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The U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, remained closed for a sixth day Jan. 4 in response to a potential security threat. The action came after security personnel observed five men who appeared to be Africans in their 20s and 30s loitering outside the facility, one of whom had a camera. Malaysian security officials, however, insist that the United States exaggerated the threat and is overreacting.
If the men were indeed conducting pre-operational surveillance, they were not doing a very good job. Of course, poor tradecraft and surveillance techniques are often associated with militant groups such as al Qaeda -- though that does not mean these groups pose no threat. Pre-operational surveillance of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, was detected more than a year before the 1998 attack against the facility. Subsequent action by the U.S. and Kenyan governments against the al Qaeda organization in Kenya was thought -- erroneously -- to have thwarted the threat.
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