Daily Morning Brief: Private Military Contractors, Legal Guns Confiscated, Jihadist Radicalization in U.S., and al Qaeda Wounded

♦ A Pentagon official allegedly created an "off-the-books" spy program that utilized a network of private military contractors to spot insurgent locations in Afghanistan and Pakistan and report their coordinates for subsequent military strikes, reports The New York Times. "The official, Michael D. Furlong, hired contractors from private security companies that employed former C.I.A. and Special Forces operatives," the Times' Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti report, adding "It is generally considered illegal for the military to hire contractors to act as covert spies." Furlong is currently under investigation by the Department of Defense for his alleged activities.

♦ Police in Oregon will return a cache of legally purchased weapons to its owner after they raided the man's home last week, confiscated the weapons, and took him for a mental health evaluation. According to the Mail Tribune, "Medford police said they started watching a home Sunday night in response to law enforcement concerns about the resident - later identified as Pyles - after he was placed on administrative leave from his job." Police called Pyles "disgruntled" and worried that he would use three recently purchased guns—Heckler & Koch .45-caliber handgun, a Walther .380-caliber handgun and an AK-47 rifle since—to retaliate against his employer.

♦ The saga of "JihadJane" has grown stranger as another U.S. woman from Colorado was arrested in Ireland and then freed for her involvement in the plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist, reports ABC News. The cartoonist, Lars Vilks, angered Muslims worldwide by drawing a dog's body on the Prophet Mohammad. The Times (of London) reports the fear of radicalization has spread into suburban America. "The recruitment of American women as home-grown jihadists presents a nightmare for the US authorities," the paper says. "'It’s like looking for the proverbial needle,” said a senior FBI official." Although jihadist radicalization seems to have quickened in the United States, a terrorism expert from Duke University's Triangle Center of Terrorism and Homeland Security told The Denver Post that people have more to fear from a city's murder rate than they do homegrown jihadists like JihadJane.

♦ Core al Qaeda, the organization that pulled off the 9-11 attacks, has "blown it," U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke told CNN yesterday. "Holbrooke said the organization that masterminded the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States now was less an organization that plans attacks than one that seeks to inspire Muslims to jihad," reports Agence France Presse. Holbrooke also said that al Qaeda is under fantastic pressure on the Afpak border because of increased Pakistani military pressure along side its U.S. ally.