Assessment of a potential Domestic Threat by Al-Shabaab of North America
You are an intelligence analyst working for the US Department of Homeland Security. You have been asked to prepare an intelligence assessment addressing a potential plot under development by a domestic terrorist organization, al Shabab In North America (ASNA).
The assignment: Write an intelligence assessment on ASNA. In your concept paper, you identified your assessment scope, analytic categories, intelligence questions, and hypotheses. You have also completed a Analysis of Competing Hypotheses that examined the degree of evidentiary support to a subset of your hypotheses for at least one analytic category.
Your job now is to complete your assessment and inform your intelligence customers about the intentions and capabilities of ASNA, whether or not you believe an attack is likely or possible, and the implications for your customers.
The assessment should:
Present a clear, defensible thesis statement that sets expectations with your customers about what you will cover and why it is relevant to them
Be well organized, with clear analytic categories that relate to your thesis statement
Clear judgments, claims, sub-claims, and evidence in each category, that roll up and stay within the boundaries of your thesis statement
Demonstrates the use of at least three structured analytic techniques (your ACH is one such technique; if you choose to include what you learned from the ACH, then you only need to apply two more SATs)
Follows the principles of the inverted pyramid organizational structure
Is well written, free of grammatical or spelling errors, with judgments clearly stated.
Word limit: 2,000 words. DO NOT include the actual use or application of SATs in the body of the assessment. If you wish, put the frameworks and work product of your SATs in an appendix. Appendix material DOES NOT count toward your word total.
See the accompanying grading rubric for more details on the expectations for this assignment.
Continuous threat of a terrorist attack has driven domestic vigilance to the very top of DHS and other law enforcement laws agendas. The capacity to assess and manage risk is necessary, especially after the 9-11 attack. The CIA analysts serve a role in ensuring they get to go through various threats presented and determine the level of the threat. There are five primary levels of threat: low, moderate, substantial, severe and critical. The category will always depend on the evidence intelligence collected. The intelligence information has to be analyzed and assessed by trained individuals before classifying a threat.
Recently there has been a suspicion that the Al-Shabaab of North America is going to launch an attack on American soil. Until recently this has only been a suspicion has there was lack of enough Intel. The level of terrorist threat should actually be categorized as severe as we have sufficient intel to back the claims. The terrorist group that is looking to undertake the attack is the Al-Shabaab group in North America. This is an associate group of the Al-Qaida and does also have links to the original Al-Shabaab group in Somalia. They are majorly going to target financial centers, banking services and busy malls with the use of dirty bombs and improvised electronic device.
Information Gathering
We had to spend a lot of time, resources and efforts to actually conclude that the terrorist attack threat is real. Consultations between different law enforcement agencies such as FBI, CIA, and police was necessary to determine the level of threat. The ASNA groups are looking up to attack the financial services as they know with such an attack they will America down to its knees.
The FBI in association with the CIA and other law enforcement Energy have been working together to establish if the threat by ASNA IA a real deal or not. There was a lot of prior phone tapping of the known ASNA associates and leaders especially members of the Sabriye family. The houses were also bugged as well as the Sadiqque mosque so that they would get prior information on what they were planning. The first red flag was when Ibrahim, Farrah, and Kareem moved to Minneapolis.
There were phone calls between the three. Most conversions were in Arabic, and there was need for an interpreter. We learned that they were planning a terrorist attack on the United States soil that would bring havoc and fear across the regions. The team tasked with tailing and gathering information on the ASNA group would go through their trash to get receipts of the various purchases made. It was difficult getting hold of their money trail as mostly they avoided the use of credit or debit cards but only paid using cash.
The emails were intercepted. This was a way they were using to keep in contact with their fellow al-Qaida and al-Shabaab messages. There were also several calls between Ibrahim and Charles Kauffman. Most of these phone calls were about an item that was to be imported from Canada. Charles Kauffman was an American native who worked in a LAB and was thus in a position to supply radiological materials.
It took several months to go through the phone texts, recorded phone calls, meetings and emails to arrive at a decision that there is actually a terrorist threat planned to happen in the US. Their target was the major financial institutions. They also want to hit the major shopping malls, banking institutions and also minor financial centers. It was clear that they were really not bothered about the number of causalities but by the fact that they will be able to cause fear and havoc.
Who’s conducting the attack
Members and associates of the ASNA are majorly the Sabriye Family. They are extremist who believes that killing non-Muslims is a way of fighting jihad a holy war. This is the family that has actually been making most of the plans including recruitment of new Islamic members. The recruitment is done at the Abubakar as-Sadiqque Islamic Center where they go to pray. Sabriye works as an immigration lawyer this gives him an upper hand in getting to recruit new members. Most of the members are from the Sabriye family, but the organization has grown. Some American natives are actually being recruited and thus converting their names. Mary Jackson who dated Khalid Sabriye changed her name to Sharmake Rahim. The intelligence report focuses on her children as they still have ties with Khalid.
The report shows indication that Khalid and other new recruits are receiving counsel at the Abubakar as-Sadiqque most. This would be ways of helping them have a plan on how to conduct the plot on US soil while other recruits may join the rest of their al-Shabaab brothers to go and fight in Somalia. There is further intel that Khalid would not be involved in the plot but is aware of what the plans.
The analysis of both the emails, phone conversations and meetings indicate that the group gets its funding from petty crime as they do not want to bring attention to themselves. They also get funding from their affiliate groups such as Al-Shabaab in Somali who give them both explosive materials, training needed as well as money. The group has some of its members in very high places and are professionals; these people do also fund the group’s activities. The group has also been involved with rendezvous, and they are stealing the materi...