INTELLIGENCE COMPROMISED OR FAILURE?

Something is possibly very rotten with the state of our anti-terrorism intelligence service team. They may have the ability to identify the location of any blogger within 10 minutes upon publishing their blogs but were unable to track down Azahari even though he had been keeping in contact with his first wife and family in Malaysia for the past 4.5 years. Whilst the anti-terrorism intelligence service had performed admirably during the Emergency of 1948~1960 and the Confrontation of 1962~1966, its road map and energy may have been redirected and now is a mere shadow of what it is meant to be - fighting terrorism. In the wake of our failure in keeping tabs on known and suspected terrorist contacts, the question is - Has our anti terrorist intelligence team been compromised from within or is it just an oxymoron - intelligence failure?


Azahari in touch with family while on the run
Ridwan Max Sijabat and Indra Harsaputra,
Link : The Jakarta Post, Jakarta/Surabaya

Malaysian terrorist Azahari bin Husin, who was responsible for a series of bomb attacks that killed hundreds of innocent people in Indonesia, appeared to have kept in touch with his family during his years as a fugitive.
Personal documents found by police in the house where he was killed in a gunfight last Wednesday revealed that Azahari had communicated with his family and siblings by letter and telephone.
The police discovered dozens of international phone cards, letters and a diary belonging to Azahari, along with guns and explosives, among the rubble of his hide-out in Batu district in the East Java regency of Malang. The building was severely damaged in what police believe was a suicide bombing by Azahari and his operative Arman.
In his last letter to his wife, Azahari asked her to pray for his efforts to wage a jihad so that he could die as a martyr. The letter, which was found inside the diary, never reached his wife in Malaysia.
"To die in such a way will assure me of a place in heaven and enable me to bring 70 members of our extended family. Remember me to our son and take care of him," the letter, written in Malay, reads...
Police also found a letter from Azahari's wife Wan Noraini Jusoh, expressing her fears that he could be killed at anytime. Noraini and their son also advised Azahari to take care of himself and she said their son frequently uttered the word "grave" in his sleep.....Azahari's 45-year-old sister, Suraya, cherished the good side of his childhood and adulthood saying he loved the outdoors and once hitchhiked on a lorry from the premier Malay College Kuala Kangsar, where he studied, to his home in Jasin as a teenager.
She said her brother was intelligent, competitive at school and liked adventure. Azahari studied at the English-medium SK Inggeris and SM Inggeris in Jasin and moved to MCKK when he was in Form Three. He then studied in Australia and took a PhD in mathematics in Britain.