December 26, 2009

Dozens of registered nurses who have been convicted of serious crimes including murder, sex offenses, robbery and assault have been identified by California regulators reviewing newly required fingerprints from tens of thousands of caregivers.

The state Board of Registered Nursing expanded its review of nurses' criminal records after an October 2008 story by The Times and the nonprofit news organization ProPublica found that regulators often didn't know about nurses' convictions and didn't act quickly once they learned of them.

At the time, nurses who had received licenses before 1990 were exempt from providing fingerprints, which are used to flag arrests for regulators. Since March, the board has required those nurses to submit their fingerprints.

Most of the crimes turned up are misdemeanors, such as driving under the influence, petty theft or fraud. But the records as of November also included two murders, two solicitations for murder, an attempted murder, a manslaughter and a vehicular homicide. There also were 19 convictions for assault, including five felonies, and 39 for sex offenses, three of them felonies.

The nursing board has referred at least 13 cases to the attorney general to start disciplinary proceedings against the nurses involved. Regulators won't release the names or details of any nurses' crimes unless public accusations are filed.

The board closed its investigation into one murder conviction without taking disciplinary action. The nurse had been convicted of second-degree murder in 1974 after shooting his sister's abusive boyfriend four times, according to board records. He was initially denied a license. But the board granted him one in 1987, finding him sufficiently rehabilitated, and placed him on three years' probation, which he completed successfully.

Of the 1,900 conviction reports sent to the board, about 1,300 have been closed without action because of the crime's age or nature. The remaining ones await further investigation.

The board has taken disciplinary action against only one of the convicted licensees. David Trower's license was suspended on an emergency basis after the board learned that he had been convicted four times of drunken driving between 1996 and 2008. An accusation to permanently revoke or restrict his license is pending.

Trower could not be located for comment.

The Times and ProPublica's review last year found more than 115 cases in which the state did not seek to discipline nurses until they had racked up three or more criminal convictions. It also turned up cases in which nurses with felony records continued to have spotless licenses -- sometimes while behind bars.

Nurse Haydee Parungao, for example, was sentenced to nearly five years in federal prison after admitting in 2006 that she had bilked Medicare out of more than $3 million. The board filed a formal accusation against her three years later. The case is pending, but her license expired in November 2008.

Other examples included an Orange County nurse who continued to renew his license for years even after he was imprisoned for attempted murder and a Redding nurse who racked up 14 convictions over a decade before the board caught up with her.

The charges included driving under the influence, driving with a suspended license and possession of a controlled substance.

Not all nurses convicted of crimes automatically lose their licenses.

Background checks

In 1990, the board began requiring nurses applying for licenses to provide their fingerprints -- the first nursing board in the country to do so. But nurses who already had their licenses at that time were not required to submit prints. That group now numbers 138,500.

As of Dec. 16, nearly 64,000 nurses in that group had submitted prints. More than 400 nurses' licenses have been put on hold because they haven't complied with the new rule. The rest have not yet renewed their licenses.

The background checks are part of the board's continuing overhaul of its operations following reports by ProPublica and The Times about lengthy delays in investigating and disciplining nurses accused of wrongdoing.

The newly discovered convictions are "opportunities to do our job that we wouldn't have had," said Paul Riches, deputy director for enforcement and compliance at the state Department of Consumer Affairs, which oversees all health licensing boards. It's been "a very positive thing," he said.

Effort expanded

The fingerprinting effort is being expanded to include all licensed health professionals in the state. Until now each of the state's health regulatory agencies set its own rules about who had to submit prints. Close to a third of the state's 937,100 licensed healthcare workers had not been screened as of December 2008. Even within the state, the rules were inconsistent for different groups of health professionals.

Boards overseeing these workers are at various stages of collecting fingerprints.

Riches said the process has been challenging for the nursing board, which is whittling away at a backlog and was forced to upgrade its databases to avoid entering every report manually.

"With every large group of people, you're going to get a broad spectrum of behavior," he said. "The priority for us is dealing with it."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-nurses-fingerprints26-2009dec26,0,6012354,print.story

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Inept nurses free to work in new locales

Lax regulators allow harmful workers to lose licenses in one state, keep them in others.

by Charles Ornstein, Tracy Weber and Maloy Moore

December 27, 2009

The frantic knocking of home health nurse Orphia Wilson startled the boy's parents awake just after dawn.

Their 3-year-old son, who suffered from chronic respiratory failure and muscular dystrophy, had stopped breathing.

The boy's mother raced to his side and began performing CPR as Wilson stood by. It was too late. Jexier Otero-Cardona died at a Hartford, Conn., hospital the next day.

In the months that followed Jexier's May 2005 death, Connecticut health officials discovered that Wilson had fallen asleep, then ignored -- or possibly turned off -- ventilator alarms that signaled the boy was not getting enough oxygen, state records show.

And Jexier, they learned, was not the first child to die under Wilson's care. Seven months earlier, she had lost her registered nursing license in Florida for similar lapses in the death of another boy in 2002. In that case, 21-month-old Thierry LaMarque Jr. had stopped breathing while Wilson was caring for him at her Orlando home. Instead of calling 911, she tried CPR, then drove the boy's limp body three miles to his parents' house.

"She said she panicked," recalled the boy's mother, Glenda Brown, who was summoned home and found her dead son still strapped into his car seat. "Why would you bring him to my house if he passed at your house?"

Wilson's case highlights a dangerous gap in the way states regulate nurses: They fail to effectively tell each other what they know. As a result, caregivers with troubled records can cross state lines and work without restriction, an investigation by the nonprofit news organization ProPublica and The Times found.

Using public databases and state disciplinary reports, reporters found hundreds of cases in which registered nurses held clear licenses in some states after they'd been sanctioned in others, often for serious misdeeds. In California alone, a months-long review of its 350,000 active nurses found at least 177 whose licenses had been revoked, surrendered, suspended or denied elsewhere.

Such breakdowns are readily fixable. Yet state regulators aren't using their powers to seek out this information, or act on what they find, the investigation found.

Florida officials, for instance, didn't notify Connecticut authorities when they sanctioned Wilson -- even though she'd told them that she also held a Connecticut license. And Connecticut's nursing board renewed Wilson's license three times after Thierry's death, relying on her pledge that she hadn't been disciplined or investigated elsewhere.

By simply typing a nurse's name into a national database, state officials can often find out within seconds whether the nurse has been sanctioned anywhere in the country and why. But some states don't check regularly or at all.

The failure to act quickly in such cases has grave implications: Hospitals and other healthcare employers depend on state nursing boards to vouch for nurses' fitness to practice.

"It only takes one outlier to end up killing a bunch of patients," said Robert E. Oshel, who retired last year as an associate director at the federal agency that runs discipline databases on health providers. "The fact that the vast majority of nurses don't cause problems and are fine professionals . . . doesn't mean you shouldn't be very vigilant against the few who aren't."

State practices vary

Because there is no federal licensing of nurses, each state sets its own standards on punishable behavior.

In general, states can discipline a nurse based solely on the actions taken by another state. But they vary widely in how quickly -- or harshly -- they act on this information, according to interviews with regulators in 14 states.

Under the law in Virginia and Louisiana, for instance, officials must immediately suspend nurses' licenses for serious misconduct in another state. Nurses are barred from practicing unless they successfully appeal.

Missouri, on the other hand, must personally serve all accused nurses with written charges and offer hearings to contest them. If nurses can't be found, their licenses remain clear and they are free to continue practicing, said Lori Scheidt, executive director of Missouri's nursing board.

Delays in several states left Craig Smart free to practice. In 2000, he surrendered his license in Florida after testing positive for cocaine and flunking a treatment program. It took eight years for five other states in which he was licensed to respond to Florida's action. California was the last to revoke his license, in 2008, after he had practiced here for several years, apparently without incident.

Even when states share borders, they sometimes fail to heed each other's disciplinary actions. At least 10 nurses, for example, hold clear licenses in Massachusetts despite being disciplined next door in Rhode Island, including suspensions for drug thefts and violence.

Nurse Karen Rheuame's Rhode Island license was suspended in 2007 after she was arrested on suspicion of assaulting a woman in a wheelchair in a hospital emergency room and trying to steal her pocketbook, according to state disciplinary records. She also had numerous other convictions and, records show, had once brought two beers to work, which she explained to her boss were for "the ride home."

But she's free to practice in Massachusetts. A health department official there said regulators are reviewing Rheuame's case and others to see if action is warranted, but they haven't received any complaints about the nurses in Massachusetts.

Rheuame said she'd made mistakes but has completed rehabilitation for addiction. "I'm not going to minimize what I did," she said. "I've really turned my life around since then."

There is ample information available for states to identify nurses disciplined by other jurisdictions. Two separate databases attempt to track disciplinary actions from every state. States are required to report to one, run by the federal government, within 30 days of taking an action. Reporting to the other, operated by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, is voluntary.

Each database can be programmed to alert a state whenever a nurse it has licensed runs into trouble in another state.

When checking a nurse's record, nursing officials say they almost uniformly use the council's database; it's free and the government's is not. In fact, federal statistics show that nursing boards accessed the government database fewer than 300 times total in 2007 and 2008.

In addition, ProPublica and The Times found that the federal database is incomplete, despite the requirement that all states report discipline to it. Many actions appeared to be missing when reporters tried to match known cases by date of discipline to a version of the database in which confidential information had been removed.

Some regulators are vigilant, while others are not.

Louisiana, for example, checks the council database every day for discipline involving its nurses, its board director said. Rhode Island does it once a month, an official said.

New York, by contrast, uses it primarily to look into the backgrounds of people applying for nursing licenses. It typically does not check it for problems involving the 266,000 registered nurses already licensed to practice in New York.

Barbara Zittel, head of the New York board, said she relies on other states to notify her if one of her nurses has been disciplined and she counts on the nurses themselves to honestly disclose their problems. It works, she says, "unless someone is lying to us."

Officials at the National Council of State Boards of Nursing said they don't tell nursing boards how often to consult their database. But tools are there to help them. State boards imposing discipline, for instance, can send out warnings known as "speed memos" to flag other states.

But the council's database continues to have significant weaknesses. Nearly all states report their disciplinary information to the council, according to its website. Yet only 37 states and the District of Columbia supply it with the names of all their licensees.

As a result, it's difficult for regulators to know who is licensed in the 13 other states, including California, and when to alert them about discipline. Those states account for more than 40% of the nation's approximately 3.5 million registered nursing licenses.

The council cannot force states to submit names, and states have a financial incentive not to: They make money by charging nurses to verify their licenses, test scores and training to authorities in other states. For example, a nurse licensed in California who wants credentials to practice in Arizona must pay California $60 to confirm her background. Those sorts of checks netted California nearly $1 million in fiscal 2009. New York, which charges $20 a check, earns more than $250,000 a year.

When states turn over their lists of licensed nurses to the national council, that group earns such verification fees. "The decision to join is a revenue loss for them," said Kathy Apple, the council's chief executive officer. "That's difficult for some states."

Barbara Morvant, executive director of Louisiana's board, said the trade-off was worth it. After the board submitted the names of all its licensees last year, it saw an immediate upswing in the number of disciplinary actions it discovered.

"While it was a loss of revenue to our state, it was a benefit to the public," she said.

To estimate the scope of the problem nationwide, ProPublica and The Times searched the records of the nation's largest state, looking for examples of nurses licensed in California who had been disciplined elsewhere.

California's Board of Registered Nursing has historically done little on its own to ferret out such problems. Until last year, the state did not even ask nurses renewing their licenses whether they had been disciplined by another state.

Moreover, the board only checked nurses' records against the council's database of disciplinary actions when they applied for a California license. Since August, California also has been checking the database when the board begins an investigation of a nurse.

Sanctions found

Reporters went further, checking the full roster of 350,000 licensed nurses against a public version of the council database. They found that at least 643 California nurses had sanctions elsewhere, including the 177 whose licenses had been revoked, suspended, denied or surrendered.

Among them are:

* Jose Martinez, who surrendered his license in Texas in July 2008 after being accused of performing a rectal exam on an 11-year-old girl without a doctor's order or a witness present. In a letter to the Texas board, Martinez acknowledged his misconduct. "Yes, I made a mistake and, yes, I am guilty. After 4 years as a tech and 12 years as a nurse I slip and fall. . . . I guess I deserve what is coming to me."

His California license is active, without restrictions, and does not expire until July 2010.

* Jeffrey Strong, whose license was indefinitely suspended in Virginia in September 2008 after he allegedly left his post at a hospital psychiatric ward with the medication cart unattended. He had previously been disciplined for medical errors at another hospital in the state, including failing to monitor a patient who fell and as a result required emergency surgery.

"I was not providing safe care on that unit at that time and could not now," he wrote the Virginia nursing board in December 2007 about that earlier discipline. Strong has a clear license in Florida as well as California.

* Randy Hopp, who was convicted in 2004 of assaulting a nursing home resident in Minnesota. It was the fourth facility since 1998 at which he had been accused of mistreating a resident, records show. The nursing boards in Minnesota and Missouri placed him on probation, and Kansas imposed restrictions on his practice. Hopp surrendered his license in Texas. In California, his license remains clear.

Martinez and Strong could not be reached for comment. Hopp declined to comment, saying the discipline was in the past. Reporters could not determine if or where they and others in this article were working, because this information is not collected by most states.

Asked about this article's findings, California officials said regulators will now check for out-of-state discipline for every licensee by the end of March. At its February meeting, the nursing board plans to discuss additional steps to better use the council's database.

California is also working to speed up the pace of discipline.

In the past, the board took a median of 13 months to file public accusations against nurses after their licenses were first revoked, surrendered, denied or suspended by another state, according to a review of 258 such cases since 2002.

Three of these nurses got work and stole drugs from California hospitals after they had surrendered their licenses across the border in Nevada for previous wrongdoing there.

Experts and regulators say the patchwork nature of nursing regulation in the country underscores the importance of a complete national database. State regulators should be required not just to submit their licensees, they said, but to routinely check to see if their nurses have been disciplined elsewhere.

Currently, only information about completed sanctions is available. Some experts say formal accusations, detailing charges against nurses, should be included too. "The more information that's available as quickly as possible and shared as fully as possible . . . the better off you are," said Oshel, the former federal official.

Such efforts might have kept Orphia Wilson from moving easily from Florida to Connecticut. Within days after Florida regulators revoked her license in October 2004, they reported the action to the federal government's database. Sometime later, the information was put into the council database.

As is their practice, however, Florida officials didn't report their action to other states. Connecticut, as is its practice, did not regularly check the national databases.

The next year, Wilson once again renewed her Connecticut license, checking "no" when asked if she had been disciplined elsewhere.

Wilson, who did not respond to requests for comment, wrote in a sworn statement to investigators later: "I am very sorry about the deaths of the babys I cared for. Believe me I went through my share of guilt."

The month after Jexier's May 2005 death, she was back at work, as a supervisor in a Connecticut nursing home.

Connecticut suspended Wilson's license in June 2006 and revoked it several months later. The nurse was sentenced to jail last year for reckless endangerment and hiding her Florida discipline from Connecticut.

In an e-mail response to questions, a Connecticut health department spokesman blamed Wilson for hiding her past, and said communication among states has improved.

Christopher T. Godialis, who prosecuted Wilson for the Connecticut chief state attorney's office, said a system that relies chiefly on the honesty of such nurses does so at its peril.

"The way the situation is set up now, there's no way for Connecticut to have known about what happened in Florida unless Orphia had told them," he said. "The state didn't check anything."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-nurses27-2009dec27,0,2445689,print.story

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Sanctioned California Nurses Database

http://projects.propublica.org/nurses

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Travelers flying into the U.S. face stricter security measures

Passengers on international flights face pat-down searches, new limits on carry-on luggage and more thorough screening at airport checkpoints.

by Dan Weikel and Nicole Santa Cruz

December 27, 2009

Travelers taking international flights to the United States on Saturday faced pat-down searches, new limits on carry-on luggage and more thorough screening at airport checkpoints after a Nigerian man allegedly tried to bomb a jetliner headed to Detroit.

Federal authorities have called on airlines and airports around the world to tighten security measures, including frisking all passengers headed to the U.S., performing additional searches and limiting passenger movements during the latter part of a flight.

The request came after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, was arrested and charged with attempting to ignite an incendiary device aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam as it prepared to land in Detroit on Friday. Passengers overpowered the man, and the Airbus A330 with 290 people on board landed safely.

After the incident, the Department of Homeland Security announced additional scrutiny for domestic and U.S.-bound passengers, and advised travelers to report any suspicious activity or behavior to law enforcement officials.

The new guidelines limit on-board activities by passengers and crew members while in U.S. airspace. Among other things, passengers must remain in their seats during the last hour of flight and cannot have access to their carry-on items or place any personal belongings in their laps.

International travelers landing Saturday at Los Angeles International Airport noticed the new measures during their flights. Domestic passengers said they did not encounter such restrictions but saw a heightened security presence at their departure airports.

Because of the tighter security measures, airlines and governments worldwide advised passengers to arrive at airports early and to expect delays, missed connections and canceled flights.

"I understand why this is being done, but I feel like we are playing into their hands. It's like a Catch-22," said Grace Regnier, 65, who arrived at LAX on Saturday aboard a WestJet flight from Edmonton, Canada, that was delayed two hours.

Regnier and her companion, Pat Cunningham, flew to Los Angeles to take a cruise along the Mexican Riviera. At the Edmonton airport, she said, they went through scanners twice and everything in their carry-on bags was inspected.

Regnier confirmed that in the last hour before landing, passengers were not allowed to have anything on their laps, use any electronic device or leave their seats, even to use the lavatories.

In response to the U.S. government's concerns, Canadian officials have ordered airlines and airports to conduct additional screening, limit travelers to one carry-on item and restrict passenger movements.

In Amsterdam, travelers bound for the U.S. underwent pat-down searches, while passengers in Belgium were advised to report to the Brussels airport three hours early to allow for a second security check at the boarding gate.

At London's Heathrow Airport, travelers headed to the U.S. were searched twice and allowed only one carry-on. Italy's civil aviation authority also required more thorough searches of passengers and baggage.

Airline and government officials said the restrictions have been imposed indefinitely and may vary among airports.

"The Department of Homeland Security immediately put additional screening measures into place for all domestic and international flights to ensure the continued safety of the traveling public," said Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. "We are also working closely with federal, state and local law enforcement on additional security measures, as well as our international partners on enhanced security at airports and on flights."

Napolitano said airline passengers should not expect to encounter the same things at all airports because the precautions will differ from facility to facility to ensure that they are unpredictable.

Bruce Schneier, an author and security expert, said he doubted the new measures would be effective. Unless searches include a person's body cavities, he said, they can miss things.

Schneier added that restricting someone's movement and activity during the last hour of flight still gives a terrorist the opportunity to do something during the balance of the trip.

"This is security theater," he said.

"We've always known you can strap explosive material to your body without a metal triggering device and get it on a plane," he said. "You need to stop terrorists before they get to the airport."

The new measures were noticed Saturday by Diane Sen, 23, and Neill Dass, 24, of Portland, Ore., who spent their honeymoon in Fiji. Before boarding their overseas flight to LAX, they said, they were screened three times and saw extra staff and dogs patrolling Nadi International Airport.

Sen said she did not mind the additional scrutiny and the thorough search of her carry-on bag. "The more we have, the better we feel," she said.

Transportation Security Administration officials said they would be increasing security measures at the nation's airports, including more use of bomb-sniffing dogs, luggage-scanning devices, screening at gates and undercover officers who patrol the airports.

Still in effect for passengers are prohibitions against carrying on liquids and gels in containers larger than 3 ounces and the requirement that travelers remove their shoes for inspection at security checkpoints.

Scanning footwear has been policy since Richard C. Reid, the so-called shoe bomber, tried to blow up an American Airlines flight in December 2001 by trying to set off explosives hidden in his shoes.

The rules related to liquids followed in 2006 after British authorities uncovered a plan to blow up planes bound for the United States with explosives that could be created by mixing liquids smuggled on board.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-na-plane-travel-rules27-2009dec27,0,1348889,print.story

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Authorities probe possible Al Qaeda ties to foiled plane attack

A Nigerian charged with trying to blow up Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day tells authorities he acted alone. Had it succeeded, the explosion could have killed all 290 on board, officials say.

by Josh Meyer

December 27, 2009

Reporting from Washington

U.S. counter-terrorism officials on Saturday were looking at possible connections between Al Qaeda-linked militants in Yemen and a 23-year-old Nigerian man charged with attempting to destroy a Northwest Airlines plane on its final approach to Detroit Metropolitan airport.

According to a criminal complaint and FBI affidavit, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab carried a destructive device aboard Flight 253 on Christmas Day in what authorities said was an attempted terrorist attack that could have killed all 290 people aboard.

In filing charges Saturday, the Justice Department alleged that Abdulmutallab had a device containing the explosive PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, attached to his body. The court documents also said that FBI agents had recovered what appeared to be the remnants of a syringe, believed to be part of the device, from the vicinity of the suspect's seat.

"Had this alleged plot to destroy an airplane been successful, scores of innocent people would have been killed or injured," Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said in announcing the charges. "We will continue to investigate this matter vigorously, and we will use all measures available to our government to ensure that anyone responsible for this attempted attack is brought to justice."

A senior U.S. counter-terrorism official said that in Abdulmutallab's initial interviews with the FBI and Customs and Border Protection agents, the suspect "was saying he was acting alone, and not part of some larger connected plot."

Abdulmutallab, who was burned in Friday's incident, was under protective guard at a Detroit-area hospital Saturday. Under questioning, he seemed cooperative, "but who knows if he's telling the truth. Maybe that's the instructions you get [from Al Qaeda] for when you get caught," said the senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he, like others, was not authorized to publicly discuss the expanding investigation.

Federal authorities had been alarmed enough Friday, the official added, to alert about 128 other planes flying from Europe to the United States to prepare for similar attacks. All of those flights landed without incident.

Another U.S. intelligence official said that although Abdulmutallab said he had acted alone, there was evidence tying him to Al Qaeda's regional network of militants based in Osama bin Laden's ancestral home of Yemen.

"There is an association, but when you say [Al Qaeda] leaders, it's hard to say with certainty," the intelligence official said. "Who organized and who launched him? I can't give you a definitive judgment."

The official said that Abdulmutallab, an engineering student, had told his family in London in August that he wanted to go to Yemen to study; he reportedly had been there until earlier this month.

According to the intelligence official, Abdulmutallab said that he was trained in Yemen to make explosives that could escape detection -- and that militants had given him the materials for Friday's attempted attack.

In October, Al Qaeda's network in Yemen released the 11th edition of its official magazine. In it, top commander Abu Basir Wahishi advised supporters to use all available weapons to kill Westerners who were "apostates," or unbelievers. Two suggested venues: "in airports in the western crusade countries that participated in the war against Muslims; or on their planes."

A Yemeni official said Saturday that the Obama administration had formally requested his government's help in the investigation. "We are cooperating completely on this issue," said the official, adding that Yemen lacked sophisticated databases to track the thousands of students who make religious pilgrimages to the country every year.

"The whereabouts and exact details of what he did in Yemen are still unknown, but the investigation will clear up these things in the coming days," the official said.

According to the Justice Department, a judge informed Abdulmutallab of the charges against him during a hearing at the hospital.

Interviews with passengers and the crew of Flight 253 revealed that, before the incident, Abdulmutallab went to the bathroom for about 20 minutes and returned to his seat complaining of an upset stomach. He pulled a blanket over himself, and passengers heard popping noises similar to firecrackers, smelled an odor, and some observed his pants leg and the wall of the airplane on fire, an affidavit filed by FBI Special Agent Theodore James Peisig said.

Passengers and crew members then subdued Abdulmutallab and used blankets and fire extinguishers to put out the flames. "Passengers reported that Abdulmutallab was calm and lucid throughout. One flight attendant asked him what he had had in his pocket, and he replied, 'Explosive device,' " the affidavit said.

President Obama convened a secure call at 6:20 a.m. Saturday from Hawaii, where he spent Christmas with his family, to get a briefing from John Brennan, his homeland security advisor, and top National Security Council advisor Denis McDonough. "He received an update on the heightened air-travel safety measures being taken to keep the American people safe, and on the investigation," the White House said in a statement. "The president will continue to actively monitor the situation."

Authorities have been reviewing their databases to see whether Abdulmutallab had come to their attention in recent years. The suspect did not appear to be on any "no-fly" list or even a watch list, the intelligence official said. But he confirmed that Abdulmutallab's name had been entered into a U.S. counter-terrorism database several months ago, after the young man's father in Nigeria reported him to officials at the U.S. Embassy in the capital of Abuja and also to Nigerian security agencies.

Nigeria's online newspaper ThisDay reported that the suspect was the son of Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, a former minister and former chairman of the prominent Nigerian financial institution First Bank. The website said that Mutallab reported his son because he was concerned about Abdulmutallab's "extreme religious views."

The father "was said to be devastated on hearing the news. . . . A source close to him said he was surprised that after his reports to the U.S. authorities the young man was allowed to travel to the United States," the Nigerian news report said.

The intelligence official, however, said that the father's report was nothing more than the expressions of a concerned parent. It was not enough to raise the kind of alarm that would have stopped Abdulmutallab from traveling to the U.S. "In and of itself, it has no meaning, as an isolated piece of information," the official said.

He said that an apparent trip by Abdulmutallab to Houston in the summer of 2008 also did not raise suspicions. "He said he came here for business," the official said. "That's all we know."

On Saturday, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said he was troubled that Abdulmutallab had escaped the attention of the State Department and law enforcement. The chairman of the Senate's Homeland Security Committee, Lieberman said he wanted to know how Abdulmutallab "managed to retain a U.S. visa after such complaints, and why he was not recognized as someone who was reportedly named in the terrorist database."

FBI forensic experts Saturday began analyzing the powder and liquid to see how potent it was and whether it might have come from Yemeni militants as Abdulmutallab claimed, the U.S. intelligence official said.

The impoverished Arab nation has emerged as a stronghold for Al Qaeda-linked militants whose threat to U.S. interests worldwide, officials said, is second only to the terrorist organization's command-and-control center along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

ABC News quoted federal authorities as saying that the plot was organized and launched by Al Qaeda leaders in Yemen, who apparently sewed bomb materials into the suspect's underwear before sending him on his mission.

The so-called shoe-bomber, Richard Reid, had carried the same explosive substance in his failed December 2001 attempt to blow up a jet heading from London to the United States. Friday's explosive failed because the detonator may have been too small or was not in "proper contact" with the explosive material, investigators told ABC News.

Authorities in Britain searched an apartment Saturday in a posh residential area near where Abdulmutallab was thought to be a student at University College London, but had little comment. A Scotland Yard spokesman confirmed that authorities were "searching addresses in London" but gave no further details.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Saturday that she was grateful to the passengers and crew aboard Northwest Flight 253 for reacting "quickly and heroically to an incident that could have had tragic results."

Napolitano also said in a statement that the Homeland Security Department was working with federal, state and local law enforcement on additional security measures, "as well as our international partners on enhanced security at airports and on flights."

"The American people should continue their planned holiday travel and, as always, be observant and aware of their surroundings and report any suspicious behavior or activity to law enforcement officials," Napolitano said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-terror-plane27-2009dec27,0,2922809,print.story

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From a crumbling slum come the resources to build a new life

After 13 years, the Cuevas family will no longer live with bedbugs, moldy walls and cramped quarters. A legal settlement gave them the means to move up and forced their landlord to improve conditions.

by Jessica Garrison

December 27, 2009

Sitting in the dank, dark, one-room apartment she shares with five other family members, Alejandra Cuevas ignored a cockroach creeping across the wall next to her and threw her head back and laughed.

The bugs don't trouble her anymore because in the next few weeks, Cuevas said, she is planning to buy a duplex in Bakersfield -- with cash. She'll plant flowers in the yard and keep "birds and beautiful things."

A windfall has come to Cuevas and more than a dozen other immigrant families who have been living in squalor at 621 S. Union Ave., a crumbling, once-beautiful Art Deco building near downtown Los Angeles. A Los Angeles judge approved a settlement this fall that netted each resident more than $40,000 in damages -- amounting to more than $250,000 for some families. It was payment for having had to endure their building's slum conditions, which, according to court papers and lawyers, included bedbugs, backed-up sewage and poisonous levels of lead paint.

Adam Murray, director of the Inner City Law Center that won the $3.3-million settlement, said the case is part of a new strategy that he hopes will motivate bad landlords across the city to clean up their acts. The group is litigating six such cases; in years past they might have pursued just one.

"We are trying to change slumlords' behavior," he said.

It remains to be seen whether the strategy will accomplish that. The landlord in this case, Monica Hujazi, settled another habitability case in 2006 in which she and others agreed to pay 220 tenants nearly $7 million. She also has been convicted of dozens of criminal counts of housing and fire code violations over the years, but prosecutors and advocates say she has done little to improve conditions in her buildings.

Hujazi declined to comment. Her attorney said he had represented her for only a short time and was unable to comment on the case. Other landlords have said they are being unfairly targeted by the city and advocacy groups, blamed for conditions that are actually caused by tenants.

At one point Hujazi filed a countersuit against some of her tenants, accusing them of running businesses out of their apartments in violation of building rules. The suit was dismissed as a condition of the settlement.

There is also the question of how such settlements, if they become more prevalent, will shape the fates of the poor who receive them. Many tenants say the money is life-changing. But history suggests the path out of poverty is not always so simple.

Nancy Mintie, an attorney who founded the Inner City Law Center, praised efforts to win such settlements but cautioned that she had seen some people secure large awards only to wind up back in slum housing years later.

"They lived off the money until it had run out," Mintie said, "but because no one in the family had education, they had fallen back down."

Such concerns are far from the minds of many at 621 S. Union Ave., where tenants smiled and laughed when asked about the case.

Antonio Dominguez is taking his whole family to Mexico for the first time in years -- his children will meet their grandmother. Family members have talked of opening a business when they return.

Down the hall, Guillermo Siniscalchi says he hopes to give his newborn daughter better opportunities.

Some tenants might stay in the century-old building despite the award. As part of the settlement, a judge appointed a receiver to oversee repairs. They are proceeding slowly, but things are getting better, many tenants said.

"It's like winning the lottery," said Cuevas, laughing. She sat at a small table in the room where she and her family have lived for the last 13 years. To her left was a tiny kitchen, to her right a bathroom with a crumbling ceiling and visible mold. Next to the front door was a small closet where her older son and his wife sleep.

Cuevas, her husband, her daughter and her other son all sleep in the main room. It also accommodates all their possessions, which include a cabinet full of porcelain figurines of horses and puppies.

Asked about her years in the building, Cuevas, an immigrant from Mexico who works sewing clothes, suddenly appeared as though she might cry. She recalled the time dirty water spewed from the pipes and the landlord balked at replacing her carpet until a city inspector ordered otherwise. The day the ceiling fell in. And, worst of all, the bedbugs. "My kids would say, 'Mommy, we can't sleep. Mommy, the bedbugs,' " she said.

Cuevas would have liked to move but could not afford to. When she moved in, the building was rundown but clean. Conditions did not become deplorable, her attorney said, until Hujazi bought it.

Lawyers and tenant organizers for Inner City began talking to tenants in the spring of 2007. They were horrified by what they heard: the mother whose newborn was suffering from lead poisoning; the father who woke up in the night and heard his son talking to the bedbugs. "You can bite me," the boy said. "But please don't bite my sister."

Still, organizing the tenants was difficult, said Julius Thompson, Inner City's lead attorney on the case.

Many refused, saying they were frightened because they were illegal immigrants or because they could get evicted and never find another place so cheap. Others were deemed unsuitable as litigants because they seemed to be drinking nearly every time lawyers came in contact with them.

In the end, Inner City signed up 57 people in 18 units as plaintiffs and filed the case in November 2007.

Nearly a dozen attorneys, including a handful from the firm Latham & Watkins working pro bono, were assigned to the case at various times.

The two years of litigation illustrated one reason these cases remain relatively rare, despite the potentially big payoff and the large number of unsavory apartment buildings in Los Angeles.

Such cases are incredibly labor intensive, and at the end, many landlords simply don't pay anything, or offer up an asset that no lawyer wants. "Do you really want to end up owning a slumlord building?" asked one lawyer.

In this case, the settlement was paid mostly by insurance companies, according to lawyers for Inner City, which received a share of the funds.

Cuevas' 17-year-old daughter, Vanessa, said she is convinced the settlement will make a difference in her life. A senior in high school, she made a short film comparing the deplorable living conditions in her building with the nicer ones in a friend's residence -- and was delighted when it won an award.

She hopes to study film in college next year, maybe at San Francisco State or Humboldt State.

She plans to take with her another lesson as well: "If people are living in an unsafe place, they should do something about it."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tenants27-2009dec27,0,2472153,print.story

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From the Washington Times

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Border drug war bypasses El Paso

by Alicia A. Caldwell ASSOCIATED PRESS

EL PASO, Texas | El Paso and its neighbor across the Rio Grande, Ciudad Juarez, are like reverse photographic images of each other.

One is a model of civic order, the other an urban war zone just a few hundred yards away across the Mexican border.

In Juarez, people have been lined up against a wall and shot to death. Victims' limbs have been cut off. Bodies have been left to rot in the torrid streets or buried in shallow desert graves. Gun battles break out in broad daylight, with children and other innocents caught in the crossfire. Residents are afraid to leave their homes.

In El Paso, Friday nights in the fall are dedicated to high school football. A Christmas tree lighting and holiday parade downtown draw thousands on a chilly December night.

A grisly war involving Mexico's ruthless drug cartels has killed as many as 4,000 of Juarez's nearly 1.5 million people over the past two years, making it one of the most dangerous cities in the world.

El Paso, with a population of more than 600,000, had fewer than 30 murders in that same period and was recently named America's second-safest city of its size, behind Honolulu, by Congressional Quarterly.

According to specialists on the drug trade, the chief explanation of how El Paso has managed to escape the mayhem going on across the border is that the traffickers have kept their base of operations on the Mexican side and do very little business in El Paso itself.

Many people in El Paso are grateful and brag about the low crime rate in this corner of far West Texas.

"We've had this designation ... since the beginning of the new millennium," City Councilman Steve Ortega said. "It's been a long-standing sense of pride that now is even more remarkable, given what's taken place in Ciudad Juarez."

While El Paso residents enjoy the Friday night lights and holiday outings, their Mexican neighbors live under siege.

They have to make their way past checkpoints manned by some of the more than 7,000 army troops stationed in Juarez. They worry about ending up in the wrong cafe at the wrong time, and don't look at the people in the car next to them at a stoplight for fear the occupants will open fire.

"Here in Juarez, I'm in my house and hear shots every day and I hear ambulances and I wonder who just died," said Humberto Rico, who works at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez and marched with thousands of others in a recent protest against the bloodshed. "This is every day. We are all scared. We don't leave the house - not me or my children - not to eat or to go to the movies because there are shots all the time."

For years, some law enforcement officials, politicians and supporters of tightened borders have warned of the potential for a catastrophic spillover of bloodshed similar to what happened in Miami when it became a center of the cocaine trade in the 1970s and '80s.

Nothing even close to that has happened.

One explanation is that while violence tends to follow drugs and money, in El Paso the drugs and money are mostly just passing through, said David Cuthbertson, the FBI agent in charge in El Paso. Mr. Cuthbertson said the marijuana and cocaine smuggled across the border are bound for bigger cities, including Phoenix and Los Angeles.

El Paso has also been spared drug violence because the Mexican cartels have managed their operations from Mexico, with its lower cost of living and "easier-to-buy-off police," said Peter Moskos, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Howard Campbell, a sociologist at the University of Texas-El Paso and an expert on the violence in Juarez, said the Mexican cartels learned a lesson from the Colombian druglords who set up operations in Miami: that causing mayhem on the U.S. side can bring a crackdown from law enforcement.

"In a way you could say Miami was kind of an experiment and Mexican cartel people wouldn't want that to happen again," Mr. Campbell said.

El Paso is not completely immune.

"There's not one person that I know that hasn't been affected either directly or indirectly, from the person who has a loved one over there that they can no longer see to those El Pasoans that would casually shop or dine in Juarez," said Mr. Ortega, the councilman.

Some El Paso residents have to make the nerve-racking trip into the war zone daily.

Ernesto Arzaga, who lives in El Paso with his wife and two daughters, crosses the border every day to run a hair salon and restaurant. His shop has been robbed twice, and he said he gets routine demands for protection money.

"When you cross the bridge, you don't feel safety, you don't feel security," Mr. Arzaga said. "You don't trust either the soldiers or the policemen. You don't trust anyone."

His wife calls him routinely during the day, and if she can't reach him, she often sends a friend from Juarez to look for him. And as soon as Mr. Arzaga crosses back into Texas, he lets her know.

"She's fine when I cross the bridge," he said.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/27/border-drug-war-bypasses-el-paso//print/

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'Barefoot' bandit eludes cops, captures cult following

by Morris Malakoff

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

SEATTLE | Colton Harris-Moore is 18, but he already is achieving folk-hero status as the Barefoot Bandit in the U.S. and Canada after a string of burglaries and daredevil escapes from the law.

Romanticized by some as a latter-day Billy the Kid figure but regarded by others as a common thief, Mr. Harris-Moore has a criminal record stretching back to when he was just 12 and displayed a penchant for kicking off his shoes before fleeing.

A Hollywood producer wants to make a movie of Mr. Harris-Moore's life and compared him to Leonardo DiCaprio's character in the film "Catch Me If You Can."

Caught in 2007 and sentenced to detention in a halfway house near Seattle, the teenager from Camano Island, north of Seattle, escaped the following year, and his legend began to grow.

Shortly after breaking out, he was being pursued while driving a stolen Mercedes-Benz near his mother's home when he jumped from the moving vehicle and ran into the woods, leaving police with a wrecked car filled with loot.

Among stolen possessions recovered was a digital camera the fugitive used to take a self-portrait. The photograph, complete with self-assured smirk, has become the public face of a teenage robber who has now become an Internet idol.

Burglaries continued on Camano Island, and while Mr. Harris-Moore remained out of sight, police and neighbors were sure he was the person behind the thefts. Within months he was suspected of more than 50 burglaries across three counties.

For the next year, Mr. Harris-Moore, a 6-foot-5 giant who obviously stands out in a crowd, was a ghost as far as the police were concerned.

Then, in September, on the remote San Juan Islands that straddle the watery border between Washington state and Canada's Vancouver Island, he was spotted on a surveillance tape during an attempted robbery.

While stealing $2,500 from the ATM machine of another business the same night, he cut himself, leaving traces of blood that were matched to his DNA.

Much to the consternation of police, his re-emergence captured the public's imagination with more tales of his uncanny ability to outmaneuver the authorities.

A San Juan County sheriff's deputy said he nearly caught Mr. Harris-Moore in the woods. He said he had him in his flashlight before the suspect "virtually vaporized in front of me."

The deputy recalled hearing him laughing loudly from the woods when he realized he had eluded him.

The Barefoot Bandit legend took on a new dimension in October when a private plane crashed near the Cascade Mountains east of Seattle. It had been stolen in Idaho, near where a rash of burglaries had occurred.

Searchers never found the pilot, but a few days later, an intruder was reported at a nearby home. When police arrived, the burglar ran into the woods and fired a gun at them.

They never found the burglar, but investigators found bare footprints leading up to the door and inside the Idaho hangar where the stolen plane had been stored.

Mr. Harris-Moore's mother, Pam Koehler, didn't doubt her son could be a pilot if he wanted to be.

"He's smart. He took an IQ test a few years ago, and he's three points below Einstein," she said. "I hope to hell he stole those airplanes - I would be so proud."

Mr. Harris-Moore has a cult following, including a fan club on social networking site Facebook, and a Seattle man has even started selling T-shirts bearing his picture alongside the words "Momma Tried."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/27/barefoot-bandit-eludes-cops-captures-cult-followin//print/

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U.S. warned of Nigerian terror-suspect

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

KANO, Nigeria (Agence France-Presse) | The man suspected of trying to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas is a London-educated Nigerian whose father, a wealthy businessman, voiced concern months ago about his son's radicalism, reports say.

The man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, was subdued by fellow passengers and crew aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam on Friday when he allegedly tried to detonate a device as the plane descended toward Detroit.

While there has yet to be confirmation of the suspect's links to extremist groups such as al Qaeda, the Nigerian newspaper This Day reported Saturday that Mr. Abdulmutallab's father, Umaru Mutallab, had grown so distraught over his son's religious extremism that he contacted U.S. authorities about it in mid-2009.

Citing family sources, This Day said Mr. Mutallab reported his son's activities to the U.S. Embassy in Abuja as well as to Nigerian security officials.

U.S. officials in Nigeria said they had no information on the report.

Mr. Mutallab, a Muslim, told Agence France-Presse he had left his hometown, Funtua, in northern Katsina State, for the capital Abuja on Saturday to meet with security agencies to discuss the allegation against his son, the last of his 16 children.

"I have been receiving telephone calls from all over the world about my child who has been arrested for an alleged attempt to bomb a plane," Mr. Mutallab said.

"I am really disturbed. I would not want to say anything at the moment until I put myself together," he said. "I have been summoned by the Nigerian security and I am on my way to Abuja to answer the call."

Mr. Mutallab, 70, was the former chief of the United Bank for Africa and First Bank of Nigeria, two of the nation's biggest banks. He served as chairman of First Bank until his retirement last week after 13 years on the board. He is also the founder of Jaiz International Bank, the first Islamic bank in Nigeria, established in 2003.

The Nigerian reports paint a picture of a young suspect radicalized by religious extremism and preaching his views to fellow students.

This Day reported that the suspect attended secondary school at the British International School in Lome, Togo, where the newspaper said he was known for preaching to classmates about Islam. It said he was nicknamed "Alfa," a local term for Muslim scholar.

Mr. Abdulmutallab later lived in London, where reports say he studied mechanical engineering at University College London.

The college said a man called Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab studied mechanical engineering at the institution from 2005 to 2008, but it said it was unable to confirm that the man listed in its records was the same as the one arrested by U.S. authorities. While in London, Mr. Abdulmutallab reportedly lived in an upscale apartment building where units sold for between $2 million and $4 million.

This Day added that after London, Mr. Abdulmutallab relocated to Egypt and then Dubai, United Arab Emirates, declaring to his relatives that he was severing all ties with his family.

This Day described Mr. Mutallab as surprised that his son was issued a U.S. visa after he had reported his concerns to U.S. authorities. According to some reports, Mr. Abdulmutallab received his multiple-entry U.S. visa in June 2008, and it was set to expire in June 2010.

Dutch authorities confirmed that the detained suspect had flown from Nigeria to Amsterdam and then on to Detroit with a valid U.S. visa, and that U.S. authorities reviewed the passenger list, in line with standard procedures, and approved the flight for departure.

Nigerian officials said Saturday that he had boarded a KLM flight from Lagos after undergoing normal security checks at the airport.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/27/banker-father-warned-us-about-terror-suspect-son//print/

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From the Wall Street Journal

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Nigerian Charged in Northwest Bomb Attempt

Man on Flight to Detroit Claims al Qaeda Ties; Father Warned U.S. Officials

by Evan Perez and Jay Solomon in Washington, Neal E. Boudette in Ann Arbor and Andy Pasztor in Los Angeles

Associated Press

U.S. prosecutors Saturday charged a 23-year-old Nigerian man with attempting to carry out a Christmas Day terrorist bombing on a Northwest Airlines flight, amid questions about whether U.S. officials missed warnings about the suspect before he boarded the Detroit-bound flight armed with an explosive device.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was charged in a federal criminal complaint with placing a destructive device on Flight 253. Passengers said the suspect apparently set off a device strapped to his body as the plane was approaching the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, causing a small fire that was quickly put out by passengers and crew. The suspect claimed connections with al Qaeda, officials said, but the formal charges don't mention the terrorist network.

A U.S. official said that Nigerian banker Umaru Mutallab, the father of the accused man, warned officials at the American embassy in Lagos, Nigeria that he feared his son had been "radicalized" during trips outside the West African country.

Mr. Mutallab's concerns about his son weren't specific, nor did they point to any imminent threat against the U.S., according to the official. But the State Department did share the father's views with officials from the U.S. government's intelligence and counterterrorism bureaus, according to the official.

"The father contacted us and expressed concerns about the radicalization of his son," said the U.S. official. "This information was then shared across the inter-agency." The official said he was still confirming the exact date of when Mr. Mutallab contacted the U.S. embassy, but believed it was recently.

On Saturday afternoon, Judge Paul Borman of the U.S. District Court in Detroit charged Mr. Abdulmutallab at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., where he was treated for burns from the incident.

The judge asked Mr. Abdulmutallab how he was feeling and the suspect responded: "I feel better," according to a reporter who was present.

The U.S. embassy in London issued a multi-year, multi-entry tourist visa to Mr. Abdulmutallab in June 2008 when the Nigerian national was a student living in the U.K., said a U.S. official Saturday.

There was no "derogatory information" concerning Mr. Abdulmutallab, according to the official, or "any information suggesting his radicalization." The official added: "Our information suggests this happened later."

Mr. Abdulmutallab initially traveled to the U.S. shortly after receiving his 2008 visa, apparently without incident. U.S. officials said they were now looking into his travel itinerary from his initial trip for any information that might inform on his later actions. Mr. Abdulmutallab apparently visited Houston, Texas, said the official.

On Friday, he told investigators he had affiliations with al Qaeda and was trying to blow up the plane, according to a U.S. official. "We believe this was an attempted act of terrorism," said a White House official.

Mr. Abdulmutallab told investigators he was given the device by al Qaeda operatives in Yemen, along with detonation instructions, the official said. "This guy claims he is tied to al Qaeda, specifically in Yemen," the official said. "He claims he was on orders from al Qaeda in Yemen. Who knows if that's true?"

A Yemeni official said his country has yet to receive any official notice of the incident from the U.S., but vowed that his country would take "immediate action" if called upon by American authorities.

"The facts are still emerging, but there are strong suggestions of a Yemen-al Qaeda connection and an intent to blow up the plane over U.S. airspace," said Rep. Jane Harman (D., Calif.) in a statement, following a briefing by a senior government official.

Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.) the top Republican on the House Homeland Security committee, said in an interview Saturday that the attempted attack would prompt Congress to reassess airline security procedures.

Mr. King said that briefings from U.S. security officials indicated that "the government definitely knew about [the alleged attacker]. They had a file on him. The question now is why wasn't he on the no-fly list."

A U.S. official said it was unclear why Mr. Abdulmutallab wasn't placed on a no-fly list as a result of his father's warnings. The Department of Homeland Security and the National Counterterrorism Center within the office of the Director of National Intelligence oversee the no-fly list and the U.S. government's broader terrorism watch list.

Mr. Abdulmutallab wasn't subjected to secondary screening at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport beyond the normal magnetometer screening, Mr. King said. He also raised concerns about whether the substances Mr. Abdulmutallab used in his device are allowed onboard under current screening procedures, and why there were no air marshals on the flight.

Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano said in a statement that her department has put additional screening measures in place for all domestic and international flights. She said that flights coming into the U.S. from overseas may also be subject to "additional security measures," but cautioned that because such measures are meant to be "unpredictable," not all passengers will be subject to the same screenings.

FLASHBACK

'Shoe bomber' Richard Reid was convicted for trying to blow up a jetliner in 2001 with plastic explosives concealed in his shoes. He is serving a life sentence in a Colorado prison.

From the Archives: U.S. Indicts Shoe Bomber on Nine Charges

The new rules imposed by the Transportation Security Administration will limit onboard activities by passengers and crew flying into the U.S., according to a statement put out by Air Canada. Among other things, during the final hour of flight, passengers must remain seated and won't be allowed to access carry-on baggage.

A spokeswoman for the Netherlands National Coordinator for Counter Terrorism said Saturday that the suspect arrived at Schiphol Airport from Lagos and transferred to the Detroit flight. Before the flight departed, a list containing passengers' personal details -- including those of the suspect -- had been sent to U.S. authorities, in accordance with standard procedures, and U.S. officials cleared this list, she said.

Dutch authorities say that it is difficult to detect all dangerous objects being brought on board a plane, particularly those that can evade existing security technology, such as metal detectors.

A spokesman for Dutch intelligence, the Algemene Inlichtingen-en Veiligheidsdienst, declined to comment.

According to Saturday's federal criminal complaint, Mr. Abdulmutallab boarded Northwest Flight 253 in Amsterdam on Thursday, and had a device attached to his body.

The incident happened as the Airbus 330-300 carrying 289 people was approaching Detroit. Mr. Abdulmutallab went to the plane's restroom for about 20 minutes, and upon returning to his seat he stated that his stomach was upset, and he pulled a blanket over himself, according to the Justice Department complaint.

As the flight was heading for a landing at Detroit airport before noon, the complaint alleges, Mr. Abdulmutallab set off the device.

Passengers heard popping noises similar to firecrackers, smelled an odor, and some observed Mr. Abdulmutallab's pants leg and the wall of the airplane were on fire.

Stephanie van Herk, a passenger from the Netherlands who was in seat 18B, said the plane had lowered its landing gear when she heard a loud bang. At first she thought the plane might have blown a tire, she said, but then she saw flames leap from the lap of a man in the row behind her in the window seat 19A. "It was higher than the seat," said Ms. van Herk, 22 years old.

"Then everyone started screaming," she said. "It was panic." Flight attendants shouted, "What are you doing? What are you doing?" Ms. van Herk added. They called for water, and the man began pulling down his burning pants, she said. Ms van Herk and other passengers got water from the galley and the man was doused.

Passengers and crew subdued Mr. Abdulmutallab and used blankets and fire extinguishers to put out the flames. Passengers reported that Mr. Abdulmutallab was calm and lucid throughout. One flight attendant asked him what he had had in his pocket, and he replied an "explosive device."

The plane landed safely after the pilots declared an emergency. Though a Northwest flight, the plane had Delta markings. Northwest was acquired by Delta Air Lines Inc. in October 2008.

"This alleged attack on a U.S. airplane on Christmas Day shows that we must remain vigilant in the fight against terrorism at all times," Attorney General Eric Holder said. "Had this alleged plot to destroy an airplane been successful, scores of innocent people would have been killed or injured. We will continue to investigate this matter vigorously, and we will use all measures available to our government to ensure that anyone responsible for this attempted attack is brought to justice."

Mr. Borman, the district judge who read the charges, asked if the suspect could afford an attorney, and after some discussion Mr. Abdulmutallab said, "I don't have funds," according to Peggy Agar of Detroit television station WXYZ , one of two reporters present at the Ann Arbor hospital.

He was then asked if he understood what was happening to him, and he responded, "Yes, I do," Ms. Agar recalled.

Mr. Abdulmutallab sat in a wheelchair throughout the proceeding and had a bandage on his left thumb and an intravenous tube in his arm.

The White House said President Barack Obama, vacationing in Hawaii, was notified of the incident after 9 a.m. local time Friday and held two secure conference calls with his national-security team. He ordered increased security for air travel, the White House said. The Department of Homeland Security said airline passengers should expect to see additional screening measures on both domestic and international flights.

Mr. Obama is continuing to monitor the situation, the White House said, and received an update regarding heightened air-travel safety measures during a secure call at 6:20 a.m. Saturday Hawaiian time.

Friday's incident also is likely to renew debate over whether new security systems are necessary to allow flight attendants to alert cockpit crews.

In addition to calling pilots on the intercom, airlines and security experts for years have debated the idea of providing cabin crews with additional ways to warn pilots about potential threats from passengers. Video cameras, wireless alerting devices or some type of discreet alarm switch have all been discussed as remedies.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126184081273605825.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories#printMode

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Suspect Took Path From Privilege to Radicalization

by JAY SOLOMON, BRUCE ORWALL, SARAH CHILDRESS and NEAL BOUDETTE

LONDON -- About the time Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab left University College London here in June 2008, the U.S. issued a multi-year, multi-visit visa to the Nigerian national, who hails from a privileged background.

A senior U.S. official says there was no "derogatory information" concerning the 23-year-old, nor "any information suggesting his radicalization."

What happened between mid-2008 and Christmas Day – when Mr. Abdulmutallab was implicated in the attempted terrorist bombing of a U.S. jetliner – remains a mystery.

"Our information suggests this happened later," a U.S. official said of his transformation into a global terror suspect.

Yet over the past 18 months, there were signs of growing concern. British security sources said he wasn't known to be the target of any previous terrorist investigations. But in May of this year, the U.K. Home Office barred the suspect from re-entering Britain on a student visa because the college he was applying to study at was not considered a bona fide institution, a person familiar with the matter said.

Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, the father of the suspect and a prominent Nigerian banker, warned U.S. officials at the American embassy in Lagos, Nigeria that he feared his son had been "radicalized" during his trips outside the West African country, according to a senior U.S. official briefed on the exchange.

The U.S. State Department did share the father's views with officials from the U.S. government's intelligence and counterterrorism bureaus, according to the official.

The Associated Press reported that Mr. Abdulmutallab appeared on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database maintained by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, according a U.S. official who received a briefing. Containing some 550,000 names, the database includes people with known or suspected ties to a terrorist organization. However, it is not a list that would prohibit a person from boarding a U.S.-bound airplane.

Mr. Mutallab is a highly respected leader in the nation's banking and business community. He retired this month from his position as chairman of First Bank of Nigeria PLC after 13 years on the board. The retirement announcement was made on his 70th birthday.

Under Mr. Mutallab, the bank expanded to nine subsidiaries in Nigeria and added a bank in the U.K., known as FBN Bank Ltd., as well as a branch in Paris and offices in South Africa and China. He is from Katsina Town, Katsina State, a mostly Muslim state in northern Nigeria, on the border of Niger.

According to a report in the Nigerian newspaper This Day, his son attended the British International School in Lome, Togo. Students called him "Alfa," a local name for an Islamic scholar, the newspaper reported. The report couldn't be independently confirmed.

Officials at University College London say Mr. Abdulmutallab enrolled in the central London school in 2005, and pursued a mechanical engineering degree until June 2008; it isn't clear whether he graduated. University officials stress that they aren't sure the man who enrolled at their college is the same man under investigation by U.S. officials.

While in London, it appears that Mr. Abdulmutallab lived in comfort. Public-records database 192.com indicates that an "Umar Mutallab" lived at an address in the upscale Marylebone section of London, in a luxury building on a quiet street. Two other people with the same surname are listed at the same address.

A person familiar with the matter said British intelligence officials believe the apartment may be owned by a relative. An English Heritage sign – used to denote the homes of prominent Londoners through the years – indicates a flat there was once occupied by the late Sir Robert Mayer, "philanthropist and patron of music."

In the wake of Friday's attempted bombing, London police spent much of Saturday searching a flat in the building but saying very little about their efforts other than that they were consulting with U.S. officials.

U.S. officials said they were now looking into Mr. Abdulmutallab's travel itinerary from his initial trip for any information that might inform on his later actions. Mr. Abdulmutallab had apparently visited Houston, the official said.

In an interview with the Associated Press, his father said he may have traveled. "I believe he might have been to Yemen, but we are investigating to determine that," he said.

The senior U.S. official said it was unclear why Mr. Abdulmutallab wasn't placed on a no-fly list as a result of his father's warnings. The Department of Homeland Security and the National Counterterrorism Center within the office of the Director of National Intelligence oversee the no-fly list and the U.S. government's broader terrorism watch list.

The report in the Nigerian newspaper indicated that the father may have had concerns about the direction the son's life had taken. According to unnamed family members quoted in the Nigerian newspaper article, Mr. Mutallab reported his son to Nigerian and U.S. officials six months ago because he was concerned about his son's extreme religious views.

On Saturday morning, Mr. Abdulmutallab appeared to be sleeping when a reporter approached his corner room in the burn center at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor.

Down the hall, other patients were resting in rooms decorated with garland and tinsel for Christmas. A few visitors moved about freely.

Mr. Abdulmutallab's room was darkened and he lay motionless in bed. His head, with close-cropped hair, was turned away from the door.

Two uniformed customs and border-patrol officers were seated outside the open door and other security officials and hospital staffers were gathered in a nearby conference room.

When the reporter identified himself, a man in a suit and tie said the area was "secured" and ordered the reporter to leave immediately.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126187511080506063.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLETopStories#printMode

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Bombing Suspect Unknown in Community

by Gina Chon

The Nigerian suspected of setting off an explosive devise on a plane landing in Detroit on Christmas Day is not known in the large Muslim community in southeastern Michigan, according to Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' Michigan chapter.

The Detroit area has a sizable Muslim population, with about 250,000 Arabs, African-Americans and others practicing Islam, Mr. Walid said.

He said he has concern about Muslims being unfairly affected in such cases and hopes the incident doesn't lead to profiling of American Muslims. He said the Muslim community strongly condemns any act of violent extremism.

"I hope the suspect faces swift justice," Mr. Walid said.

Although the suspect is not Arab, Arabs still worry they could be discriminated against because of this incident since Arabs are usually associated with Islam. The Detroit area has the largest Arab-American population in the U.S., with the first Arabs coming in the late 1800s as Syrian and Lebanese Christians.

Today the community is largely made up of Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians and Yemenis. Thousands of Iraqis from the Shiite sect of Islam were given a safe haven in Michigan after former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein targeted them when they tried to rise against the government in the aftermath of the first Gulf War.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, the Arab and Muslim population in the Detroit area have worked with government agencies to improve relations and also fight discrimination.

Imad Hamad, regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee office in Michigan, noted that after the U.S. military base shooting at Fort Hood, there wasn't a large backlash against the Arab community even though the suspect is an Arab-American who practices Islam. He hopes the same kind of behavior will prevail in light of this incident.

He added that his organization and others are communicating with authorities to ensure that accurate information is being provided to the public and the media.

"The notion of guilt by association is fading but that doesn't mean we are free of challenges," Mr. Hamad said. "Terror and evil are blind and don't recognize race or religion."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126186380093606001.html#printMode

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The World's District Attorney

Legendary prosecutor Robert Morgenthau on his famous cases, his brawl with Mike Bloomberg, and why he's sounding alarm about Iran.

by JAMES FREEMAN

In the criminal justice system, the people of Manhattan have been represented for 35 years by New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. This is his story.

Mr. Morgenthau, who inspired the original D.A. character on the television program "Law and Order," will retire on Thursday at age 90. Much of the barely fictitious drama is set in his office in Manhattan's Criminal Courts Building. This week, amid half-filled boxes and scattered personal mementos, he sat down to discuss his life's work.

Even though he knows I'm wearing a wire—actually an audio recorder placed on the table between us—America's D.A. speaks candidly, including about his public blowups with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Mr. Morgenthau says this is the first mayor he hasn't gotten along with, and that the relationship went south when his office started investigating the city's role in the death of two of New York's bravest in an August, 2007 fire. Among other mistakes, city inspectors had failed to note that the water had been turned off at the old Deutsche Bank building opposite Ground Zero. The blaze resulted in 33 "mayday" calls from firefighters, and the D.A. is amazed that only two lost their lives.

Mr. Morgenthau soon got a call from a city lawyer telling him that "the mayor wanted me to tell you that he's surprised that you're looking at the Deutsche Bank case." Mr. Morgenthau says he told the mayor's minion, "You tell the mayor that I'm surprised that he's surprised."

Why would the mayor encourage such a call? Because, says Mr. Morgenthau, Mr. Bloomberg "thinks all lawyers work for him" and "doesn't want anybody around who doesn't kiss his ring, or other parts of his body."

The mayor has also recently gone after Mr. Morgenthau's budget, with city officials demanding that he stop sending some of the money forfeited by criminals to the state government, and instead send all of it to the city. The D.A. reports that both governments benefit handsomely from the work of his office—$300 million so far this year, with another $230 million coming soon.

These big criminal forfeitures support his $80 million budget, but they are also the product of Mr. Morgenthau's unique legacy among district attorneys: his national and global reach. Such resources have allowed him to prosecute complex international business cases. Combined with his jurisdiction in the world's financial capital, he has become in a sense the world's district attorney.

Thomas Jefferson would have liked this bastion of local power as part of a federal system, but it is not always celebrated by federal officials. "I'm sure it [annoys] the hell out of them," Mr. Morgenthau observes.

The feeling is mutual. The D.A. says that while he's had to deal with the federal bureaucracy for decades, "it has just gotten worse" and "they ought to burn it down and start all over again. It's extremely worrisome."

For example, he says, "We had a lot of trouble with the Treasury Department" in his recent case against Credit Suisse, in which the bank coughed up $536 million and admitted to aiding Iran and other rogue nations in violating economic sanctions. The feds, as they did in a similar settlement with the British bank Lloyds, wanted only civil penalties.

Mr. Morgenthau would have none of it. He says Credit Suisse had been "stonewalling us" and only struck a deal after he threatened to bring criminal charges to a grand jury. "We would have gotten an indictment," he says.

In 2006, Mr. Morgenthau's office began an investigation into New York's Alavi Foundation, which turned out to be an Iranian government front. Money from the foundation "was being used to pay Iranian agents around the world," he says. Last month the U.S. government seized $500 million of the foundation's assets, including a Fifth Avenue office tower.

Mr. Morgenthau lacked the statute to bring legal action so he referred the Alavi inquiry to the FBI, while continuing to track a larger financial web. Individuals associated with Alavi had received money from Iran's government-controlled Bank Melli, which has been sanctioned by our government, the United Nations and the European Union for its support of the regime's nuclear and missile programs. The D.A.'s investigators found a money trail leading from Melli and other Iranian state-controlled banks, through legitimate banks in London and other European cities and into correspondent banks in the United States.

Credit Suisse, Lloyds and "eight other banks that we know about," according to Mr. Morgenthau, were involved in "stripping." This means disguising that Iran is the origin of transactions routed through American banks.

What are the Iranians buying with their ill-gotten American currency? Mr. Morgenthau obtained a shopping list that includes tantalum, a hard metal used in roadside bombs. But the Iranians are thinking bigger. He reports that he showed the shopping list to an executive at Raytheon, which manufactures missiles for the American military. Mr. Morgenthau says that after reviewing Tehran's wish list, the Raytheon official was stunned at the sophistication that would be required to create it, and replied, "My hands went cold."

The Iranian finance investigation led him to evidence showing the destination of a North Korean cargo plane that was seized in Bangkok by Thai police on Dec. 12. Despite Iranian denials, Mr. Morgenthau says the massive weapons shipment was bound for Tehran.

After years of prosecuting world-wide financial cases, including bringing down the criminal enterprise known as the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, Mr. Morgenthau has assembled a formidable intelligence network. "When people trust you, you get a lot of information from all around the world."

Mr. Morgenthau says "It takes a long time to build the kind of network we have" and adds that he expects his successor, Cyrus Vance Jr., will continue to focus on international financial crimes and Iranian finance in particular. That's because these cases are effective.

Regarding Iran, the lifelong Democrat scores both parties in Washington for ignoring the gathering threat. His own concern flows in part from his experience as a newly minted ensign aboard a destroyer the day Pearl Harbor was attacked. Mr. Morgenthau later saw action in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters, and was fortunate to survive one sinking when a convoy ship violated standing orders and picked him and fellow crew members out of the water. He doesn't want his country to be caught unprepared again.

***

'Everyone has dropped the ball on [Iran sanctions]. The president is smoking pot or something if he thinks that being nice to these guys is going to get him anywhere," Mr. Morgenthau says. He says economic sanctions can "have significant impact" because most of Iran's enablers are not terrorists, just people "trying to make a buck. . . . They don't enjoy being the focus of an investigation." The D.A. argues that more aggressive federal enforcement of existing sanctions, plus a new effort to restrict Iran's gasoline imports, could make life very difficult for a regime that is under increasing pressure from its own citizens.

"The president has to say this is a priority. We have sanctions and we ought to make them work," he says. "The boss," as he's known to Manhattan prosecutors, is particularly concerned about Iran's progress in missile development and its budding relationship with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez. While the two countries have opened banks in each other's countries, the D.A. reports that they nonetheless are transacting business in dollars through New York.

Mr. Morgenthau says his habit is to "never look back," but he obliges when pressed to revisit some of his most famous wins and losses. Boss of mob bosses John Gotti evaded the long arm of Mr. Morgenthau for years but was ultimately convicted of murder by the feds. "The [FBI] didn't turn over key evidence they had to us," he says.

Asked whether he should have indicted board members along with Tyco Corporation CEO Dennis Kozlowski and CFO Mark Swartz, Mr. Morgenthau responds, "probably."

Of his recent prosecution of Anthony Marshall, convicted of stealing from his mother Brooke Astor, Mr. Morgenthau makes clear that the case had a significance beyond exposing the lifestyles of the rich and famous. He notes a disturbing trend of children ripping off their parents and grandparents. The case, he says, "sent a message all over the country: You can't steal from your elders."

Mr. Morgenthau notes that his office was the first in the country to "indict the footprint," which means securing indictments before finding a defendant. This has the practical effect of removing the statute of limitations.

Mr. Morgenthau is proudest of his victories in cases widely considered unwinnable. He notes that his office was the first in the country to successfully prosecute a murder case with no body and no witness. In 2000 he won convictions against Sante and Kenneth Kimes. The mother and son killed Irene Silverman when they believed she had caught on to their plot to swindle her out of her Upper East Side mansion. The son later admitted to disposing of the body in a dumpster.

Mr. Morgenthau took on another lost cause but finally prevailed, 15 years after the disappearance of Gail Katz-Bierenbaum. Discovering flight records at New Jersey's Essex County Airport led his team to conclude and ultimately prove that her husband had pushed her body out of a Cessna over the Atlantic.

Overall, it's hard to argue with the results. While he is quick to credit the police and other city officials, Mr. Morgenthau notes that when he became district attorney in 1975, Manhattan was suffering almost 650 murders annually. Last year, there were 62. From more than 39% of the city's murders, Manhattan's share has fallen to just 12%.

Manhattan's renaissance has allowed many New Yorkers to consider not just survival, but success, and more specifically how to keep more of what they earn from the tax collector. Mr. Morgenthau has aggressively pursued those who seek to preserve their capital in other jurisdictions, but that doesn't mean he favors the current system.

"I think taxes in New York City and State are much too high," he says. "But you're never going to see them reduced unless everybody pays what they're required to pay under the law."

Mr. Morgenthau's effort to go after citizens who park their money in tax havens has led to more frustration with the Mayor. The D.A. says Mr. Bloomberg "has never been any help. I've talked to him three times about it and each time the conversation is almost identical. I tell him how much money is offshore and in the underground economy and he always says, 'I'm paying my taxes.' And I always say, 'Mike, no one is suggesting you don't, but there are a lot of other people who don't.' And then he says, 'I'm glad I'm not a lawyer.'"

Before exiting the public stage, Mr. Morgenthau also wants to set straight the record on one of the most controversial episodes in the history of the United States Supreme Court. Justice Abe Fortas was denied a Senate vote in 1968 when President Lyndon Johnson sought to elevate him to chief justice to replace the retiring Earl Warren.

The following year, Fortas resigned his seat as an associate justice after it was revealed that he received money from the foundation of Louis Wolfson, who had been convicted of crimes related to a securities case.

But Mr. Morgenthau already knew about the payments from Wolfson. As a U.S. attorney appointed by John F. Kennedy, he had been investigating Wolfson for years, against the wishes of Wolfson's friends in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. (To be fair, politicians seeking contributions were not the only defenders of Wolfson. More recently, Henry Manne has written in these pages that Wolfson invented the modern hostile tender offer, enhancing the power of shareholders and making the U.S. economy more competitive.)

***

In any case, Mr. Morgenthau believes that Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach was fired by LBJ in 1966 because he refused to block Mr. Morgenthau's indictment and subsequent conviction of Wolfson. At the time, Mr. Katzenbach said disputes with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover caused his resignation.

Knowing of the $20,000 per year "for life" that Wolfson's foundation was sending to Fortas, Mr. Morgenthau contacted Mr. Katzenbach's successor Ramsey Clark, told him of the deal, and suggested that he tell Chief Justice Earl Warren to consider delaying his retirement. Mr. Morgenthau says Mr. Clark never informed Warren. Wolfson had powerful friends.

Just like viewers at the end of a "Law and Order" episode, observers of the legendary D.A. are treated to one more twist in the tale.

Mr. Freeman is assistant editor of the Journal's editorial page.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704039704574616433529879494.html#printMode

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From the Department of Homeland Security

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Statement by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano

"I am grateful to the passengers and crew aboard Northwest Flight 253 who reacted quickly and heroically to an incident that could have had tragic results. The Department of Homeland Security immediately put additional screening measures into place—for all domestic and international flights—to ensure the continued safety of the traveling public. We are also working closely with federal, state and local law enforcement on additional security measures, as well as our international partners on enhanced security at airports and on flights.

The American people should continue their planned holiday travel and, as always, be observant and aware of their surroundings and report any suspicious behavior or activity to law enforcement officials.

Passengers flying from international locations to U.S. destinations may notice additional security measures in place. These measures are designed to be unpredictable, so passengers should not expect to see the same thing everywhere. Due to the busy holiday travel season, both domestic and international travelers should allot extra time for check-in."

http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1261853923809.shtm

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