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Northeast states ask for regional centers

BURLINGTON, Vt. - Public safety officials from 10 Northeastern states want the Department of Homeland Security to create state and regional intelligence-sharing centers to get terrorism-related information to police officers on the street.

The officials, who form the Northeast Regional Homeland Security Agreement, endorsed the idea in a letter delivered Thursday to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.

"The Department of Homeland Security must achieve the goal of keeping our nation safe," the letter said. "This will be enabled by getting the right information to the right people."

Rachael Sunbarger, a spokeswoman for the department, said Friday the agency is discussing the concept with public safety officials.

"We have been working with this group since they contacted us," she said.

The intelligence-sharing centers would be staffed by people with top-secret security clearance who would work directly with federal, state and local police and security agencies. The centers would enable officers to use federal databases to learn if suspects have terrorist connections.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Federal prosecutors who accuse nine U.S. citizens and two other men of conspiring to join a Muslim terror group presented an address list and other evidence Friday to try to link the suspects to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida group.

But the evidence wasn't enough to persuade U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema to keep one defendant, Sabri Benkhala, in jail. Brinkema ordered Benkhala released to home detention at his father's house in Falls Church, upholding a previous release order issued by a magistrate.

"There's no question the government has raised some significant issues here," the judge said. "There's some smoke here, but I don't believe in this case the government has met its burden."

Benkhala, a U.S. citizen, was the fourth of the 11 defendants to be set free while awaiting a November trial on charges of training to join a Pakistani terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.

Assistant U.S. Attorney David Laufman said Friday at a detention hearing for Benkhala that the suspects aimed to train with Lashkar so they could fight alongside the Taliban against Americans after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

WASHINGTON - Federal security officials are warning that hundreds of law-enforcement identification cards and uniforms are missing, raising concerns that they could fall into the hands of terrorists.

The Department of Homeland Security surveyed five unspecified states and found that hundreds of official IDs, badges, decals, uniforms and license plates were reported lost or stolen in just three months this year, from February to May.

Couple that with reports from private companies that they have received suspicious inquiries about renting official delivery vehicles, and the department said it decided to issue an "information bulletin" Wednesday to alert "owners and operators of the nation's infrastructure."

The department cautioned that it did not know whether any or all of the missing items had ultimately been located, or if the three-month tally was representative of an uptick in thefts. No previous study has been done with which this one could be compared.