In 2008, Candidate Barack Obama criticized Hillary Clinton's campaign for creating an ad that invoked Osama Bin Laden and implicitly questioned his readiness for the position. "We already have a President who plays the politics of fear, and we don't need another," his spokesman said at the time. Well, in 2012 the polls are a little tighter than Obama would like them to be, so Fear is again our friend (did you know that he killed Osama bin Laden with his bare hands?) But Republicans are SHOCKED that other politicians might try to scare up votes. more ›

The alleged mastermind of a thwarted plan to blow up several NYC subway trains testified for the second day in the trial of his alleged accomplice yesterday. According to Najibullah Zazi, the attack was motivated by a desire for avenge the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers in 2006. In a “martyrdom” video, Zazi said, ‘This is for her,’ ” referring to the girl. He also explained that al-Qaeda taught him a 'very simple' formula for suicide bombs using materials that could all be bought over the counter. more ›

Is the sinking of a grand ocean liner by an iceberg analogous to the destruction of two iconic towers at the hands of terrorists? The Daily News' Helen Kennedy thinks so, calling what happened to the Titanic "the first truly global tragedy the 9/11 of its day." more ›

The five 9/11 suspects, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will be tried in front of a military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which means that if found guilty, they could face the death penalty, Al Jazeera English reports. Within 30 days, the action is set to begin: suspects will hear the charges against them and enter a plea. The charges include terrorism, hijacking an aircraft, conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war. more ›

The NYPD held its annual pre-Passover briefing, which, according to the NYPD's press release, is "an annual conference at which religious and community leaders are provided information on the current threat environment and implications for New York City during the upcoming religious holiday." The release does not have any details about any specific threats, but NYPD Director of Intelligence Analysis Mitchell Silber said they're all over that mysterious Internet post showing a composite image of New York City's skyline, landmarks and One Police Plaza with the message, "Al Qaeda Coming Soon Again in New York." more ›

Former Vice President and Eternal Sith Lord Dick Cheney received a heart transplant last night. According to the Times he is recuperating at a Northern Virginia hospital. "Although the former Vice President and his family do not know the identity of the donor, they will be forever grateful for this lifesaving gift," aide Kara Ahern said in a statement. Cheney, a former smoker, has suffered five heart attacks, the first of which occurred when he was 37 years old. He had been living with a battery-powered heart pump until the pump saw W and threatened to walk off the job. more ›

Sometimes Uncle Sam needs you to have coitus for your country, even if it turns out to be an utterly salacious waste of time. FBI informant Craig Monteilh AKA "Farouk Aziz" wondered if he was crossing the line when a woman he was monitoring wanted to have sex with him. "They said, if it would enhance the intelligence, go ahead and have sex. So I did," Monteilh told the Guardian. Is that the Patriot Act in your pocket or are you gonna wiretap that ass? more ›

In the wake of a lot of bad press about overzealous TSA screeners strip-searching and frisking senior citizens at airports, the TSA has announced that it will grant the elderly a modicum of dignity at a handful of airports. Starting next week, the agency will begin testing modified screening procedures for passengers 75 and older at airports in Chicago, Denver, Portland, and Orlando. At these airports, travelers over 75 will no longer be required to remove their shoes "and light outerwear." more ›

The U.S. staff sergeant who allegedly killed 16 Afghan civilians on Sunday served three tours in Iraq and was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury in 2010 in a vehicle rollover incident. According to the Washington Post, the 38-year-old soldier, who the military refuses to identify until they are able to formally charge him, joined the Army 11 years ago as a sniper, is a married father of two and was deployed to Afghanistan for the first time in December. After sustaining the brain injury, he was declared fit for duty. “We’re going to do a thorough investigation," commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Marine Gen. John Allen told CNN. "We’re going to hold this individual accountable.” more ›

Jose Pimentel, who is either a would-be terrorist or a stoned entrapment victim, pleaded not guilty today to rarely used state-level terrorism charges which were enacted after 9/11. You'll recall that NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly made a big deal in announcing Pimentel's arrest, holding a press conference in which he held up a theatrical pipe bomb replica that looks something like what Pimentel might have built, had he actually been competent enough to do so. more ›

The Associated Press can't stop, won't stop reporting on the NYPD's "Demographics Unit," which has been both criticized and praised for conducting widespread surveillance in neighborhoods with significant Muslim populations. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has insisted the NYPD is not racially profiling their surveillance targets, but internal NYPD documents tell a different story: Secret files (below) have been kept on businesses owned by second- and third-generation Americans specifically because they were Muslims, the AP reports. more ›

Police have been called to the Guggenheim and P.S. 290 on the Upper East Side today after reports of "suspicious powder" at both locations. The NYPD press office tells us that in both instances, the powder was enclosed in letters mailed to the addresses, and its makeup is "undetermined." more ›

The narrator of the "documentary" The Third Jihad, is scheduled to speak at a rally at 1 Police Plaza to support the department's sweeping surveillance of Muslims. "We feel the NYPD has been taking a lot of unfair hits," Dr. Zuhdi Jasser told the AP. more ›

In a speech to Fordham Law alumni yesterday, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly defended his department's vast surveillance network watching Muslims across the Northeast. “The notion that the Police Department should close our eyes to what takes place outside the five boroughs is folly, and it defies the lessons of history,” Kelly said. “If terrorists aren’t limited by borders and boundaries, we can’t be either." more ›

Nineteen years ago today, a bomb exploded in the parking garage of the World Trade Center just after noon. Six people were killed and over 1,000 were injured. As History.com explains: "A crater 60 feet wide [was left], causing the collapse of several steel-reinforced concrete floors in the vicinity of the blast. Although the terrorist bomb failed to critically damage the main structure of the skyscrapers, six people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured. The World Trade Center itself suffered more than $500 million in damage. After the attack, authorities evacuated 50,000 people from the buildings, hundreds of whom were suffering from smoke inhalation. The evacuation lasted the whole afternoon." more ›

Newark Mayor Cory Booker tells the AP he's undertaking an investigation into the NYPD's surveillance of Muslims in his city. The spying came to light in the Associated Press's most recent report about the NYPD's counterterrorism efforts, which have been criticized for racially profiling Muslims. "We're going to get to the bottom of this," Booker says. "This raises a number of concerns. It's just very, very sobering." In fact, the NYPD's efforts to build a database of Muslims in Newark was so clandestine that Booker didn't even know about it. The AP reports: more ›

In yet another revelation of the scope of the NYPD's surveillance of U.S. citizens throughout the Northeast based on their religion, the AP has obtained secret reports on Muslim communities in Newark, New Jersey, and Suffolk and Nassau Counties in New York. The reports contain photographs of mosques and Muslim-owned businesses, and the names and descriptions of those who worked in them. Newark's mayor Corey Booker claims to have had no knowledge of the NYPD's actions, which occurred in 2007. "Wow," Booker said upon learning of the surveillance. "This raises a number of concerns. It's just very, very, sobering." more ›

Reporters questioned Mayor Bloomberg today about the recent AP report that the NYPD was keeping tabs on Muslims at universities like Yale and UPenn, and the Mayor unapologetically defended the practices. "We have to keep this country safe. This is a dangerous place. Make no mistake about it," Bloomberg said, according to a transcript by the Daily News. Asked to comment on the reports that an undercover NYPD officer went on a whitewater rafting trip sponsored by a Muslim Student Association, Bloomberg replied, "I have no idea. The only whitewater rafting I’ve done I did with my daughter. I don’t think she had a lot of information that I was interested in." more ›

An internal NYPD document recently obtained by the Associated Press shows that in 2006 NYPD analysts advised the department to infiltrate a number of Shiite mosques because of tensions between the U.S. and Iran. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has vigorously denied that the NYPD targets Muslims for surveillance, insisting that "We don't do it ethnically, we do it geographically." But a series of in-depth AP articles have repeatedly contradicted Kelly, revealing that the NYPD does in fact have a wide-ranging surveillance operation designed to infiltrate Muslim communities and mosques. (It's even called the Demographics Unit—not the Geographics Unit.) And the latest AP scoop is further evidence of the role religion plays in NYPD spying. more ›

Marshall Curry has profiled NASCAR hopefuls and Newark Mayor Corey Booker (which earned him an Oscar nomination), and his latest, If A Tree Falls, follows the plight of Daniel McGowan, a former member of the Earth Liberation Front, a group that the F.B.I. once dubbed "America's #1 domestic terrorist threat." Curry traces McGowan's journey from his identity as the mild-mannered son of an NYPD officer to a radical environmental activist in the Pacific Northwest, carrying out arson in the name of the ELF, and back again. McGowan faces a life sentence plus 335 years for committing acts of terrorism, and his guilt is never in doubt. But the movie forces us to think about who a "terrorist" is, and how our society treats citizens who feel that they have no voice. more ›

Remember Jose Pimentel, the "lone wolf" terrorist the NYPD arrested last year after a tip from a questionable informant? The one whose first lawyer said he was entrapped and whose case the FBI absolutely, to the NYPD's embarrassment, wanted nothing to do with? Well, the Manhattan's DA office is reportedly working on a plea deal for the "stoned squirrel" as you read this, despite the fact they haven't actually indicted him yet. more ›

14 Muslim leaders have fired off a sternly-worded letter to Mayor Bloomberg announcing their intention to boycott his annual interfaith breakfast on Friday, which brings together religious and political leaders from all over the spectrum for a friendly coffee klatsch. At issue is a damning series of articles in the Associated Press detailing the NYPD's targeting of Muslim communities for surveillance. Commissioner Ray Kelly has firmly denied this, telling the City Council, "We don't do it ethnically, we do it geographically. We don't racially profile, we follow leads wherever those leads take us." The NYCLU, however, calls it a "rogue domestic surveillance operation," and in November hundreds of Muslims demonstrated outside police headquarters. more ›

Back in 2009, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland was released from prison on "compassionate" grounds, ostensibly because he was expected to die from prostate cancer within three months. (The real reason, according to a U.S. Senate report, had to do with lucrative Libyan oil contracts sought by British-based oil giant BP.) Upon his return to Tripoli, al-Megrahi received a hero's welcome, and he's been living in luxury ever since. But in August, he told CNN he really is so totally going to die soon. And now he's giving ONE FINAL INTERVIEW, before disappearing into Al Capone's vault for good. more ›

On the eve of the second anniversary of the Christmas Day underwear bomber, a man who helped stop the would-be bomber before he could blow up a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit is suing for $10 million. Theophilus Maranga, a Dutchess County resident, has filed the lawsuit against thwarted terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Delta Air Lines, and Air France-KLM. In a lawsuit filed in Manhattan Federal Court yesterday, Maranga says he “risked his life” by jumping on Umar Faroul Abdulmutallab after the Nigerian student lit his shorts on fire. more ›

After being inexplicably denied at the airport in Lima, Peru early Saturday morning, New York native and paroled terrorist collaborator Lori Berenson will be allowed to fly to NYC to visit her family until January 11. "She called and said, 'I've got the permission to leave' and the next step is for her to get on a plane and get here," Berenson's father Mark told the AP. "I'm just glad they finally resolved the thing." more ›

Lori Berenson, the New Yorker who served 15 years of a prison sentence in Peru as a convicted terrorist, said Peruvian immigration officials prevented her from visiting the US yesterday despite a court-order that allowed her to travel to New York City until January 11. "They said I needed a document for immigration and I didn't have it," she told the Times, "so they wouldn't let me leave the country. Berenson is currently on parole through November of 2015, and her attorney called the actions "an abuse of authority." more ›

[UPDATE] Berenson was stopped at the airport by Peruvian officials. "They didn't let me leave and they're putting out this version that I arrived late," Berenson told the AP earlier today. "An abuse of authority has been committed," her attorney said. "Administratively, you can't block a court order." On Wednesday, a three-judge panel agreed to allow the visit, and Peruvian officials denied to comment on why Berenson and her 2-year-old son Salvador, have been denied the trip to New York. more ›

Accused "lone wolf" terrorist Jose Pimentel has been assigned a new attorney, after the Legal Aid Society learned that it was representing the informant in the case for an unrelated criminal matter. Pimentel's new counsel is Lori Cohen, a private criminal defense attorney who defended the Egyptian banker accused to assaulting a housekeeper last spring, and has several homicide cases under her belt. "The credibility of the person who led him to do those things will certainly be an issue," Cohen tells DNAinfo, referring to reports that the case against Pimentel may be tainted by entrapment. more ›

At a hastily-assembled press conference Sunday night, Mayor Bloomberg and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly stated that arresting 27-year-old terror suspect Jose Pimentel was an urgent priority "before he could detonate a fully-operated bomb." But the FBI's refusal to take the case based on "holes" and entrapment issues as well as the revelations that Pimentel, a frequent marijuana smoker, had attempted to circumcise himself pose the salient question: was Pimentel ever a serious threat to society? more ›