Relaxed Curbs At Shoe Bomber’s Prison Angers Security Experts

(Analyst's note:  Troubling at best.)


By Tom Mashberg

Three terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center in 1993 have sent 90 letters exhorting holy war to overseas al-Qaeda units from the same prison in Colorado where shoe bomber Richard C. Reid is doing life, angering security experts who question why the feds have relaxed curbs on Reid’s access to the outside world.

The letters were brandished like trophies and printed in Arabic newspapers, said Debra Burlingame, a member of the board of directors for the National Sept. 11 Memorial Foundation. She noted that some of those letters went to terrorists associated with the 2004 Madrid train bombings, known as the Spanish 9/11.

The Sunday Herald reported yesterday that earlier this summer, the Obama administration quietly dropped tough restrictions on Reid, who tried to blow up a Paris to Miami flight in December 2001 by igniting a bomb in his shoe. The Justice Department refused to say why the special administrative measures were lifted in the wake of a lawsuit filed by Reid challenging them. ....