Looking for the perfect holiday gift? Something nobody else will give him/her? Al Kamen's got just the thing--all you have to do is get hold of one

"The Gift That Keeps On Giving," our pal Al calls it in today's Washington Post "In the Loop" column.

Yes, it's the new, better-than-ever National Counterterrorism Center's 2008 weekly planner, out just in time for Christmas.

Where else can you discover that nine years ago today, on Dec. 19, Libyan-trained Abu Sayyaf Group leader Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani died in a gunfight with Philippine authorities on Basilan island? Or that it's 20 Dhu al-Hijjah in the Arabic calendar?

Or let's say it's July 30, and you spot a tall, thin, bearded guy eating chocolate cake with candles on it while schlepping around a dialysis machine. Your NCTC planner will tell you that it's Osama bin Laden's birthday, and you can collect a cool $27 million "for information leading directly to [his] apprehension and/or conviction."

Just call the FBI or the nearest embassy. Telephone and e-mail options are provided.

Bin Laden, in years past, had been listed as likely to be in Afghanistan and, more recently, Pakistan. This year's calendar -- which says he has somehow maintained his girlish 160-pound figure all these years -- has him "in the wind," as the spooks say, with no location mentioned.

Early this year, there were reports that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, wanted for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, might have been killed by U.S. airstrikes in Somalia. Apparently not, because the State Department's Rewards for Justice Program still has a $5 million price tag on his head.

The calendar's most-wanted group includes many of our favorites from years past, most with a $5 million bounty. Our longtime favorite, Faker Ben Abdelazziz Boussora, a Canadian, still has those "prominently protruding ears and is believed to have a serious pituitary gland illness."

One newcomer in 2008 is Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, secretary general of the Damascus-based Islamic Jihad, which the State Department lists as a terrorist group. The 2008 planner has more realistic color photos of Shallah and many of the most-wanted, including Taliban chief Mullah Omar, which should help sightings.

For example, there are three candid photos of Jaber Elbaneh of that famed terrorist cell in Lackawanna, N.Y.

The left-hand page has the customary helpful information about terrorist groups, safety tips for chemical and biological weapons, and safe distances from various types of explosives. (You'll want to be at least 500 yards from the typical car bomb, we're advised.) So you think that runny nose and shortness of breath are just a cold? Maybe. Or maybe you've got symptoms of exposure to VX, a deadly nerve gas, the planner says. If you start to twitch, pull out your atropine syringe or high-tail it to your doctor. But it might only be anthrax.

Other new features include a page that rebuts such notions as poverty breeds terrorists. Not so. Another myth is that you can spot a radical because of certain "signs," such as a beard, beady eyes, a crazed expression or manic behavior. (In fact, it could be just a reporter on deadline.) The NCTC notes that this year's splendid edition is "the largest since the calendar first appeared in a daily planner format in 2003." (It began in the '90s as a wall calendar put out by the CIA with no mention of a publisher. The NCTC started publishing it in 2005.) The calendars are popular gifts for anti-terrorism officials in other countries and are highly prized as Christmas gifts within the counterterrorism community, we are told. "People are begging for this thing," a source said. And this year's -- with maybe 40,000 in print, up substantially from last year's output -- is exceptional.

But forget Wal-Mart or Target. There are no operators standing by to take your call. These calendars are available only to folks inside the anti-terrorism community. As always, in this town, it's who you know.

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