The House Homeland Security Committee web site noted today
that the subcommittee hearing on ammonium nitrate that I mentioned in an
earlier blog will be a closed hearing. They report that: “Due to the nature of
the information at this hearing, the Subcommittee intends to move directly
to close the hearing [emphasis in original] and transition to HVC-302 to
receive classified testimony.”
While I certainly understand the need to take classified
testimony out of public view, I find it very intriguing that there is much
about the way that ammonium nitrate is outlawed in Afghanistan that is not part
of the public record. Now if this were an intelligence hearing, I would expect
that the subcommittee would hear about AN smuggling from Pakistan or Iran, but
that would have no bearing on an infrastructure protection hearing.
So what’s going on? I don’t know except that its classified.
Since we don’t even yet have a witness list, I can’t even make sophisticated
guess. So what could be going on? Well, if this were an FBI witness, I would
suspect that there were a recent report from Afghanistan about an IED trainer
(probably from the tribal area in Pakistan) that was said to be moving to the
US (or sighted in US, or….) to train some local cells in the use of AN for the
construction of IEDs.
If this were the case (and remember this is a wild-ass-guess
on my part based upon a lack of reasonable information) then the sudden
designation of this as a closed hearing would mean that the FBI had essentially
closed this case and was now willing to talk to Congress about it, but not yet
ready to go public with the information. Why this subcommittee? That would
certainly be infrastructure protection related.
What would be interesting to know is if there were someone
from the DHS Infrastructure Security Compliance Division also scheduled to
testify at this hearing. What would be very interesting would be the questions
that should then be asked about the interminable delays in publishing the Congressionally
mandated ammonium nitrate security program (ANSP) regulations. Of course to get
a good answer to that question there would also have to be a witness from the Office
of Management and Budget.
Of course, this is all idle conjecture on my part. There
will be a closed hearing on Thursday, and we will probably never know what was
covered. Unless, of course, there is the almost inevitable leak…
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