Two teens get 50 to life in drive-by shooting; advocates protest sentence

More than two dozen youths and advocates gathered in front of the criminal courts building in downtown Los Angeles to support two young males who were sentenced today to 50 years to life in prison for a fatal drive-by shooting.

A jury convicted Steven Menendez, 17, and Jose Garcia, 19, of murder in July in the March 2007 death of 16-year-old Danny Saavedra .

Saavedra was playing basketball in the 500 block of 82nd Street in South Los Angeles when he was shot in what police described as a gang-related attack. Afterward, officers pursued a vehicle matching the description of the one used in the killing, and when Garcia and Menendez got out, they were arrested.

Both later said they were just passengers and identified the shooter as Noel Velasco , a 26-year-old member of the Street Villains gang. Velasco was never charged and was shot to death three months later.

Saavedra's parents and siblings spoke at the sentencing and told prosecutors they considered the sentence appropriate, said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office.

“These were two admitted gang members who went into rival gang territory, and they drove around not once but twice, slowed down and shot and killed a 16-year-old boy who had no gang connection,” Robison said.

But supporters of Garcia and Menendez said they did not deserve such harsh sentences.

“My son has never been locked up before,” said Menendez's mother, Maria Luisa Borrego, 34, of Downey. “I don't think this is justice at all. It's more like vengeance.”

Rachel Veerman coordinates a support group for Menendez and other parents whose children are in jail or detention. She said her own son narrowly escaped being charged as an adult after friends took his car and used it in a drive-by shooting.

She said her son's lawyer persuaded a judge to keep the attempted murder case in Juvenile Court, and her son was ordered to spend two years in state detention. He is now a freshman at Santa Clara University.

“We've been seeing more and more of these outrageous sentences — it just doesn't make sense,” Veerman said. “They should pay for what they did, but now they're just throwing them and our tax dollars away.”

Some supporters considered today's sentences a partial victory: Garcia had faced life without parole. About 250 prisoners convicted for crimes committed when they were youths are serving such sentences statewide, according to Kim McGill, an organizer with the Inglewood-based Youth Justice Coalition.

McGill said her group supports proposals to revise such strict sentencing laws. The Fair Sentences for Youth Act, sponsored by state Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) and scheduled for consideration by the state Assembly later this year, would allow some youths sentenced to life without parole to qualify to have their sentences reconsidered and be released.

“They learn much more in the community about what it means to be a good human being than they do in prison,” McGill said.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/

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Polanski asks to be sentenced in absentia in 1970s sex case

Roman Polanski has asked a Los Angeles judge to sentence him in absentia for having sex with a 13-year-old in 1977.

In a notarized letter submitted to a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge at a hearing Wednesday afternoon, the filmmaker wrote, "I request the judgment be pronounced against me in my absence."

The letter was dated Dec. 29 and signed in Gstaad, the Swiss resort town where the director is under house arrest pending a decision by a Swiss judge on whether to extradite him to the United States. Judge Peter Espinoza accepted the letter but said he would not decide whether such a proceeding was appropriate until a Jan 22 hearing.

An appellate court proposed sentencing in absentia as a way to resolve the three-decade-old case in a decision last month in which the justices denied Polanski's request for a complete dismissal of charges.

Espinoza, the presiding judge of the Superior Court's criminal division, told defense lawyers that the justices' proposal was "a suggestion" and "certainly wasn't a directive."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/

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Villaraigosa, Beck praise 9% drop in major crimes during 2009, part of a seven-year trend

As The Times reported last week, serious violent and property-related crime in the city dropped about 9% compared to the previous year. The declines continued a seven-year trend that includes a 17% drop since Villaraigosa took office four years ago. 

Homicides in Los Angeles fell by 69 to 314 – the lowest since 1967.  Police and prevention specialists also made inroads in gang-related crime, which dropped by 11%.

Unlike the early 1990s, when killings peaked in the city amid the crack cocaine epidemic with more than 1,000 homicides each year, the dramatic decline in bloodshed has meant a more manageable workload for detectives, Beck said. That, in turn, he said, led to the department making an arrest or otherwise closing 83% of its homicide cases in 2009 – far above the national average.

Since taking the LAPD's top job in November, Beck has warned that an erosion of the department ranks would jeopardize the LAPD's ability to continue the aggressive crime-fighting strategies and cooperation with community groups he credits with ongoing gains.

“It is inexplicable why these crime numbers are so good except for one thing: cops count, effective policing matters,” he said.  “That's what makes these numbers what they are.”

Villaraigosa said the ongoing improvements in safety have been an important factor in helping to salvage the city's tourism industry amid a dire fiscal crisis. “Even in these difficult times, people come here, in no small part, because it's safe,” he said.

Beck declined to offer a projection for crime rates in 2010, saying he and his command staff would do so in coming weeks.  Placing pressure squarely on the shoulders of the City Council, which holds the city's purse strings, Beck said another year of falling crime was possible if the department is “properly staffed and properly funded.”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/01/violent-and-propertyrelated-crime-in-los-angeles-continued-to-fall-in-2009-.html#more

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Groups work to provide more mentors for at-risk L.A. youth

Los Angeles-area nonprofit groups are announcing a new initiative today aimed at boosting the number of mentors available to work with at-risk youth.

Children Uniting Nations, a nonprofit that works with foster and at-risk youth in L.A., is the lead agency for the initiative, said Juliette Harris, a spokeswoman for the organization.

Children Uniting Nations has recruited Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater L.A. and the Inland Empire , Los Angeles Cares Mentoring Movement , Catholic Big Brothers Big Sisters and Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters to help reach people of various faiths and socioeconomic backgrounds, Harris said.

“We have hundreds and thousands of kids in this country that have nobody," she said. "By having that one adult that can keep them on the right track and keep them in school or from using drugs, it's just so key for Los Angeles right now.”

Children Uniting Nations was created to bring attention to the plight of at-risk and foster youth. The goal is to reach as many children in out-of-home care by offering role-model support, guidance, a sense of community and to promote the importance of an education.

To get more information on how to become a mentor, visit www.childrenunitingnations.org .

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/01/groups-work-to-provide-more-mentors-for-atrisk-la-youth.html#more

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A mad scheme to kill a scientist

Brilliant and wealthy but a paranoid schizophrenic, Walter Sartory was a prime target. He was abducted, drugged and his body set on fire. And a housekeeper and her son have been charged with murder.

by Bob Drogin

January 7, 2010

Reporting from Hebron, Ky.

Like the disturbed genius in Hollywood's "A Beautiful Mind," Walter K. Sartory was a brilliant mathematician with a grave mental illness. It made him the perfect victim.

Sartory worked for 30 years at Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which was built in secret for the atomic bomb project and became America's largest science and energy lab.

Sartory's work on nuclear weapons remains classified, but he published pioneering papers on reactor design, medical centrifuges and other subjects. He won a top award at the lab and held three patents.

"You only played chess with Walt two or three times because you were always humiliated," said John Eveleigh, a British biochemist who worked at Sartory's side. "And I played chess for Oxford, so I wasn't an amateur."

Sartory was treated most of his life for paranoid schizophrenia. He believed the CIA trained ants to spy on him. He battled social phobias so acute that he turned down a high-paying job rather than submit to an interview.

When Sartory retired in 1992, he shut himself in a tiny apartment and used algorithms to invest on Wall Street. The savant built a $14-million portfolio before the stock market crashed last year, records show.

With therapy and new medicine, he began to travel. He moved to Hebron in March 2008 to be near the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport. He had no immediate family and knew no one in the area.

Then last February, old friends phoned police to say the 73-year-old recluse had vanished. Their plea for help came too late.

Sartory had been abducted, drugged and duct-taped to a chair, police later concluded. He surrendered his financial accounts but died after he was denied the medicine that kept his panic attacks at bay. His body was stuffed in a trash can, doused with gasoline and burned.

"We all struggle to have faith in mankind," said Linda Tally Smith, the commonwealth's attorney who will prosecute the case. "To think a man who was already paranoid, who lived his whole life in fear of others, could fall prey to something so horrific is heartbreaking."

Exploitation of the elderly, and of the mentally ill, is a sad but growing trend. Prosecution is also more common thanks to surveillance cameras and other new tools.

But few cases present such a grim mix of pulp fiction and Greek tragedy as the lonely death of Walter Sartory.

Last January, Sartory spent three days visiting Therese "Terri" Davis, 60, in Binghamton, N.Y. They had met on an Internet site for people with personality disorders. This was their first date.

"He was so shy, so quiet," she recalled. "We held hands. I'm pretty sure he never held anybody else's hand before."

Sartory told her that government agents sometimes tampered with his car. "And when we went out to eat, he thought the waitress was laughing at him. I couldn't get him to smile."

Sartory also complained of a pushy housekeeper back home named Willa Blanc. At 47, she wore big blond wigs and rhinestone-encrusted fake fingernails, even when cleaning homes, and drove a candy-apple red 2007 Corvette.

Blanc worked in Sartory's neighborhood and offered to clean his house in mid-2008. He declined, but she kept bothering him, he said.

Sartory also complained about Blanc to Ann Cartee in Sterling, Va. They had met in an Internet mental health forum years before and spent hours together on the phone nearly every day.

"He said Blanc would knock on his door, barge in, and before you know it, she was there for two hours," Cartee recalled. "He didn't know how to get her to leave."

When Sartory returned from Binghamton, he found that Blanc and her 27-year-old son, Louis Wilkinson, had cleared his driveway of snow. Blanc handed Sartory mail, including financial statements, that she had taken from his mailbox.

Less than a month later, on Feb. 26, Cartee and her husband, Robert, called the Boone County Sheriff's Department in Kentucky to say their friend had not answered phone calls or responded to e-mails in 10 days.

The Cartees also sent police several of Sartory's recent e-mails. In one, he wrote that he had changed his locks in case Blanc had stolen a copy of his house key.

"I do not trust her," Sartory wrote. "I might be merely paranoid, but I suspect she might be running some sort of confidence racket. Or she might be casing my house to see if it is worth robbing."

Deputies checked Sartory's beige bungalow several times. But the shades were drawn, as usual, and nothing seemed amiss. They left notes under the door.

Then, on March 4, deputies noticed the garage door was unlocked and entered the house through there.

They discovered that the scientist had converted his living room into a monitoring station for extra-terrestrial life: Six powerful computers were running a program that analyzed radio signals from outer space.

Deputies found Sartory's schedules. He set precise times to brush his teeth, get dressed and so on, and then checked off each completed task.

In the kitchen, they found the prescription pills Sartory took daily to ward off psychotic episodes. He would not have left home without them.

Neighbors mentioned seeing a van from the cleaning service Molly Maids in Sartory's driveway. Company officials disclosed that Blanc, who sometimes worked for them, told them that she and Sartory "would be traveling" indefinitely.

On March 10, Sheriff's Chief Det. Coy Cox stopped at Blanc's two-story brick home in nearby Union, Ky. She assured him she had just seen Sartory in a grocery store and promised to call when she heard from him.

The next day, Cox found a letter in Sartory's mailbox from Fidelity Investments. The detective faxed a subpoena to Fidelity, which informed him that Blanc had added her name to Sartory's brokerage account.

Cox raced back to Blanc to demand an explanation. This time, she said she had passed Sartory in his silver Prius.

"I said, 'That's not what you told me before,' " Cox recalled. "She was totally cool, didn't blink an eye. She said, 'Really? Well, he's fine. He's probably home now.' "

As Cox drove away, Blanc packed a bag and fled with her son.

Police were ready. Surveillance teams shadowed the pair as they changed hotels and cars three times in two days and shuffled cellphones to avoid being traced.

The trackers lost them in Cincinnati traffic. But other clues quickly emerged.

Cox interviewed Blanc's husband, an electronics engineer. He said she had been his maid before they married. But she emptied his financial accounts, he said, and ran up $500,000 in debts. The mortgage company foreclosed on their home in mid-February, the engineer added.

That was just before Sartory disappeared.

The engineer also disclosed that Blanc had totaled his Chevrolet Trailblazer on Feb. 22. She had been on her way to rural Indiana to visit a friend with whom she liked to gamble, he said.

Cox drove to Indiana. Police told him Blanc was hauling a large plastic trash barrel when she crashed the SUV. She told police at the scene that the 50-gallon can contained firewood. The lid was fastened with bungee cord, and no one bothered to check.

She insisted that the tow-truck driver return the wrecked SUV, barrel and all, to Kentucky.

Once there, police say, Blanc and her son moved the trash barrel to a rented Dodge van and drove back to Indiana.

Blanc had stopped shortly before the accident to gamble at the Argosy, a riverboat casino on the Ohio River. Now, on her second trip with the barrel, she stopped at another gaming hall.

"They played bingo until it got dark," Cox said. Then they drove to her friend's farmhouse about 40 miles southwest of Indianapolis.

The farmhouse owner, Dwayne Lively, later told police that Blanc and her son drove up but did not stay. But Lively's daughter, Amanda, pulled up just as detectives were leaving and gave a more alarming story.

"She said Willa Blanc just showed up and said she had a large dog in the trash can, and paid her dad $1,000 to help them burn it," prosecutor Smith said. "They took all night to do it. This was even weirder than we were imagining."

Blanc's son "got third-degree burns from churning the fire," said his lawyer, Jason Gilbert, a public defender. Blanc, he added, "didn't sleep for 48 to 72 hours during this period. She was manic."

Police found charred human remains, a pair of burned metal-rim glasses, and steel tread from incinerated tires scattered in the nearby Morgan-Monroe State Forest.

Arrest warrants were issued for Blanc and Wilkinson. Police spotted Blanc's Corvette at a Red Roof Inn early the next day in nearby Sharonville, Ohio, and arrested them both.

Blanc and Wilkinson have pleaded not guilty to charges including murder, kidnapping, theft and abuse of a corpse. They are being held in lieu of $10-million bail each in the Boone County jail.

After his arrest, Wilkinson told Cox that he was "tired of his mother controlling his life" and of being her "slave." He gave two videotaped statements. The grisly details spilled out at subsequent court hearings.

Wilkinson lived in the basement of the house his mother and her husband shared. He had discovered Sartory confined there on Feb. 16 or 17, he said. The elderly man's hands and feet were taped to a chair, and tape covered his mouth. He appeared drugged.

Wilkinson said his mother ordered him to stay in the basement and locked the door. He said he pulled the tape from Sartory's mouth, and the captive asked if the "terrorist had been paid" and pleaded to be set free.

Denied his pills for several days, Sartory repeatedly vomited and struggled to breathe. Wilkinson said he tried to revive him three times with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but never called 911.

Wilkinson told detectives he carried Sartory "like a baby" up the stairs at one point to get him medical help, but his mother ordered him to stop. It's not clear when Sartory died, but Wilkinson said they stored the body in the trash can for two days in the garage.

Before Sartory died, police say, he gave Blanc his computer passwords and a power of attorney granting control over his bank and brokerage accounts. He also appeared to revise his will to leave Blanc the bulk of his fortune, although police believe the document is forged.

Blanc withdrew $210,000 from Sartory's account, the maximum available, before her arrest and was due to get $1.3 million more the day Cox sent his subpoena and Fidelity stopped the transfer.

Cox also checked at the Chevrolet dealership where the SUV had been towed after the accident. A salesman said Blanc had erupted in fury when she learned that someone already had bought a new, top-of-the-line Corvette ZR1 that she wanted. The car cost more than $100,000.

"She became very irritated, very angry," Cox said. "She told them she was about to get $7.5 million in cash."

When police searched her home, he said, they found a book with a title like "How to Choose Your Prey" in her safe.

"In her mind, he was perfect," Cox said. "She's tapped out. He has lots of money. He doesn't know anybody. He lives behind closed doors. He's trying to communicate with ET. Who would miss him?"

At an hourlong court hearing Dec. 2, Wilkinson stared at the floor, never looking at his mother. She fidgeted and glared at reporters through sparkling Dolce & Gabbana designer glasses above her black-and-white prison stripes.

Smith said she will seek the death penalty for Blanc when the case goes to trial, probably in the summer. Joanne Lynch, a public defender who represents Blanc, said the case is in a preliminary stage and the facts are still undetermined. Boone County Circuit Judge Anthony W. Frohlich has scheduled a hearing today to determine whether Wilkinson is mentally competent to stand trial. His lawyers also will seek to have his confession tossed out.

Sartory's last known act was to send two dozen red roses on Valentine's Day to Terri Davis, the woman he visited in Binghamton.

"The flowers were so beautiful," she said. "I tried calling him and calling him and calling him. And then I heard the news. And I cried, and I cried, and I cried."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-scientist-murder7-2010jan07,0,7767925,print.story

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U.S. learned intelligence on airline attack suspect while he was en route

U.S. border enforcement officials discovered alleged extremist links in a database while the suspect was headed to Detroit on Christmas Day, new disclosures show.

by Sebastian Rotella

January 7, 2010

Reporting from Washington

U.S. border security officials learned of the alleged extremist links of the suspect in the Christmas Day jetliner bombing attempt as he was airborne from Amsterdam to Detroit and had decided to question him when he landed, officials disclosed Wednesday.

The new information shows that border enforcement officials discovered the suspected extremist ties involving the Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, in a database despite intelligence failures that have been criticized by President Obama.

"The people in Detroit were prepared to look at him in secondary inspection," a senior law enforcement official said. "The decision had been made. The [database] had picked up the State Department concern about this guy -- that this guy may have been involved with extremist elements in Yemen."

If the intelligence had been detected sooner, it could have resulted in the interrogation and search of Abdulmutallab at the airport in Amsterdam, according to senior law enforcement officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

"They could have made the decision on whether to stop him from getting on the plane," the senior law enforcement official said.

But an administration official said late Wednesday that the information would not have resulted in further scrutiny before the suspect departed. Abdulmutallab was in a database containing half a million names of people with suspected extremist links but who are not considered threats. Therefore, border security officials would have sought only to question him upon arrival in the U.S., the administration official said.

Nonetheless, the disclosure shows the complexity of the intelligence and passenger screening systems that are the subject of comprehensive reviews that the administration will release today.

The threshold for requiring a foreign visitor to undergo special scrutiny upon arrival in the U.S. is considerably lower than criteria for stopping a passenger's departure overseas, according to current and former law enforcement officials. That is why border security agencies rely heavily on terrorism watch lists of suspects seen as urgent threats, officials said.

"The public isn't aware how many people are allowed to travel through the U.S., who are linked, who intersect with bad guys or alleged bad guys," a national security official said. "It makes sense from an intelligence perspective. If they are not considered dangerous, it provides intelligence on where they go, who they meet with."

Moreover, the window for identifying a passenger overseas as a potential threat is limited, a senior homeland security official said.

U.S. border enforcement officials have access to passenger data based on lists of those who have made flight reservations. But the in-depth vetting only begins once a comprehensive list, known as a flight manifest, has been generated, just a few hours before takeoff, the homeland security official said.

Customs and Border Protection personnel based at the National Targeting Center in Washington came across the intelligence about Abdulmutallab -- which was based on a tip from the suspect's father to U.S. Embassy officials in Nigeria -- during an in-depth review of the manifest after the plane was en route to Detroit, the other law enforcement officials said.

The administration's review of screening procedures now underway includes an effort to make more information accessible to inspectors further in advance of flights, the senior law enforcement official said. The sheer number of passengers who must be screened and the potential slowdown for air travel posed by more scrutiny remains an impediment, however, officials said.

In contrast, once foreign visitors arrive in the U.S., border inspectors armed with additional screening data can refer them to secondary inspection, which involves more extensive questioning and searches, for reasons including suspected immigration problems or criminal activity.

Customs and Border Protection spokesmen declined to comment because the investigation is still open.

Abdulmutallab, after flying in from Nigeria, boarded the nine-hour flight to Detroit at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, one of nine airports around the world where foreign governments permit the presence of U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in an advisory capacity.

The U.S. border officials work with foreign counterparts and Washington-based American officials to compare passenger lists to law enforcement and intelligence databases. The Americans can ask foreign law enforcement officials to conduct interrogations and searches of passengers who are not U.S. citizens or residents and, in rare instances, question passengers themselves, officials said.

Reservation lists that are generated a few days before flights allow some preliminary screening, officials said. But that information is limited by privacy laws, especially in Europe, and by the vagaries of reporting by airlines, so passenger manifests created with passport information once the flight is closed are a much stronger tool.

Homeland security officials declined to discuss what information reached the U.S. border officials in Amsterdam on Christmas Day or the actions of those officials related to Northwest Airlines Flight 253.

But they asserted that the likelihood of Abdulmutallab being intercepted in Amsterdam was low because he was not on the no-fly list, which contains about 4,000 names, or a separate terrorism watch "selectee" list that contains fewer than 20,000 names. Instead, the Nigerian was on the larger database.

The real breakdown came months before the flight because intelligence officials failed to match the father's tip with intercepts about a suspected plot involving a Nigerian, a former senior homeland security official said.

"There was enough information in the system to make the guy a selectee or a no-fly without hoping for Customs and Border Protection to detect it at the last minute," the official said.

The administration plans to release results today of its review of the Christmas Day plot, following a directive by Obama to make public a declassified version of the report he has received.

The report will be edited to remove information that might tell how the intelligence was gathered or who the sources were, administration officials said. The report is expected to present a clearer picture of how the intelligence system failed to detect the threat.

Then, for the second time in three days, Obama is planning to speak publicly about the matter. Counter-terrorism chief John Brennan and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano also may speak about the breakdown as early as today.

In Detroit on Wednesday, federal prosecutors filed a six-count indictment accusing Abdulmutallab, 23, of placing a destructive device on an aircraft, attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and other charges that carry a penalty of up to life in prison.

Abdulmutallab was subdued by passengers and crew members on the plane after he allegedly attempted to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear.

"This investigation is fast-paced, global and ongoing, and it has already yielded valuable intelligence that we will follow wherever it leads," Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said. "Anyone we find responsible for this alleged attack will be brought to justice using every tool -- military or judicial -- available to our government."

Abdulmutallab has provided valuable information to federal investigators about his dealings with extremists in Yemen, where he was allegedly trained and outfitted with the explosive device that was sewn into his underwear to avoid detection, according to U.S. law enforcement officials.

Abdulmutallab told interrogators that he met in Yemen with Anwar al Awlaki, a U.S.-born Yemeni cleric suspected of belonging to Al Qaeda, and who is also connected to the accused assailant in the November shootings at the Ft. Hood, Texas, Army base. Communications intercepts detected chatter about Awlaki's role in a plot involving a Nigerian, U.S. officials have said.

The investigation has also uncovered communications between Abdulmutallab and Awlaki, a senior U.S. anti-terrorism official said Wednesday. The official did not specify whether those communications were via phone or Internet or whether they took place during the period that the Nigerian studied engineering in London, from 2005 to 2008.

"He was definitely in communication with Awlaki," the senior anti-terrorism official said. "That's been documented."

British anti-terrorism officials said initially that Abdulmutallab was not identified as an extremist while a student at University College London. But there are increasing signs that he was active in a "radicalized group" while in London, the U.S. anti-terrorism official said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-airline-terror7-2010jan07,0,2520443,print.story

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Foreigners in Yemen see terrorism worries as overblown

The problems the country faces are significant, they say, but they're nothing new. Even Al Qaeda has been a presence for more than a decade, one man says.

by Haley Sweetland Edwards

January 6, 2010

Reporting from Sana, Yemen

Elena Rezneac's lavender eye shadow shimmered in the sun outside a crowded Internet cafe in Yemen's capital city. The 21-year-old Moldovan student giggled as she pushed her sunglasses up above her blond ponytail.

"If you read about Yemen in the news lately, you think there are terrorists running around and bombs in all the streets," she said. "But when you are here, it's calm. I have to go online to remember there's a war going on."

Others among the thousands of foreign aid workers and students of Arabic who live in this impoverished nation expressed a similar view.

The problems Yemen faces are long-standing and significant, they said, but at least on the surface, it's not the nest of terrorism it seems in some Western news reports.

"It's pretty much completely normal around here," said Ramon Scoble, a water management engineer for GTZ, a German development agency, who has lived and worked in Yemen for decades. "It's not that the problems aren't real. It's that they aren't new."

Yemen has been in the spotlight since Christmas Day, when a Nigerian man who had studied Arabic in Yemen during the fall was stopped by fellow passengers as he allegedly attempted to set off explosives on a plane bound for Detroit from Amsterdam.

Responsibility for the attack has been claimed by the group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a branch of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network that has prospered in Yemen in the last few years -- and been the target of air and ground raids by U.S.-backed Yemeni forces since mid-December.

The U.S., Japan and several European nations closed their embassies in Yemen in recent days because of security threats. The U.S. Embassy in Sana has since reopened, said Deborah Smith, a spokeswoman for the facility. She noted that no U.S. personnel had been evacuated from the country and that threats to -- and attacks on -- U.S. interests here go back at least a decade.

On Wednesday, Yemeni authorities announced the arrest of three men linked to the latest threats.

Yemen's Al Qaeda wing first appeared on Washington's radar in 2000 when a motorboat packed with explosives slammed into the U.S. destroyer Cole in the port of Aden, killing 17 sailors. In 2008, militants attacked the U.S. Embassy, killing at least 16 people, including an American.

The last three years have also seen attacks on tourists from nations including South Korea and Spain. Attacks on international aid workers have been rare, although in June the bodies of two German nurses and a South Korean teacher were found in a mountain hideaway of Islamic militants in northwestern Yemen.

Except for heightened security precautions, the constellation of aid and relief organizations here is operating normally.

"We have strengthened our security methods, but at this time, all essential services are still in place," said Andrew Knight, spokesman for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Yemen.

At Sana coffee shops frequented by Westerners, rumors about possible attacks persisted Wednesday, but the mood remained calm.

Most of the foreigners who come to Yemen are here voluntarily, after all, to study and work. Some are attracted by the distinctive architecture, the ancient traditions, the crispness of the Yemeni Arabic accent, and the country's famous hospitality.

"It's sort of a magical place in some ways," said Rezneac, the Moldovan student. "It's like landing in the 16th century. I feel like I'm not only in a different country, but on a whole different planet."

Longtimers like Scoble, a New Zealander who is a leading authority on Yemen's water issues, takes the current troubles in stride. The country was divided for decades and became a Cold War battleground when the south gained independence from Britain. After reunification two decades ago, civil war erupted, and today the nation remains in turmoil.

"Going back to the [1990] time of unity, Yemen has never been a settled country," Scoble said. "There's resistance against the regime and terrorism in pockets, but that's always been there. Al Qaeda are the new kids on the block. But even they've been here for more than a decade."

He fears that the spotlight on Al Qaeda could exacerbate Yemen's problems by attracting more foreign militants, as well as foreign governments that want to intervene.

"The media reports are a little bit inflammatory," Scoble said, "and I worry that some of it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy."

In the last month, security officials in Yemen have voiced concern that Islamic extremists are bolstering their attempts to attack foreign -- especially U.S. -- targets. Such attacks would be in retaliation for the American-backed air and ground raids that began Dec. 17, which have killed dozens of alleged Al Qaeda operatives, according to the Yemeni government. Also worrisome are local news reports that six trucks loaded with explosives and weapons "disappeared" this week en route to Sana.

Still, Edward Prados, director of an American nonprofit educational organization in Sana and a longtime Yemen resident, downplayed the closure of the embassies in a letter to his employees.

More than any new developments, he cited the Obama administration's priorities in combating terrorism, the failed jetliner attack and a delayed media reaction to Yemen's ongoing security issues as the impetus for the new attention.

"There is nothing particularly exceptional about this closing," he wrote, "except that Yemen is currently enjoying extensive media attention."

Many expatriates working for international organizations in Yemen take classes on how to protect themselves, and they follow certain security precautions, said Rasha Aljundi, a Jordanian who works for CARE International in Yemen.

They're advised to avoid fancy international hotels and other places where foreigners gather. They're told to vary their routines in case they're being watched. Many foreigners avoid throwing big parties, playing loud music at home or going out to eat with more than a few other foreigners.

"The aim is to avoid saying, 'Hey! Look at me!' " said one British woman who has lived in Aden and worked for a local aid organization for more than a decade.

She asked not to be named, for her own safety. Like many foreign women in Yemen, she chooses to wear the abaya , a long, black gown, and a head scarf, to avoid drawing attention to herself.

"When I first moved here, people would yell at me on the street, maybe because I'm blond and it's not something they see a lot," she said. "Sometimes Western women are annoyed by wearing the hijab , but you have to think of it as making your life easier."

"You get used to it after a while," said Aljundi, who found Lebanon from 2005 to 2008 much more dangerous. "I'm looking around Yemen thinking, 'Really?' " she said. "I've seen worse."

Most foreigners live in either Sana or Aden, the two major cities, where kidnappings are rare.

A trip through the countryside requires permission from the government, which is difficult, sometimes impossible, to get.

That's partly because Yemeni officials don't trust the patchwork of tribal authorities that rule a large part of the country, and that kidnap foreigners to use as bargaining chips in negotiations for public services or prisoner exchanges.

Many parts of the country -- including Saada province, where a Shiite Muslim rebellion against the Yemeni government has erupted -- are off-limits.

Some Westerners who live and work in Yemen have made a decision to stay put for the sake of a country they've grown to appreciate.

"I read about these issues every day, but I will not leave unless I have to," said Stephan Daus, 22, a blond, blue-eyed Norwegian who studies Arabic in Sana. "From a humanitarian perspective, the situation will get worse if we surrender to the threats of Al Qaeda."

Besides, he joked, "I've already paid my tuition through June."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-yemen-foreigners7-2010jan07,0,6681398,print.story

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More former Guantanamo detainees returning to militant activity, Pentagon says

A new Pentagon report puts the recidivism rate at 1 in 5 detainees freed from the U.S. prison, up from 14% in the last accounting. Some observers challenge the figures.

by Julian E. Barnes and Christi Parsons

January 7, 2010

Reporting from Washington

A new report estimates that one-fifth of the detainees who have been released from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have resumed extremist activity, a Defense Department official said Wednesday, a figure that intensifies the debate over the prison.

The Pentagon report on the released detainees remains classified and officials refused to discuss it publicly. But Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell acknowledged the numbers had risen since April, when the department said about 74 former detainees -- about 14% of those released -- had returned to hostile action against the United States.

The Pentagon method for counting former detainees who once again have taken up arms remains contentious. Conservatives argue that it undercounts the number of terrorists who have returned to the battlefield, whereas liberals say previous lists were inflated and included detainees who were wrongly arrested or were involved in local, not international, disputes.

The new estimate comes on the heels of an announcement by the Obama administration that it would halt Guantanamo transfers to Yemen. Republicans are pushing for a more expansive moratorium -- in particular, demanding that the U.S. stop sending detainees to Saudi Arabia.

President Obama last year ordered the Guantanamo Bay detention center closed, but the shutdown -- which was to have occurred by this month -- was postponed when the administration encountered difficulties in sending detainees back to their home countries or transferring them elsewhere.

Obama wants to send the remaining detainees to a prison in Thomson, Ill., the site of a state prison that the administration would like to purchase and operate as a federal prison and military detention center.

The George W. Bush administration released an estimated 500 detainees from Guantanamo Bay. Obama has transferred several dozen.

Senior members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group that claimed responsibility for the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a U.S.-bound jetliner, are former detainees at Guantanamo, including Saeed Ali Shahri, a Saudi who is the group's second-in-command.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday that he didn't know if the decision to halt repatriation of Yemeni detainees had anything to do with the perceived likelihood that they would join up with extremist organizations.

"We never have a plan to transfer anybody either to a home country or to a third country that we have reason to believe will present a security situation for us or for that country," Gibbs said.

Human rights organizations and lawyers for some of the detainees believe the Pentagon's recidivism statistics are inflated.

"I take a jaundiced view of those numbers," said attorney Marc Falkoff, whose clients include Guantanamo detainees. "They don't identify the recidivists or what they did wrong."

Although human rights groups have not seen the new Pentagon report, several reviewed the list released in April. At least two people were placed on that list for making statements critical of the U.S., critics said. Another was classified as a recidivist after being arrested for allegedly being involved in an uprising in the predominantly Muslim town of Nalchik, in southern Russia.

"A guy who was beaten up by the Russians for participating in an armed rebellion -- that is not tantamount to returning to the battlefield to fight Americans," said Stacy Sullivan, a counter-terrorism advisor with Human Rights Watch.

But Charles Stimson, a scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation, criticized the Pentagon list for not including more names.

"Why is it that nobody is surprised that career criminals have a recidivism rate above 90%, yet people act with shock and disbelief when committed jihadists have a recidivism rate of 20%?" Stimson said.

Stimson, a former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for detainee operations in the Bush administration, added, "I have every reason to believe it is very conservative and the actual number is substantially higher than 20%."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-guantanamo-repeaters7-2010jan07,0,7620610,print.story

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EDITOIAL

The price of justice

The Supreme Court should not backtrack on its ruling that the defense has a right to cross-examine experts who present lab reports for the prosecution.

January 7, 2010

The 6th Amendment to the Constitution guarantees a criminal defendant the right "to be confronted with the witnesses against him." In June , the Supreme Court adapted that principle to the age of "CSI" by requiring prosecutors who use laboratory reports to call the experts who prepared them so that they can be cross-examined by the defense.

Now, after exaggerated complaints by some prosecutors, the court will revisit the issue in arguments on Monday. It should decline the invitation to rein in or reverse its ruling. Not for the first time, a court decision has forced prosecutors to change the way they do business and incur additional costs. And rightly so; the court shouldn't put a price tag on the exercise of a fundamental constitutional right.

In its 5-4 decision in June, in a drug case from Massachusetts, Justice Antonin Scalia (joined by fellow conservative Clarence Thomas and three liberal justices) came to the convincing conclusion that laboratory analysts are "witnesses," because their reports could lead to a defendant's conviction. Now the court will review a decision of the Virginia Supreme Court that would weaken the new rule. The state court held that there is no violation of a defendant's rights as long as the laboratory expert can be called as a witness when the defense is making its case.

This might seem a distinction without a difference. But lawyers for two men convicted of cocaine offenses based on laboratory analysis argue that cross-examination during the prosecutor's case is likely to have a greater impact than putting experts on the stand during the defense's case. That practice also undermines the principle that the burden of proof is on the prosecution, not the defense.

Taking their cue from the dissenters in June's decision, 26 state attorneys general (not including California's Jerry Brown) have told the Supreme Court that requiring technicians to appear as witnesses as part of the prosecution's case -- instead of appearing only when requested by the defense -- is inordinately costly and already is having "an overwhelming negative impact on drug prosecutions." But the attorneys general concede that they're relying partly on "anecdotal evidence." L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley says his office hasn't been panicked by the decision and has adapted its guidelines to reflect the ruling.

It's too early to judge the financial costs of a decision that is little more than 6 months old. But cost isn't the issue. At a time when television crime dramas suggest that forensic testing is infallible, jurors are likely to give prosecutors the benefit of the doubt when they introduce a scientific report whose author can't be cross-examined about the care with which a test was conducted. When it reviews the Virginia ruling, the high court should render an opinion that says, in effect, "We were right the first time."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-expert7-2010jan07,0,387763,print.story

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EDITORIAL

In Afghanistan, not-so-smart intelligence

As a recent deadly bombing and a critical Army report indicate, the U.S. is falling down on the intelligence-gathering front in the war there.

January 7, 2010

Shortly before a double agent for Al Qaeda detonated a suicide bomb and killed seven CIA employees in Afghanistan last week, a U.S. general issued a report excoriating American military intelligence-gathering for being too focused on targeting enemy combatants at the expense of understanding civilians and the environment around them. Though unrelated, both developments highlight deep and enduring problems for the United States eight years into the war.

The suicide bomber was a Jordanian doctor recruited to infiltrate Al Qaeda at the highest level. Instead, he turned on his handlers like a Cold War spy and then, apparently steeped in religious fanaticism, blew himself up on a U.S. base along with the high-level CIA operatives. Casualties are inevitable in war, and the attack demonstrates the sophistication and adaptability of Al Qaeda; this apparently was no ragtag operation. But it also exposes poor tradecraft on the part of the CIA agents, who failed to search the informant before admitting him to the base, and it suggests that, like the military, the CIA also may be excessively focused on Al Qaeda targets.

As anyone steeped in counterinsurgency strategy knows, such wars are won or lost on the support of the population. Armies need information to succeed. According to the damning report by Army Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, director of military intelligence in Afghanistan, U.S. spy agencies there (with a few notable exceptions) are "ignorant" of local politics and economics, "hazy" about who the power brokers are and "disengaged" at the grass-roots level from those who might provide answers and help win the war. In short, they are providing intelligence "marginally relevant" to the counterinsurgency campaign that Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal is running now and for which President Obama ordered an additional 30,000 troops last month.

Those troops want to eliminate Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders, of course, but that is not sufficient. As the report said: "The Soviets experienced this reality in the 1980s, when despite killing hundreds of thousands of Afghans, they faced a larger insurgency near the end of the war than they did at the beginning." U.S. forces also must peel away low-level fighters and a network of supporters from the Taliban. For that they need intelligence.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-afghanistan7-2010jan07,0,7808191,print.story

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From the Wall Street Journal

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L.A. Is Latest City to See Crime Drop

Violent crime in Los Angeles hit its lowest level in more than half a century last year, one of a growing number of U.S. cities reporting its streets were remarkably safe in 2009.

Washington, D.C., finished the year with 143 killings, the lowest tally in the nation's capital since 1966. San Francisco reported 45 homicides last year, its lowest in 48 years. New York, Chicago, Boston and Dallas also reported dramatic year-over-year declines in 2009 compared with 2008.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced Wednesday there had been 314 homicides in 2009 -- the lowest number of killings since 1967, when there were 281. In 2005, 489 people were killed in the city. Los Angeles also saw declines in rapes, robberies and assaults in 2009, compared with the previous year.

Violent crimes nationwide -- including homicide, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault -- have been shrinking since 2007, after a slight increase in 2006, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Killings dropped 4.4% in 2008 from 2007. Preliminary FBI statistics for the first six months of 2009 showed homicides were down 10%.

Reported statistics showed the greatest drop in cities with populations greater than a million people. Violent crime in those cities fell 7% in the first six months of the year; homicides were down 13.4% compared with the same period in 2008.

Experts believe the fall in violent crime is tied to the aging U.S. population.

"The graying of America is a significant factor," said James Alan Fox, Lipman Professor of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University in Boston. "The largest and fastest growing segment of the population is people over 50. People over 50 also happen to be the age group that is the least likely to commit crimes. As the group grows, crime rates do decline."

Prof. Fox said a common assumption that crime goes up during a recession is wrong. Historic data show there is little connection between economic conditions and crime, particularly violent crime.

Prof. Fox said the crimes most likely to increase during a recession were such offenses as fraud, check forgeries and insurance schemes.

In Chicago, there were 453 homicides between Jan. 1 and Dec. 27 last year, according to preliminary figures from the police department, down 11% from 509 over the same period in 2008. The number of killings has fallen steadily from about 900 a year in the early 1990s until 2007, when they hit 442.

In New York, police reported 466 homicides in 2009, down 10.9% from 2008.

Dallas also hit historical lows last year with 166 homicides, according to Dallas police. It was the lowest number of killings there since 1967, when the city registered 133. The homicide rate in 2009, which is based on the population, is the lowest the city has seen in 51 years. Killings in the city have dropped by 33% in the last five years.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126282968835719045.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5#printMode

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Yemen Forces Hunt Leader of Local Al Qaeda Group

SAN'A, Yemen -- Yemeni security forces launched a manhunt for leader of the al Qaeda affiliate that claimed responsibility for the alleged attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day, and is believed to be behind a threat that forced the closure of the U.S. and British embassies.

Security forces swept into several areas where the militant leader, Mohammed Ahmed al-Hanaq, was believed to be hiding, in the mountainous region of Arhab, northeast of the capital, but haven't located him, security officials said.

Officials negotiating with tribal sheiks in Arhab are demanding that they surrender Mr. al-Hanaq and another al Qaeda suspect related to him, Nazeeh al-Hanaq, tribal leaders said.

The U.S. says the Arhab cell was behind a plot to send al Qaeda fighters into San'a to carry out attacks, possibly against foreign embassies. The U.S. and British embassies closed Sunday and Monday, and other Western missions limited or stopped their access to the public.

U.S. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared to rule out direct military action by the U.S. in Yemen.

Speaking to students at George Washington University, Adm. Mullen, the nation's top military officer, said the U.S. effort would be limited to helping fund and train the Yemeni security forces, some of whom are already mentored by small teams of elite American Special Operations forces.

Yemeni security forces on Monday tried to capture Mohammed Ahmed al-Hanaq as he was moving through the Arhab region, prompting heavy clashes. He and Nazeeh al-Hanaq both escaped, but two fighters with them were killed.

On Tuesday, security forces arrested three other fighters who were wounded in the clashes as they were being treated in a hospital in a nearby town. Four others who took them to the hospital were also arrested, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday.

The U.S. and British embassies reopened the following day, saying the effort by Yemeni forces had largely resolved the threat.

A French Foreign Ministry official also said the country's embassy in Yemen's capital has reopened to the public following a three-day closure.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126281793704618597.html?mod=WSJ_World_LEFTSecondNews#printMode

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OPINION

What Does the Detroit Bomber Know?

The president's job is not detecting bombs at the airport but neutralizing terrorists before they get there.

There was much to celebrate in the providential combination of an incompetent terrorist and surpassingly brave passengers and crew who saved 288 people aboard Northwest Airlines flight 253 on Christmas Day. There is a lot less to applaud in the official reaction.

Well-deserved mockery has already been heaped on the move-along-folks-nothing-to-see-here tone of the administration's initial pronouncements—from Janet Napolitano's "the system worked," to President Obama's statement that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was an "isolated extremist." This week brought little improvement.

The president acknowledged that the plot had been hatched in Yemen, but not without adding the misleading statement that Yemen faces "crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies." That Yemenis have to cope with "crushing poverty" is irrelevant here. Abdulmutallab is the son of a wealthy Nigerian banker. Other jihadists, including the physician who blew himself up and killed seven CIA agents in Afghanistan last week, and indeed the millionaire Osama bin Laden, prove that poverty does not beget terrorists. "Deadly insurgencies" is a half-truth, which omits the fact that the Yemeni government itself has supported al Qaeda and continues to harbor at least two people—Jamal Ahmed Mohammed Ali al-Badawi and Fahad Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso—involved in the bombing of the USS Cole.

Then, too, there was the unfortunate metaphor chosen by a senior intelligence adviser to account for why a conspiracy helped along by at least two Guantanamo alumni had not been discovered before Abdulmutallab boarded the plane. There was, he said, "no smoking gun"—a clue one would expect to find after disaster strikes, not before. There were, as it happens, many smokeless but redolent clues lying about before the plane took off. These included Abdulmutallab's father's warning to the State Department that his son was being radicalized and had gone to Yemen; the one-way ticket purchased for cash; no luggage; and intercepted communication referring to a plot involving "the Nigerian" in Yemen.

But it is not so much these gaffes as what they appear to reflect that gives serious cause for concern. Even as the initial spin was in progress, Abdulmutallab was chattering like a magpie to his FBI captors about having been trained by al Qaeda and about there being more where he came from.

Braggadocio aside, he was certainly aware of who had prepared the potentially deadly mix that was sewn in his underwear, who had trained him, where the training had taken place, whether there was in fact a South Asian man described by two other passengers who helped him talk his way on to the plane, and a good deal more. Such facts are valuable but evanescent intelligence. The location of people—and with it our ability to find and neutralize them—is subject to rapid change.

Had Abdulmutallab been turned over immediately to interrogators intent on gathering intelligence, valuable facts could have been gathered and perhaps acted upon. Indeed, a White House spokesman has confirmed that Abdulmutallab did disclose some actionable intelligence before he fell silent on advice of counsel. Nor is it any comfort to be told, as we were, by the senior intelligence adviser referred to above—he of the "no smoking gun"—that we can learn facts from Abdulmutallab as part of a plea bargaining process in connection with his prosecution.

Whatever that official thinks he knows about the plea bargaining process, he certainly should know that the kind of facts that Abdulmutallab might be expected to know have a shelf life that is a lot shorter than the plea bargaining process, assuming such a process ever gets started.

Holding Abdulmutallab for a time in military custody, regardless of where he is ultimately to be charged, would have been entirely lawful—even in the view of the current administration, which has taken the position that it needs no further legislative authority to hold dangerous detainees even for a lengthy period in the United States. Then we could decide at relative leisure where to charge him—whether before a military commission or before a civilian court. In Abdulmutallab's case, it would hardly make a difference, given the nature of most of the evidence against him. (Although potential disclosure of the body of intercepted communications that included reference to "the Nigerian" could prove problematic if the prosecution were to be brought in a civilian court.)

Those considerations, however, are entirely academic because Abdulmutallab was proceeded against—if that is the correct description—in a civilian tribunal where the first step was to get him a lawyer who promptly put an end to his disclosures. The point is less where Abdulmutallab will eventually be prosecuted than what use could have been made of him as an intelligence source. No consideration whatsoever appears to have been given to where Abdulmutallab fits in the foreign contingency operation (formerly known as the global war on terror) in which we are engaged.

Most recently we have had the promise of more rigorous searches at the airport, along with a White House summit meeting that featured a furrowed brow, an earnest injunction to "do better" at "connecting dots," an oddly benign reference to al Qaeda as our "agile adversary," and a promise to suspend the transfer of prisoners to Yemen because of the "unsettled" situation in that country, accompanied by an emphatic recommitment to closing Guantanamo.

What the gaffes, the almost comically strained avoidance of such direct terms as "war" and "Islamist terrorism," and the failure to think of Abdulmutallab as a potential source of intelligence rather than simply as a criminal defendant seem to reflect is that some in the executive branch are focused more on not sounding like their predecessors than they are on finding and neutralizing people who believe it is their religious duty to kill us. That's too bad, because the Constitution vests "the executive power"—not some of it, all of it—in the president. He, and those acting at his direction, are responsible for protecting us.

There is much to worry about if they think that the principal challenge of the day is detecting bombs at the airport rather than actively searching out, finding and neutralizing terrorists before they get there.

Mr. Mukasey was attorney general of the United States from 2007 to 2009.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704842604574642151948743022.html#printMode

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From the Washington Times

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Obama to address report on botched attack

by Ben Feller

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The public is getting its clearest look at the government missteps that allowed a suspected terrorist to slip through post-Sept. 11 security and threaten lives on American soil.

The White House on Thursday planned to make public a declassified account of the near-catastrophe on a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day, and President Barack Obama was to address the nation about its findings and recommendations. Obama was also to reveal new steps intended to thwart terrorist attacks, as he promised earlier in the week.

No firings over the December security debacle are expected -- for now, at least.

For an administration rocked by the breach of security, the day was meant to be a pivot point from an incident that has dominated attention.

"In many ways, this will be the close of this part of the investigation," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday.

In an interview published Thursday by USA Today, national security adviser Gen. James Jones said people who read the report will feel "a certain shock."

Elaborating, Jones said, "The man on the street ... will be surprised that these correlations weren't made" between clues pointing toward a threat from Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Even though the 23-year-old Nigerian man was in a database of possible terrorists, he managed to fly from Nigeria through Amsterdam to Detroit with an explosive concealed on his body.

For nearly the last two weeks, Obama and his team have spent an enormous amount of time responding to the near-disaster. The White House is eager to start moving public attention back to its efforts to expand health care and boost the economy, while careful to say Obama will be monitoring security improvements.

Abdulmutallab was indicted Wednesday on charges of attempted murder and other crimes for trying to blow up an airliner.

His father had warned U.S. officials that Abdulmutallab had drifted into extremism in the al-Qaida hotbed of Yemen, but that threat was never identified fully by intelligence officials, a breakdown that has drawn intense, candid criticism from the president himself.

Still, even with whatever details and improvements are revealed Thursday, questions will remain. Senate committees plan hearings later this month.

And it remains unclear whether any top officials from Obama's not-quite-year-old administration will be fired over the debacle.

"I don't know what the final outcome in terms of hiring and firing will be," Gibbs said.

He said no personnel announcements were expected Thursday.

Two legislative officials familiar with intelligence matters, one in the House and one in the Senate, said Wednesday that it appeared unlikely that anyone in the Obama administration would be fired over the incident. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Obama's comments Thursday will be his sixth on the incident, encompassing two statements to reporters during his Hawaii vacation and two more from the White House, a written statement on New Year's Eve and his radio address last weekend.

The president blistered the intelligence community earlier this week, saying flatly that the government had enough information to uncover the plot and disrupt the attack. "It was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had," Obama said.

Charlie Allen, the former head of collection at CIA, said the government suffers from a shortage of experienced intelligence analysts.

Analysts take pieces of information -- like the disparate threads available before Christmas -- look at them, correlate them, and then make a "very strong leap in order to reach a decision," Allen said. "It takes experience."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/07/obama-address-report-botched-terror-attack//print/

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Two terror events not detected

by Joseph Weber

Congressman Joe Wilson, South Carolina Republican, said Thursday he agrees with White House National Security Adviser James Jones' assessment that the Obama administration's intelligence agencies failed twice in detecting early warning signs to stop two recent attacks -- the mass shooting at Fort Hood, then the failed Christmas Day airplane bombing.

"It's about time," Mr. Wilson told The Washington Times' "America's Morning News" radio show this morning. Mr. Wilson served in the National Guard for 28 years and has two sons who served in Iraq. "It's so clear to me we're in a global war on terrorism."

He also said President Obama appears to be coming around to realizing the country remains at war against terrorism.

The White House is expected to release a report Thursday on the failed Christmas Day bombing on a Detroit-bound flight from Amsterdam.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian, boarded the flight with undetected explosives. The suspect's father had warned officials at the U.S. embassy in Nigeria that he feared his son was being radicalized.

In the Fort Hood case, Army officials has expressed concern about the behavior of the suspected shooter Army psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. Witnesses reported hearing him yell "Allah Akbar" during the attack.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/07/wilson-two-terror-events-not-detected//print/

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Parents on trial in young girl's overdose death

by Denise Lavoie

ASSOCIATED PRESS

BOSTON | Before she turned 3, Rebecca Riley was diagnosed with attention-deficit (hyperactivity) and bipolar disorders. By age 4, she was dead. Authorities said her body succumbed to a cocktail of prescription drugs typically given to adults.

Her parents, Michael and Carolyn Riley, go to trial Thursday on murder charges in a case that reignited a long-running debate in psychiatry over whether young children can be accurately diagnosed with serious mental illnesses, and if so, how they should be treated.

The Rileys insist they were just following doctor's orders, and contend the girl died of pneumonia in December 2006.

Prosecutors allege the parents deliberately overmedicated the girl to keep her quiet, and ended up killing her.

Carolyn Riley's lawyer, Michael Bourbeau, declined to comment on the eve of the trial in Brockton Superior Court but has said Mrs. Riley gave her daughter only the number of pills prescribed by Dr. Kayoko Kifuji.

"Carolyn Riley has done everything she could as a mother to take care of her child. She relied on the doctor," Mr. Bourbeau said during a pretrial hearing.

Mr. Riley's lawyer, John Darrell, called his client "a loving parent who cared about his children" and insists the Rileys strictly followed the orders of Dr. Kifuji, who he has called "a totally irresponsible doctor."

Dr. Kifuji was not charged in Rebecca's death. A grand jury refused to indict her, and in September she was reinstated to her job as a child psychiatrist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. She has declined repeated interview requests.

Some psychiatrists think the case illustrates a trend of overdiagnosing bipolar disorder in young children, an illness traditionally diagnosed in adolescence or early adulthood.

"There are some kids who need those medicines, but I think you get on a slippery slope when, rather than acknowledging that it's really tough to diagnose this in preschoolers, there's a tendency to say, 'Let's give her medication,'" said Dr. Oscar Bukstein, a child psychiatrist and professor at the University of Pittsburgh who is not involved in the case.

According to a state medical examiner, Rebecca died of a combination of Clonidine, a blood pressure medication the girl had been prescribed for ADHD; Depakote, an anti-seizure and mood-stabilizing drug prescribed for bipolar disorder; and two over-the-counter drugs, a cough suppressant and an antihistamine. The amount of Clonidine alone in Rebecca's system was enough to be fatal, the medical examiner said.

The two prescription drugs, Clonidine and Depakote, are approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in adults only, although doctors can legally prescribe them to children and often do.

In the months before her death, Rebecca showed signs of being overmedicated. A school nurse said she was so weak she was like a "floppy doll." Her principal said she had to help the girl off the bus and walking on stairs several times because she was shaking.

Relatives told police the Rileys called Clonidine "happy medicine" and "sleep medicine," and gave it to their two other children, who had also been diagnosed with ADHD and bipolar disorder by Dr. Kifuji.

Prosecutors have said they think Mrs. Riley made up stories about losing or accidentally ruining bottles of Clonidine so that she could get more pills to give to Rebecca and the other children.

They also claim the Rileys, of Hull, concocted symptoms of mental illness in hopes of collecting Social Security disability payments for her, as they had with their other children.

Dr. Kifuji, who will be called by prosecutors to testify at the trial, has insisted that she warned Mrs. Riley against giving Rebecca any extra Clonidine.

"The medications that she prescribed and that were used to treat Rebecca are commonly used and highly appropriate to treat ADHD and bipolar," said her lawyer, Bruce Singal. "As long as they are taken as prescribed, they are an appropriate and effective method to treat those illnesses."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/07/parents-on-trial-in-young-girls-overdose-death//print/

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P.C. undermines our military

by Adm. James A. Lyons

Political correctness has undermined the military for years. Recently things have turned for the worse. Under the Obama administration's pursuit of a "new era of engagement" with America's enemies, it has gained more prominence.

That is reflected in the December tragedy at Fort Hood, Texas, by the failure to cashier Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan out of the U.S. Army. His military associates and commanding officers had to have known for years of his openly acknowledged sympathy for fanatical jihadism yet evidently did nothing out of fear of being labeled anti-Muslim and/or accused of racial profiling. Such charges in today's military can have a career-ending impact.

There is no question Maj. Hasan should have been court-martialed based on the previous known fact that he was communicating with the enemy, the Yemen-based radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki on jihadism. This failure resulted in 14 Americans (including an unborn child) losing their lives in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001. Military commanders who had oversight responsibilities for Maj. Hasan must be held accountable.

Then there's the case of the three elite U.S. Navy SEALs from SEAL Team 10 who face criminal charges after capturing one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq, Ahmed Hashim Abed. This man was credited with the murder and mutilations of four American security guards in Fallujah. Their bodies were burned and dragged through the city, then two of the bodies were hung from a bridge. The charges against the SEALs are based on an accusation that the terrorist was punched in the stomach and had a "bloody lip."

When you consider that the Defense Department is well aware of the al Qaeda training manual that provides guidance to its terrorists that if "they are captured, they should claim they were tortured and/or mal-treated," the absurdity is obvious.

The best-selling book "Lone Survivor" by Marcus Luttrell (Little, Brown & Co., 2007) describes the dilemma facing four SEALs (also from SEAL Team 10) deployed on an Afghan mountaintop to kill or capture Ahmad Shah, a Taliban leader who was close to Osama bin Laden.

Unfortunately, "Murphy's Law" came into play as three Afghan goatherders stumbled on their hiding spot. The politically correct rules of engagement (ROEs) caused the SEALs to let them go, instead of killing them. Within an hour the goatherders betrayed their position to the Taliban and the SEALs suffered their greatest loss. Three of the SEALs were killed and one barely survived after being blown off a cliff by a rocket-propelled grenade.

An MH-47 Chinook helicopter was dispatched with eight SEALs and eight 160th Special Operations "Nightstalkers" to rescue the team but on reaching the site, the helicopter was shot down with the loss of all 16 men. Pvt. 1st Class Marcus Luttrell was the only survivor from the original four-man SEAL team.

Political correctness has often surfaced over the years in our rules of engagement. The restrictions imposed on our forces in Vietnam are legend. The U.S. Marines providing perimeter security for the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon on Oct. 23, 1983, were prohibited from chambering a round, leaving 241 dead. Similar instances occurred with the bombing of Khobar Towers in 1997 and the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.

In November, the The Washington Times compiled an informal list of current ROEs in Afghanistan. The ROEs are said to reflect a change in our operating culture and put the Afghan people first. A partial list includes:

Clearly, political correctness has had its impact. There have been too many instances where our forces have been put in jeopardy because we did not employ available capabilities for fear of collateral damage.

The safety of our military forces should come first. If our military forces are going to put their lives on the line for our country, then they must have the confidence that their commanders will do everything in their power to protect them. That's not happening.

James A. Lyons, U.S. Navy retired admiral, was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/07/pc-undermines-our-military//print/

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From the Department of Justice

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WASHINGTON – The Justice Department announced that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian national, was charged today in a six-count criminal indictment returned in the Eastern District of Michigan for his alleged role in the attempted Christmas day bombing of Northwest Airlines flight 253 from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to Detroit.

Count one of the indictment charges Abdulmutallab with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, which carries a penalty of up to life in prison. Count two of the indictment charges him with attempted murder within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States, which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. Count three of the indictment charges him with willful attempt to destroy or wreck an aircraft within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States, which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.

Count four of the indictment charges Abdulmutallab with willfully placing a destructive device on an aircraft within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States, which was likely to endanger the safety of such aircraft. This violation carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. Count five of the indictment charges him with use of a firearm/destructive device during and in relation to a crime of violence, which carries a consecutive mandatory 30 years in prison. Count six of the indictment charges the defendant with possession of a firearm/destructive device in furtherance of a crime of violence, which carries a consecutive mandatory 30 years in prison

"The charges that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab faces could imprison him for life," said Attorney General Eric Holder.  "This investigation is fast-paced, global and ongoing, and it has already yielded valuable intelligence that we will follow wherever it leads.  Anyone we find responsible for this alleged attack will be brought to justice using every tool -- military or judicial -- available to our government."

"The attempted murder of 289 innocent people merits the most serious charges available, and that's what we have charged in this indictment," said U.S. Attorney Barbara L. McQuade, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.

According to the indictment, Northwest Airlines flight 253 carried 279 passengers and 11 crewmembers. Abdulmutallab allegedly boarded Northwest Airlines flight 253 in Amsterdam on Dec. 25, 2009 carrying a concealed bomb. The bomb components included Pentaerythritol (also known as PETN, a high explosive), as well as Triacetone Triperoxide (also known as TATP, a high explosive), and other ingredients.

The bomb was concealed in the defendant's clothing and was designed to allow him to detonate it at a time of his choosing, thereby causing an explosion aboard flight 253, according to the indictment. Shortly prior to landing at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, Abdulmutallab detonated the bomb, causing a fire on board flight 253.

According to an affidavit filed in support of a criminal complaint, Abdulmutallab was subdued and restrained by the passengers and flight crew after detonating the bomb. The airplane landed shortly thereafter, and he was taken into custody by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers. Abdulmutallab required medical treatment, and was transported to the University of Michigan Medical Center after the plane landed.

This prosecution is being handled by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan, with assistance from the Counterterrorism Section of the Justice Department's National Security Division.

The investigation is being conducted by the Detroit Joint Terrorism Task Force, which is led by the FBI and includes U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Federal Air Marshal Service, and other law enforcement agencies. Additional assistance has been provided by the Transportation Security Administration, the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the Wayne County Airport police, as well as international law enforcement partners.

The public is reminded that an indictment contains mere allegations and a defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/January/10-nsd-004.html

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From ICE

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The initiative, Secure Communities, is administered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Secure Communities enables ICE to determine whether an individual arrested by a participating state or local law enforcement agency is a dangerous criminal alien and take the appropriate action to remove the individual from the community.

The Secure Communities biometric identification technology is now accessible to the local law enforcement agencies in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties that use electronic booking machines. Formerly as part of the booking process, local arrestees' fingerprints were taken and checked for criminal history information against the DOJ biometric system maintained by the FBI. With the implementation of Secure Communities, that fingerprint information will now be simultaneously checked against both the FBI criminal history records and the biometrics-based immigration records maintained by the DHS.

If any fingerprints match those of someone in DHS's biometric system, the new automated process notifies ICE, enabling the agency to take appropriate action to ensure dangerous criminal aliens are not released back into communities. Top priority is given to individuals who pose the greatest threat to public safety, such as those with prior convictions for major drug offenses, murder, rape, robbery, and kidnapping.

"Secure Communities provides local law enforcement with an effective tool to identify dangerous criminal aliens," said Acting Secure Communities Executive Director Marc Rapp. "Enhancing public safety is at the core of ICE's mission. Our goal with Secure Communities is to use information sharing to prevent criminal aliens from being released back into the community, with little or no additional burden on our law enforcement partners."

With the expansion of Secure Communities to Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, there are now six California counties participating in the initiative, including Los Angeles, Ventura, San Diego and Imperial. Across the country, Secure Communities is being used by 108 jurisdictions in 15 states. By next year, ICE expects Secure Communities to have a presence in every state, with nationwide coverage anticipated by 2013.

Since its inception in October 2008, Secure Communities has identified more than 11,000 aliens charged or convicted with Level 1 crimes, such as murder, rape and kidnapping - 1,900 of whom have already been removed from the United States - and more than 100,000 aliens convicted of Level 2 and 3 crimes, including burglary and serious property crimes.

Secure Communities is part of DHS's comprehensive plan to distribute technology that links local law enforcement agencies to both FBI and DHS biometric systems. DHS's US-VISIT Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT) holds biometrics-based immigration records, while the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) contains biometrics-based criminal records.

"US-VISIT is proud to support ICE, helping provide decision makers with comprehensive, reliable information when and where they need it," said US-VISIT Director Robert Mocny. "By enhancing the interoperability of DHS's and the FBI's biometric systems, we are able to give federal, state and local decision makers information that helps them better protect our communities and our nation."

"Under this plan, ICE will be utilizing FBI system enhancements that allow improved information sharing at the state and local law enforcement level based on positive identification of incarcerated criminal aliens," said Daniel D. Roberts, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division. "Additionally, ICE and the FBI are working together to take advantage of the strong relationships already forged between the FBI and state and local law enforcement necessary to assist ICE in achieving its goals."

For more information, visit the Secure Communities page.

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1001/100105santabarbara.htm

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Former school administrator pleads guilty to producing child pornography

DETROIT - A 64-year-old Davisburg, Mich., man, who filmed his 4-year-old relative to produce child pornography, pleaded guilty in federal court on Tuesday. The plea was announced by U.S. Attorney Barbara L. McQuade, Eastern District of Michigan, and Brian Moskowitz, special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Detroit.

Craig Aleo pleaded guilty to producing, transporting and possessing child pornography before U.S. District Judge Bernard A. Friedman in Detroit.

The information presented to the court during the plea established that on March 26, 2009, Aleo, en route to New York via Canada, was found with a computer containing a portion of his child pornography collection. A warrant executed at Aleo's home revealed a conglomeration of sexually explicit video footage Aleo filmed of his 4-year-old victim.

"All children have an absolute right to grow up free from the fear of being sexually exploited," said Brian Moskowitz, special agent in charge of the ICE Office of Investigations in Detroit. "ICE will relentlessly pursue anyone who physically abuses or sexually exploits our most vulnerable asset, our children."

Producing child pornography is punishable by a statutorily mandated minimum sentence of 15 years, and a maximum sentence of 30 years imprisonment; transporting child pornography carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years and up to 20 years in prison; possessing child pornography is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Each statute carries a fine of up to $250,000.

Aleo's sentencing is scheduled for April 20.

This investigation is part of Operation Predator, a nationwide ICE initiative to protect children from sexual predators, including those who travel overseas for sex with minors, Internet child pornographers, criminal alien sex offenders, and child sex traffickers. Since Operation Predator was launched in July 2003, ICE agents have arrested more than 12,000 individuals.

ICE encourages the public to report suspected child predators and any suspicious activity through its toll-free hotline at 1-866-DHS-2ICE. This hotline is staffed around the clock by investigators. Suspected child sexual exploitation or missing children may be reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an Operation Predator partner, at 1-800-843-5678 or http://www.cybertipline.com .

U.S. Attorney McQuade noted that this case is being prosecuted as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys' offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit http://www.projectsafechildhood.gov

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1001/100105detroit.htm

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