Critical Releases in Homeland Security: May 21, 2008

Chairman Bennie G. Thompson of the House Committee on Homeland Security, charged the Democratic Majority staff to examine and observe a number of different mass gathering events to identify areas where additional homeland security resources might help to ensure public health and safety at these events. "Ensuring the public health, safety, and security of the public at mass gatherings can be especially challenging. These areas are interrelated and do not fall within the exclusive domain of the private sector. On the contrary, mass gatherings require that the public and private sectors interact with and support one another in complex ways. […] Mass gatherings pose special challenges in terms of management and control, especially considering their value as targets for terrorism and other crimes. The terrorist goal of attacking cities in order to kill and injure the most people-and otherwise have the greatest impact for the least amount of effort-applies to mass gatherings as well. All large-scale mass gatherings need to be protected in the post-9/11 world. Mass gatherings can be categorized in a number of different ways. Mass gatherings occur over different periods of time. Some are one-day events, such as the Super Bowl. Others extend for longer, such as the Lollapolooza music festival. Still others are composed of a series of one-day events, such as National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) 'March Madness.' In this paper, one-day events are referred to as 'shortterm mass gatherings.' This paper primarily focuses on mass gatherings lasting for longer than one-day and the attendees, participants, and support personnel who physically remain in the same constrained location-long-term mass gatherings."

"At the request of Chairman Henry A. Waxman, the majority staff of the Committee conducted a survey of Level I trauma centers in seven major U.S. cities to assess whether they have the capacity to respond to the level of casualties experienced in the Madrid attack. The survey included five of the cities considered at highest risk of a terrorist strike: New York City, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Houston. It also included Denver and Minneapolis […]. The Level I trauma centers surveyed are not the only providers of emergency care in the seven cities, but they are the hospitals that can provide the highest levels of injury care and would be the preferred destinations for casualties in the event of a terrorist attack involving conventional explosives. […]. The survey was designed to determine the real-time capacity of the emergency rooms at the Level I trauma centers to absorb a sudden influx from a mass casualty event. Thirty-four of the 41 Level I trauma centers in these cities participated in the survey. The results of the survey show that none of the hospitals surveyed in the seven cities had sufficient emergency care capacity to respond to an attack generating the number of casualties that occurred in Madrid."

"Consistent with its statutory mission to serve as the U.S. Government's knowledge bank on international terrorism, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) is providing this report and statistical information to assist academics, policy makers and the public in understanding the data. […] While NCTC keeps statistics on the annual number of incidents of 'terrorism,' its ability to track the specific groups responsible for each attack involving killings, kidnappings, and injuries is significantly limited by the availability of reliable open source information, particularly for events involving small numbers of casualties. The statistical material compiled in this report, therefore, is drawn from the number of attacks of 'terrorism' that occurred in 2007, which is the closest figure that is practicable for NCTC to supply in satisfaction of the above-referenced statistical requirements."

This document establishes an investigation and prosecution framework that emphasizes four priority areas of action against organized crime: Marshal information and intelligence; prioritize and target the most significant IOC threats; attacks from all angles; and enterprise theory. "In recent years, international organized crime has expanded considerably in presence, sophistication and significance - and it now threatens many aspects of how Americans live, work and do business. International organized crime promotes corruption, violence and other illegal activities, jeopardizes our border security, and causes human misery. It undermines the integrity of our banking and financial systems, commodities and securities markets, and our cyberspace. In short, international organized crime is a national security problem that demands a strategic, targeted and concerted U.S. Government response."

"This is the first in a series of reports by the Majority and Minority staff of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (Committee) on the threat of homegrown terrorism inspired by violent Islamist extremism. The Committee initiated an investigation into this threat during the 109th Congress under the leadership of Chairman Susan Collins (R-ME). The first hearing on the homegrown threat considered the potential for radicalization in U.S. prisons, including an examination of the activities of Kevin Lamar James, an American citizen. While in prison, James adopted a variant of violent Islamist ideology, founded an organization known as the Assembly for Authentic Islam (or JIS, the Arabic initials for the group), and began converting fellow prisoners to his cause. Upon release, James recruited members of JIS to commit at least 11 armed robberies, the proceeds from which were to be used to finance attacks against military installations and other targets in southern California. James and another member of the group eventually pled guilty to conspiring to wage war against the United States. The James case is only one example of how the violent Islamist terrorist threat has evolved and expanded since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Al-Qaeda planned the 9/11 attacks and recruited the hijackers abroad before sending them to the United States to make final preparations for the operation. The 9/11 hijackers were indoctrinated into the violent Islamist mindset long before they set foot in the United States. As the James case and others illustrate, however, radicalization is no longer confined to training camps in Afghanistan or other locations far from our shores; it is also occurring right here in the United States."