Mr. Rodrigues, who prompt­ly evict­ed the pre­vi­ous res­i­dents and began ren­o­vat­ing the run-down prop­er­ty, it was most­ly emp­ty except for builders, mean­ing that young men arriv­ing with bar­rels of chem­i­cals were unlike­ly to arouse much sus­pi­cion.

Mr. Rodrigues said that Ibrahim and Khalid el-Bakraoui were his first ten­ants, and that they had pro­vid­ed him with fake iden­ti­ty papers and bogus pay slips to obtain a one-year lease. Three oth­ers, includ­ing a man since iden­ti­fied as Mr. Laachraoui, vis­it­ed reg­u­lar­ly.

The smell in their apart­ment was hor­ren­dous, the own­er said, recall­ing how he had seen on the floor two large fans sim­i­lar to ones found on con­struc­tion sites, and an exhaust fan on the wall. Such fans would be use­ful in the final stages of prepar­ing TATP, the home­made per­ox­ide-based explo­sives used in the bomb­ings on Tues­day, and also by the Novem­ber sui­cide bombers in Paris.

After break­ing into the apart­ment on Tues­day morn­ing, police offi­cers found 30 pounds of TATP — enough for anoth­er pow­er­ful bomb — as well as near­ly 40 gal­lons of ace­tone and eight gal­lons of hydro­gen per­ox­ide, mate­ri­als used in pro­duc­ing TATP. They also found a suit­case full of nails and met­al bolts, used to make bombs more lethal, as well as an Islam­ic State flag.

Mr. Rodrigues said that when­ev­er he vis­it­ed the apart­ment, the door to the liv­ing room was always shut, while win­dows through­out the apart­ment were always open. Mr. Rodrigues said he would smell a “very strong chem­i­cal odor” that he could not quite put a fin­ger on. “If it smelled like bleach or drugs, I would’ve rec­og­nized it,” he said.

Mr. Rodrigues said that while he was mys­ti­fied by the odor, he nev­er report­ed any­thing amiss to the police.

But at least one res­i­dent in the area did, not because of the smell but because of strange com­ings and goings from the build­ing. Rachid Ghad­dih, a long­time local res­i­dent who lives around the cor­ner, said nobody in the neigh­bor­hood sus­pect­ed any­thing relat­ed to ter­ror­ism but added that the strange goings-on at the build­ing had been brought to the atten­tion of the local agent de quarti­er, a police offi­cer respon­si­ble for keep­ing a reg­istry of res­i­dents and oth­er tasks.

The agent de quarti­er, Philippe Swin­nen, declined to be inter­viewed. Mr. Rodrigues said the offi­cer had stopped by the build­ing at least twice to check whether the names of res­i­dents were prop­er­ly list­ed, but nev­er entered because the Bakraouis did not list their names. “It took him three months to fig­ure out that peo­ple were liv­ing” on the top floor, Mr. Rodrigues said, adding: “But it was too late. That’s how things work in Schaer­beek.”

“How was it pos­si­ble, mem­bers of Par­lia­ment asked, that two of the sui­cide bombers in the Brus­sels attacks, Ibrahim el-Bakraoui and his younger broth­er Khalid, both res­i­dents on Max Roos Street since the begin­ning of the year, had man­aged to go unde­tect­ed for so long? And all this despite a record of vio­lent crime in Bel­gium and, in the case of the old­er broth­er, a clear warn­ing from Turkey in June that he was on his way back to Europe after being arrest­ed as a sus­pect­ed ter­ror­ist while on his way to Syr­ia?”

Yeah, it’s all pret­ty baf­fling, espe­cial­ly since...

...
Act­ing with unchar­ac­ter­is­tic — and still unex­plained — swift­ness, Bel­gian secu­ri­ty forces sealed off the area around the apart­ment in Schaer­beek with­in 90 min­utes of the air­port attack. The author­i­ties attrib­uted their speedy reac­tion to a tip-off from the taxi dri­ver.

But the dri­ver was said to have alert­ed the police only after a pho­to­graph of the sus­pects in the attacks was released hours lat­er, rais­ing ques­tions about whether the police had per­haps already had the build­ing in their sights but, for some rea­son, had not moved in and smashed through the front door to the sixth-floor apart­ment until it was too late.

“There were inves­ti­ga­tions before and after the events” of Tues­day, Alexan­dri­no Rodrigues, the own­er of the build­ing, said in an inter­view, sug­gest­ing that the police had sus­pi­cions before the attacks and had not entire­ly ignored the report from a con­cerned neigh­bor. “You can’t catch a rab­bit with­out know­ing where it lives,” he added.
...

And was it real­ly true, the law­mak­ers demand­ed, that the author­i­ties had received a pre­cise tip in Decem­ber about the pos­si­ble where­abouts of Salah Abdeslam, the only known sur­vivor among the ter­ror­ists respon­si­ble for the Paris attacks, who was final­ly cap­tured in Brus­sels on March 18? He was found at the address cit­ed in the Decem­ber tip-off, which had not been act­ed on because it had not been passed up the police chain of com­mand.
...

Is that real­ly true? If so, it would appear that the one of the dots most urgent­ly in need of con­nect­ing is the lack of dot con­nect­ing.

Its not just hap­pen­ing in Brus­sels, it is also Cal­i­for­nia:
FBI inves­ti­gat­ing reports of Mid­dle East­ern men fir­ing hun­dreds of shots in Apple Val­ley

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-17-men-with-guns-detained-and-released-i-20160328-story.html

Richard Win­ton­Con­tact Reporter
The FBI on Tues­day was con­tin­u­ing to ques­tion peo­ple after receiv­ing reports from campers that a group of armed men in a remote part of Apple Val­ley fired hun­dreds of shots Sun­day morn­ing.

San Bernardi­no Coun­ty sheriff’s deputies and an FBI agent respond­ed to the area known as Deep Creek Hot Springs after reports of gun­shots and chant­i­ng in the predawn hours, offi­cials said. Accord­ing to law enforce­ment sources, 17 men of Mid­dle East­ern descent were detained.

But none were arrest­ed or charged in con­nec­tion with shoot­ing firearms and they coop­er­at­ed with deputies, author­i­ties said.

San Bernardi­no Coun­ty sher­if­f’s spokes­woman Jodi Miller said the men were released after author­i­ties found no evi­dence of a spe­cif­ic crime or out­stand­ing war­rants.

“None of the per­sons inter­viewed yes­ter­day were iden­ti­fied as ter­ror­ists,” she said.

One rifle did not have a ser­i­al num­ber because it was bought in parts, Miller said. But it was deemed to be legal in Cal­i­for­nia. She said the FBI may be con­duct­ing addi­tion­al inter­views with the men.

See the most-read sto­ries this hour »
FBI spokes­woman Lau­ra Eimiller said agents are work­ing with local author­i­ties to deter­mine if crimes were com­mit­ted.

A caller to 911 report­ed hear­ing more than 100 shots fired and see­ing sev­er­al men wear­ing tur­bans in the area of the shoot­ing.

With the assis­tance of a sheriff’s heli­copter, deputies locat­ed the men walk­ing away from a creek car­ry­ing back­packs and oth­er items.

A search found sev­er­al hand­guns, a rifle and a shot­gun, accord­ing to a sheriff’s state­ment.

“A records check of the sub­jects, their weapons, and their vehi­cles was com­plet­ed,” the state­ment said. “The records check revealed none of the sub­jects had a crim­i­nal his­to­ry or out­stand­ing war­rants, the weapons were reg­is­tered with the Depart­ment of Jus­tice except for the rifle, and the vehi­cles were also reg­is­tered.”

Sheriff’s inves­ti­ga­tors con­tact­ed sev­er­al hik­ers, but none wit­nessed the guns being fired. “There was no evi­dence found that a crime had been com­mit­ted by any of the sub­jects who were detained, and they were released,” the depart­ment said.

A pho­to­graph tak­en at the scene shows the men hand­cuffed as sev­er­al deputies exam­ine their back­packs and equip­ment.

The DNI indi­cates more ISIS cells are detect­ed in Eng­land, Italy and Ger­many in this arti­cle:

New encryp­tion tech­nol­o­gy is aid­ing ter­ror­ists, intel­li­gence direc­tor says

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/monitor_breakfast/2016/0425/New-encryption-technology-is-aiding-terrorists-intelligence-director-says

New encryp­tion tech­nol­o­gy is aid­ing ter­ror­ists, intel­li­gence direc­tor says

Wash­ing­ton — The Edward Snow­den leaks have accel­er­at­ed the sophis­ti­ca­tion of encryp­tion tech­nolo­gies by “about sev­en years,” Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence James Clap­per told reporters this morn­ing.

And that is not a devel­op­ment to be cel­e­brat­ed, he added in remarks at a break­fast host­ed by The Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor.

“From our stand­point, it’s not a good thing.”

New, com­mer­cial­ly avail­able encryp­tion soft­ware “had and is hav­ing major, pro­found effects on our abil­i­ty” to col­lect intel­li­gence, “par­tic­u­lar­ly against ter­ror­ists,” he warned.

That’s in large part because the Islam­ic State is “the most sophis­ti­cat­ed user by far of the Inter­net.” They pri­vate­ly pur­chase soft­ware that “to ensure end-to-end encryp­tion” of their com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

“And so that is a major inhibitor to dis­cern­ing plot­ting, prin­ci­pal­ly by ISIL and oth­ers,” Mr. Clap­per said, using one acronym for the Islam­ic State.

The sev­en year esti­ma­tion comes from the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency, he said.

It rais­es the issue of the ten­sion between the need for secu­ri­ty against cyber attacks – which as recent­ly as Feb­ru­ary Clap­per cit­ed as a greater threat than ter­ror­ism – and the oppo­si­tion to law enforce­ment against so-called unbreak­able encryp­tion soft­ware that, they say, could hin­der their search for ter­ror­ists.

Clap­per for his part echoed Pres­i­dent Obama’s warn­ing against “abso­lutist posi­tions” on the top­ic. “Some­how, we need to find a bal­ance here,” he said. “I don’t know the tech­ni­cal­i­ties of how we might arrive here, how we thread the nee­dle” between how to “ensure pri­va­cy and secu­ri­ty on an indi­vid­ual basis, as well as secu­ri­ty in the con­text of what’s best for the col­lec­tive good.”

At the moment, he added, that goal “is an elu­sive holy grail that we’re pur­su­ing.”

That said, he warned that the devel­op­ment of unbreak­able encryp­tion, which he likened to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that that it could, in essence, “give the ter­ror­ists a pass.”

Clap­per warned Mon­day that the group has clan­des­tine cells that are plot­ting more ter­ror­ist attacks in Ger­many, Italy, and Eng­land.

To this end, the Unit­ed States is step­ping up efforts to pro­mote more intel­li­gence shar­ing. In the mean­time, since the recent IS attacks on Paris and Brus­sels, US intel­li­gence offi­cials have learned some things about the ter­ror­ist group, he said.

For starters, they are “very op-sec con­scious,” Clap­per said. A for­mer Air Force lieu­tenant gen­er­al, he was using mil­i­tary par­lance for “oper­a­tional secu­ri­ty.”

It is clear that IS is also tak­ing advan­tage of the migrant cri­sis in Europe, he added.

And that pos­es a for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge for Europe. There is a “fun­da­men­tal con­flict” between Euro­pean Union incen­tives and dri­ves to pro­mote open­ness and free move­ment of peo­ple and goods with pri­va­cy, “which is in some ways in con­flict with the respon­si­bil­i­ties that each coun­try has as a nation-state to pro­tect the bor­ders and secu­ri­ties of their nations and peo­ples,” Clap­per said.