All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

The Senate Homeland Security Committee will conduct an investigation into last week's shootings at Fort Hood, beginning with a public hearing next week, the committee's leaders announced Monday.

While the investigation will not interfere with the Army or FBI's criminal investigations, "this murderous attack should be examined from every angle to make sure nothing like this occurs again," Committee Chairman Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said in a statement.

The committee will investigate the potential motives of Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the man accused of opening fire at the military base. It will also look into whether the government missed warning signs of the incident and what lessons can be gleaned from the tragedy to prevent such future attacks.

CBSNews.com Special Report: Tragedy at Fort Hood

"As this investigation continues, we would do no favor to the thousands of Muslim Americans who are serving our military with honor and the millions of patriotic and law-abiding Muslim Americans by ignoring real evidence that an individual Muslim American soldier may have become a violent Islamist extremist," Lieberman said.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the ranking Republican on the committee, said Congress owed the investigation to the military, their families and their communities.
"Our military must be prepared to detect the warning signs for potential violence and to intervene and prevent similar attacks in the future," she said. "This hearing is vital to assuring the men and women serving in our military and their families that their safety is a top priority for us."

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Tom Ridge is opening up about his time as the nation's first Secretary of Homeland Security during the Bush Administration. He has a new book coming out in a few weeks, and the details are starting to come out now.

The most striking claim is that Ridge says he was pressured by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft to raise the security threat level on the eve of the 2004 election.


The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which received an advance copy of the book, writes more about the incident:

Osama bin Laden had released a videotape with one more ominous sounding but unspecific threat against the United States. Neither Mr. Ridge nor any of the department's security experts thought the message warranted any change in the nation's alert status.

…

"A vigorous, some might say dramatic, discussion ensured. Ashcroft strongly urged an increase in the threat level and was supported by Rumsfeld."

Noting the correlation found between increases in the threat level and the president's approval rating, Mr. Ridge writes, "I wondered, 'Is this about security or politics?'"

The dispute remained open at the end of the call. Mr. Ridge's aides carried the word to the White House staff that the threat escalation would court accusations of politicizing national security. Mr. Ridge's view finally prevailed.

"After that episode, I knew I had to follow through with my plans to leave the federal government for the private sector," he writes, according to a press release from the publisher.

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The first thing most people get wrong about Navy SEALs is that they love the limelight.

"Three Navy SEAL snipers take out Somali pirates," the headlines trumpeted a few weeks back. "Head shots, every one!"

In Coronado, where they put incoming would-be SEALs through BUDs, there were groans. BUDs stands for Basic Underwater Demolition — the six-month course you have to get through, just to start the three-year process of becoming a SEAL.

"Oh, great," they were saying. "Now, everyone will think, 'how cool to be a SEAL.' Now we'll get a bunch of young guys trying to sign up who think this is some kind of video game."

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A roundtable of health officials stressed the seriousness of the H1N1 influenza strain, but said "encouraging" research and prior planning will hopefully minimize the impact.

"We are starting to see encouraging signs," the acting director of the CDC Dr. Richard Besser told moderator Bob Schieffer on CBS News' Face the Nation.

And, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said, the government is hoping to have a vaccine for the new virus strain by the Fall.

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WASHINGTON--The Conficker Internet virus has infected important computerized medical devices, but governmental red tape interfered with their repair, an organizer of an anti-virus working group told Congress on Friday.

Rodney Joffe, one of the founders of an unofficial organization known as the Conficker Working Group, said that government regulations prevented hospital staff from carrying out the repairs.

Joffe, who also is the senior vice president for the telecom clearinghouse Neustar, told a panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that over the last three weeks, he and another Conficker researcher identified at least 300 critical medical devices from a single manufacturer that have been infected with the computer virus.

The devices were used in hospitals to allow doctors to view and manipulate high-intensity scans like MRIs and were often found in or near intensive care unit facilities, connected to local area networks with other critical medical devices.

"They should have never, ever been connected to the Internet," Joffe said.

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The electric grid system that keeps the United States humming is worth more than $1 trillion and keeps the lights on for more than 300 million Americans. But recent reports have suggested it's also increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks as utilities tie grid-monitoring control systems to open networks like the Internet.

Federal regulators have complained they do not have enough authority over the electric grid networks. Now, in the wake of news of grid infiltrations by Chinese and Russian spies, some members of Congress are prepared to hand them that power.

Matching bills were introduced in the House and the Senate on Thursday to increase the authority of the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to secure the electric grid. The bills were introduced by Senator Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who chair the Homeland Security committees in their respective chambers.

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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has sent a memo to some health care providers noting procedures to be followed if the swine flu outbreak eventually makes quarantines necessary.

DHS Assistant Secretary Bridger McGaw circulated the swine flu memo, which was obtained by CBSNews.com, on Monday night. It says: "The Department of Justice has established legal federal authorities pertaining to the implementation of a quarantine and enforcement. Under approval from HHS, the Surgeon General has the authority to issue quarantines."

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The federal official overseeing a 60-day review of the U.S. government's cybersecurity efforts indicated on Wednesday that the final report recommended shifting more responsibilities to the White House.

"It provides the president with recommendations for a White House organizational structure that can effectively address cyberspace-related issues," Melissa Hathaway, acting cyberspace director for the White House's National Security and Homeland Security councils, said at the RSA computer security conference in San Francisco.

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Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said intelligence reports highlighting the potential terrorist threats posed by right wing extremists groups are "not accusations, they're assessments."

The report, which states that right wing extremist groups could use the nation's poor economy and the election of the country's first black president as recruiting tools in an effort to undermine national security, has come under fire from Republicans who say the Obama administration is unfairly singling out conservatives and military veterans.

But Napolitano said the reports are "not intended to infringe on anyone's constitutional rights by any stretch," during an appearance on CBS' The Early Show Thursday.

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Conservatives are up in arms about a report from the Department Of Homeland Security entitled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic And Political Climate Fueling Resurgence In Radicalization And Recruitment." (Here it is, in PDF form.)

The report is "one of the most embarrassingly shoddy pieces of propaganda I’d ever read out of DHS," writes Michelle Malkin, who deems it a "piece of crap report" that serves as "a sweeping indictment of conservatives."

Coverage of the report presently occupies both the top spot on the Drudge Report and a prime second location, where it comes with a picture of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and the words "SHE IS WATCHING YOU."

The "Key Findings" section of the report opens with these words: "The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing* terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues. The economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment."

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