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From LA Times

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L.A. council's Public Safety Committee confirms Beck's nomination for LAPD chief

The L.A. City Council's Public Safety Committee today unanimously confirmed Charlie Beck's nomination to be the next Los Angeles police chief.

The vote came after a hearing in which community leaders and council members praised Beck's work at the Los Angeles Police Department and called him the right man to take over the department right now.

Beck made his own presentation, saying his top goal was to extend the reforms begun by former Police Chief William J. Bratton and move them down into the rank and file of the department.

"Now is the time to push [the reforms] down into the patrol cars," Beck said, adding this effort would be the "hallmark of my leadership."

Council members said they have worked with Beck and have come to respect him.

Beck was selected  by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to replace Bratton last week, and the pick has met with praise from both rank-and-file officers and civil-rights activists.

The committee hearing comes a few weeks before the full council is expected to vote on Beck's nomination on Nov. 17.

In an interview with Times reporters last week, Beck -- an LAPD veteran and current deputy chief --portrayed himself as a leader rooted by his ties to rank-and-file officers, as opposed to Bratton, who reformed the department by focusing on its upper echelon.

He said he would concentrate on continuing reforms Bratton introduced into the mind-set of the thousands of officers who are the heart of the organization.

Strategically, Beck said he planned to give greater authority to the captains who run the department's dozens of field stations. Currently, decisions on how to deploy a large segment of the department's force are made by commanders at the LAPD's headquarters. Field captains should have more discretion, Beck said.

Amid an ongoing debate over the size of the force and whether the city should continue to fund a push by the mayor to add 1,000 officers, Beck said he believed the current number of officers, which hovers near 10,000, should be viewed as "a floor, a basement." Any drop in numbers, he said, would make it difficult to continue with gains made under Bratton.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/11/la-public-safety-committee-confirms-becks-nomination-for-lapd-chief.html#more

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Obama to speak at Fort Hood service

The memorial, honoring the 13 people killed in a shooting rampage at the Army base, comes amid new questions about contacts between the suspect and a militant cleric.

By Ashley Powers

3:30 AM PST, November 10, 2009

Reporting from Ft. Hood, Texas

President Obama is slated to speak at a memorial service today at this grieving Army base, where a military psychiatrist is accused of killing 13 people in a shooting rampage.

The service, scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. local time, will be a traditional military affair, with a sermon, a roll call of the dead and a rifle volley. About 3,000 spectators, as well as the families of the 12 soldiers and one civilian killed, are expected to attend.

The tribute comes amid new questions about whether the shooting, in which dozens were also wounded, could have been prevented.

Authorities said Monday that the FBI and Army had apparently looked into contacts between the suspected gunman, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, and a Yemen-based militant Islamist prayer leader with ties to the Sept. 11 hijackers.

Investigators are poring over numerous e-mails sent by Hasan to Anwar al Awlaki and apparently to other Islamist figures, said a federal law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

But the official said that the information authorities had at the time did not suggest that Hasan -- a devout Muslim who was reportedly despondent over his scheduled deployment to Afghanistan -- was growing violent or was involved in "any terrorist planning or plotting."

Authorities think that Hasan acted alone when he allegedly opened fire Thursday in the base's Soldier Readiness Center complex. Witnesses said he shouted " Allahu akbar! " -- Arabic for "God is great" -- before discharging more than 100 rounds from a 5.7-millimeter semiautomatic pistol.

The minutes-long rampage -- inside and outside a building where soldiers get medical exams before deploying -- ended when two civilian police officers shot the gunman in the upper torso.

Hasan is in stable condition at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. Officials said he would be tried in military court.

On Monday, Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, Ft. Hood's commanding general, said officials would take a "very hard look" at how they attended to the needs of troubled soldiers.

"We have other soldiers that . . . might have some of the same stress and indicators that he has," Cone said.

Still, he added, "I believe this is an isolated incident. An unfortunate, isolated incident."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fort-hood-obama10-2009nov10,0,3396471,print.story

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Fort Hood suspect was on U.S. radar

Nidal Malik Hasan's contacts with a radical Islamic cleric linked to some of the 9/11 hijackers were investigated but found to be mostly innocuous, officials say.

By Josh Meyer and Greg Miller

November 10, 2009

Reporting from Washington

The FBI and the military investigated contacts over the last year between an Army psychiatrist accused in the deadly Ft. Hood rampage and a Yemen-based militant cleric linked to some of the Sept. 11 hijackers, but concluded the shooting suspect did not pose a threat, senior law enforcement and military officials said Monday.

After U.S. intelligence officials intercepted their e-mails, members of two Joint Terrorism Task Forces contacted Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's superiors and reviewed his academic and military records for evidence of suspicious activity late last year and early this year, according to three senior U.S. officials.

But the investigators concluded that Hasan's activities did not warrant a more formal investigation, even though the imam, Anwar al Awlaki, had ties to Al Qaeda operatives and was the author of a popular website espousing jihadist activity, the three officials said.

The disclosure that Hasan had ongoing communications with Awlaki raised questions of whether U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies had information that, if properly shared and investigated, might have helped prevent last week's attack on the Texas military base. Hasan is accused of firing more than 100 rounds from a pair of semiautomatic handguns, killing 13 people and injuring dozens more. Fifteen people remained hospitalized Monday, with eight in intensive care.

In the Hasan "assessment," the officials conceded Monday, authorities did not know that he had purchased at least one semiautomatic handgun last summer at a store in Killeen, Texas, even though such purchases go through an FBI check. And there was no indication, the officials said, that investigators knew about an inflammatory Internet posting from May in which a writer named "NidalHasan" likened a suicide bomber to a soldier who jumps on a grenade to save the lives of his fellow officers -- in that both were sacrificing their lives "for a more noble cause."

The officials disclosed those details at a highly unusual briefing with reporters Monday evening, after conducting a similar one with Capitol Hill lawmakers. For the most part, they defended investigators, saying they had acted on the best information available at the time. The officials also said Hasan's e-mails to Awlaki appeared mostly innocuous and not worthy of further investigation or monitoring under Justice Department guidelines.

But, one of them acknowledged, "painted in the worst light, in hindsight, someone could reach different conclusions."

As part of the shooting inquiry, which is being led by the Army's Criminal Investigation Command, officials are reassessing the communications between Hasan and Awlaki -- and possibly other militant Islamist figures -- to see whether clues might have been missed.

Potentially among those, the Washington Post reported Monday night, was a warning Hasan issued to a roomful of senior Army physicians a year and a half ago in which he said that to avoid "adverse events," the military should allow Muslim soldiers to be released as conscientious objectors instead of fighting in wars against other Muslims.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III also has ordered a review of the bureau's "internal processes."

During the briefing Monday, the officials also said they were trying to determine whether Hasan might have acted alone, and whether he was radicalized or perhaps directed by others.

So far, that does not appear to be the case.

"But this is the beginning of a very long and complex investigation," said another of the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the ongoing nature of the case.

The officials also said that Hasan would be tried in a military court, although he has yet to be arrested.

Maria Gallegos, a spokeswoman for Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, said Hasan had been conscious and talking to medical staff since Saturday. He is in critical but stable condition. Investigators tried to interview him Sunday but he refused, officials said.

President Obama is slated to speak this afternoon at a memorial service at Ft. Hood, a traditional military affair that includes a sermon, a roll call of the dead and a 21-gun salute. Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, the base's commanding general, expected the families of the 13 people killed to be among the 3,000 in attendance.

Even before Monday's disclosures, lawmakers were calling for inquiries into whether the Army, FBI and U.S. intelligence community had missed warning signs about Hasan's increasing radicalization in the months before Thursday's shootings.

"I think the very fact that you've got a major in the U.S. Army contacting [Awlaki], or attempting to contact him, would raise some red flags," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. Hoekstra said his office had been contacted by U.S. officials involved in the case who believed that "the system just broke down."

Awlaki was the imam at a Virginia mosque that Hasan attended in 2001. The mosque later drew the attention of the FBI and the Sept. 11 commission because of Awlaki's connection to at least two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, who may have followed him from a mosque in San Diego to the Dar al Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., in early 2001. A U.S. citizen, Awlaki left the country in 2002 and is believed to be in Yemen and actively supporting the Islamist jihad, or holy war against the West, through his website.

Several officials said U.S. intelligence agencies first intercepted communications between Hasan and Awlaki in late 2008 as a result of another investigation. The information was given to one Joint Terrorism Task Force and then to a second one in Washington because Hasan was living in the area while working and attending classes at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and a military-affiliated health sciences university in Bethesda, Md. "When reviewed, there was nothing to raise a red flag," one of the officials said Monday.

The task forces determined that Hasan contacted the radical cleric between 10 and 20 times, but it was mostly "within the context of the doctor's position and what he was doing at the time, conducting research . . . on the issues of Muslims in the military and the effects of war in Muslim countries," one senior FBI official said earlier Monday. Another official said the research involved post-traumatic stress syndrome and was sanctioned by Hasan's academic overseers.

But Hoekstra expressed frustration with the handling of the intelligence on Hasan, saying authorities had underestimated the significance of the material they had obtained -- including that Awlaki responded to several of the e-mails.

Those responses were regarded by U.S. authorities as "relatively innocuous," Hoekstra said. But, he added, "I think the fact that you're getting responses should have set off red flags regardless of the content."

Hoekstra said authorities appeared to have been looking for evidence of direction from overseas or communication involving a developing plot. "They're looking for somebody to say, 'Go.' " he said. "But I don't think that's the kind of organization [Al Qaeda] is trying to set up. They're more in the world of, if you see an opportunity, take advantage of it and you don't have to get it approved at headquarters."

In an interview, the senior FBI official defended the bureau's handling of the matter, saying: "The process worked."

"If we find in his e-mails that he reached out to all kinds of other people for input," that assessment could change, the official said. "We just don't have the full context yet."

The emerging details are likely to draw parallels with intelligence breakdowns that preceded the Sept. 11 attacks, when the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and other agencies failed to recognize or share information that may have helped uncover the plot.

Fixing those problems was the focus of a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. intelligence community.

Congressional investigators "are going to be taking a look at all of the information and making decisions on whether people should have been notified along the way," said a congressional official who has been briefed on the Hasan probe. "I think that's going to depend on the nature of the communications."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fort-hood10-2009nov10,0,7823182,print.story

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U.S. Supreme Court considers limiting life prison terms for youths

The lawyers in the Florida cases stressed that their clients were not involved in homicides and therefore, should not have been sentenced to prison for life.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dcnow/2009/11/us-supreme-court-considers-limiting-life-prison-terms-for-youths.html

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Case against Ohio murder suspect could widen

Authorities want to know if Anthony Sowell is linked to any killings in places he lived while in the military, including California and Japan. So far, 11 bodies have been found at his Cleveland home.

Associated Press

November 10, 2009

Cleveland

Authorities are investigating whether a murder suspect whose home and yard harbored the remains of at least 11 people is connected to any killings in places he lived while in the military, including California, Japan and the Carolinas.

The FBI will investigate any leads in the case against Anthony Sowell, 50, who served in the Marines from 1978 to 1985, said Scott Wilson, an FBI spokesman in Cleveland.

Sowell was stationed at various times at Parris Island, S.C.; Cherry Point, N.C.; Okinawa, Japan; and Camp Pendleton.

The city of East Cleveland is also reviewing three unsolved slayings in 1988 and 1989, after Sowell returned there from service in the Marines and before he went to prison for attempted rape, said Sgt. Ken Bolton, a detective for the police department in the Cleveland suburb.

Sowell has been charged in Cleveland with five counts of aggravated murder in connection with the bodies found at the home.

He was indicted Monday on one count of attempted murder, two counts of rape, two counts of kidnapping and two counts of felonious assault in an alleged attack Sept. 22 that led to the search of his home.

Police in Coronado, south of Camp Pendleton, said a woman told them that she saw Sowell's picture on TV and was sure he had raped her in 1979.

Officers talked with her but were unable to confirm her story because rape investigation records from 30 years ago have been thrown out, said Jesus Ochoa, Coronado police commander.

Also Monday, the remains of two more women -- Janice Webb, 48, and Kim Yvette Smith, 44 -- were identified by the Cuyahoga County coroner's office, according to Cleveland police Lt. Thomas Stacho.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cleveland-bodies10-2009nov10,0,864727,print.story

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MEXICO UNDER SIEGE

Women play a bigger role in Mexico's drug war

Addiction, the economy and the lure of living well have sucked many into the narcotics underworld. The trend threatens the foundations of Mexican society.

By Tracy Wilkinson

November 10, 2009

Reporting from Culiacan, Mexico

In the story making the rounds here in Mexico's drug capital, the setting is a beauty parlor. A woman with wealth obtained legally openly criticizes a younger patron who is married to a trafficker. The "narco-wife" orders the hairdresser to shave the first woman's head. Terrified, the hairdresser complies.

Urban legend or real? It almost doesn't matter; it's the sort of widely repeated account that both intimidates and titillates. And it highlights a disturbing trend: As drug violence seeps deeper into Mexican society, women are taking a more hands-on role.

In growing numbers, they are being recruited into the ranks of drug smugglers, dealers and foot soldiers. And in growing numbers, they are being jailed, and killed, for their efforts.

Here in Sinaloa, the nation's oldest drug-producing region and home to its most powerful cartel, the wives of drug lords were long viewed as trophies with rhinestone-studded fingernails and endless surgical enhancements.

Now wives -- and mothers and daughters -- are being used by male traffickers because women can more easily pass through the military checkpoints that have popped up along many drug-transport routes.

As Mexico has become a nation that also consumes drugs, women have become addicts, which sucks them into the narcotics underworld.

Mexico's worst economic crisis since World War II is also helping to fuel the trend; for desperate women, dealing and smuggling are often seen as a more "dignified" job than prostitution, said Pedro Cardenas, a Sinaloa state public security official in charge of prisons.

Drug violence that preys on women, in a patriarchal, macho society such as that of Sinaloa, has become an urgent problem in the last year, which has seen more killings than ever before, said Margarita Urias, head of the Sinaloa Institute for Women.

The trend could ultimately pose a threat to the stability of family structures in Mexico, a country where the woman is usually the glue holding a family together.

"It is a social cancer contaminating women who weren't touched before," Urias said.

"When we are so vulnerable, how do we educate and bring up our children? When insecurity overwhelms us, how do we inject values into our homes? How can we remain immune?"

He's free, she's not

Veronica Vasquez curses her drug-smuggling husband.

He wasn't at home the night the army came calling. She didn't have time to dispose of the bags of cocaine he had hidden in the bedroom. Now she's serving five years in the crowded prison in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa, and he's still free.

"I am paying for his crime," said Vasquez, 32. "But I knew what he was doing."

Vasquez, who has two children, lost not just her freedom but all the trappings of the good life she enjoyed. The jewelry and designer handbags and fancy sunglasses, all within easy grasp without really having to work very hard.

"It is all gone," she said. As for her husband: "He is dead to me."

Carmen Elizalde was caught transporting 220 pounds of cocaine from Panama to Mexico. Nabbed on the Honduran border with Guatemala and sentenced to 18 years in prison, she says the deal was her husband's doing. She'd been duped, she said, into going along on what he portrayed as a vacation in Panama. But she didn't ask many questions either.

"Truth is, I didn't want to examine his activities," said Elizalde, 49, a mother of two with a smooth, plump face and perfectly arched eyebrows. "He was giving us a good life, and I didn't care where the money came from."

Mirna Cartagena blames no one but herself. She wanted the quick, easy money. For $1,000, all she had to do was put about 7 pounds of cocaine in her suitcase and board a bus from Culiacan to Mexicali, a city that sits on the border with California. Police pulled her from the bus about halfway along the route, and she was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

"It was a matter of necessity and ignorance, of not thinking of alternatives," Cartagena, 31, said with a toss of her long, curly hair, peering from behind sunglasses.

Nearly a quarter of the inmates in the Culiacan prison are female; nationally, it's 5%. The most dramatic change is the type of conviction. A decade ago, the vast majority of women in prison were there for theft or "crimes of passion," such as the killing of a spouse or lover.

Today the statistics have been turned upside down: The majority are incarcerated for crimes related to drug trafficking, Cardenas said, and 80% of first-time inmates are addicts or users.

In the bloody battles to dominate the drug trade, the traditional codes among traffickers that left families untouched have largely broken down. Being a narco-wife is not the armor it once was.

Golden sandals

Maria Jose Gonzalez seemed to have everything going for her. Her curvaceous looks won the crown at the Sun Festival beauty pageant. She had a budding career as a singer with hopes of a recording deal. And she must have had some smarts too, because she had studied law.

The 22-year-old's body was found dumped along a road on the southern edge of Culiacan last spring, near a sign that warns, "Don't throw trash." Nearby was the body of her husband, Omar Antonio Avila, a used-car salesman. She had been shot in the head; he was blindfolded and his hands handcuffed behind his back. Her eyes were open, staring skyward. She wore golden sandals.

The road where they were discovered is frequently used to dump the murder victims that haunt Culiacan. The road meanders into bushy countryside, winding around the back wall of an affluent residential community with its own man-made lake popular with people on jet skis. Wooden crosses and tiny shrines mark where bodies have appeared. The area is known as La Primavera. Springtime.

Authorities suspect that Gonzalez and her husband got mixed up with the Sinaloa cartel, members of which may have blamed them for the loss of 9 tons of marijuana in an army raid shortly before the couple were slain.

Zulema Hernandez ended up in prison on armed-robbery charges. There she met Mexico's most notorious drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the head of the Sinaloa cartel, who was serving out a sentence until he famously escaped in 2001 by bribing guards and hiding in a bundle of outgoing laundry.

While the two were doing time in the Puente Grande maximum-security prison outside Guadalajara, Hernandez, in her early 20s, became Guzman's mistress.

"After the first time, he sent to my cell a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of whiskey," Hernandez told Mexican author Julio Scherer for a book he wrote on prisons. "I was his queen."

She told another reporter in 2002 that she became pregnant by El Chapo but miscarried after being beaten by guards.

By the time she was released in 2003, Hernandez had apparently picked up some of her lover's tricks of the trade: She was arrested less than a year later with 2 tons of cocaine.

Lawyers supplied by El Chapo helped her file a peculiarly Mexican injunction used to stop many a prosecution, and she was free again in 2006. She quickly became the Sinaloa cartel's agent in Mexico City, authorities said, transporting cocaine into the capital's neighborhoods -- relatively new terrain for the organization.

Last December, her body was found in the trunk of a car outside Mexico City. She had been shot in the head. Carved into her breasts, stomach and buttocks was the letter Z, symbol of the notorious gang of hit men called the Zetas, archenemies of El Chapo. She was 35.

A year earlier, the fugitive Guzman had married his third wife the day she turned 18: Emma Coronel, another beauty pageant winner, who is one-third her husband's age. At one point, she was reportedly seen around Culiacan, frequenting the hair and nail salons that cater to narco-wives and other young women who emulate the style: glamorous 'dos and fingernails longer than toes, bejeweled or painted with elaborate designs or pictures of cartoon characters. More recently, she was said to be in hiding.

On average in Sinaloa this year, a woman was killed every week in what authorities believe to be gangland hits.

Two women driving on a state highway last month were intercepted by two carloads of gunmen and pulled from their vehicle as their horrified children watched. Their bullet-scarred bodies, heads wrapped in plastic bags, were found a few hours later. One was believed to be a wife of one of the Sinaloa cartel's top kingpins, Victor Emilio Cazares.

The allure persists

Despite the risks, the drug world life continues to appeal to a subset of young women, generating its own lore, especially here in Sinaloa.

Two days before Christmas, federal police arrested Miss Sinaloa, the state's reigning beauty queen, and seven men, all of whom were paraded before television cameras and accused of trafficking cocaine. A cache of high-powered weapons and tens of thousands of dollars were seized from their vehicle.

Laura Zuñiga, 23, was never charged and went free after 38 days under a form of house arrest. Tagged "Miss Narco" by the Mexican media, Zuñiga acknowledged that her boyfriend was the brother of a big trafficker, but she said her beau was not involved in the business, although she wasn't sure what he did for a living.

She was stripped of a title she had won in an international contest. But she remains Miss Sinaloa.

For many women, joining this life is not a matter of choice. They are press-ganged, pushed by parents seeking wealth and influence, or don't know what they're getting into, said Urias, the women's institute official. And escape is rarely an option.

A few women have managed to flee drug-trafficking husbands, and have taken refuge in a shelter whose location is a tightly held secret.

Teresita tried for four years to get away from a husband who beat her, cheated on her and partied endlessly with his drug-dealing friends.

"He was high all the time," she said in an interview at the shelter. The Times agreed not to publish her last name.

She went to the police and the courts, but no one helped. After one particularly bad beating, she gathered up her two children and moved in with her sister.

But her husband followed her, threatened to burn the house down and shot out the outside lights. The goons who worked with him menaced Teresita and her family.

Teresita, a 28-year-old brunet with large, almond-shaped eyes, had known her husband since she was 16. Her sister had married his brother. But drugs and the business had changed him.

She finally became convinced that he would kill her and kidnap the children and found her way to the agency that runs the shelter. There she has remained with her children, trying to learn how to use a computer and other skills that will help her rebuild her life.

But most of the women who have left narco-husbands have to be transferred out of the state and sometimes out of the country to really be safe.

Teresita has a simple wish: "I just want to be in a place where I am not afraid to walk outside."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-narco-women10-2009nov10,0,1980049,print.story

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Opinion

Sometimes, an extremist really is an extremist

If we act as if 'Islam is the problem,' we will guarantee that Islam will become the problem.

Jonah Goldberg

November 10, 2009

Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan demonstrated many things when he allegedly committed treason in the war on terror. For starters, he showed -- gratuitously alas -- that evil is still thriving.

He demonstrated that being a trained psychiatrist provides no immunity to ancient hatreds and religious fanaticism, nor does psychiatric training provide much acuity in spotting such things in others. For example, the London Telegraph reports that, in what was supposed to be a medical lecture, Hassan instead gave an hourlong briefing on the Koran, explaining to colleagues at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that nonbelievers should be beheaded, have boiling oil poured down their throats and set on fire.

His fellow psychiatrists completely missed this "red flag" -- a suddenly popular euphemism for incandescently obvious evidence this man had no place in the U.S. Army.

He proved how lacking our domestic security system is. According to ABC News, intelligence agencies were aware for months that Hasan had tried to contact Al Qaeda. His colleagues reportedly knew he sympathized with suicide bombings and attacks on U.S. troops abroad, and one colleague said Hasan was pleased by an attack on an Army recruiting office and suggested more of the same might be desirable. That's treason, even if you're a Muslim.

Which raises the most troubling revelation: For a very large number of people, the idea that he is a Muslim fanatic, motivated by other Muslim fanatics, was -- at least initially -- too terrible to contemplate. How else to explain the reflexive insistence after the attack that the real culprit was "post-traumatic stress disorder"? The fact that PTSD is usually diagnosed in people who've been through trauma (hence the word "post"), and that Hasan had never in fact seen combat, didn't seem to matter much.

Apparently the "P" in PTSD can now stand for "pre."

A few months ago, an anti-Semitic old nut named James von Brunn allegedly took a gun to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to get payback against "the Jews" and killed a black security guard in the process.

In response to this horrific crime, the leading lights of American liberalism knew who was to blame: Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the GOP. One writer for the Huffington Post put it succinctly: "Thank you very much Karl Rove and your minions."

The fact that Von Brunn was a 9/11 "truther" who railed against capitalism, neocons and the Bush administration didn't matter. Nor did the glaring lack of evidence that Rove et al ever showed antipathy for the museum. It was simply obvious that Von Brunn was the offspring of the "right-wing extremism [that] is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment," wrote columnist Paul Krugman.

If only Hasan was a fan of Glenn Beck!

President Obama was right when he said, in the early hours after the shooting, that people shouldn't "jump to conclusions" (a lesson he might have learned when he jumped to the wrong conclusion about a white cop who arrested Henry Louis Gates, a black Harvard professor). But just as we should not jump to conclusions, we shouldn't jump away from them.

Despite reports that Hasan had shouted "Allahu Akbar" as he opened fire, MSNBC's Chris Matthews insisted that "we may never know if religion was a factor at Ft. Hood." Thursday night, NBC and CBS refrained from even reporting the man's name. Meanwhile, ABC's Martha Raddatz's reporting on the subject reflected a yearning for denial: "As for the suspect, Nadal Hasan, as one officer's wife told me, 'I wish his name was Smith.' "

We have a real problem when much of the political and journalistic establishment is eager to jump to the conclusion that peaceful political opponents are in league with violent extremists, but is terrified to consider the possibility that violent extremists really are violent extremists if doing so means calling attention to the fact that they are Muslims.

I am more sympathetic toward this reluctance to state the truth of the matter than some of my colleagues on the right. There is a powerful case to be made that Islamic extremism is not some fringe phenomena but part of the mainstream of Islamic life around the world. And yet, to work from that assumption might make the assumption all the more self-fulfilling. If we act as if "Islam is the problem," as some say, we will guarantee that Islam will become the problem. But outright denial, like we are seeing today, is surely not the beginning of wisdom either.

I have no remedy for the challenge we face. But I do take some solace in George Orwell's observation that "to see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-goldberg10-2009nov10,0,4102586,print.column

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Editorial

Guarding the ranks

Religious tolerance in the military does not trump security concerns.

November 10, 2009

Did Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the accused gunman in Thursday's rampage at Ft. Hood, Texas, commit mass murder because of a mental breakdown or because of hatred for his own country fueled by Islamic radicalism -- or some combination of the two? We don't have all the answers yet, but whatever the explanation turns out to be, we do know this: The carnage is not a reflection on all the other Muslims serving in the U.S. military. President Obama made that point on Saturday, albeit obliquely, when he noted that those who have fought for this country include "Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and nonbelievers."

Speaking more plainly than the president, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. warned of "a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers," adding that "it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well."

We wholeheartedly agree with the president and Casey. But it would be equally tragic if the armed services allowed an insistence on religious tolerance to stand in the way of detecting and rooting out extremism in the ranks. It's essential to avoid profiling people on the basis of their religion, but that doesn't require us to deny the existence in this country, as elsewhere, of a dangerous and anti-American ideology that identifies itself with Islam and seeks to recruit believing Muslims. If the U.S. military receives evidence that some of its members have succumbed to the siren song of extremism, it must investigate. Not to do so would be foolhardy. But it must be done in a way that doesn't treat adherence to Islam itself as a security risk. It would be grossly unfair, for example, to subject all Muslim recruits to special screening, as some commentators on the right have proposed.

Nor should Islamic extremism be the only noxious ideology monitored by the military. The Department of Homeland Security came under misguided criticism from veterans this year when it released a report warning that some disaffected veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were especially susceptible to the lures of right-wing extremism. That common-sense conclusion also applies to current and prospective members of the armed forces.

A long-standing Defense Department directive decrees that "military personnel must reject participation in organizations that espouse supremacist causes, . . . advocate the use of force and violence, or otherwise engage in efforts to deprive individuals of their civil rights."

Policing a service member's participation in an extremist group becomes more delicate when the organization is a religious one. But if we're talking about involvement in a mosque where violence is preached -- or in a white supremacist group that calls itself a church -- that's not a private matter. The military can recognize and act on that fact without presuming that every Muslim is an extremist.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-hasan10-2009nov10,0,7787537,print.story

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From the Daily News

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City's legal costs: $137M over past 2 years

The city of Los Angeles shelled out $137 million over the past two years for legal costs - nearly two times more than the previous two-year period and enough to hire nearly 1,300 police officers and cover most of the public works budget, according to a report released Monday.

The study by California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse also found the amount of money Los Angeles County spent on lawsuit verdicts, settlements and outside counsel rose from $138 million to $190 million in the same period.

"It's amazing that while endless programs are being cut and jobs are being lost, the city and county of Los Angeles are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on lawsuits," said Maryann Marino, regional director of the organization's Southern California branch.

A recent national study cited in the report found that every man, woman and child in the United States pays $835 a year in a "lawsuit tax" - higher prices for goods and services due to litigation costs.

The report found eight of the state's largest cities and nine of its largest counties spent $504 million to deal with lawsuits over the last two fiscal years, nearly double the $276 million spent in the prior two-year period.

"This certainly reveals that we live in a litigious society," said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

"It's not just cities and counties that have had higher litigation costs. There is probably a connection to the fact that many businesses have left California because of a very aggressive trial bar, and tort reform is certainly warranted, not only to save the California economy, but to save local governments from frivolous or marginal lawsuits."

The report said the $72 million the city spent on legal costs in 2008-09 could have been spent to hire 1,271 LAPD officers. It also said the $65 million the city spent in 2007-08 could have funded the city's annual infrastructure improvements, including streets, storm drains and bikeways.

City Attorney Carmen Trutanich, who recently marked his first 100 days in office, said he's taken a number of steps to reduce costs. This includes personally reviewing each case, bringing more cases in-house and asking outside law firms to discount their fees by 15 percent.

"As we move forward, we are looking at reducing those figures through management, by being involved in every step of the decision-making process, reviewing cases and expenses, being involved in the mediation and arbitration processes and taking more cases to trial rather than settling quickly," Trutanich said.

In an effort to stop frivolous lawsuits, Trutanich said his office is changing its tactics.

"One way you can stop the frivolous lawsuits is to make it costly for those who choose to sue the city," Trutanich said. "If you bring a frivolous lawsuit against the city - thinking we were going to settle - we are going to attach fees and costs. We are no longer just showing up in court with a shield. We are coming to court with a sword and a shield, because it's about protecting taxpayer dollars."

The authors of the report noted the amount the county spent on litigation could have funded its annual budget for county libraries and paid for the sheriff's narcotics enforcement, child abuse prevention and other programs.

County Risk Manager Rocky Armfield said legal expenses have soared because of an increase in hourly rates paid to outside counsel and because of a 10 percent increase in cases.

"When you have more lawsuits and an hourly rate increase," Armfield said, "the costs are going to go up."

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_13751470

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Investigators asked not to question Ft. Hood suspect

KILLEEN, Texas — A lawyer for the Army psychiatrist accused in a deadly shooting spree at Fort Hood said Monday he asked investigators not to question his client and expressed doubt that the suspect would be able to get a fair trial, given the widespread attention to the case.

Retired Col. John P. Galligan said he was contacted Monday by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's family and was headed to an Army hospital in San Antonio to meet Hasan.

"Until I meet with him, it's best to say we're just going to protect all of his rights," Galligan said.

Hasan, 39, is accused of opening fire on the Army post on Thursday, killing 13 people and wounding 29 before civilian police shot him in the torso. He was taken into custody and eventually moved to Brooke Army Medical Center, where he was in stable condition Monday and able to talk, hospital spokesman Dewey Mitchell said.

Galligan said he didn't know if Hasan had been medically cleared to talk.

"There's a lot of facts that still need to be developed, and the time for that will come in due course," he said.

Authorities won't say when charges would be filed or if Hasan would face military justice.

Galligan questioned whether Hasan could get a fair trial in either criminal or military court, given President Barack Obama's planned visit to the base on Tuesday and public comments by the post commander, Lt. Gen. Robert Cone.

"You've got his commander in chief showing up tomorrow," Galligan said. "That same kind of publicity naturally creates an issue as to whether you find a fair and impartial forum, whether that's in the military or even if it were in a federal forum."

Authorities say Hasan fired off more than 100 rounds at a soldier processing center. Fifteen victims remained hospitalized with gunshot wounds, and eight were in intensive care.

Authorities continue to refer to Hasan as the only suspect in the rampage, but they have said they have not determined a motive. A spokesman for Army investigators did not immediately respond to calls and e-mails seeking comment Monday.

A radical American imam living in Yemen who had contact with two 9/11 hijackers praised Hasan as a hero as a hero on his personal Web site Monday.

The posting on the Web site for Anwar al Awlaki, who was a spiritual leader at two mosques where three 9/11 hijackers worshipped, said American Muslims who condemned the Fort Hood attack are hypocrites who have committed treason against their religion.

Awlaki said the only way a Muslim can justify serving in the U.S. military is if he intends to "follow in the footsteps of men like Nidal."

"Nidal Hassan (sic) is a hero," Awlaki said. "He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people."

Two U.S. intelligence officials told The Associated Press the Web site was Awlaki's. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence collection. Awlaki did not immediately respond to an attempt to contact him through the Web site.

Hasan's family attended the Dar al Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., where Awlaki was preaching in 2001. Hasan's mother's funeral was held at the mosque on May 31, 2001, according to her obituary in the Roanoke Times newspaper, around the same time two 9/11 hijackers worshipped at the mosque and while Awlaki was preaching.

The Falls Church mosque is one of the largest on the East Coast, and thousands of worshippers attend prayers and services there every week.

Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, outreach director at Dar al Hijrah, said he did not know whether Hasan ever attended the mosque but confirmed that the Hasan family participated in services there. Abdul-Malik said the Hasans were not leaders at the mosque and their attendance was normal.

Fort Hood officials said the country's largest military installation was moving forward with the business of soldiering. The building where Hasan allegedly opened fire remains a crime scene, but a processing center is scheduled to reopen Thursday in a new, temporary location.

Command Sgt. Maj. Arthur L. Coleman Jr. said Monday that reopening the center is an important step in returning the Army post to normal. Cone said the post stepped up security, including suspending visits by the public, largely to reassure the population that the sprawling base is safe and won't "become a battlefield."

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_13746939

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From the Washington Times

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Showcase

INTERACTIVE: The D.C. Snipers

Seven years ago, fear gripped the D.C. area as two snipers killed 10.

INTERACTIVE: The D.C. Snipers

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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

The siren call of Shariah

Frank J. Gaffney Jr.

Poll after poll indicates that official Washington is held in very low regard by the American people. One reason is that our leaders are seen as out of touch with the realities confronting ordinary folks - and with what those folks' common sense suggests are appropriate responses to such realities.

There could scarcely be a more graphic example of that disconnect - and its ominous implications - than the contortions the U.S. government is going through in the wake of the murder of 13 people and the wounding of dozens more at Fort Hood last week. For example, the FBI declared immediately after the attack that it was not an act of terrorism. Other officials are promoting the idea that it is simply a case of an individual afflicted by stress or deranged by the prospect of an upcoming deployment to a war zone. President Obama insists we should reserve judgment, evidently because the facts are open to varying interpretations.

Such statements are an affront to most Americans' intelligence, which common-sensically applies a prosaic form of the scientific method: They look for the explanation that best fits the facts. The facts - which are becoming ever more numerous by the day - are that the purported perpetrator of these crimes, Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, is "a devout Muslim" who, as such, has had to follow at least since 2001 the dictates of the theo-political-legal and seditious program that authoritative Islam calls Shariah. One of those dictates is that the faithful must engage in jihad, or holy war, to achieve the submission of unbelievers to Islam.

Consider the following partial but illustrative listing of behavior that speaks to Maj. Hasan's dangerous proclivities:

As troubling as these indications of Maj. Hasan's embrace of Shariah are, even more alarming is the Army's inaction in the face of those of which it was informed. Retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters scorched the Army's leadership in a New York Post column last Friday, saying: "For the first time since I joined the Army in 1976, I'm ashamed of its dereliction of duty. The chain of command protected a budding terrorist who was waving one red flag after another. Because it was safer for careers than doing something about him."

What is really frightening, though, is the prospect that our civilian and military leaders may think it "safer for their careers" to persist in the politically correct but mendacious contention that there is no link between murderous actions like Maj. Hasan's and adherence to authoritative Islam's Shariah program. That is the line of the Muslim Brotherhood - an organization sworn to "the destruction of Western civilization from within." It is not the truth, however.

If the U.S. government cannot come to grips with the reality that authoritative Islam is rooted in Shariah, that Shariah demands its adherents engage in supremacist jihad and that jihad is - pursuant to Shariah - intended to inflict terror on its victims, it will be wholly unable to defeat an enemy bent on its destruction. And official Washington will only further alienate the American people who have the eminent sense to appreciate that although not all Muslims (in or out of uniform) embrace Shariah and its obligation to wage jihad, those who do are our mortal enemies. The latter have no more business in our military than does their program in our country.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent, has the right idea. Announcing on "Fox News Sunday" that he would launch an investigation in the Senate Homeland Security Committee, the senator declared, "If Hasan was showing signs, saying to people that he had become an Islamist extremist, the U.S. Army has to have zero tolerance. He should have been gone."

Under those circumstances, the least the Army can do is ensure that his victims - both those who are gone and those wounded in his attacks - receive Purple Hearts for the losses they incurred at the hands of the enemy.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program, "Secure Freedom Radio."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/10/the-siren-call-of-shariah//print/

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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Jihadists in the military

by Cal Thomas

By now, the script should be disturbingly familiar. Whether in the Middle East or, increasingly, in America, a fanatical Muslim blows up or goes on a shooting spree, killing many. This is followed quickly by "condemnations" from "Muslim civil rights groups," such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations. We are then warned by the president and some newspaper editorials not to jump to conclusions or to stereotype. Yasser Arafat wrote this script, which he used with great success throughout his bloody career as a terrorist.

Suddenly, the issue of gays in the military doesn't seem as important as jihadists in the military.

If you were an enemy of America, not only would you fight overseas and develop nuclear weapons (Iran), you also would engage in an even more effective strategy by striking at America's underbelly. This is our most vulnerable region because we tolerate virtually everything, indulge in political correctness and subscribe to a bogus belief that if radical Islamists can see we mean them no harm, they will mean us no harm.

The federal government at all levels has hired and promoted Muslims to influential positions. It requires "sensitivity training" for federal employees, including those who work at the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. Last week, the House Judiciary Committee, dominated by liberal Democrats, defied the White House and removed from the USA Patriot Act a tool for tracking non-U.S. citizens in anti-terrorism investigations. As our enemies grow stronger and more emboldened, they see us becoming weaker and less committed.

No amount of evidence - from Koran verses urging the killing of "infidels," to cries of "God is great," reportedly shouted by the purported Fort Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan - will cure our self-deception. Sun Tzu famously wrote that all war is deception. But it takes two to deceive, and the United States is behaving like a willing partner.

People claiming to know Maj. Hasan told interviewers he made frequent statements against the wars and the U.S. presence in Islamic countries. Rep. Michael McCaul, Texas Republican, told reporters after he was briefed on the shootings that Maj. Hasan "took a lot of advanced training in shooting." Why would a psychiatrist need advanced training in shooting unless he believed in murder as therapy? Shouldn't that, coupled with his statements about "the aggressor" and other actions - including his preference for Muslim clothing - have alerted someone in authority that he might be a time bomb waiting to go off? Yes, absolutely. But who wants to jeopardize a career by raising such questions and becoming the target of "civil rights groups" and politically correct dupes? Intimidating Americans into silence when they know better is also a very effective strategy when fighting a war.

Sound minds not brainwashed by our own "re-educators" should have seen this coming. Though born in America to Jordanian immigrant parents, Maj. Hasan described himself as a "Palestinian." He got into trouble by attempting to proselytize some of his patients.

Most top federal agencies, including the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, have "civil liberties" offices recommended by the 9/11 Commission to focus on "outreach" to the Muslim community. In this, they follow efforts by the George W. Bush administration, which dispatched Karen Hughes to tell Muslim women in Saudi Arabia that American women are so free they can drive their own cars. The Saudi women were not impressed.

It's one thing to be suckered by others. It's quite another to sucker yourself.

How much longer will we tolerate fighting this war as if it were a minor crime wave? Our enemies are fighting to win, and they are fighting everywhere, including within our borders. People trained to appear nonthreatening, until the threat becomes obvious and it is too late to do anything about it, are infiltrating our government and society at every level.

It is irrelevant that some have put the number of radicalized Muslims worldwide at 10 percent. Even if that figure is accurate, 100 million jihadists can cause a lot of damage as they plot the destruction of Western democracies. Other wars have been won with far fewer soldiers and far fewer dupes.

Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/10/jihadists-in-the-military//print/

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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Rampage of extremism

by Arnaud de Borchgrave

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is the proverbial canary in the mine. Gunning down 12 soldiers and one civilian and wounding 31 was not a random act of violence by an army psychiatrist who was slated to deploy to Afghanistan, an evil war in his mind, where American infidels are killing good Muslims.

As the Jordanian-born major told a female neighbor in his apartment complex, "I'm going to do good work for God." Maj. Hasan wanted, in his mind, to die a martyr, killing American soldiers who had been killing Muslim soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan or soon would be doing so.

There are tens of thousands of Hasans all over the Western world - from Brussels to Berlin and from Burgos, Spain, to Birmingham, England. For them, the attacks on America of Sept. 11, 2001, were a conspiracy cooked up by the CIA and Mossad, Israel's external intelligence service. Even though al Qaeda's Osama bin Laden and his No. 2, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, have both taken credit for Sept. 11, countless millions are convinced they had nothing to do with the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

In 2001, before Sept. 11, Maj. Hasan attended Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, where his principal preacher was a U.S.-born Yemeni scholar named Anwar al-Awlaki, who praised the virtues of jihad, or holy war. He is one of 1.3 million Muslims - or 1 percent of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims - who espouse extremist beliefs about the United States and its NATO allies. Led by the United States, the West's Christian nations, as Muslim fundamentalists read the world chessboard, are on a crusade to throttle the Muslim world.

About 10 percent, or 130 million Muslims, are estimated by moderate Arab leaders to be fundamentalists whose sympathies are with the extremists but who do not participate in acts of jihadi violence.

Shouting "God is great" - "Allahu Akbar" - as he opened fire on unarmed American soldiers, Maj. Hasan was merely emulating what Muslims cry out as they charge into battle. He presumably was hoping his last act on Earth would give the powers pause in what he viewed as their crusade to destroy Islam. He had counseled scores of battle-shocked, wounded veterans - in his mind casualties of the Mossad-CIA conspiracy, now an article of faith among most Muslims.

Sept. 11 machination theories have spun a tale of intrigue that has circled the globe and grown from cottage to a global industry replete with best-selling books in scores of languages, videotapes, Web sites and lecture bureaus that offer speakers who claim special knowledge on a variety of inside tracks. The fact that this is twaddle in all its unrationed splendor - e.g., Jews were not ordered to stay away from work in the Twin Towers the day before the attacks - is conveniently ignored.

Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead. A conspiracy on the scale of Sept. 11 would have required a lot more than three. Yet two former Egyptian ambassadors in Washington, long since retired, told this reporter in Cairo last month that they were convinced there had been "some U.S. government involvement in Sept. 11." One of them said buildings as solid as the Twin Towers could not possibly collapse like a house of cards unless explosive charges on different floors had been programmed to detonate as the floor above began collapsing.

All Arab newspapers have published detailed stories about an Israeli intelligence service manipulating its friends in high places in the Pentagon and the CIA. The conspiracy theories show no sign of flagging. The peddlers of palpably fraudulent accounts constantly embellish, embroidering accounts of Israeli tourists videotaping and supposedly celebrating the collapse of the Twin Towers. This dovetailed neatly with the biggest Sept. 11 canard that had phone banks calling all the Jews in Long Island and the tristate area who worked in the Twin Towers to stay home next day.

The Sept. 11 conspiracy theory rivals those of Holocaust deniers. Forty-percent of Israel's Arab population say the Holocaust never happened. The phenomenon, understandably, is more prevalent among those born since World War II. For veterans of World War II, dying at the rate of 2,000 a day, the idea that the Holocaust did not take place is too preposterous even to discuss. Rudolf Hoess, the Auschwitz commandant for three years, admitted at his 1947 trial before an international court in Poland that 1.3 million Jews had been gassed and burned on his watch. He was hanged over the Gestapo's offices at Auschwitz.

Maj. Hasan is one of millions today who believe America and its Israeli ally are working in tandem to suppress Islam. For Maj. Hasan to go off to Afghanistan would be, for him, to participate in America's anti-Islam crusade, made all the worse by the accounts he heard from the soldiers scarred physically and mentally by wounds sustained in a war against Islamic radicalism.

As the FBI's cybersleuths comb through Maj. Hasan's hard drive, they will conclude that this Virginia-born shrink inhabited an electronic global caliphate, the ummah, or universal community of Muslim believers, next to which the nation-state, even one as powerful as the United States, seems irrelevant.

Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/10/rampage-of-extremism//print/

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From the Wall Street Journal

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• NOVEMBER 10, 2009

  Border Arrests Decline Again

  Weak Economy and Tighter Security Dissuade Illegal Entrants; Drug Seizures Jump

  By CAM SIMPSON

  The number of people caught illegally entering the U.S. dropped by more than 23% during the past year, continuing a longer trend, federal data shows.

  The struggling U.S. economy and rising joblessness are major factors behind the decline. But government officials say investment in border security since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, also has deterred illegal immigration.

  Drug seizures along the border, meanwhile, rose over the same period, according to the government. Authorities say tougher enforcement has forced smugglers to try such methods as flying ultra-light aircraft over border fences.

  Journal Community

  • Vote: Grade U.S. handling of border security

  U.S. border apprehensions dropped to 556,041 in fiscal year 2009 -- which ended Sept. 30 -- compared with 723,825 in the 2008 fiscal year. Border apprehensions have fallen nearly 67% decline since fiscal year 2000, when the border patrol made 1,675,438 arrests.

  The Obama administration will use evidence of tougher border enforcement as part of its strategy to win support for a congressional overhaul of the U.S. immigration system next year. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is scheduled to give a speech about the administration's plans Friday at the Center for American Progress, a Democrat-affiliated think tank in Washington.

  Some state and local officials along the U.S.-Mexico border, including Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry, have said federal enforcement needed to be tougher. Mr. Perry recently said he would send teams of Texas Rangers to beef up security along the frontier.

  The U.S. has nearly doubled the number of border-patrol agents in the past five years and uses a combination of patrols, fences, electronic sensors and pilotless drone aircraft. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, is expected to release its 2009 data this week.

  The government and independent experts say there is a strong correlation between apprehensions and the number of people attempting to cross the border, especially with the sharp increase in enforcement in recent years.

  David Aguilar, the border-patrol chief, says the newest data show U.S. investments in personnel, equipment and technology are creating a strong deterrent. "We have the right mix at the right places and in the right time," he says.

  There are now more than 20,000 border agents, compared with about 11,000 in 2004. The agency has built fences and vehicle barriers along large swaths of the nearly 2,000-mile border with Mexico.

  Funding for the border-patrol agency jumped to more than $10.9 billion last year from about $6 billion in fiscal-year 2004.

  Economists say the souring U.S. jobs market is a driving force behind the decline in illegal crossings. The U.S. unemployment rate last month passed 10% for the first time since the early 1980s. Fewer jobs -- especially in trades such as construction, where migrant workers fare well -- mean fewer people are willing to risk a journey that has become more perilous and more expensive, experts say.

  If the U.S. were experiencing the kind of job growth it enjoyed in the 1990s, "I would be very surprised if there would be these kinds of reductions, even with the investments that have been made," says Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.

  The U.S. government will point to other indicators to bolster its view that tougher enforcement is paying dividends. Higher spending on more agents and equipment kicked into gear under former President George W. Bush following the 9/11 terror attacks.

  Mr. Aguilar and Thomas Winkowski, who runs the more than 300 legal border-crossing stations in the U.S., say they will show record drug seizures in 2009.

  Fewer illegal crossers allows the government to shift more resources to illicit trafficking, they say.

  Marijuana seizures at ports increased more than 19% -- as measured in weight -- while cocaine seizures were up 53%, the agency will report this week. On land, marijuana seizures increased 37% from the previous year, while cocaine seizures were up 15%. Heroin seizures fell at ports, but they increased about 15% between the crossings, data will show.

  Mr. Aguilar says his agents were finding tougher enforcement has resulted in bolder attempts to smuggle drugs and people.

  There were 118 efforts detected last year to send people or drugs into the U.S. via makeshift aircraft that fly above border fences but below the 500-foot radar-detection level.

  There are also growing numbers of people trying to burrow below the border and crash through fences, according to Messrs. Aguilar and Winkowski.

  "They're desperate," Mr. Winkowski says. "They're desperate to ram through vans loaded with illegal aliens."

  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125781594948540097.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLTopStories#printMode
  
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• NOVEMBER 9, 2009, 11:36 P.M. ET

  Dr. Phil and the Fort Hood Killer

  His terrorist motive is obvious to everyone but the press and the Army brass.

  By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ

  It can by now come as no surprise that the Fort Hood massacre yielded an instant flow of exculpatory media meditations on the stresses that must have weighed on the killer who mowed down 13 Americans and wounded 29 others. Still, the intense drive to wrap this clear case in a fog of mystery is eminently worthy of notice.

  The tide of pronouncements and ruminations pointing to every cause for this event other than the one obvious to everyone in the rational world continues apace. Commentators, reporters, psychologists and, indeed, army spokesmen continue to warn portentously, "We don't yet know the motive for the shootings."

  What a puzzle this piece of vacuity must be to audiences hearing it, some, no doubt, with outrage. To those not terrorized by fear of offending Muslim sensitivities, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's motive was instantly clear: It was an act of terrorism by a man with a record of expressing virulent, anti-American, pro-jihadist sentiments. All were conspicuous signs of danger his Army superiors chose to ignore.

  What is hard to ignore, now, is the growing derangement on all matters involving terrorism and Muslim sensitivities. Its chief symptoms: a palpitating fear of discomfiting facts and a willingness to discard those facts and embrace the richest possible variety of ludicrous theories as to the motives behind an act of Islamic terrorism. All this we have seen before but never in such naked form. The days following the Fort Hood rampage have told us more than we want to know, perhaps, about the depth and reach of this epidemic.

  One of the first outbreaks of these fevers, the night of the shootings, featured television's star psychologist, Dr. Phil, who was outraged when fellow panelist and former JAG officer Tom Kenniff observed that he had been listening to a lot of psychobabble and evasions about Maj. Hasan's motives.

  A shocked Dr. Phil, appalled that the guest had publicly mentioned Maj. Hasan's Islamic identity, went on to present what was, in essence, the case for Maj. Hasan as victim. Victim of deployment, of the Army, of the stresses of a new kind of terrible war unlike any other we have known. Unlike, can he have meant, the kind endured by those lucky Americans who fought and died at Iwo Jima, say, or the Ardennes?

  It was the same case to be presented, in varying forms, by guest psychologists, the media, and a representative or two from the military, for days on end.

  The quality and thrust of this argument was best captured by the impassioned Dr. Phil, who asked us to consider, "how far out of touch with reality do you have to be to kill your fellow Americans . . . this is not a well act." And how far out of touch with reality is such a question, one asks in return—not only of Dr. Phil, but of the legions of commentators like him immersed in the labyrinths of motive hunting even as the details of Maj. Hasan's proclivities became ever clearer and more ominous.

  To kill your fellow Americans—as many as possible, unarmed and in the most helpless of circumstances, while shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is great), requires, of course, only murderous hatred—the sort of mindset that regularly eludes the Dr. Phils of our world as the motive for mass murder of this kind.

  As the meditations on Maj. Hasan's motives rolled on, "fear of deployment" has served as a major theme—one announced as fact in the headline for the New York Times's front-page story: "Told of War Horror, Gunman Feared Deployment." The authority for this intelligence? The perpetrator's cousin. No story could have better suited that newspaper's ongoing preoccupation with the theme of madness in our fighting men, and the deadly horrors of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, than this story of a victim of war pressures gone berserk. The one fly in the ointment—Maj. Hasan had of course seen no war, and no combat.

  Still, with a bit of stretching, adherents of Maj. Hasan-as-war-victim theme found a substitute of sorts—namely the fears allegedly provoked in him by his exposure, as an army psychologist, to the stories of men who had been deployed. The thesis then: Maj. Hasan's mental stress, provoked by the suffering of Americans who had been in combat, caused him to go out and butcher as many of these soldiers as he could. Let's try putting that one before a jury.

  By Sunday morning, Gen. George Casey Jr., Army chief of staff, confronted questions put to him by ABC's George Stephanopolous—among them the matter of the complaints about Maj. Hasan's anti-American tirades that were made by fellow students in military classes, as well as other danger signs ignored by officials when they were reported, apparently for fear of offense to a Muslim member of the military.

  These were speculations, Gen. Casey repeatedly cautioned. We need to be very careful, he explained, "We are a very diverse army." Mr. Stephanopolous then helpfully summarized matters: This case then was either a case of premeditated terror—or the man just snapped.

  The general was not about to address such questions. He was there to recite the required pieties, and describe the military priorities . . . which are, it appears, a concern above all for the sensitivities of a diverse army, a concern so great as to render even the mention of salient facts out of order, as "speculation.'" "This terrible event," Gen. Casey noted, "would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty."

  To hear this, and numerous other such pronouncements of recent days, was to be reminded of all those witnesses to the suspicious behavior of the 9/11 hijackers who held their tongues for fear of being charged with discrimination. It has taken Maj. Hasan, and the fantastic efforts to explain away his act of bloody hatred, to bring home how much less capable we are of recognizing the dangers confronting us than we were even before September 11.

  Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of the Journal's editorial board.

  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704402404574525831785724114.html#printMode
  
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• NOVEMBER 10, 2009

  After the Fort Hood Massacre

  Sorting the Hasans from patriotic Muslims in the U.S. military.

    There are two irreconcilable views of Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan's murder of 13 people last Thursday at Fort Hood, Texas. One is that Major Hasan should be seen as not much different than many other disturbed individuals, whose demons pitch them into homicidal frenzies. The other is that the Hasan murders raise hard questions about the ability of Muslims to serve at all in the American military.  

  Neither view is acceptable. It will be the job of public and military officials in weeks ahead to shape a policy response that recognizes the hard political and ethnic realities of the Fort Hood massacre.

  The central reality is that 13 people are dead on American soil, all but one in service to the country as a member of the U.S. Army. Sergeant Amy Kreuger of Kiel, Wisconsin, enlisted explicitly in response to 9/11, she said, to oppose the forces that caused that day. These appear to be the same violent forces that turned Major Hasan into an instrument of terror.

  So no, Major Hasan is not just another nut. He volunteered himself into a larger Islamic jihad, whose political weapon of choice is the murder of innocents across the globe.

  The Fort Hood massacre makes clear, again, that Islamic terror is unavoidably a domestic U.S. problem as well. There is a strain in American thinking that deludes itself in believing that somehow this force will occupy itself mainly with blowing up marketplaces in faraway Pakistan or Afghanistan. On Thursday, their problem was our problem.

  In the aftermath of these shootings, the best venue for exploring the domestic threat from radical Islam and what to do about it is Senator Joe Lieberman's proposed hearings into the Hasan murders. News reports piecing together Major Hasan's history suggest an association years ago with a pro-al Qaeda imam at a mosque in northern Virginia. That imam left for Yemen in 2002, and his lectures there in support of al Qaeda have appeared on the computers of terrorists suspects in the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

  Investigators are collecting information from Major Hasan's PC and his email traffic, with officials already noting that he spent time surfing radical Islamic Web sites. This sounds similar in some respects to the aborted car bombings in the U.K. in 2007, committed by Muslim doctors there who also spent evenings absorbing violent exhortations on Web sites. A Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty study that year documented the reach and sophistication of radical jihadi media on the Web—accessible to anyone with an Internet hook-up in Kabul, Islamabad, London or Fort Hood.

  Before the Democrats came to power in the 2008 elections, one issue they pushed hardest through the policy debate was their opposition to domestic electronic surveillance in pursuit of Islamic terror activities. If the Hasan investigation concludes that he arrived at his pre-spree cry of "God is great!" after immersion in the world of violent Islamic Web sites and prior time spent at radical domestic U.S. mosques, then we would hope that the response of our lawmakers would be more than a shrug that these 13 dead are simply the price we have to pay for living in "our system."

  Likewise, Mr. Lieberman's hearings could explore if the Army needs ways to muster out personnel such as Hasan or recruits ambivalent about fighting fellow Muslims.

  Just as Americans can't blink away the dangerous world of radical Islam, however, we also cannot pretend that we can field a military that doesn't include Muslims. The unreality of attempting to fight this enemy without Muslim soldiers or operatives should be obvious. In Iraq, devout Muslims worked loyally as translators and guides for U.S. forces, sometimes dying to rid their country of the world's common enemy, which is homicidal Islamic fanatics.

  In recent years U.S. soldiers have fought a common enemy on behalf of and often alongside Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Somalia, and elsewhere. The U.S. is fighting a sworn enemy today, just as in World War II American Germans, Italians and Japanese fought sworn U.S. enemies of the same race and religion. Many American Muslims will do the same if we stay focused on the real enemy, and show we have the will to do what's necessary to find them and stop them.

  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704402404574525743684356798.html#printMode
  
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  From the White House
  
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  Welcome to the White House Partnerships Blog

  Posted by Joshua DuBois on November 09, 2009 at 06:00 PM EST

  Friends,

  It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Partnerships blog , the blog of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships!

  President Obama established the Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships to connect the Federal government to local nonprofit organizations and community leaders – both faith-based and secular – that are serving individuals, families and communities in need.  We form partnerships between government and nonprofits on a range of issues, from public health to disaster response and everything in between, in order to better serve all Americans.

  This blog will highlight the work of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, along with the activity at Centers for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships that we coordinate at several Federal agencies. 

  But we don't just want to focus on what government is doing.  We also want to highlight the efforts of local nonprofits in communities across the country.  So we'll be spotlighting local organizations and leaders that are meeting community needs, in order to learn from their great work.

  In the coming days, you can expect this blog to:

  • Provide more information about the day-to-day work of the White House Office and Centers at Federal agencies;
  • Highlight the latest work of the President's Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships;
  • Point nonprofits to federal resources that can help them implement effective programs; and
  • Spotlight innovative local organizations that are strengthening our communities

  I'm looking forward to using this blog to communicate important information to local organizations and community leaders.

  And I'm even more excited about working with you to make an impact on our communities together, as the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships implements this important element of President Obama's vision for our country.

  Warmly,
  Joshua DuBois

  Joshua DuBois is the Director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships

  http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2009/11/06/welcome-white-house-partnerships-blog

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  From the Department of Homeland Security
  
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  Acting Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Bart R. Johnson Speech at National Homeland Defense Foundation Symposium

  Release Date: November 9, 2009

  Colorado Springs, Colo.
  National Homeland Defense Foundation Symposium VII
  (Remarks as Prepared)

  Thank you, General Eberhart, for that kind introduction and for your and Don Addy's invitation to address this National Homeland Defense Foundation Symposium.

  I'm delighted to be with you this morning, ladies and gentlemen, to speak about the exciting and important work that DHS, and specifically my Office of Intelligence and Analysis, is doing to further evolve and define how the department works with the Intelligence Community and our federal, state, local, tribal, and private sector partners to keep the Nation safe and secure.

  DHS I&A was established by statute after the September 11 attacks to improve the coordination of intelligence in order to prevent, deter and prevent terrorist attacks. This includes serving as a smart and aggressive customer of the Intelligence Community, having a seat at the table when our nation's intelligence collection priorities are determined, and serving as a single repository where crucial information may flow between the Intelligence Community and our homeland security federal, state, local, tribal, and private sector partners.

  We have a unique mission at I&A—to be the premier provider of homeland security information and intelligence to state, local and tribal governments—and Secretary Napolitano has tasked us to do a better job of focusing and defining that mission. Having served as governor of Arizona, attorney general of the state and U.S. attorney in Phoenix, the Secretary's background is rich in state, local and tribal governments. She is committed to information sharing and has made it one of DHS' top priorities.

  In response, we have realigned the Office of Intelligence and Analysis to be the focal point—the one-stop shop, if you will—for state, local and tribal governments to come to for information and intelligence on homeland security threats. We are committed to providing our customers with that information and intelligence accurately, quickly and in the form that they can best use it. We are also committed to doing so with the utmost respect for the civil liberties, civil rights and privacy of all Americans.

  We work closely—and on a daily basis—with DHS' other components and with our other federal partners, including the Intelligence Community, the Department of Justice, FBI, National Counterterrorism Center, Office of National Drug Control Policy, Joint Terrorism Task Forces and the HIDTAs (or High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas) task forces.

  Fusion Centers

  But what makes I&A unique is that we take information from the national Intelligence Community and other DHS components, analyze it and move it to our state, local, tribal and private sector partners in a format that they can use. We also facilitate the reverse: providing the federal government, including the IC, with information and intelligence from state, local, tribal and private sector partners.

  The fusion centers—which are owned and operated by state and local authorities—are the primary way that DHS shares intelligence and analysis with its state, local and tribal government homeland security partners. Having spent most of my professional life in the New York State Police, I know first-hand how valuable fusion centers are to multiplying the effectiveness of our first responder and homeland security efforts.

  Here in Colorado, for instance, the Colorado Information Analysis Center (CIAC), or “Kayak” in Denver, served as the funnel for all information and intelligence collected, analyzed, produced and disseminated during the August 2008 Democratic National Convention. The I&A representative we have deployed in the CIAC provided intelligence support to the Principal Federal Official and his staff, while assisting in the coordination of all information sharing activities for the four additional I&A analysts sent to Denver for the convention.

  More recently, in the Najibullah Zazi case, the CIAC provided a considerable amount of support to the Denver FBI in the investigation and support of the field operations. These efforts are ongoing.

  There are currently 72 recognized fusion centers up and running across the country. These fusion centers are at various stages of maturity—some have been operational for several years, while others are at the very early stages of development. The pattern we have seen with most of these centers is an initial focus on the sharing of information across law enforcement agencies.

  However, as these fusion centers develop, and as a national network of fusion centers continues to evolve, we have seen and are actively supporting the integration of other disciplines—like the emergency services and public health sectors—into fusion center operations and management.

  I&A currently has 44 field representatives deployed to fusion centers across the country. These DHS staff work side by side with their state and local counterparts to share information in real time. They also aggressively reach out to the state and local first responder communities to bring these stakeholders to the table and support the development of mutually beneficial relationships with their fusion center partners.

  By the end of fiscal 2010, we will deploy DHS personnel to all 72 recognized fusion centers and all 72 centers will have access to our Homeland Security Data Network that carries classified information up to the Secret level. HSDN, by the way, has just been enhanced by a DHS agreement with the Department of Defense to include classified terrorism-related data from DOD's SIPRNet network.

  I&A Going Forward

  As part of our realignment, the Secretary has tasked us with being the manager for a new Joint Fusion Center-Program Management Office that will coordinate support for fusion centers across the department. We anticipate that all DHS components will have new or expanded roles in strengthening fusion centers and the national fusion center network.

  In the last six months, President Obama's Administration has reaffirmed the Federal Government's commitment to the national fusion center network. This has been visible in several ways, including:

  • Secretary Napolitano's commitment to assist fusion centers in becoming Centers of Analytic Excellence
  • The White House's issuance of budget guidance that elevates fusion centers as a key priority and calls for the development of recommendations to establish an interagency Program Management Office

  We also recognize that State and local governments are facing unprecedented budgetary challenges that are having a drastic impact on the ability of fusion centers to maintain staff and make progress against the baseline capabilities.

  It's one thing to say fusion centers are important; it's another to demonstrate that importance organizationally and operationally.

  To address these challenges and the elevated prioritization of fusion centers, we are taking the following steps to enhance Federal support to Fusion Centers:

  • Establishing the DHS Joint Fusion Center Program Management Office that I spoke of; and
  • Establishing a National Fusion Center Program Management Office.

  The first effort recognizes the Department's ongoing work to make fusion centers a key priority and apply Departmental resources in a more coordinated manner to enhance:

  • Budget planning;
  • Operational coordination; and
  • State and local support (e.g. training, technology, and technical assistance)

  The second effort—establishing a National Fusion Center Program Management Office—will bring multiple agencies of the federal government and representatives of state, local, and tribal governments together in a Program Management Office designed to support Fusion Centers.

  As an interim step toward that permanent national office, we are elevating and expanding the work of the National Fusion Center Coordination Group cochaired by DHS and the FBI through the Fusion Center Management Group. The FCMG will build on the success already achieved through the National Fusion Center Coordination Group. It will engage more senior leadership from Federal agencies and provide State and local partners with a direct role in the federal interagency policy making process.

  The FCMG also will leverage the key State and local associations, including the National Fusion Center Association, Criminal Intelligence Coordinating Council, National Governors' Association, Major Cities Chiefs' Association, International Association of Chiefs of Police, Major County Sheriffs' Association, and National Sheriffs' Association. These representatives will support translating the national policy into operational activities.

  Our effort with the Fusion Center Management Group is very similar to what is being done with the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative. With the initiative, the ability to train personnel regarding behaviors and indicators indicative of terrorism-related crime will be established across the country. This means that intelligence regarding threats to the homeland will be provided to state, local and tribal law enforcement so that they can use it to train their officers and deputies.

  The CIAC [pronounced “Kayak”] in Denver that I mentioned earlier is partnering with New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming to create a four-state regional monthly and yearly summary of suspicious activity. This is an excellent example of horizontal information sharing—and precisely the kind of collaboration and cooperation needed to create a national fusion center network. As Secretary Napolitano told Congress in September: “Let me be clear: The federal government can't do it alone. Law enforcement on the state, local, and tribal level represents a critical ring of defense against terrorism of all kinds. The Department of Homeland Security assists these so-called ‘first preventers' in addressing terrorist threats that manifest within the United States – helping them to make sense of the activities they are encountering on the beat that may represent the first steps in a terrorist plot.”

  Support for the Integration of First Responders into Fusion Centers

  While continuing our support for state and local law enforcement operations within fusion centers, I&A also supports the integration of the fire and emergency services, public health and healthcare communities, critical infrastructure and key resource protection efforts, and cyber security into the fusion centers.

  These initiatives are focusing on developing the necessary frameworks, identifying information and intelligence requirements, developing information sharing mechanisms, and providing technical assistance and training to support the fusion centers in their efforts to effectively develop meaningful relationships with these important stakeholders.

  Conclusion

  We are committed to elevating and enhancing federal support to fusion centers.

  While we recognize that bureaucratic changes in Washington seem to not impact a fusion center's day-to-day operations, these changes, once implemented, should provide the centers with more timely and relevant support from the Federal Government.

  In the past, state and local officials sometimes faced difficulties in partnering with the Federal government; we hope to address these challenges in the future. We will use this new posture to address:

  • Conflicting messages
  • Lack of single point of contact during rapidly escalating threat situations
  • Disconnect between policy and grant guidance

  Additionally, state and local officials are now at the table when law enforcement and homeland security policies are being considered and developed. This will be important as we begin addressing sustainment and other policy-related issues.

  It is critical to the maturity of the national network of fusion centers to achieve the baseline capabilities.

  The Baseline Capabilities for State and Major Urban Area Fusion Centers, released in September 2008 by DHS, the Department of Justice and the Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative, identify 12 core capabilities and provides specific instructions on how to achieve each capability.

  • For example, the Privacy and Civil Liberties capability contains more than 40 steps, including items such as appointing a privacy officer, writing a privacy and civil liberties policy, conducting community outreach, and developing oversight mechanisms.
  • Today, most fusion centers are in the process of achieving the capabilities; it is expected to take a period of up to five years to achieve all of the capabilities. Achieving these capabilities will help fusion centers to become centers of analytic excellence that ensure that law enforcement and public safety officials have the information they need to protect America's local communities.

  We will support fusion centers to achieve self-identified priorities.

  The fusion center initiative continues to be fundamentally a grassroots effort—one that is driven by our state, local, tribal and territorial partners.

  Integrating and connecting these State and local resources benefits all of us; it creates a national capacity to gather, process, analyze, and share information in support of efforts to protect the nation

  Based on the priorities identified at the March Fusion Center Directors meeting, we have begun taking proactive steps to address the most pressing priorities of the network to include:

  • Communications and Outreach : We're in the initial phases of standardizing and developing a communications and outreach technical assistance program and look forward to deploying it over the next year. We've also begun the Building Communities of Trust initiative to support fusion centers to engage in dialogue with their local communities
  • Privacy, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Protections : DOJ and DHS are providing training and reference materials for our state and local partners that help ensure their respect for civil rights and civil liberties. This is an important priority for us, as we work toward a Nation whose people and values are secure.
  • Dissemination : DHS I&A is in the final stage of having a study conducted on dissemination to understand how fusion centers can better share information with their State and local law enforcement partners.

  Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. With your continued support and advice, we will continue to achieve greater information and intelligence sharing with our state, local, tribal and private sector partners.

  http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/speeches/sp_1257781061720.shtm
  
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  Readout of DHS Meeting with Mexican Customs Officials

  Release Date: November 9, 2009

  For Immediate Release
  Office of the Press Secretary
  Contact: 202-282-8010

  Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials met with their counterparts from the Mexican Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP) on Friday to outline joint initiatives to combat transnational crime, increase law enforcement collaboration and increase the secure flow of travel and trade along the U.S.-Mexico border.

  Representing DHS were Assistant Secretary for International Affairs and Special Representative for Border Affairs Alan Bersin, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Assistant Secretary John Morton, U.S. Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar and other DHS officials; representing SHCP were Tax Administration Chief Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortíz-Mena, Administrator General of Customs Juan José Bravo Moisés, the Customs Administrator General for Planning Pablo González Manterola and other Mexican officials.

  During the meeting, U.S. and Mexican officials agreed to formalize Bi-national Port Security Committee to improve open and regular communication along the Southwest border—a significant step toward deterring violence at and near land ports of entry. These committees will address cross-border operational, safety and security issues.

  Officials also agreed to build on DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano's efforts to promote smart and effective security at the Southwest border by increasing coordinated investigative efforts, committing more resources for additional inspection teams at ports of entry along the border, and implementing comprehensive plans to strengthen security and ensure the secure flow of trade during events that affect port operations.

  Since March, Secretary Napolitano has doubled the number of DHS agents working to identify and apprehend violent criminal aliens and bolstered southbound inspections to search for illegal weapons and cash at the Southwest border—adding additional law enforcement, mobile X-ray machines, license plate readers, and K-9 detection teams as part of a multi-layered, integrated border security strategy.

  Thus far in 2009, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and ICE have combined to seize nearly $35 million in southbound currency at the Southwest border—more than four times the amount seized during southbound operations compared to this point in 2008. Since January, CBP and ICE have also seized totals of 1,231 firearms, $92 million in cash and 1.4 million kilograms of drugs at the Southwest border—increases of 34 percent, 87 percent and 45 percent, respectively, over totals during the same period in 2008.

  DHS continues to work closely with Mexico to ensure the safety and security of the U.S.-Mexico border by helping to train and equip Mexican law enforcement officers to ensure the secure flow of travel and trade while protecting both sides of the border from violence and criminal activity.

  For more information, visit www.dhs.gov .

  http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1257804437621.shtm

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  From the Department of Justice
  
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  Combating Mortgage Fraud

  November 9th, 2009
  
  Posted by Tracy Russo

  Combating mortgage fraud – one of the fastest growing white collar crimes – is an important element in the Justice Department's mission to protect the public. The Department is partnering with state, local and tribal law enforcement to share information and provide the resources needed to successfully fight this type of crime, which can bring hardship to individual citizens and financial organizations alike. Attorney General Holder has personally met with various officials to directly address the problem, and in April announced a multi-agency crackdown targeting foreclosure rescue scams and loan modification fraud.

  Last week, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida announced the results of a nine-month-long “Mortgage Fraud Surge” investigation that has resulted in charges against more than 100 defendants and involves allegations concerning more than $400 million in loans procured by fraud, on more than 700 properties.

  This announcement is just the latest of many such cases. At this time, there are federal mortgage fraud-related charges pending against approximately 500 defendants around the nation. The cases range from mortgage schemes designed to defraud mortgage lenders to “foreclosure rescue schemes,” which prey on distressed homeowners.

  The Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs' Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) has also been working on a multi – faceted approach to combating this problem. In January 2009, BJA convened a roundtable of local officials and private sector experts to learn about policies and operations to prevent, investigate, and prosecute mortgage fraud, as well as the local crime problems generated from the associated increase in foreclosures and vacant properties.

  Based on information gleaned from the roundtable and using Recovery Act funds, BJA developed a grant program specific to mortgage fraud. To further state and local efforts, BJA awarded Recovery Act funds to increase the number of state and local investigators, prosecutors, and crime prevention practitioners. More than $10.75 million in Recovery Act funds will support regional mortgage fraud task forces, which are central to coordinating local, state and federal investigations and prosecutions. The list of grant recipients can be found here: http://www.ojp.gov/recovery/pdfs/byrnemortfraud.pdf

  BJA also continues to work to address mortgage fraud through its Community Prosecution Initiative, which brings together local prosecutors, code enforcement and city government officials to tear down — or clean up and find owners for — vacant and abandoned houses that are often left to deteriorate after a mortgage fraud scheme has been carried out. Vacant properties invite disorder and criminal activity into communities, so decreasing the number of these properties, or restoring them to productive use can play a significant role in preventing and reducing neighborhood crime.

  Additionally, BJA is working with federal partners in the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys Offices around the nation to coordinate state and local fraud training opportunities. The collaboration among federal, state and local law enforcement will facilitate a cohesive response on behalf of the affected communities. To learn more about BJA's mortgage fraud initiative and other programs, visit the BJA Web site at www.ojp.gov/BJA .

  Through these various efforts, the Department of Justice along with our federal, state, local and tribal partners, is working tirelessly to combat mortgage fraud. At a meeting with federal partner agencies and state Attorneys General in September, Attorney General Holder summed it up best when he said:

  “Our efforts to attack mortgage fraud must be, and are, concerted and coordinated. Working together, we can send a clear and straightforward message: Those who prey on vulnerable American homeowners cannot hide from the hand of the law. If you perpetrate mortgage fraud, we will find you and we will bring you to justice.”

  http://blogs.usdoj.gov/blog/archives/319

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  From the FBI
  
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  November 9, 2009

  Washington D.C. FBI National Press Office (202) 324-3691

  Investigation Continues Into Fort Hood Shooting

  The FBI continues to work closely with the Department of the Army in the joint, ongoing investigation into the tragic events that occurred last Thursday at Fort Hood. Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the victims and their families.

  With respect to the investigation—the Army Criminal Investigative Division is leading a coordinated criminal investigation with the support of the FBI and other components of the Department of Justice and the Texas Rangers. The investigation is in its early stages and the information we can provide now is limited.

  With respect to what the FBI is doing—personnel from the Counterterrorism Division, Laboratory Division, and the Critical Incident Response Group (CIRG) are on site in support of the tragedy. The personnel deployed by the Laboratory and CIRG are specialists in crime scene analysis, evidence collection, and shooting incident reconstruction. Our victim assistance teams are working closely with their counterpart Department of Defense specialists, and we will continue to provide whatever resources are necessary to support the investigation.

  At this point, there is no information to indicate Major Malik Nidal Hasan had any co-conspirators or was part of a broader terrorist plot. The investigation to date has not identified a motive, and a number of possibilities remain under consideration. We are working with the military to obtain, review, and analyze all information relating to Major Hasan in order to allow for a better understanding of the facts and circumstances that led to the Fort Hood shooting. Understandably, there is a large volume of information in various forms and it will take us some time to complete this work.

  There has been and continues to be a great deal of reported information about what was or might have been known to the government about Major Hasan prior to the shooting.

  Major Hasan came to the attention of the FBI in December 2008 as part of an unrelated investigation being conducted by one of our Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs). JTTFs are FBI-led, multi-agency teams made up of FBI agents, other federal investigators—including those from the Department of Defense—and state and local law enforcement officers.

  Investigators on the JTTF reviewed certain communications between Major Hasan and the subject of that investigation and assessed that the content of those communications was consistent with research being conducted by Major Hasan in his position as a psychiatrist at the Walter Reed Medical Center. Because the content of the communications was explainable by his research and nothing else derogatory was found, the JTTF concluded that Major Hasan was not involved in terrorist activities or terrorist planning. Other communications of which the FBI was aware were similar to the ones reviewed by the JTTF.

  Our top priority is to ensure that the person responsible for the Fort Hood shooting is held accountable. The ongoing investigation includes forensic examinations of Major Hasan's computers and any Internet activity in hopes of gaining insight into his motivation. But the investigation to date indicates that the alleged gunman acted alone and was not part of a broader terrorist plot.

  After meeting with the president, FBI Director Robert Mueller ordered a review of this matter to determine all of the facts and circumstances related to this tragedy and whether, with the benefit of hindsight, any policies or practices should change based on what we learn.

  Again, this is a joint, ongoing criminal investigation that continues to move forward on many fronts. There is still much to learn. As a pending criminal case, the government remains limited in what information can be disclosed publicly about a United States citizen under investigation. As with any criminal investigation, all suspects are presumed innocent unless and until they are proven guilty of a crime in a court of law.

  http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel09/forthood110909.htm

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