Lapses hurt intelligence effort after failed jet attack

The Nigerian suspect saw a lawyer too soon, a U.S. official says, and an interrogation opportunity was lost.

By Greg Miller

January 21, 2010

Reporting from Washington

In a tacit admission that the U.S. squandered a chance to gain valuable information after the failed Christmas Day airliner bombing, the nation's intelligence director testified Wednesday that authorities had been too quick to read the suspect his Miranda rights and grant him access to an attorney.

Dennis C. Blair said that a newly created team of elite interrogators should have been called in to question Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and that top officials in Washington should have been consulted. The director of national intelligence also acknowledged that there had been a number of blunders in the handling of intelligence data that kept authorities from preventing the incident.

Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian, is accused of attempting to bomb a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

In testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Blair said that the interrogation group "was created exactly for this purpose. . . . We did not invoke [its use] in this case. We should have."

Blair attributed the breakdown in part to a failure last year among those who set up the unit to envision scenarios in which the team might be used to question someone captured in the United States.

"Frankly, we were thinking more of overseas people," Blair said. "And, duh. . . . The decision was made on the scene." Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said it was a costly mistake.

"We know that those interrogations can provide critical intelligence," she said. "But the protections afforded by our civil justice system . . . encourage terrorists to lawyer up. I'm told that with Abdulmutallab, once he was 'Mirandized' and received civilian lawyers . . . he stopped answering questions."

Collins and other lawmakers also questioned the decision to try Abdulmutallab in a civilian court rather than move him into military custody to face a tribunal. Abdulmutallab has pleaded not guilty to various charges in federal court in Detroit.

Blair said in a statement afterward that his testimony had been misconstrued and that the FBI indeed had interrogated Abdulmutallab and "received important intelligence at that time." But he and other top U.S. counter-terrorism officials -- including Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III -- testified that they were never consulted on the decision to give Abdulmutallab access to an attorney or be advised of his right to remain silent.

The disclosure came as a parade of top national security officials made their first public appearances on Capitol Hill to explain how the Nigerian penetrated the nation's defenses and might have succeeded in bringing down a packed airliner had he not been subdued by other passengers after his explosives failed to ignite.

The officials challenged some of the criticism aimed at their agencies after the attack, but were unanimous in acknowledging that U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies had assembled more than enough information before the attack to prevent it.

Abdulmutallab "should not have stepped onto a plane," said Michael E. Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center. "The counter-terrorism system collectively failed. . . . We have to do better."

Leiter and his organization -- which was created after the Sept. 11 attacks specifically to sift through piles of intelligence data to identify and thwart terrorist plots -- have been the main targets of criticism.

But Blair was involved in the most pointed exchange of the day when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) challenged the witnesses to explain why no members of their respective agencies had been held accountable for their failures or mistakes.

Blair sought to defuse the situation by reminding McCain of their common military heritage. Blair is a retired Navy admiral, and McCain a former Navy pilot who was held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

But McCain bristled when Blair described how the Navy investigates an accident at sea.

"Actually, it's been my experience, Admiral, that when the captain of the ship does something wrong or something goes wrong on his watch, the captain is relieved," McCain said.

Administration officials also confirmed some new details about the intelligence failures leading up to the Christmas Day incident. Leiter acknowledged, for example, that the United States had obtained electronic intercepts months before indicating that an individual with the partial name Umar Farouk was linked to Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen.

The National Security Agency, which collects electronic signals around the globe, also had learned that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the Yemen-based offshoot is called, was planning an operation using a Nigerian.

Separately, Abdulmutallab's father had approached the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria to warn CIA officials there that his son might have traveled to Yemen and was espousing increasingly radical beliefs.

The suspect purchased a round-trip ticket with cash in Nigeria and boarded a connecting flight in Amsterdam without any luggage. Magnetic screeners failed to detect a chemical explosive he had sewn into his underwear.

Abdulmutallab was detained on Christmas and cooperated under initial questioning. He was formally charged and given access to an attorney a day later.

Because he spent months in Yemen, Abdulmutallab might have been a source of significant information about Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has emerged as one of the most potent branches of the terrorist network outside its base in Pakistan. The group has claimed responsibility for trying to bomb the jetliner.

In separate testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mueller said that the elite interrogation group was "in its formation stages," suggesting that it might not have been prepared to question Abdulmutallab.

The unit includes interrogation experts from the FBI, CIA and other agencies. Members are required to abide by guidelines in the U.S. Army Field Manual, which prohibits the use of sleep deprivation or other controversial coercive methods that the CIA used for years after the Sept. 11 attacks.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-terror21-2010jan21,0,685473,print.story

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Haiti's elite hold nation's future in their hands

A few businessmen like Gregory Mevs will decide how -- or whether -- Haiti recovers from one of the worst natural catastrophes in modern times.

By Tracy Wilkinson

January 21, 2010

Reporting from Port-Au-Prince, Haiti

Gregory Mevs leaped from his armored silver Toyota SUV and marched past the guards and mango trees into what serves these days as the center of the Haitian government.

He was ready to dispense a million gallons of fuel to the earthquake-ravaged capital. But the paperwork was not in order. He needed the Haitian prime minister's signature.

Ten minutes later, he had it.

Mevs can do that. He has the prime minister's ear. He hobnobs with people like Bill Clinton, George Soros and the chief executives of the world's largest corporations. He is one of Haiti's storied elite, a member of one of the six families that control the Haitian economy and have essentially called the shots here for generations.

They are mostly light-skinned, multilingual entrepreneurs with a dismal reputation for profiting handsomely on the backs of the poorest people in the hemisphere. The actions they take now will prove decisive in how -- or whether -- Haiti recovers from one of the deadliest natural catastrophes in modern times.

"A lot of friends say, 'Get out, it's only going to get worse before it gets better.' But all of us have to be here," said Mevs, a solidly built, slightly balding man of 50. "We have to rebuild. There is no choice."

The rich do have a choice. They could easily pull up stakes and go somewhere else. The question is whether they will go, or whether they will decide to throw themselves into the (potentially money-making) business of reconstruction.

As of Wednesday, the majority seemed bent on the latter, pledging to do what it takes to get Haiti back on its feet.

Some have described Haiti's earthquake as "democratic" because it afflicted poor and rich alike. That would be an oversimplification.

The rich are never hurt the same way the poor are. Their capacity for revival, thanks to resources, private planes and visas, vastly outdistances that of the poor and middle class.

Certainly, however, they are suffering too. Their houses and offices also collapsed. Few, if any, of their number died, but there were injuries and the loss of friends and employees.

It takes people with Mevs' skills and wherewithal to get much of anything done in Haiti these days. What's left of the government -- every major institution was pulverized -- has essentially ceded important sections of the recovery operations to the businessmen.

In theory, these businessmen report to a committee that includes members of President Rene Preval's administration, but most are acting independently. It has to be that way, they'd argue.

"We have, more than ever, a tremendous responsibility to help this country rebuild. We are needed," Mevs said. "I know people, I have access, I can get financing, I know how to negotiate."

Mevs' days are filled with all that and more. His BlackBerry buzzing incessantly, he rushes to hospitals to see how much gasoline they need, then gets it for them. He oversees the off-loading of tons of Dutch aid. He sets up computers for the provisional government, which is working out of a police station flying the Haitian flag at half-staff.

In Armani eyeglasses and Hugo Boss jeans, with a Mont Blanc pen in his shirt pocket, Mevs climbed into the armored SUV one day this week and escorted two reporters through some of the damaged parts of his empire.

The Mevs family owns all the petroleum storage facilities in the country, 30% of the Internet business, a 2.4-million-square-foot industrial park and a network of 50 warehouses for food and other material, among many other properties.

Mevs figures he lost as much as $40 million at the wharf his family owns, where most oil shipments are received. That's only a fraction of his financial losses, however. And when half the wharf fell into the sea, it took 54 workers with it.

Most of the elite are descendants of Europeans who in the mid- to late 1800s came to Haiti, a nation that had been founded largely as a slave plantation. (Mevs' grandfather came from Hamburg, Germany, in search of a rare breed of parrot.) They were -- and are, for the most part -- merchants. Their money is from commerce.

They control all the major sectors of the economy, from banking and telecommunications to apparel factories and food. They go to the French schools here, and they attend university in Miami. They vacation in Europe. They live farther up the hills that rise above the squalor of Port-au-Prince.

Haitians sometimes refer to them as the Bambam, each letter the initial of one of the six families. During tense times under populist President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, when politicians stoked class warfare and pointed to the nation's egregious income gap, they were called MREs. Not after the packaged military "meals ready to eat"; rather, the initials stood for "morally repugnant elites."

Patrick Elie, a leftist sociologist who has been extremely critical of Haiti's elite, said the magnitude of the disaster may shake the wealthy out of their complacency. Several have spoken of feeling "humbled" by the ordeal.

"This crisis will separate those who can pick up and go from those with real roots, who are heavily invested in Haiti and whose survival depends on the survival of the country," Elie said.

As if to suggest the beginnings of a new Haitian world order, Elie was sitting outside the government's refuge next to Mevs' brother, Fritz -- an ardent Aristide ally wearing a Che Guevara cap next to one of Haiti's wealthiest men. They embraced.

Gregory Mevs bristled when a visitor referred to him as part of the cabal of families running the place. It's an unfair and outdated image, he argued. Years of dictatorship stifled any sense of civic duty, he said, but today's globalized economy means that entrepreneurs can no longer cling to colonial ways.

"My generation is between two worlds," he said. "We had to learn how to reach out, we had to learn to work with social responsibility."

Mevs' house, next door to the prime minister's, was damaged, and he and his family have been camping at a friend's house, sleeping on their lawn. His children, who were at home when the quake hit, watched in horror as an exterior wall collapsed and crushed the family gardener to death. Mevs' niece was among the people trapped at the Hotel Montana, a legendary salon for the Haitian elite and visiting intelligentsia that pancaked into a concrete mountain. Rescuers pulled her from the rubble.

As Mevs traveled about Port-au-Prince, he bounced between eagerness to rebuild and despair over the devastation. His chauffeur has been so traumatized, he said, that he has been in two wrecks in the last few days.

Mevs noted that Haitian construction uses a lot of pillars and concrete slabs to withstand hurricanes. No one was thinking much about earthquakes, he said. The gorgeously quaint slat-wood house built in 1911 that serves as Mevs' main office endured the quake undisturbed.

He acquired the armored vehicle with darkened windows and diplomatic license plates four years ago at his wife's request, he said. He was working a lot in Cite Soleil, the enormous slum that abuts some of his commercial properties.

The license plates speak to another quirk of Haiti's elite: Most have finagled posts as honorary consuls of any number of countries. It's sort of a status symbol, like owning the latest iPod.

Mevs is the official consul of Finland.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-haiti-elites21-2010jan21,0,5015431,print.story

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Mexico prison riot leaves at least 23 dead

All of the dead in the Durango prison uprising are inmates. The fighting is said to have been between members of rival drug-trafficking cartels.

By Ken Ellingwood

January 21, 2010

Reporting from Mexico City

A prison riot Wednesday killed at least 23 inmates in the northern Mexican state of Durango, which has been the scene of increasingly violent feuding between drug-trafficking groups during the last year.

Authorities said fighting broke out early in the morning between inmates affiliated with rival drug-trafficking groups who were held in the penitentiary in the state capital, also named Durango. The clashes left an undetermined number of inmates injured.

The Durango state prosecutor, Daniel Garcia Leal, declined in a radio interview to identify the rival cartels. But the state has been a battleground between a trafficking group led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, from the northwestern state of Sinaloa, and a competing gang known as the Zetas.

The same Durango prison was the site of a riot in March in which seven inmates died.

Wednesday's riot marked the latest violence in Mexican prisons, which are notoriously overcrowded and prone to fights and uprisings over living conditions.

Rioting in a separate prison in the Durango city of Gomez Palacio in August left 20 dead from knife wounds and gunshots. In March, gang brawling in a facility in the border city of Ciudad Juarez killed 20.

Mexican prisons have grown more crowded and dangerous as the government carries out a war against cartels, with more than 67,000 drug arrests in three years. The increased incarcerations have often created an incendiary mix by jamming members of rival gangs inside the same walls.

The penal facilities also have seen dramatic breakout attempts as drug gangs seek to rescue captured members, sometimes with success.

In May, a convoy of men dressed in what appeared to be police uniforms cruised into a prison in the northern state of Zacatecas and calmly led 53 inmates to freedom as surveillance cameras rolled. Authorities said it was an inside job.

Durango is part of an important drug-trafficking corridor known as the Golden Triangle, which also consists of areas in the states of Chihuahua, a smuggling hub on the U.S. border, and Sinaloa, the cradle of Mexican drug trafficking.

Durango has become one of Mexico's most dangerous regions for cartel clashes, with more than 600 people slain last year, according to the Reforma newspaper.

Among the dead was Agustin Roberto "Bobby" Salcedo, an assistant principal and school board member in the Los Angeles suburb of El Monte. The bodies of Salcedo and five other men were found after they were hauled out of a bar Dec. 30 in Gomez Palacio, his wife's hometown. The killings remain unsolved.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-mexico-prison-riot21-2010jan21,0,4058722,print.story

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Russian journalist dies after beating by police officer

Human rights officials warn that the case is just one small story in a tapestry of alcoholism, police brutality and expectation of authoritative impunity that bedevils today's Russia.

By Megan K. Stack

January 20, 2010

Reporting from Moscow

A Russian journalist who was thrown into a Siberian drunk tank and savagely beaten by a young police officer died today, in a case that has sparked a national conversation about the latent alcoholism and casual violence that wind their way through life in this winter-hardened land.

Konstantin Popov was a little-known 47-year-old journalist who specialized in writing about economics. A few days into the new year, in the thick of a 10-day Russian holiday known for its debaucheries, Popov was arrested and thrown into the police holding cell reserved for the drunk and disorderly.

He was taken home the next day, but he had been beaten so badly his wife grew alarmed and took him to a hospital. He soon lapsed into a coma from severe damage to his internal organs.

Because Popov was a journalist, and because Russia is a country where not-uncommon attacks on journalists are carefully tracked, his death drew national attention. News conferences were called. The Tomsk drunk tank was closed down. The deputy police chief resigned, along with the supervisor of the holding cell. The police chief apologized. The young officer was arrested and confessed.

But human rights officials warn that the case is just one small story in a tapestry of alcoholism, police brutality and the expectation of authoritative impunity that bedevils today's Russia.

"The only thing different about this case is that he happened to be a journalist, so it became a high-profile public case. But the same thing happens every day," said Svetlana Gannushkina, a human rights lawyer and chairwoman of Russia's Civic Assistance committee. "Usually the cases are just closed down because there's no evidence, nobody testifies, and it's impossible to get to the bottom of it."

There's no indication that Popov's death was the deliberate killing of a journalist. He had worked for years as a spokesman for the now-bankrupt Yukos oil company; more recently he opened a publishing company and printing plant, and wrote columns about economics.

"Anybody could be beaten like that," said Konstantin Karpachyov, editor of the Tomsk edition of Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper. "He was not a high-profile journalist and he was not publicly known. We can't say he had a big name in local journalism."

Popov wound up in one of the many drunk tanks that exist across Russia, holding pens for people who have drunk themselves blind, beaten up their wives or girlfriends -- or both.

The drunk tanks are notoriously harrowing places. People who wash into police custody during the wee hours are sometimes beaten, forced into cold showers or lashed to cots; they often lose their wallets or cellphones for good.

The 26-year-old police officer told investigators he lost control of himself because of stress, a Tomsk investigator told a news conference today, according to reports on Interfax. The policeman, Alexei Mitayev, will undergo a battery of psychiatric tests next month.

The investigator told reporters that Mitayev was suffering "a lengthy, traumatizing situation" because he had fathered young children with two different women.

"Essentially, he lived between two families," investigator Andrei Gusev told reporters. "He says the stress is due to family problems."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-russia-slaying21-2010jan21,0,2622724,print.story

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OPINION

Angel Island's history offers lessons on immigration policy

The immigrant station's past underscores America's contradictory approach to immigration: The U.S. welcomes the 'huddled masses yearning to be free' even as it unfairly detains and deports newcomers.

By Erika Lee and Judy Yung

January 21, 2010

One hundred years ago today, the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay opened its doors. From 1910 to 1940, the "Ellis Island of the West" was the gateway into America for more than half a million immigrants from 80 countries, all seeking the opportunity, freedom and fortune of the American dream. Among them was a Chinese immigrant who carved the following poem into the barrack walls while detained on Angel Island:

We do not know who he was, when he arrived, how long he remained at the immigration station or whether he was admitted into the United States or sent back to China. What we do know is that his poem echoed the frustration, anger and despair that many other Chinese detainees on Angel Island experienced as they suffered through humiliating medical exams, days of intense interrogation and weeks and sometimes months of confinement.

Built to enforce laws that specifically excluded Chinese and other Asian immigrants from the country, the Angel Island Immigration Station turned away countless newcomers and deported thousands of U.S. residents who were considered risks to the nation or had entered the country with fraudulent papers. For those who were denied entry because of race and class-biased exclusion laws, Angel Island showed America at its worst as a gate-keeping nation.

But that wasn't the only Angel Island story. The immigration station was also the first stop for thousands of Chinese, Japanese, South Asians and Filipinos who were admitted into the country and made homes here, working as farmhands, small-business owners and laborers. Koreans, Russians and Mexicans passed through the station and found refuge from political persecution and revolutionary chaos in their homelands.

Some who spent time on Angel Island went on to become notable figures. Karl Yoneda was a prominent labor organizer on the West Coast. Alexandra Tolstoy, youngest daughter of Leo Tolstoy, founded the Tolstoy Foundation and assisted thousands of refugees from Europe during World War II. Dong Kingman became an artist and lecturer well known for his watercolors.

In 1940, the Angel Island Immigration Station closed after a fire gutted its administration building. Since 1997, it has been a National Historic Landmark.

Now, on its centennial, it offers a timely lesson as America once again turns its attention to the debate on immigration reform. Last month, Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.) introduced a new comprehensive immigration reform bill in the House. President Obama has pledged to take up the issue early this year. The issues are complex and the emotions are high. The country, entrenched in a global recession and suffering unemployment rates that are the highest they have been in decades, remains divided over possible solutions to our immigration problem.

Many believe that immigration reform is unlikely in this context. We hope that they are wrong. In the 21st century, record numbers of immigrants have come to the country. There are now more than 38 million foreign-born residents in the United States, making up 12.6% of the American population. We need a functioning immigration system to enhance national security; to expedite the legal flow of people and goods on which our global economy depends; to support America's values as a compassionate nation of immigrants and refugees. We need, in essence, an immigration policy that treats every individual with dignity and respect.

Instead, we repeat the darkest side of Angel Island's history. According to the Department of Homeland Security, more than 32,000 people are held in detention on any given day on immigration-related charges. Many of them are longtime U.S. residents with no ties to terrorist activities. Yet they are held for months in substandard conditions, often with insufficient food, clothing and medical care, and little access to legal counsel; 107 people have died in detention since October 2003. Growing anti-immigrant sentiment is breeding discrimination. Immigration laws are skewed to favor those with certain skills and backgrounds, while deportees are disproportionately Latino and poor. Our broken immigration system encourages undocumented immigration, and too many immigrant families are living in the shadows of American society.

America's contradictory relationship to immigration is written on the walls of Angel Island. We welcome the "huddled masses yearning to be free," but at the same time, we unfairly detain and deport immigrants based on flawed immigration policies.

On this landmark date in our immigration history, we should remember Angel Island's multiracial history of inclusion and exclusion and recognize that there is no more time to waste. It's time to fix immigration and fulfill America's promise as a nation of immigrants.

Erika Lee is associate professor of history at the University of Minnesota. Judy Yung is professor emeritus of American studies at UC Santa Cruz. They are the authors of the forthcoming book, "Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-lee21-2010jan21,0,6642349,print.story

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EDITORIAL

Colombian justice vs. human rights

Will activist Principe Gabriel Gonzalez Arango become a victim of the country's uneven judicial system?

January 21, 2010

Just weeks ago, Colombian human rights activist Principe Gabriel Gonzalez Arango was making the rounds in Washington -- meeting with senior State Department officials, testifying before Congress -- and being feted in New York for his work on behalf of political prisoners and the steep personal price he has paid for his advocacy. Now he is facing seven years in prison.

Gonzalez, who had been providing inmates with educational and social services, was arrested in 2006 and charged with the standard smear against activists who are thorns in the government's side: being a member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a drug-trafficking terrorist group. The FARC, which has been waging its guerrilla war for 50 years, is so widely loathed that just the allegation of rebel allegiance is life-threatening. More than one human rights activist, although cleared by the courts, has been murdered by vigilantes.

Gonzalez was jailed for 15 months while awaiting trial, then a judge threw out the charges, calling them utterly baseless. The government, however, appealed his acquittal, and a district court overturned the lower court's decision; it sentenced Gonzalez to prison. Days later, he lost his appeal of that ruling when Colombia's Supreme Court refused to hear his case.

Although Gonzalez's particular plight has become well known in human rights circles, there have been thousands like him -- union organizers and indigenous-rights advocates, farm and land reformers, lawyers who expose the links between elected officials and right-wing death squads, all subject to arbitrary incarceration and imprisonment on fabricated grounds.

The travesty of Gonzalez's case gained worldwide attention when Human Rights First, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, publicized details: how one witness could neither name nor identify Gonzales; how another said prosecutors coerced his testimony. Furthermore, the defense was not permitted to cross- examine these witnesses, who never appeared in court. The State Department weighed in on Gonzalez's behalf, as did the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights. Although he was free while appealing to the Supreme Court, he may be imprisoned any day now.

Gonzalez's last recourse may be the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which could declare his prosecution invalid under international law. But the commission should go further than insisting on a fair process for one activist and urge systemic reforms in Colombia's judicial system. In its fight against the FARC, Colombia has prevailed by taking a no-holds-barred stance. But justice should not become a casualty of the country's civil war.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-gonzalez21-2010jan21,0,6222735,print.story

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From the Daily News

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White House gate crashers invoke Fifth Amendment

WASHINGTON - White House gate crashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination Wednesday, refusing to answer a House committee's questions about their uninvited appearance at a state dinner.

The jet-setting Virginia couple repeatedly said they were remaining silent on advice of counsel, but that didn't prevent members of the Homeland Security Committee from peppering them with questions about how they got through Secret Service checkpoints on Nov. 24.

Tareq Salahi read an opening statement in which he offered to have the couple's lawyers provide information about their appearance at the dinner for the prime minister of India. Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., rejected the offer.

A federal grand jury is investigating the Salahis to learn how they got past the Secret Service without invitations and shook hands with President Barack Obama.

The Salahis' attorney, Stephen Best, said in an interview prior to the hearing that the couple believed they were invited to an arrival ceremony for the prime minister and the White House receiving line for the dinner.

The couple was auditioning for a reality television show, "The Real Housewives of DC." The White House incident led to an apology from the U.S. Secret Service, and three officers of its officers were placed on administrative leave.

Members of the committee repeatedly told the Salahis that the safety of the president was not a joke, although some of the questions from frustrated committee members were less than serious. One even asked whether the couple, sitting facing the lawmakers, were in the committee room. They also were asked whether they tried to trick the Secret Service to get into the event.

The couple - she dressed in a white jacket and skirt, he in a dark suit - said they would be willing to return and testify after the criminal investigation is finished.

Best, the Salahis' lawyer, said in the interview Tuesday that a grand jury is still hearing witnesses.

The couple could be charged under statutes that prohibit making false statements to federal agencies or using false pretenses to enter federal property.

Best said his clients "maintain their absolute innocence and have not committed any criminal wrongdoing whatsoever. They will contest any charges."

While the Salahis have not testified before the grand jury, Best said they have cooperated fully with a Secret Service investigation. He insisted that his clients did not lie their way into the White House.

"They received verbal assurances they were invited to an event at the White House that they believed to be that evening. It was an innocent misunderstanding," he said.

Best said the couple did not know whether their invitation included the state dinner or the events leading up to it.

Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee said the case partly tests the openness of the Obama administration because officials declined to allow White House social secretary Desiree Rogers to testify. Rogers was in charge of the dinner.

Much has been written about the Salahis jet-setting lifestyle and lawsuits trying to collect money they owed.

Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting Democratic delegate from Washington, D.C., has criticized the Salahis, saying they accumulated unpaid bills to prepare for events like the state dinner.

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_14229968

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Prison problems

BY every standard, moral or practical, California's prison system is an outrage. The state locks up more people than all but a few countries, jams them into facilities that are too small by half, provides low-grade medical care, and still manages to spend far more per prisoner than any other state in the nation.

Yet lawmakers go into political gridlock at any mention of serious reform. The governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has proposed solutions that include some good ideas. But some are terrible; for example, a rush to privatize prisons and a "ballot solution" that would somehow mandate more spending for education and much less for prisons.

Nonetheless, something must be done. The state has no choice but to obey a federal court order to reduce the prison population of 170,000 by 40,000 to meet minimal levels of health care for inmates. Some of the governor's proposals depend on elusive legislative approval, such as lowering the standards for felony theft, contracting with private prisons and speeding up prison expansion.

In a crisis, it's hard to open our minds to fresher ideas. But Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University, has written in The New York Times Magazine about two concepts that could appeal to liberals as well as conservatives and yield proven results.

One is a simple change in managing probation or parole that could dramatically reduce California's notoriously high recidivism rate. Instead of sending offenders back to prison for long terms for minor probation or parole violations, lock them up for shorter terms but with greater certainty of punishment. Courts in Hawaii did this and achieved sharp drops in offenses and incarceration.

The proven theory behind this approach is that a threat of mild but immediate punishment has a greater deterrent effect than severe punishment that is delayed or uncertain.

The second idea is taken from Boston's experience with Operation Cease-Fire, which within two years helped reduce youth violence by two-thirds and homicide by half. The approach was to threaten entire gang memberships with consequences if even a single member committed a violent crime, and at the same time offer help in finding jobs if they were willing to give up street life.

David M. Kennedy, of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, led the way with Operation Cease-Fire. He later took on narcotics in High Point, N.C., starting with the arrest of four of the city's 16 most active dealers. He then called in the rest, with their parents or grandparents, and told them they could get help in getting out of the drug business, but the alternative was immediate arrest. The neighborhood drug market shut down.

With these simple descriptions, prison reform sounds easy. It isn't. Like any successful efforts to clean up crime, these programs are simple in concept, but they take deep commitment and hard work.

Yet they are practical and effective. California needs such changes in mind-sets and in the workings of the criminal justice system. So do the communities and neighborhoods that are overloading the system and breaking the bank.

http://www.dailynews.com/opinions/ci_14234091

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From the Wall Street Journal

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Direct Flights to U.K. From Yemen Suspended

Direct flights to the U.K. from Yemen were suspended Wednesday, part of a broad drive to improve airport security following the failed Christmas Day attack on an airliner bound for Detroit.

The moves recognize the rising threat from militants based in Yemen and affiliated with al Qaeda. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man charged in the Detroit plot, told officials he was in contact with al Qaeda operatives in Yemen, which Mr. Brown called "both an incubator and potential safe haven for terrorism."

A spokesman for Yemenia, the Yemeni national airline, said the U.K. had asked for London-bound Yemenia flights to undergo additional security measures in Paris or Cairo. The spokesman didn't elaborate on why the two cities were selected.

"They wanted planes to be emptied and searched [and] passengers and luggage to go through security checks," he said. Those demands were unacceptable and the airline had decided to suspend flights, he said.

A spokesman for the U.K. Department of Transport declined to comment.

Mr. Brown—speaking in the House of Commons after meeting with military, intelligence and border-security chiefs—said the U.K. was working closely with the Yemeni government to agree on "what security measures need to be put in place before flights are resumed." U.K. officials are currently in the Yemeni capital San'a to help improve aviation security, a spokesman said.

The prime minister said the government was introducing a new "no-fly list" of terror suspects barred from entering the U.K. That would be complemented by a larger list of suspect individuals who would be subject to special measures, including expanded screening, before boarding flights bound for the U.K.

He also said that by year-end, the U.K. would be able to check all people planning to travel to the U.K. from other countries, including transit passengers, against a Home Office watch list a day before they travel.

Western governments are scrambling to tighten security since the Christmas Day plot, which President Barack Obama said had exposed a "systemic failure" in sharing and acting upon intelligence about terror suspects.

Mr. Abdulmutallab had a multiple-entry visa to the U.S. that wasn't revoked even after his father, a prominent Nigerian banker, allegedly warned the U.S. authorities about his son's growing radicalism. The suspect, who had studied in London for three years, had been refused a U.K. visa last May after trying to enter the country to study at a college that turned out to be bogus.

Mr. Brown also reiterated that new body scanners would be introduced in U.K. airports starting next week, and promised an increase in testing for traces of explosives and the use of sniffer dogs. The government would, he said, also demand tougher security guarantees in international airports from which there are flights to the U.K.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704320104575014733668485448.html?mod=WSJ_World_LEFTSecondNews #

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Potential Defects in Cockpit-Door Locks Worry Officials

Airlines and aviation authorities around the globe are worried that cockpit door locks installed on at least 1,600 widely used jetliners to keep intruders from accessing flight decks might be defective, according to people familiar with the details.

Regulators from the U.S., Europe and other countries are scrambling to ensure that airlines complete mandated repairs in the coming months on some 800 Boeing Co. 747 jumbo jets, these people said. U.S. airlines also are under the gun to fix cockpit doors on hundreds more Airbus A320s or other commonly used Airbus models.

Overall, industry officials and security experts estimate that thousands of commercial jets world-wide still require some type of cockpit-door modification

In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, regulators required airlines to fortify cockpit doors and add what were supposed to be impregnable locking mechanisms. But over the years, regulators and industry security experts began to discover potential security gaps in these high-tech systems. The latest problems underscore how difficult it is to install a foolproof solution.

The Federal Aviation Administration in September, without any public disclosure, ordered U.S. airlines to fix the electrically operated locking mechanisms of reinforced cockpit doors on Boeing 747 passenger and cargo jumbo jets. The European Aviation Safety Agency quickly followed suit, putting a brief mention of the required modifications on its Web site that was devoid of all details. Some FAA officials, concerned about the sensitive nature of the glitches, were upset about the European decision to put out public notification, according to people close to the process.

The sweeping directives, which together are intended to cover more than 800 of the jumbo jets used around the globe, haven't been previously reported.

According to people familiar with the details, the electrical controls or the bolts used to secure the doors can jam or fail to operate properly. It isn't clear how many of the 747 aircraft already have had the work done, though several people familiar with the details said repairs could stretch out for months.

The latest hardware changes aimed at eliminating nagging defects in anti-hijack doors come amid heightened public and government security concerns, highlighted by the Christmas bombing attempt on a Northwest Airlines jet approaching Detroit.

The moves also follow at least three previous rounds of regulations mandating widespread changes to fortified cockpit doors. Those earlier glitches included defective electrical systems that could jam doors in the open position, smolder after being locked and, in some cases, even be opened by certain nearby radio transmissions. Pilots have filed scores of confidential reports detailing such failures.

The current 747 repairs are only part of the current efforts to make cockpit doors more secure. Starting in August 2008, the EASA ordered European carriers to install upgraded bolts and overheat-protection systems on roughly 1,600 narrow-body Airbus A319, A320 and A321 models. In addition to security issues, such malfunctions pose safety hazards—including possible major aircraft structural damage—if they prevent immediate opening of the door in case of a rapid decompression in the cockpit.

At the time, the agency said efforts by Airbus—a unit of European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co.—to make the fixes were lagging behind expectations, "making mandatory action necessary." European carriers were ordered to complete fixes by the end of March 2009. Eventually, the modifications may affect a total of approximately 4,000 Airbus jets in service around the globe.

Now, the FAA wants U.S carriers flying roughly 800 of those same Airbus models to complete different cockpit door modifications, and that process is expected to stretch at least into the spring. FAA officials declined to comment on any pending or future cockpit door fixes, citing the sensitive nature of the security directives. Airbus and Boeing officials also declined to comment.

The latest directives follow a string of unrelated malfunctions and mandated fixes of cockpit locks on various airliner models dating back more than six years. As early as 2004, Airbus and Boeing realized that high-tech doors on more than 2,000 jets were vulnerable to electro-magnetic interference, sometimes from something as simple as a handheld radio. Engineering changes solved the problem.

But two years later, the agency went public with an unrelated safety hazard,

The FAA issued a so-called airworthiness directive requiring modification of certain electronics used in the cockpit doors of Boeing 747, 767 and 777 aircraft. "The defect, if not corrected, could result in a failure of the equipment, which could jeopardize flight safety," the FAA concluded. The FAA directive referred to a service bulletin issued by Northwest Aerospace Technologies Inc., a subcontractor for the lock control systems. Last week, a spokesman for the company, based in Everett, Wash., declined to comment.

In July, the FAA issued a security directive covering cockpit door modifications to McDonnell Douglas DC-9 and MD-90 aircraft, and EASA adopted those as well.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703405704575015410398239210.html?mod=WSJ_World_LEFTSecondNews #

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From the Washington Times

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U.S. to deploy missiles near Russia

by Nicholas Kralev

President Obama sent two of his top national security officials to Moscow on Wednesday to clear the last hurdles to a new nuclear pact, but a revelation that U.S. missiles will soon be deployed near Russian territory could complicate the talks.

The White House said that National Security Adviser James L. Jones and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen will meet with Russian officials "primarily to discuss the remaining issues left to conclude" a follow-on to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which the U.S. ambassador to Moscow predicted will be completed within weeks.

"It's only a question of when, and I think the finish line is approaching in the very near future," Ambassador John R. Beyrle said in an interview with the Echo of Moscow radio.

Washington and Moscow began negotiating a new treaty last spring but failed to work out all their differences by the time START expired on Dec. 5.

Verification has been one of the main problems. Russia has insisted on monitoring U.S. missile-defense interceptors being deployed in Europe but has refused U.S. inspectors access to its data on new missile tests.

In an attempt to "reset" their relationship after tensions during the Bush administration, Mr. Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed in July to cut the number of deployed nuclear warheads on each side to between 1,500 and 1,675.

The missile defense issue is one of the most sensitive for the Russians, even after Mr. Obama decided in September to scrap plans by his predecessor, George W. Bush, to deploy a system in Eastern Europe to counter a growing threat from Iran.

In a consolation to Poland, which was to host one of the sites and was unhappy with Mr. Obama's decision, the administration agreed to deploy Patriot-type surface-to-air missiles in the country. On Dec. 11, the two NATO allies signed a prerequisite agreement on the status of U.S. troops in the former Soviet satellite ahead of the missile deployment.

However, the Patriot site was kept secret — until Wednesday, when Polish Defense Minister Bogdan Klich said it will be about 35 miles from a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania that includes the city of Kaliningrad.

"Morag was chosen as the location long ago, but we didn't make it public," Mr. Klich was quoted as saying by Poland's PAP news agency.

He insisted that the choice of the site had "no political or strategic meaning — its good infrastructure is the only reason." He also said the missiles could arrive as soon as late March or early April at Morag, which is home to a Polish military base.

Moscow, which is protective of Kaliningrad because it is surrounded by two NATO members, is likely to react angrily to the news about Morag. That could complicate the START negotiations, though U.S. officials said it should not threaten them seriously.

"We believe it will still be conducted in good faith, and I would not think that complication will come into it," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters. "It is in the interest of Russia and the United States — and the world — to see the completion of and ratification of a follow-on START agreement."

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said the Patriot missiles "should be a nonissue for Russia" because "this system poses no threat to Russian defense forces, and it is a symbolic gesture of the existing U.S. security commitment to Poland."

"Russia is not and should not be looking for excuses to blow up the new treaty," he said. "Russia's longer-term concern is all about potential future numbers and locations of the SM-3 interceptors in Eastern Europe that were outlined as the Obama administration's new missile defense approach."

Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said last week that the outstanding issues in the START negotiations included sharing of telemetry data — electronic signals sent from missile flight tests — as well as Russian demands that missile defenses be included in the new treaty.

Mr. Jones and Adm. Mullen are visiting Moscow a week after a trip by another senior U.S. official, William J. Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs. Mr. Burns represents the United States in international negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, which also was discussed in his meetings and is expected to be part of the talks this week.

Washington and its Western allies want new sanctions on Iran for rejecting a proposal that would lift suspicion that it is developing a nuclear weapon under the cover of a civilian program. Russia has not been as opposed to sanctions as it has in the past, but China is resisting them, so U.S. officials hope Moscow could influence its friends in Beijing.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/21/missiles-threaten-nuclear-pact//print/

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Turf war hampers war on terrorism

by C. Boyden Gray

The media focus on the criminal indictment and Mirandization of the Detroit bombing suspect has raised an important point but obscured an even more critical one related to the war on terrorism. The suspected bomber should clearly have been held for more questioning. But more important is what the unseemly rush to indictment tells us about the overall, fundamental systemic failure that occurred.

What we see is a continued, persistent "turf war" culture that divides prosecuting agencies like the Department of Justice and the FBI on the one hand and the intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency, the CIA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on the other — a divide that seems to have been aggravated by the creation of the ODNI and that resulted in the failure to screen the suspected bomber in the first place and then forfeited a treasure of intelligence from him about Yemen.

Even the most cursory review of the recent record will concern anyone worried about terrorism. Compare, for example, the bland report just released by the White House that all of the bureaucratic turf behavior and other barriers to information sharing that led to 9/11 have now "8 years later, largely been overcome," with the blistering report issued just a year ago by the ODNI inspector general that data integration across the intelligence community (IC) has been a total failure.

The IG found, for example, that IC information systems are "largely disconnected and incompatible" and lacking any "standard architecture supporting the storage and retrieval of sensitive intelligence." Moreover, found the IG, the "culture of protecting 'turf' remains a problem, and there are few if any consequences for failure to collaborate."

More specifically, the IG concluded that "there is no overall IC strategy or leadership structure to drive collaboration among national intelligence agency and law enforcement organizations." Here the IG also found that FBI collaboration with the IC is "hampered by frequent turnover within FBI senior ranks and by outdated IT systems."

Bearing in mind that the FBI manages the Terrorism Screening Center (TSC) and the watch lists, it is even more disturbing then to read the Justice Department's inspector general's report of just a few weeks ago that said the information system of the FBI is "severely outdated, cumbersome to use, and does not facilitate the searching and sharing of information."

It was the responsibility of the ODNI to resolve all of these problems — but the creation of the ODNI has apparently only intensified the fragmentation. As the IG found, its review revealed that even within the ODNI "poor collaboration has resulted in 'turf battles' among some of the ODNI offices, causing information and activities to be 'stove piped.'"

Congress and the White House would have been better served after 9/11 to put a whip-cracking entity in the Executive Office of the President to beat the intelligence and prosecuting teams together rather than create another layer of competing agencies.

As a result, there is little coherence in the contradictory White House conclusions that (1) "information sharing does not appear to have contributed to this intelligence failure" because no one was "prevented" from accessing information but that (2) "information technology within the CT community did not sufficiently enable the correlation of data that would have enabled analysts to highlight the relevant threat information." That is to say, no one was "prevented" from accessing relevant information, but no one was "enabled" to do it either.

The ODNI inspector general's report followed an Aug. 21, 2008, investigation request from the chairman of the investigations and oversight subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee. That request asked for an examination of what the chairman described as the ODNI's "colossal failure" to update the ODNI's terrorist intelligence database that provides the backbone of the FBI's consolidated terrorist watch list.

Bridging the intelligence/prosecution divide, as urged more than a year ago by the ODNI inspector general, is obviously a difficult task, just as it was before 9/11. But the way forward is not to remove the inspector general just after he describes the divide, along with the related incompetence of both the ODNI and FBI.

Maybe the key to a solution is to ask first why the inspector general was fired and replaced with a Justice Department employee who appears to have done nothing in the year following to modernize the FBI's information sharing in response to the IG's criticism. The problem goes beyond trying to track just one terrorist; it fundamentally jeopardizes the government's basic ability to grasp fully any of the threats it faces.

Who and what are they covering up? No doubt the congressional Armed Services, Intelligence, Homeland Security and Judiciary committees all think their own agency is in charge. But there is only one White House, and it will have to provide the missing coordination between the intelligence and law enforcement communities. Otherwise, each will continue to go its own way — prosecuting criminals on the one hand and fighting terrorists on the other — without truly collaborating to reduce risks to the public.

• C. Boyden Gray is a former U.S. ambassador to the European Union.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/21/gray-turf-war-hampers-war-on-terrorism//print/

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EDITORIAL

Guns decrease murder rates

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

More guns in law-abiding hands mean less crime. The District of Columbia proves the point.

Reading most press accounts, one would be forgiven for thinking Armageddon had arrived after the Supreme Court struck down the District's handgun ban in 2008. Predictions sprung forth from all directions that allowing more citizens to own guns and not forcing them to keep them locked up was going to threaten public safety. According to D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, more guns in homes would cause more violent crime.

This has never been the case. Local politicians enthusiastically embraced the 1977 handgun ban predicting it would make Washington a safe place by dramatically reducing murder rates. But they were as wrong three decades ago as they are now.

A telling story is illustrated by the murder numbers since the handgun ban and gun-lock bans were struck down. Between 2008 and 2009, the FBI's preliminary numbers indicate that murders fell nationally by 10 percent and by about 8 percent in cities that have between 500,000 and 999,999 people. Washington's population is about 590,000. During that same period of time, murders in the District fell by an astounding 25 percent, dropping from 186 to 140. The city only started allowing its citizens to own handguns for defense again in late 2008.

Few who lived in Washington during the 1970s can forget the upswing in crime that started right after the ban was originally passed. In the five years before the 1977 ban, the murder rate fell from 37 to 27 murders per 100,000. In the five years after the gun ban went into effect, the murder rate rose back up to 35. One fact is particularly hard to ignore: D.C.'s murder rate fluctuated after 1976 but only once fell below what it was in 1976 before the ban. That aberration happened years later, in 1985.

This correlation between the D.C. gun ban and diminished safety was not a coincidence. Look at the Windy City. Immediately after Chicago banned handguns in 1982, the murder rate , which had been falling almost continually for a decade, started to rise. Chicago's murder rate rose relative to other large cities as well. The phenomenon of higher murder rates after gun bans are passed is not just limited to the United States. Every single time a country has passed a gun ban, its murder rate soared.

The choice Americans face isn't between freedom or safety. Washington's experience with gun bans shows once again that Americans will either be free and safe or unfree and unsafe. Letting people protect themselves is the responsible approach. It's important the Supreme Court remember these facts in March when it hears the case over Chicago's handgun ban.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/21/guns-decrease-murder-rates//print/

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