Homeland Insecurity

Detroit

Nuclear search targets Muslims

December 24, 2005

BY NIRAJ WARIKOO

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Federal agents secretly monitored Muslim homes and mosques in Detroit for radiation linked to terrorist bombs, according to published reports -- a disclosure Friday that prompted disbelief and outrage in Michigan's large Islamic communities.

Under the program, agents with the FBI and U.S. Department of Energy targeted a range of private Muslim institutions without court approval or warrants. Federal officials say they set up the program in Detroit and five other cities to thwart a nuclear attack from Islamic extremists, according to a U.S. News and World Report article that was confirmed Friday by the U.S. Justice Department.

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In a 2001 decision, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that police must get warrants before using devices that search through walls for criminal activity. That decision struck down the use of a heat-sensing device without a warrant that led to marijuana charges against an Oregon man.

Roehrkasse said the Justice Department believes that case does not apply to air monitoring in publicly accessible areas.

On Friday, after the report was published, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights and advocacy group with a Michigan chapter, called upon the U.S. government to provide details on who it has been monitoring. What disturbed the group was the fact that the government appeared to only focus on Muslims.

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BrooklynDodger comments: The hidden agenda of homeland insecurity included attacking social organizations considered threatening by copocracy. [Copacracy?] Houses of religion are rarely bastions of progressive thought, but the Dodger concedes that such structures of threatened minorities should be protected from intrusion.

The Dodger's questions and would like to know whether and to what extent a nuclear device puts off enough radiation to be detected outside in the street, or outside a shipping container?