Terrorism Notebook
TSA's No. 2 official says he's leaving

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McHale, TSA's deputy administrator, has worked at TSA since January 2002, just two months after the agency's creation following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

He oversaw the hiring of 158 federal security directors who manage the security efforts at the nation's airports, and the hiring of thousands of security screeners. Before working at TSA, he had worked in the federal government for 23 years.

Members of Congress in recent months have criticized TSA, saying it has performed no better than private screeners before Sept. 11.

TSA's chief of staff, Carol DiBattiste, will become acting deputy administrator.

Red Cross suspects U.S. hiding detainees

GENEVA — The international Red Cross said yesterday it suspects the United States is hiding detainees in lockups across the globe, though the agency has been granted access to thousands of prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere.

Terror suspects reported by the FBI as captured have never turned up in detention centers, and the United States has failed to reply to agency demands for a list of everyone it's holding, said Antonella Notari, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Under the Geneva Conventions, the United States is obliged to give the neutral, Swiss-run ICRC access to prisoners of war and other detainees.

The United States says it is cooperating with the agency and has allowed Red Cross delegates access to thousands of prisoners in Afghanistan, at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in Iraq, where agency delegates have visited Saddam Hussein.

Background-check plan delayed again
 
WASHINGTON — The government is revising a plan to check all airline passengers' backgrounds before they board a plane, further delaying a program once described by the Bush administration as urgent.

The Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, or CAPPS II, would check personal information against commercial and government databases. Passengers would be given one of three color-coded ratings based on the likelihood of them being terrorists.

The program has been delayed because some U.S. airlines refused to turn over passenger data for testing, fearing that doing so could violate privacy laws.

Acting Transportation Security Administration chief David Stone told a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on his nomination to become TSA administrator that the agency is "reshaping and repackaging" the project.

Government quietly ships "chem-packs"

WASHINGTON — The government is quietly shipping stocks of antidotes against chemical weapons to states under a long-awaited program to boost response to a potential terrorist attack.

New York and Boston, sites of the upcoming political conventions, were among the first areas to receive the "chem-packs."

Within two years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hopes to have the allotments dispersed to every state.

The program was begun in part because there has been "an uneven level of protection across the country," said Steve Adams, deputy director of the Strategic National Stockpile Program.

Suit seeks release of Algerian pair

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Lawyers for two Algerian terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, said yesterday they filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. government's authority to hold the men and saying they were wrongly handed over to American forces in Bosnia.

The lawsuit was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Washington, lead attorney Stephen Oleskey said from Boston.

Lakhdar Boumediene and Mohammed Nechla were doing relief work in Bosnia when they were detained in 2001, according to the suit, which demands the U.S. government justify their detentions or free them.

The challenges follow similar lawsuits brought earlier this month on behalf of nine detainees at the U.S. Naval base in Cuba.

The U.S. military maintains the nearly 600 detainees there are "enemy combatants" captured in the Afghanistan war and suspected of links to the fallen Taliban regime or al-Qaida.

Lawyers for the Algerians, however, say they were not al-Qaida members, had no links to terrorism and were not involved in the Afghan conflict.

Also

Hamed Aderrahman Ahmad , a Spanish citizen held for two years in the U.S. military camp at Guantánamo Bay before being handed over to Spain, walked out of prison on bail yesterday, judicial sources said. He is charged with belonging to al-Qaida. According to court sources, Ahmad said he had wanted to join the Taliban movement in Afghanistan, but denied the charge of belonging to al-Qaida.

A terminally ill Egyptian suspected of links to Osama bin Laden and involvement in bomb attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa will be freed on bail, a British High Court judge ruled yesterday. The man, who can only be identified as Mr. X because of the risk of vigilante attacks, was freed because he had bone-marrow cancer and wanted to be reunited with his family.

Sweden's government drew harsh criticism yesterday amid reports it paid $67,425 to fly home a citizen who had been detained by the United States in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for more than two years.

Mehdi-Muhammed Ghezali was released Thursday and then flown to Skavsta Airport at Nykoeping in southern Sweden aboard a government jet.