Tackling illegal immigration from the top

A crackdown on alleged smuggling operations is a step in the right direction.

February 12, 2010

Super Express Van Tours of Houston was not your ordinary bus line. It served neither tourists nor commuters. Instead, federal officials say, it specialized in transporting illegal immigrants around the country. Once they arrived from Mexico, it kept the passengers under lock and key in "safe houses" -- preventing both scrutiny from outsiders and possible escapes -- until it loaded them into minivans and shuttled them to cities across the United States, including Los Angeles, Atlanta and Miami.

Super Express was no stranger to the Border Patrol and other federal authorities -- its drivers had been stopped and arrested seven times over five years for transporting illegal immigrants. But the drivers and their human cargo were merely the low-hanging fruit. That's why it was a welcome development last week when agents arrested the company's owner, Fermin A. Tovar. This reflects a marked shift in enforcement methods, officials said, and a critical step in what is intended to be an ongoing effort to crush the smuggling industry.

Super Express was one of 14 transportation companies raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities last week, and Tovar was among 22 people charged with using their businesses to transport illegal immigrants. The way it worked, according to the criminal complaint, was that Tovar would pay a commission of $300 per passenger to smugglers in Mexico. Once in the U.S., the migrants were part customer and part hostage; in many cases, the companies charged exorbitant fees that often were paid not by the passengers but by relatives at the end of the ride. Passengers sometimes would not be released if the money wasn't paid, the complaint said.

When President Obama took office, his administration promised to focus immigration enforcement resources on employers rather than workers, and on dangerous criminals rather than nannies and gardeners. To that end, the government has stepped up scrutiny of companies' employment paperwork, and audits are up tenfold. At the same time, the workplace roundups popular during the George W. Bush years, which punished illegal immigrants but not the companies that were enticing them into the country with jobs, have diminished.

As hopes for comprehensive immigration legislation recede, reform advocates are growing concerned about the rate at which immigrants are still being rounded up. For instance, 81 illegal immigrants also were taken into custody during last week's bus company raids. It's too much stick and no carrot, the reformers worry.

We too are anxious about the fate of reform. But the Houston raids should accord with everyone's priorities. Cracking down on smugglers who endanger and exploit migrants is a corrective that's long overdue.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-ice12-2010feb12,0,4577361,print.story

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From the Wall Street Journal

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Social Security to Expand Fast-Track System

People with early-onset Alzheimer's disease and 37 other medical conditions should get federal disability checks more quickly under an expansion of the Social Security Administration's fast-track system, the agency said Thursday.

Those with a confirmed diagnosis for one of the covered diseases will be approved automatically for disability payments, sidestepping a lengthy process of denials and appeals that such patients often go through. A full five-step application and appeals process currently averages 440 days.

"If you have a devastating disease, that's an awfully long wait," said Social Security Administrator Michael Astrue. "We're focusing on making a decision for people who are clearly entitled to benefits."

The program, called Compassionate Allowances, is aimed at speeding benefits to individuals who can't work due to a medical condition that is expected to last at least one year or result in death. Benefits requirements aren't changed under Compassionate Allowances, but people can start to receive payments more quickly.

When Mr. Astrue took office three years ago, he found that 20% to 40% of cases involving people with rare diseases were "mishandled" and many resulted in appeals before administrative law judges. In the end, judges almost always approved disability payments, he found.

The Compassionate Allowances initiative was launched in 2008 and focused initially on 50 conditions involving traumatic brain injury, cancer and genetic diseases. Diseases that affect more people and have high mortality rates within short periods of time were added first.

The 38 added conditions announced Thursday also were selected because they are degenerative conditions that people don't usually recover from and typically receive benefits when the cases go in front of a judge. Input was received from medical and disability experts in the Social Security Administration, the National Institutes of Health and other organizations, as well as from testimony at public hearings from patients, doctors and advocates, according to the Social Security Administration. It said lobbying didn't play a role in the selection of fast-track conditions.

Some 40,000 to 50,000 Americans could benefit from the expansion in 2010, which will begin on March 1, Mr. Astrue said. The administration hopes to eventually fast-track 6% to 9% of all disability applicants, up from 3.9% last year. In 2009, it received 3.3 million claims.

People on disability are typically encouraged by the agency to return to work, if possible. There is an incentives program under which people can try working again. Training organizations also are paid incentives to help people on disability make the transition back to the workplace.

For people with medical conditions on the Compassionate Allowances list whose diseases are typically progressive, a return to work isn't expected.

Patients with early-onset Alzheimer's disease—in which they develop the memory-robbing brain disease before the age of 65—are among the potential beneficiaries. Such people may be too impaired to work but too young to collect Social Security retirement benefits, and thus are candidates for Social Security disability payments. About 200,000 people in the U.S. are thought to have early-onset Alzheimer's, according to the Alzheimer's Association.

Harry Johns, president and chief executive of the Alzheimer's Association, applauded the expansion of Compassionate Allowances. "Because of the time it's historically taken to get any of these benefits, these folks are facing Alzheimer's and facing all these other [financial and insurance] issues," Mr. Johns said.

Mr. Astrue hopes to further expand the number of conditions in Compassionate Allowances this year, with a focus on autoimmune diseases and cardiac conditions, among others.

In 2008, the Social Security Administration also rolled out another fast-track system that uses statistical analysis to expedite claims that past experience showed had a 95% chance of being granted.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703382904575059102889796326.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5#printMode

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From the Washington Times

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Terror reviews avoid word 'Islamist'

by Shaun Waterman

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Two new documents laying out the Obama administration's defense and homeland security strategy over the next four years describe the nation's terrorist enemies in a number of ways but fail to mention the words Islam, Islamic or Islamist.

The 108-page Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, made public last week by the Department of Homeland Security, uses the term "terrorist" a total of 66 times, "al Qaeda" five times and "violent extremism" or "extremist" 14 times. It calls on the U.S. government to "actively engage communities across the United States" to "stop the spread of violent extremism."

Yet in describing terrorist threats against the United States and the ideology that motivates terrorists, the review - like its sister document from the Pentagon, the Quadrennial Defense Review - does not use the words "Islam," "Islamic" or "Islamist" a single time.

Although the homeland security official in charge of developing the review insists it was a not a deliberate decision, the document is likely to reignite a debate over terminology in the U.S.-led war against al Qaeda that has been simmering through two administrations.

"There was not an active choice" to avoid using terms derivative of Islam, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Policy David Heyman told reporters on a conference call. President Obama had "made it clear as we are looking at counterterrorism that our principal focus is al Qaeda and global violent extremism, and that is the terminology and language that has been articulated" by Mr. Obama and his advisers, Mr. Heyman added. He declined to use the I-word.

The sensitivity to terminology is not new. In April 2008, during the George W. Bush administration, an official guide produced by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), the multiagency center charged with strategic coordination of the U.S. war on terrorism, urged officials not to use the words "Muslim" or "Islamic" in conjunction with the word "terrorism."

Such usage "reinforces the 'U.S. vs. Islam' framework that al-Qaeda promotes," read the NCTC's "Words That Work and Words That Don't: A Guide for Counterterrorism Communication."

Instead, the guide urges policymakers to use terms such as "violent extremists," "totalitarian," and "death cult" to characterize al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

The Obama administration has adopted "violent extremism" as its catchall phrase for terrorism.

It is advice that officials at the Defense Department also appear to have taken to heart. The 128-page Quadrennial Defense Review - which like the homeland-security review is a congressionally mandated effort to ensure budgeting and other planning efforts are properly aligned against threats to the nation - also eschews words associated with Islam, employing instead the constructions "radicalism," "extremism" or "violent extremism."

"I understand the reluctance to play up religion as a part of violent extremism," said Stewart Baker, who held Mr. Heyman's job at the Department of Homeland Security in the last administration. "But it's easy to take that too far. Which communities [in the United States] is the government planning to engage to counter extremism? Not Hispanics, I'll bet, or Lutherans."

Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, said in a statement that she was "struck" by what she called the "glaring omission."

Other kinds of extremism - for instance, white supremacism - are also seen as threats by many analysts, but they generally are acknowledged to pose a much less significant danger.

"To understand a threat and counter it, we must know our enemy," said Ms. Collins, the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. "While there are other threats to our national security from other types of violent extremism, the gravest threat comes from Islamist extremists. ... In a review such as this, it is critical that we identify and address the specific threat posed by Islamist extremism."

Ms. Collins noted that the publicly available portions of the recent Pentagon report on the attack at Fort Hood also did not use terms related to Islam. "We shouldn't be reluctant to identify our enemy," she said.

Patrick Poole, a counterterrorism consultant to government and law enforcement agencies, said the documents reveal a "culture of willful blindness that continues to grow" within senior levels of government.

"For our military, intelligence, and homeland security agencies to continue to ignore the short- and long-term strategic threat from jihadist groups, and the radical Islamic ideology that fuels them, is nothing less than a dereliction of duty," Mr. Poole said.

"The current administration seems hellbent on doubling down on the previous administration's failure to comprehend this threat, and there are American citizens and armed service members [who] are going to die as a result."

The Heritage Foundation's James Carafano poured scorn on the idea that the omission was not deliberate, pointing out that the quadrennial reviews were subjected to a comprehensive interagency editing and approval process. "It's not like this is an oversight. ... No one is slapping their forehead going, 'Oh, yeah, we forgot to use the word.'"

Mr. Carafano said he sympathized with the desire "to separate the act of terror from the religion" of Islam, but he said there was a straightforward solution: The word Islamicist or Islamist - as used by Ms. Collins. Webster's dictionary defines Islamist or Islamicist as "an advocate or supporter of Islamic, especially orthodox Islamic, political rule."

Mr. Carafano called this "terminology that's well understood in both the East and the West ... [as] an extremist grouping with a political agenda, not a religious one."

A 2008 paper produced by the Department of Homeland Security's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties suggested that the distinction between Islam and Islamism might not be well understood.

"The experts we consulted did not criticize this usage based on accuracy," according to the paper, "Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations From American Muslims."

"Nevertheless, they caution that it may not be strategic for [U.S. government officials] to use the term because the general public, including overseas audiences, may not appreciate the academic distinction between Islamism and Islam."

A U.S. military report produced in 2008 by a special unit of the U.S. Central Command criticized the federal government for not properly identifying the nature of the Islamist terrorist threat.

"We must reject the notion that Islam and Arabic stand apart as bodies of knowledge that cannot be critiqued or discussed as elements of understanding our enemies in this conflict," said the internal report by the Centcom "Red Team," a unit that provides contrarian views for the combatant commander.

"The fact is our enemies cite the source of Islam as the foundation for their global jihad," the report said. "We are left with the responsibility of portraying our enemies in an honest and accurate fashion."

Other Obama administration officials, including, most strikingly, the top U.S. diplomat, appear less timid than their defense and homeland security colleagues in using terms such as "Islamic" to describe the nation's terrorist enemies. Speaking over the weekend of the various threats to U.S. security, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton described al Qaeda and its allies as "extremists ... fundamentalist Islamic extremists."

A homeland security official authorized to speak on background said the quadrennial review was not designed to provide a definition of the enemy; instead, it "focuses on what the key goals and objectives should be to prevent terrorism. ... Preventing and deterring terrorism - in any form - is the primary mission, which is very clearly spelled out."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/12/violent-extremists-but-not-islamists//print/

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U.S. distrusts Iran nuclear breakthrough bragging

by Eli Lake

The White House on Thursday dismissed Iran's boasts of a nuclear breakthrough, as pro- and anti-regime demonstrators massed on the streets of Tehran during the 31st anniversary of Iran's revolution.

Responding to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's announcement that Iranian scientists had succeeded in enriching uranium to the 20 percent level needed for medical isotopes, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said he did not believe it.

"He says many things, and many of them turn out to be untrue," Mr. Gibbs said. "We do not believe they have the capability to enrich to the degree to which they now say they are enriching."

On Monday, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini stated that Iran would deliver a "punch" to the West. Earlier this week, Iran's defense minister said that the Iranian military had successfully tested a new armed, unmanned aerial vehicle and had develop new air defenses.

It is not clear if the announcement of boosting enriched-uranium capabilities was what was referred to earlier by the ayatollah.

At a government rally in Tehran, Mr. Ahmadinejad said, "We have the capability to enrich uranium more than 20 percent or 80 percent, but we don't enrich [to this level], because we don't need it."

Uranium enriched to 90 percent is needed for producing the fuel for a nuclear weapon. Iran has been making low-enriched uranium at 3.5 percent since 2006 at a facility in Natanz that is monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. According to the IAEA report from November, Iran possesses 1.8 tons of low-enriched uranium.

Low-enriched uranium can be further enriched through Iran's thousands of centrifuges, at Natanz and at a recently disclosed site at Qom. Iran has denied it is seeking nuclear weapons; however, U.S. intelligence officials recently testified to Congress that Iran's nuclear program could be used for weapons if a decision is made to do so.

Iran's president made his remarks Thursday at a demonstration in central Tehran to commemorate the 1979 Islamic revolution. Thursday was billed as a clash between the current Iranian regime and the opposition green movement that has, since June 12 elections, said that government was illegitimate.

Mr. Ahmadinejad claimed victory in the June presidential elections, spawning a new opposition movement around his main challengers in the election, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi.

Limited news and Internet reports from Tehran suggest the pro-regime demonstrators outnumbered opposition protesters in the street. The regime also appears to have avoided killing protestors like the slaying last summer of a young Iranian girl who became a martyr and symbol for the movement.

That opposition movement has defied threats from the regime as well as a violent crackdowns culminating in the killing of protesters, their disappearances and public trials and executions. Earlier this month, two such oppositionists were tried and executed in anticipation of Thursday's rallies.

Despite that pressure, Messrs. Mousavi and Karroubi urged their followers through their Web sites and in the media to turn up for peaceful protests against the government Thursday.

The Iranian government in turn bused in its supporters to Tehran and nearly shut down all Internet and cell-phone service. The opposition has used Facebook, YouTube and other Internet media to share pictures and videos of demonstrations with the rest of the world.

In a show of solidarity this week, the United States and European Union leaders issued a warning to Iran's regime to refrain from using violence against peaceful protests.

Ali Alfoneh, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said, "I think the regime has won a tactical victory by suppressing the opposition in a fairly nonviolent way."

He added, "The oppression has been nonlethal. Not a single person has lost their life during the demonstrations, which is a success for the regime. They have deterred the opposition, which did not turn out in mass numbers, and the regime succeeded in intimidating the public through executions last week."

Karim Sadjadpour, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, cautioned against drawing too many conclusions.

"We don't have the full picture yet. Internet access has been shut down for many people; information is still trickling out," he said. "Very few cell-phone videos have emerged. compared to previous protests."

Mr. Sadjadpour said it would also be a mistake to judge the efficacy of the opposition movement based on its turnout Thursday. "I always thought it was a mistake to build up too many expectations about this one day. Most people recognize that the opposition is not running a sprint; it is running a marathon."

He added that senior religious leaders, leading intellectuals, film actors and sports stars have all said the current government is not legitimate.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/12/us-doubts-iran-nuke-breakthrough//print/

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From Fox News

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Jaycee's Emotional Diary: 'I Want to Be Free'

February 12, 2010

Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — 

Jaycee Dugard, the Northern California woman who was kidnapped as a child and held prisoner for 18 years, kept a diary in which she wrote of longing for freedom and feeling both emotionally trapped and protective of the man charged with raping her, court documents filed Thursday show.

"It feels like I'm sinking. ... this is supposed to be my life to do with what I like ... but once again he has taken it away," Dugard wrote in an entry dated July 5, 2004, almost five years before she surfaced last summer with the two daughters fathered by her alleged captor Phillip Garrido.

"How many times is he allowed to take it away from me?" she wrote. "I am afraid he doesn't see how the things he says makes me a prisoner."

El Dorado County prosecutors quoted three portions of Dugard's diary in the court papers seeking a protective order barring Garrido and his wife Nancy from trying to contact Dugard or her children, now 12 and 15.

The motion came in response to papers filed last week by the Garridos' defense lawyers trying to force prosecutors to tell them where Dugard is living and if she has a lawyer. A hearing is set for Feb. 26.

District Attorney Vern Pierson said Dugard's writings show that Phillip Garrido controlled her in the past and was trying to exert continued psychological pressure on her from jail.

Dugard, now 29, has "emphatically stated to our office that she does not want any contact with the defendants or their attorneys," Pierson said in the documents. "The people ask this court to protect Ms. Doe and to, once and for all, put an end to the defendant's manipulation."

The papers referred to Dugard as "Jane Doe" because she was 11 when she was kidnapped and sexually assaulted.

The documents also reveal new details about Dugard's captivity, saying she was kept in a building in a hidden compound inside the backyard of the Garridos' Antioch home for the first 18 months after her abduction then prohibited from leaving the yard for the first four years.

In another diary entry, dated more than two years after Dugard was snatched from the street outside her South Lake Tahoe home, Dugard wrote, "I got (a cat) for my birthday from Phil and Nancy ... they did something for me that no one else would do for me, they paid 200 dollars just so I could have my own kitten."

A decade later, however, Dugard wrote of the complex emotions surrounding her situation and Phillip Garrido.

"I don't want to hurt him ... sometimes I think my very presence hurts him," she wrote. "So how can I ever tell him how I want to be free. Free to come and go as I please ... Free to say I have a family. I will never cause him pain if it's in my power to prevent it. FREE."

In the court filing, Pierson said Dugard and the two daughters she had by Garrido when she was 14 and 17 had been instructed by the Garridos to run to the hidden backyard if anyone ever came to the door.

He also described a plan that Phillip Garrido allegedly hatched to stay in contact with Dugard if he was ever arrested. Dugard told prosecutors Garrido instructed her to request an attorney who could communicate directly with his "without law enforcement knowledge," the papers state.

Since Garrido's arrest, he has tried repeatedly to put the plan into action, Pierson said.

On the day he was arrested and Dugard's identity was revealed, Garrido advised her to get a lawyer. The next month, Garrido sent a letter to a Sacramento television station stating he wanted to reach Dugard "by attorney mail only."

In January, Garrido's lawyer wrote Dugard saying, "Mr. Garrido has asked me to convey that he does not harbor any ill will toward (Ms. Doe) or the children and loves them very much."

Dugard interpreted the "ill will" remark to mean she was not following the plan and that the letter was another way of manipulating her, the papers state.

Phillip Garrido's lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Susan Gellman, wrote in an e-mail that contacting a witness to determine what happened is part of her job as a defense attorney, and the information she has been seeking is a matter of routine in criminal cases.

"For the district attorney to hint that it is somehow improper or nefarious is disingenuous to say the least," Gellman wrote. "I am not the 'tool' of any man, as he has been intimated in today's filing."

Nancy Garrido's court-appointed defense lawyer Stephen Tapson did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment.

The Garridos have pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The couple also are requesting permission to visit each other in jail, where they are being held on $30 million and $20 million bail, respectively.

Pierson opposed that request, too, blasting efforts by defense lawyers to portray the pair as the parental figures who deserve jailhouse visits so they can discuss the welfare of their "family."

"The defense utterly fails to recognize that Jane Doe and her children were not their 'family,' but were in fact captives -- they were victims," Pierson wrote. "The unfortunate reality is that Ms. Doe and her children may not have fully realized they were captives and victims because the defendants controlled their reality."

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,585560,00.html

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Man Arrested in Mississippi is 'Person of Interest' in Florida Girl's Murder

February 11, 2010

Associated Press

ORANGE PARK, Fla. — 

Authorities have arrested a man they are calling a person of interest in the kidnapping and killing of a northeast Florida girl whose body was found in a landfill after she vanished on her way home from school.

Clay County Sheriff Rick Beseler said a man who had lived in the girl's neighborhood was arrested in Mississippi Thursday on 29 charges of possession of child pornography. The man, Jarred Harrell, 24, has not been charged in the death of 7-year-old Somer Thompson.

SLIDESHOW: Somer Thompson Murder

Harrell, who was arrested in Meridian, Miss., had lived until recently in a home near Somer Thompson's. Authorities were searched that house Thursday. Deputies and an FBI forensics team were seen searching its front yard with rakes and shovels

Beseler, who announced the arrest during an evening news conference, said a vehicle had also been searched.

The 7-year-old girl vanished Oct. 19 as she was walking home from school, sparking a search that lasted for two days. Investigators sorted through more than 225 tons of garbage at a landfill some 50 miles away, across the state line in Georgia, before their worst fears were realized: Sticking out of the rubbish were a child's lifeless legs.

Authorities have checked into thousands of tips in the case in the nearly four months since, but no one has been charged in the killing. The girl's mother, Diena Thompson, said she didn't want to get her hopes up that a break had been made in the case.

"I'm not speculating on anything. I don't want to get my hopes up and I don't want to get my hopes down," she told The Florida Times-Union. "I'm going to put my faith in God."

P.J. Simms, who has lived in the neighborhood 17 years, said she hopes authorities find what they are looking for.

"I just hope they find what they were looking for because it has been a long time coming. This is the first time anything like this has ever happened. It's broken our hearts," she said. "You used to see 40 to 50 kids out here every day, now there's always somebody with them."

Simms said she knew Somer because she used to babysit for the girl's friend.

"She was a sweetheart, just very loving. She always wanted to be a part of everything. I hope and pray to God that this is it so we can finally let the kids play."

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,571325,00.html

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Prisoners' Facebook Pages Removed After Taunting Victims From Jail

February 11, 2010

The London Times

Thirty prisoners in Britain have had their Facebook pages taken down after they used them to taunt victims and communicate with associates on the outside.

Colin Gunn, a double murder plotter serving time in a maximum security jail, posted threats to his rivals, it was revealed this month.

Gunn claims that he was allowed to blog from jail, although the Ministry of Justice insisted that inmates were denied access to social networking sites.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw said he approached Facebook three weeks ago to address the issue and requested the pages be removed within 48 hours.

“We've made requests for the removal of 30 sites and they've responded to do that positively, with no single refusal, within 48 hours, so we just want to push this forward,” Straw told the BBC.

The government would be looking at other measures to prevent inmates from accessing web pages and abusing their victims, he added.

“We're looking at other ways in which we can raise the stakes against prisoners who seek to use these sites. It's unlawful, it's against prison rules, which is the law,” he said.

The action followed a meeting last night between families of murder victims, Facebook and Straw.

Barry Mizen, whose son Jimmy was murdered by Jake Fahri in May 2008, said that the talks were encouraging.

He added that he wanted Facebook to be more responsible. “I'm sure Facebook is a massive organization and there's lots of money floating around,” he said.

“If you have to spend a bit more on monitoring, then you have just got to do it.”

MStraw said that officials were considering a change in parole rules and the rules for prisoners released on temporary licence, “to make it explicit that even if they're outside prison, but if they are on licence, they can't make use of sites in this way.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We will not hesitate to refer to the police any published material that appears to cause harassment, alarm or distress."

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,585474,00.html

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Fla. Woman Denied Protective Order From Stalker Before Murder

February 11, 2010

FOX News

A 23-year-old woman killed outside her Orlando office by a stalker had asked for a protective order but was denied, MiamiHerald.com reported.

Alissa Branton, 23, reportedly turned in more than 70 pages of documents, some e-mails from the stalker, to a judge. The judge denied the request and scheduled a hearing for next week, Fox2Now.com reported.

Police say Roger Troy, 61, fatally shot Branton and then fatally shot himself in an AT&T call center parking lot, when she returned from her lunch break. Her co-workers placed calls to 911 describing the scene.

"This gentlemen just shot this woman several times, and then he shot himself," said another caller, who was clearly flustered and confused. "Can we tell if they're breathing?" asked the 911 dispatch operator. "Oh my God. I don't know, ma'am. I can't go closer," the caller responds.

MyFoxOrlando: LISTEN TO THE 911 CALL

Branton and her husband, Brent, both worked at the AT&T building where the shooting happened.

Police say Blanton met Troy when she was working at a Hooters restaurant, MiamiHerald.com reported. Blanton says she stopped talking to him after he began sending e-mails describing personal attacks.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,585535,00.html

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Military to Discipline at Least 6 Officers in Ft. Hood Case

February 11, 2010

The Wall Street Journal

The military will formally discipline at least six officers, mostly from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, for failing to take action against the officer accused of carrying out last year's deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood, according to people familiar with the matter.

Senior Army officials said the decision to punish so many officers reflects the military's belief that the November assault, which killed 13 people at the Army base in central Texas, could have been prevented if Maj. Nidal Hasan's superiors had alerted authorities to his increasing Islamist radicalization.

The officials said that as many as eight officers could ultimately be censured over Hasan, mostly with letters of reprimand that effectively end their military careers. The punishments will be detailed in an "accountability review" that Army Gen. Carter Ham, who has been investigating the shootings for several months, will deliver to top Army officials as early as Friday.

An Army spokesman said that Ham's accountability review would be submitted within days, but declined to comment further on the inquiry.

People familiar with the matter said the Army had earlier notified eight officers that they were under investigation, including Col. John Bradley, who until recently ran Walter Reed's psychiatry department, and Col. Charles Engel, a psychiatrist who supervised Hasan when he was doing a fellowship at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,585449,00.html

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From MSNBC

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Missionaries' aide eyed in trafficking ring

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - The police in El Salvador have begun an investigation into whether a man suspected of leading a trafficking ring involving Central American and Caribbean women and girls is also a legal adviser to many of the Americans charged with trying to take 33 children out of Haiti without permission.

When the judge presiding over the Haitian case learned on Thursday of the investigation in El Salvador, he said he would begin his own inquiry of the adviser, a Dominican man who was in the judge's chambers days before.

The inquiries are the latest twist in a politically charged case that is unfolding in the middle of an earthquake disaster zone. A lawyer for the group has already been dismissed after being accused of trying to offer bribes to get the 10 Americans out of jail.

The adviser, Jorge Puello, said in a telephone interview on Thursday that he had not engaged in any illegal activity in El Salvador and that he had never been in the country. He called it a case of mistaken identity. “I don't have anything to do with El Salvador,” he said, suggesting that his name was as common in Latin America as John Smith is in the United States.

“There's a Colombian drug dealer who was arrested with 25 IDs, and one of them had my name,” he said, not elaborating.

“Bring the proof,” he said when pressed about the child-trafficking accusations in the brief interview, which ended when he said he was entering an elevator. Reached later, he became angry and said he had broken no laws.

The 10 Americans have been imprisoned since Jan. 29 in the back of the same police station used by President René Préval as the seat of Haiti's government since the earthquake. They had been told by their lawyers that at least some of them would be on their way home on Thursday. But the judge overseeing their case, Bernard Saint-Vil, recommended to the prosecutor that they be tentatively released from custody and permitted to leave the country as long as a representative stayed behind until the case was completed.

Mr. Puello has been acting as a spokesman and legal adviser for most of the detainees in the Dominican Republic. The family of one of the detained Americans obtained independent counsel as of Feb 7.

Prostitution

The head of the Salvadoran border police, Commissioner Jorge Callejas, said in a telephone interview that he was investigating accusations that a man with a Dominican passport that identified him as Jorge Anibal Torres Puello led a human trafficking ring that recruited Dominican women and under-age Nicaraguan girls by offering them jobs and then putting them to work as prostitutes in El Salvador.

Mr. Puello said he did not even have a passport. When Mr. Callejas was shown a photograph taken in Haiti of Mr. Puello, Mr. Callejas said he thought it showed the man he was seeking. He said he would try to arrest Mr. Puello on suspicion of luring women into prostitution and taking explicit photographs of them that were then posted on Internet sites. “It's him, the same beard and face,” Mr. Callejas said in an interview on Thursday. “It has to be him.”

Judge Saint-Vil also said he thought that the photo of the trafficking suspect in a Salvadoran police file appeared to be the same man he had met in court. He said he intended to begin his own investigation into whether a trafficking suspect had been working with the Americans detained in Haiti.

“I was skeptical of him because he arrived with four bodyguards, and I have never seen that from a lawyer,” the judge said in an interview. “I plan to get to the bottom of this right away.”

The judge said he would request assistance from the Department of Homeland Security to look into Mr. Puello's background. A spokesman for the department said American officials were playing a supporting role in the investigation surrounding the Americans, providing “investigative support as requested.”

An Interpol arrest warrant has been issued for someone named Jorge Anibal Torres Puello, according to the police and public documents.

There were questions about whether Mr. Puello, the adviser, who said the Central Valley Baptist Church in Idaho had hired him to represent the Americans, was licensed to practice law. Records at the College of Lawyers in the Dominican Republic listed no one with his name.

Mr. Puello said he had a law license and was part of a 45-member law firm. But his office in Santo Domingo turned out to be a humble place, which could not possibly fit 45 lawyers. Mr. Puello's brother Alejandro said that the firm had another office in the central business district, but he declined to provide an address.

Mr. Puello said in the interview that he had been representing the Americans free of charge because he was a religious man who commiserated with their situation. “I'm president of the Sephardic Jewish community in the Dominican Republic,” he said. “I help people in this kind of situation. We're not going to charge these people a dime.”

But other lawyers for the detainees said that the families had wired Mr. Puello $12,000 to pay for the Americans' transportation out of Haiti if they were released, and that they had been told by Mr. Puello in a conference call late Tuesday that he needed an additional $36,000. Mr. Puello said that he had not participated in a conference call.

One lawyer for the families said that Mr. Puello had told him that he was licensed to practice law in Florida, but the lawyer said he had checked and found no such record. Mr. Puello said in the interview that he had never said he was licensed in Florida.

Mr. Puello said that he had been born in Yonkers, N.Y., and that his mother was Dominican. He said that his full name was Jorge Puello and that he had no other names. But then in a subsequent interview he said his name was Jorge Aaron Bentath Puello. He said he was born in October 1976, and not in October 1977, which the police report indicates is the birth date of the suspect in the Salvadoran case.

The report said the police had found documents connected to the Sephardic Jewish community in a house in San Salvador where the traffickers had held women.

Blake Schmidt contributed reporting from San José, Costa Rica, and Jean-Michel Caroit from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Kitty Bennett contributed research.

This story, " El Salvador Investigates Adviser to Detained Americans in Haiti ," originally appeared in The New York Times.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35362526/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/

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