Wildfire Commentaries
WASHINGTON TIMES October 30, 2003 COMMENTARY Wildfires and security sparks
By Jack Kelly
At this writing, wildfires in California have taken 15 lives and more than 1,000 homes. This is already the most expensive fire in California history, and it is still blazing out of control.
What if the fires were deliberately set, by al Qaeda terrorists?
This is purely conjecture, but the idea apparently has occurred to al Qaeda.
On June 25, the FBI's regional office in Denver sent a memorandum to state and local law enforcement agencies warning them of a plot to start forest fires in the western United States using timed incendiary devices.
The FBI learned of the plot from a senior al Qaeda detainee, who told investigators he had developed a plan to set forest fires in Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming.
"The detainee believed that significant damage to the U.S. economy would result and once it was realized that the fires were terrorist acts, U.S. citizens would put pressure on the U.S. government to change its policies," said the FBI memo, a copy of which was obtained by the Arizona Republic.
There has been no official determination of what started the fires, which most likely are the product of natural causes, or of accidents. But a news report indicated that the sheriff's department in San Bernardino County is seeking two men, both about 20, who were seen on a road north of San Bernardino on Saturday. "A witness saw one occupant throw something into roadside brush that started a fire and the van then made a U-turn and fled, officials said."
There are plenty of soft targets to attack in the United States. Because they are willing to attack anything, terrorists can do massive harm at little risk to themselves. If they are willing to die in the process, the carnage they can cause rises exponentially.
On September 11, 2001, Islamic extremists killed nearly 3,000 Americans.
Unless al Qaeda had a hand in the California wildfires, there have been no successful terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since. It's important to remind ourselves why, since Democrats seem determined to restore us to our pre-September 11 vulnerability.
The Democrats are very much a Sept. 10 party. A recent poll indicated fewer than 5 percent of likely primary and caucus voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina worried much about terrorism or homeland security. Democrats want to declare the war on terrorism over, and get on with really important stuff like global warming and national health insurance.
But if we unilaterally declare the war on terrorism over, would the terrorists go along?
Here are three hypotheses for why no Americans have died at terrorist hands on U.S. soil since September 11: (A) Al Qaeda has renounced violence as a means of obtaining its objectives. (B) American offensives in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere have knocked the terror network off balance. (C) Heightened vigilance by the FBI and other domestic security agencies has reduced the vulnerability of domestic targets.
Most Americans would opt for a combination of hypotheses B and C, with a liberal dose of luck thrown in. But most of the Democratic presidential contenders seem to be leaning toward A. Of the nine candidates, only two support seeing the mission in Iraq through to a successful conclusion.
Nearly all seem to think our liberties are threatened more by the FBI than by the terrorists the FBI is trying to catch.
Attorney General John Ashcroft says that the U.S.A. Patriot Act of 2001, which restored to the FBI investigative tools that had been taken away in an orgy of political correctness in the 1970s, has made it possible to break up terrorist cells in Buffalo, Seattle, Portland and Detroit. But the leading Democratic candidates liken the Patriot Act to the Alien and Sedition Acts, or Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War. Even some who voted for it are calling for its repeal.
Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, John Kerry, John Edwards et al say we can pull out of Iraq and repeal the Patriot Act without adverse consequences.
They're willing to bet your life on it. Are you?
Jack Kelly, a syndicated columnist, is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh (Pa.) Post-Gazette.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0711forestterror11.html
Al-Qaida targeted Western forests, memo says
Hoped to set disastrous summer fires in U.S.
Judd Slivka The Arizona Republic
Jul. 11, 2003
National forests in the West were considered targets for al-Qaida attacks, according to an FBI memo to law enforcement agencies dated June 25.
A senior al-Qaida detainee told federal investigators he had developed a plan to set midsummer forest fires in Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming, according to the document, obtained by The Arizona Republic.
"The detainee believed that significant damage to the U.S. economy would result and once it was realized that the fires were terrorist acts, U.S. citizens would put pressure on the U.S. government to change its policies," the memo said.
The unidentified detainee said he hoped to create several large, catastrophic wildfires at once, mimicking the destructive fires that swept across Australia in 2002, according to the memo.
The Forest Service took note of the warning, a spokeswoman said, but didn't really change any of its policies or operating patterns.
In fact, many forest law enforcement officers contacted by The Republic had no idea the warning had been issued at all.
"It goes along with the rest of the alerts," said Rose Davis, a spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. "It's a reminder to be vigilant. We hope the public is, too. If you see something suspicious in an airport, report it. Likewise, if you see something suspicious in a forest, report it."
But neither the interagency fire center nor the Forest Service chose to report the warning to the public. The decision to release the information was up to the FBI. A spokeswoman for the bureau's Denver office, which drew up the memo, declined to comment.
The al-Qaida detainee told investigators that his plan called for three or four operatives to travel to the United States and set timed explosive devices in forests and grasslands. The devices would be set to detonate after the operatives had left the country.
But the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Attorney's Office in Wyoming could not evaluate the source or the accuracy of the information. The detainee's admission may have been given as a smokescreen.
"The information provided may have been intended to influence as well as inform," the memo said.
In the days since Sept. 11, 2001, the idea of intentionally setting fires as a terrorist act has been bandied about in the fire community.
"I thought about it a lot after 9/11," said Don Riddle, the law enforcement officer for the Manti-LaSal National Forest in Utah. "How hard would it be for someone to get in a small plane and fly over a forest dropping fusees (flares) or firing off a flare gun as they flew over?"
With fires in the right place, they could be devastating, destroying homes and commercial timber areas. They would also tie up a significant amount of national resources.
"When fire season really gets rolling," Riddle said, "they call out the National Guard."
And when things really get bad - as they did in 2000, 2001 and last year - Army and Marine units get called out as emergency firefighters.
America's national forests have been targeted before. On Sept. 9, 1942, a plane launched from a Japanese submarine flew over Oregon's forests dropping incendiary bombs. The plan was to cause massive conflagrations in the forests that would be hard to fight because of their size and the lack of manpower. But the weather didn't cooperate, and the fires the Japanese set didn't spread very far.
Six decades later, the forests are in substantially worse shape, snarled with timber and tinder-dry. A bark beetle infestation across the West has made the forests even more susceptible to fire. "This is not considered an immediate threat," said the National Interagency Fire Center's Davis. "But we do consider it another potential ignition source at a dangerous time." Reach the reporter at <mailto:judd.slivka@arizonarepublic.com judd.slivka@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8097. This apparently got widespread coverage at the time. A few sites where it could be found under a simple google search for al-Qaeda and FBI memo :
http://www.intelmessages.org/Messages/National_Security/wwwboard/messages_03/4957.html Al-Qaida Targeted West for Forest Fires, FBI Memo Reportedly Says Posted by (64.91.144.82) on Saturday, July 12th, 2003 at 02:10:47 GMT From the Arizona Republic article linked to below: Al-Qaida targeted Western forests, memo says Another site: http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Jul/07122003/nation_w/74848.asp
Also appeared through an AP feed on Fox News. Note the mention of flares being fired from a plane. Several initial reports, both in San Bernardino and in San Diego, indicated that signal flares were fired, sparking the initial fires. The signal flare in Ramona, the most destructive fire known as the Cedar fire, then morphed into a signal fire.
Since Wyoming, Utah and Montana were originally considered as targets, it is possible that these states, as well as other regions of already-stricken California and Colorado should be considered target areas.
It should also be noted that Australia, which suffered the extensive fires there in 2002, has a number of Afghan refugees, including many Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives in the mix, and is a US ally in the war on terrorism. Their fires may not be coincidental
There is a historical precedent. The article mentions a solitary plane attack on the US by the Japanese during WW II but fails to mention the full-scale balloon bomb project that followed. Japanese balloons were sent into the jet stream, carrying both small bombs and incendiary devices meant to torch forests in the western United States. The idea was not only to impact the economy and destroy lumber useful to the war effort, but to tie up manpower.
The question now should be why action was not taken sooner--once confirmed evidence of arson fires was in evidence to activate military aircraft and personnel. If nothing else, military transport helicopters could have been employed for rapid deployment of firefighters and equipment, and C-5/C-17 aircraft could have been put on active alert to transport fire engines rather than having them drive hundreds of miles by land.
If the answer is that nobody anticipated that this was a terrorist attack, we need to change the mindset of fire and police officials to accept the assumption that any wildfire has the potential for being a terrorist attack, and to plan and deploy forces accordingly. Currently, in the southern California area, the presumption seems to be that once a fire is out, unless hotspots trigger another outbreak, a burned area and its surroundings are relatively safe. No. The reality is that if these are arson attacks, particularly ones launched by terrorists or their agents, then fires can be expected to continue to break out, often in places far from the initial point or where winds would not be expected to start. The Crest fire in San Diego seems a perfect example of this. There was no warning for residents of that area and the residents had no idea that fire was a danger to them. If county officials had understood that we may be under siege by an arsonist, word could have been passed to residents to be vigilant throughout the county, even far from existing fires.
Fire officials and the current governor in California are claiming that no additional aerial firefighting resources could be mobilized against the current spate of fires because of federal law against using military assets until contracts had been issued to all existing civilian contractors first. Nonsense. If resources were as overwhelmed as we have been told, civilian assets would have been exhausted very early on, clearing the way for federal assistance. As to claims that the weather, winds and smoke limited the use of these aircraft, Governor Davis needs to ask why photos exist of civilian helicopters and fire-fighting aircraft being used in the LA area for days before the San Diego fires even began. Mountain flying in high winds IS dangerous, without a doubt, but the winds in San Diego were no more severe than in LA, where aircraft were being flown. If you can t lay retardant or water on top of a fire, then lay it down in its projected path, out of the smoke. Also, if you know an area is under threat by terrorists using arson as a weapon, military assets can be staged and ready to move in on a moment s notice, immediately after conditions allow deployment.
Even the handling of the media becomes crucial when terrorism is expected. In the past few days, the media has carried news about the deployment of firefighting assets, describing where they came from and what these different agencies brought with them. If one considers this to be an act of war, deployments should be treated just as they would in a war setting, as military secrets. It makes no sense to report to the enemy all of your deployments and capabilities, yet this is precisely what officials and the media have done in the Southern California fires. Within 24 hours of announcing that Colorado firefighters were in place to fight southern California fires, two major fires broke out in Colorado. It is very likely that this was no simple coincidence. In future effectively immediately because we are still under threat from existing fires it should be automatically assumed that any wildfire is a terror event. If it later proves not to be the case, fine.
There is little cost or loss in being over-prepared. However, if we do not assume terrorism, do not make military assets available and do not manage information resources effectively, and it turns out that the incidents were, indeed, terror-related, the costs can be exceedingly high.
This is NOT a suggestion that we panic and over-react on the assumption that every campfire is a terror event. What I am saying is that we need to recognize the potential and not go to the other extreme of assuming that every fire is NOT a terror event.
Ronald Lewis
MILITARY/OPEN-SOURCE INTELLIGENCE ANALYST