Terrorism

Despite success in shutting down the financing of terrorist groups within its borders, Saudi Arabia remains a top source of funding for Al Qaeda elsewhere and Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, the Government Accountability Office said in a report to Congress. The report does not name individuals or estimate how much money might be flowing to the terrorists. Since 2003, the Saudis have barred charities from transferring money outside the kingdom, but the GAO said that this hasn't prevented Saudi-based charities with branches abroad from serving as funding sources for terrorist groups.

The nervous woman in a gray suit clicked on a photo lineup on an overhead screen labeled "Jihadi Martyrs." It flashed to mug shots of men with names like Abu Issa, an Al Qaeda recruiter, and Abu Jabber, a trainer. A man in one photograph was pointing a machine gun. "They are all me," said the blond mother from Montana, speaking before an audience of computer experts, law enforcement agents and investigators at the first International Conference on Cyber Security, held last week in New York.

Weeks after arriving in Pakistan on a flight from New York, Bryant Neal Vinas plunged into holy war: He volunteered to train for a suicide attack and fought in the wilds of Afghanistan. By the time he was captured in November, 14 months later, the Muslim convert from Long Island had journeyed into the innermost circles of Al Qaeda, according to a statement he gave investigators. Vinas befriended fellow trainees who wanted to bomb stadiums in Europe. He learned to assemble explosives vests.

As owners of one of the oldest ferry services in America, Tom and Judy Bixler steer their craft across the narrow Tred Avon River dozens of times each summer day to link two sleepy Chesapeake Bay towns known for crabs, not jihadists. "The ferry goes pretty slowly," Judy Bixler said of the seasonal service, which dates back to 1683. "It's not like someone could commandeer it and go anywhere." But under a little-known domestic security program, the Bixlers and about 1.

Right-wing plotters targeted prominent figures for assassination, including Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize-winning author, and planned to attack NATO installations in Turkey, the government charged Friday in a wide-ranging indictment against what it described as a nationwide network of conspirators. The 2,500-page document laying out details of the alleged ultranationalist plot was released by prosecutors Friday, as an Istanbul court agreed to take up the case and scheduled hearings to begin Oct. 20. At least 86 people face trial on charges that include conspiracy and terrorism, and authorities have said more people are likely to be charged.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia told world leaders at a U.N. interfaith meeting that terrorism is the enemy of all religions, and he called for a united front to combat it and promote tolerance. "We state with a unified voice that religions through which Almighty God sought to bring happiness to mankind should not be turned into instruments to cause misery," the king said, opening a U.N. General Assembly meeting his government initiated. "Terrorism and criminality are the enemies of every religion and every civilization.

Barack Obama picked CIA veteran John Brennan as his top advisor on counter-terrorism, a White House position not subject to Senate approval. Brennan will be an influential advisor on the Middle East and on Iran, an area in which he has called for a sharp break with past U.S. policy. The president-elect's decision comes only six weeks after Brennan was forced to pull out of contention for the directorship of the Central Intelligence Agency because of fears that his statements supporting some controversial interrogation techniques would have complicated his confirmation.

President Obama held an emotional meeting Friday with relatives of victims of the 2000 bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole and the Sept. 11 attacks who are still waiting for justice to be served years after the deadly acts of terrorism. Obama promised the roughly 40 individuals who attended that the meeting would be the first of many. Some of the victims' family members said they welcomed Obama's gesture even though they weren't entirely convinced that his decision to close the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where terrorism suspects are being detained, was the right thing to do.

Bryant Neal Vinas' unlikely odyssey from Long Island, N.Y., to Al Qaeda's innermost circle of commanders in Pakistan was achieved without any help in the U.S. from the well-oiled "jihadist pipeline" that has guided so many militants from Europe and other countries -- a fact that is cause for concern, current and former U.S. counter-terrorism officials said. His case, which became public last week, showed that a U.S.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. is poised to appoint a criminal prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA abuses committed during the interrogation of terrorism suspects, current and former U.S. government officials said. A senior Justice Department official said that Holder envisioned an inquiry that would be "narrow" in scope, focusing on "whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized" in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws.