Arrest made in N.Y. bomb case

U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder identifies the suspect as Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent. He had been trying to board a plane to Dubai.

By Tina Susman, Richard A. Serrano and Geraldine Baum, Los Angeles Times

May 4, 2010

Reporting from New York and Washington

An arrest was made overnight in New York in connection with the attempted car bombing in Times Square, police said early Tuesday, after a government official said investigators were focusing on a man of Pakistani descent who has been living in the United States.

"Law enforcement can confirm an arrest has been made," a spokesman for the New York Police Department said shortly after midnight.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. spoke at an early morning news conference in Washington and identified the man as Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent.

"It's clear the intent behind this terrorist attack was to kill Americans," Holder said.

He said Shahzad was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens as he attempted to fly to Dubai.

Holder indicated more arrests would be made. "This investigation is ongoing. It is multifaceted," he said. "We will not rest until we have brought everyone responsible to justice."/

Earlier, a government official in Washington had said police and FBI agents were closing in on a man of Pakistani descent and suspected the man had not acted on his own when he left a Nissan Pathfinder laden with explosives in Times Square on Saturday.

The amount of explosive material inside the SUV — which included about 100 pounds of fertilizer as well as a large metal gun box, firecrackers, cans of gasoline and three propane tanks — suggested that it took two people to prepare it, especially in secret, the official said.

However, the official, who declined to be identified because he said the investigation was sensitive and moving fast, described the work as "done with little sophistication." He also noted that if the assailants were trained by a Middle Eastern terrorist group, it likely "would have been a suicide bombing."

Attention turned to the man after the vehicle's previous owner recalled selling it to someone who was either Arabic or Latino.

The Associated Press reported that the buyer had traveled recently to Pakistan and lived in Connecticut, one of three states, including New York and Pennsylvania, that have figured into the investigation.

The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the incident, but Obama administration officials, including Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, insisted Monday it was too early to draw any conclusions as to the legitimacy of the claim or to speculate if the attack was a case of domestic or international terrorism.

"No leads are being discarded," Napolitano said, but added, "This is an open investigation that really is in its beginning stages."

Holder resisted labeling the attempt a "terrorist incident," even though he said there could have been a "substantial loss of life" if the bomb had gone off. "We have some good leads," he said.

Law enforcement officials say they don't know if the person was an amateur or a seasoned terrorist whose bomb simply malfunctioned. Earlier Monday, police were seeking information on a slim, balding man captured on a surveillance camera as he walked away from the scene in what Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly called a "furtive manner."

Although the video was aired throughout Monday, nobody had come forward to identify the man.

Kelly and the FBI refused to comment on reports that the SUV had been sold about three weeks ago on Craigslist. CNN reported that the transaction took place at a Connecticut shopping center and that the new owner never registered the vehicle. Kelly said the person who would have sold the vehicle was not under suspicion.

"We have spoken to the owner of record, and the owner of record is not a suspect," he said.

Kelly has said the car bomb, made of easily purchased items, including alarm clocks and gasoline, could have sent a "significant fireball" hurtling through one of the world's busiest tourist spots. Holder said that whoever was responsible "intended to spread terror across New York."

The incident, coming months after a foiled plot by Afghan immigrants to blow up New York subways, underscored the vulnerability of heavily policed Times Square, which since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been under close watch by police and scores of surveillance cameras.

But Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said bystanders' attention and the reaction of police showed the ability of the city to respond to threats, and that the bustling crowds in Times Square showed the city's resilience. "It's a sick and despicable act, but New Yorkers are going about their normal activities," Bloomberg said.

The city returned to work Monday, seemingly unfazed by the idea that a bomber remained on the loose.

Construction workers Danny Pugliese, 35, and Bobby Marshall, 39, had plunked down their lunch at a table in front of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. They said they hadn't thought much about the incident over the weekend. Marshall and his family had driven from Long Island to Yonkers to attend the christening of Pugliese's third child.

"If anything, the economy was more of a topic," Pugliese said. They had talked Monday about the potential of a car bombing in the city, but only briefly. Both electrical workers who specialize in elevators, they had vivid memories of Sept. 11.

"Before 9/11 you saw something funny and you walked by it," Marshall said. "Now you look and you wonder and you think twice. It's just part of the city now."

It was, in fact, two street vendors who first noticed the suspicious SUV and alerted police.

Marshall said it showed that the city's post-Sept. 11 campaign that urges people to say something if they see something suspicious had worked.

Pugliese, not convinced, said it was the would-be bomber's ineptitude that saved the day. "He was an amateur and his bomb messed up. We were lucky. Again," he said.

Hardened as they are to out-of-routine events, some young New Yorkers lost their casual attitude over the weekend.

Cynthia Laker, 49, said her teenage son had come to her Monday morning and asked if she would drive him to school. Normally, he, his siblings and mother take the subway, which runs under Times Square.

Laker, who remembered the nerve-racking months after Sept. 11, when many New Yorkers froze in fear at the sound of low-flying airplanes, refused to get the car out of the garage.

"I told him, 'Forget it.' We can't go there. If we start to react again, what's the point of living in the city?" she said.

Vinnie Gorham, a bike messenger who pedals across Manhattan, agreed. Watching out for danger, be it potholes, distracted pedestrians or terrorism, was all in a day's work for New Yorkers like him.

"I'm so caught up in what I do and on the move, I hardly think about the worst that could happen," said the wiry, 45-year-old biker before slinging a silver messenger bag over his shoulder and taking off.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-new-york-car-bomb-20100504-28,0,7617017,print.story

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Security tightened around studios after N.Y. bomb attempt

Law enforcement officials say sites linked to the Comedy Central show 'South Park' have received extra protection.

Richard Winton

May 4, 2010

Los Angeles-area law enforcement officials said Monday that after the attempted bombing in New York's Times Square, police had stepped up patrols around entertainment studios.

Police across Southern California say they are prepared to handle an attack. But they stressed the importance of alert residents in the security equation: It was a New York street vendor who noticed the SUV emitting smoke Saturday and reported it to authorities.

"New York is another wake-up call to us in the United States," said Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca.

"We cannot afford to not be aware of what happened in New York."

Baca said that although excellent counterterrorism resources exist, "the reality of the situation in New York was it was a member of the public who prevented a horrific explosion."

He said he was unaware of any new threats to the L.A. region, but his department already was on heightened alert at Universal Studios and CityWalk.

"We have an extensive awareness at Universal Studios. But we rely on the public substantially to spot anything unusual and report it," Baca said.

"Large gatherings of people are among the most obvious targets."

Although the NYPD hasn't identified a suspect in Saturday's attempted bombing, the proximity to Viacom headquarters there spurred speculation that the company was targeted because of a recent episode of Comedy Central's "South Park" involving the prophet Muhammad. Viacom owns the Comedy Central network. Late Monday, police announced an arrest in the case.

Santa Monica police Sgt. Jay Trisler says the department is aware of the reports regarding Viacom. "We continue to be vigilant when it comes to the MTV location," he said. At Lionsgate and MTV offices in Santa Monica on Monday, there was stepped-up security in the form of uniformed guards checking vehicle trunks and stopping visitors at a side entrance.

One of the corporate garage entrances was closed to funnel traffic through a central inspection point.

http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/topofthetimes/topstories/la-me-0504-terror-studio-20100504-18,0,3761316,print.story

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Times Square bomb attempt: Terror group's claim of responsibility met with skepticism

Experts say evidence is lacking to support the Pakistani Taliban's claim in a video made public Monday that it was behind Saturday's failed car bomb attack in New York.

By Alex Rodriguez and Laura King, Los Angeles Times

5:59 PM PDT, May 3, 2010

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Kabul,

Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mahsud warned in video released Monday that his insurgent group has deployed suicide bombers in the U.S. and that they would soon carry out attacks in major American cities.

The video, which showed Mahsud flanked by two militants wearing white veils, came as U.S. law enforcement officials said there was no evidence to support a Pakistani Taliban claim of responsibility for a car bomb found in downtown New York during the weekend. Skeptical analysts said they believed the militant group lacks the capability or reach to carry out such missions in the U.S.

"Our [suicide bombers] have penetrated the terrorist America," Mahsud said in the video, which he said was made April 4. "We will give extremely painful blows to the fanatic America."

Mahsud's appearance in the video confirmed that the young Taliban leader had survived a U.S. drone missile strike along the border between North and South Waziristan in January. Dressed in Pashtun garb with an automatic rifle at his side, Mahsud said he was "alive and healthy."

Officials had claimed that he died in the January missile strike, until Pakistani security officials last week confirmed that he survived the attack.

A separate 71-second video posted on the Internet on Monday claimed that the Pakistani Taliban planned an attack in Times Square in retaliation for the U.S. drone missile strike that killed the insurgent group's leader, Baitullah Mahsud, in August. A voice speaking in Urdu states that the group "takes full responsibility for the recent attack in the USA."

Law enforcement officials on Monday continued their investigation of the incident in New York, in which a sport utility vehicle was found in Times Square on Saturday carrying materials including plastic cans filled with gasoline, M-88 firecrackers, three propane tanks, wires and two alarm clocks.

Some analysts doubted Mahsud's claims that suicide bombers were poised to unleash a wave of attacks in U.S. cities. The Pakistani Taliban's mission is focused on battling the government in Islamabad, they said, and the group does not have the logistics in place to carry out attacks thousands of miles from their strongholds in the tribal belt along the Afghan border.

"They want to build an image that says, 'We are capable of reaching your home and hurting you,' " said Amir Rana, a security analyst with the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies. "But they don't have that capability."

The militant group has previously claimed responsibility for an attack in the U.S. in which it was not involved. Baitullah Mahsud had falsely claimed that the Taliban carried out a mass shooting in Binghamton, N.Y., that killed 14 people in April 2009.

During its two-year existence, the Pakistani Taliban has focused its attention largely on attacking Pakistani security forces and civilians. It has directed many of its suicide bombings on U.S. and Western targets in Pakistan, but it has never carried out an attack outside South Asia.

It did claim a role in the December suicide bombing of a CIA base in Afghanistan near the Pakistani border, an attack that killed seven CIA employees and contractors. That base, located near Khowst, was again targeted by a suicide car bomb attack Monday that killed one Afghan civilian and injured two Afghan security guards.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/asia/la-fg-pakistan-taliban-20100504,0,860053,print.story

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U.S. discloses size of nuclear arsenal

The Obama administration releases a set of figures that has remained an official government secret since the Manhattan project during World War II.

By Paul Richter and Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times

May 4, 2010

Reporting from the United Nations and Washington

The Obama administration disclosed the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal for the first time on Monday, issuing a set of figures that has remained an official government secret since the Manhattan project during World War II.

The administration said the stockpile consists of 5,113 active and inactive warheads, down from a high of 31,255 in 1967, in the years after the Cuban missile crisis.

Although no U.S. administration had ever revealed the current size of its weapons stockpile, the number came as little surprise. Most experts had made estimates close to the actual figures. The Federation of American Scientists, which advocates arms control, for instance, had estimated the inventory at 5,100.

However, administration officials and advocates who supported the public release of the information said the figures would help demonstrate a U.S. commitment to openness about its arms program and prod other countries, especially China, to do likewise.

"We think it is in our national security interests to be as transparent as we can be about the nuclear program of the United States," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said at a news conference at the United Nations. "We think that builds confidence."

Clinton announced the release of the numbers during an address to the opening session of an international conference to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the cornerstone world treaty on nuclear inventories.

On its first day Monday, the conference flared into an angry public confrontation between the United States and Iran over Tehran's nuclear program.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad castigated the United States for its use of nuclear weapons in World War II.

Clinton denounced the Iranian president's "tired, false and sometimes wild accusations," and called for a crackdown on nations, like Iran, that she said have reneged on their commitments to the nonproliferation treaty.

"Iran will do whatever it can to divert attention away from its own record," she said.

Clinton pointed to steps the Obama administration is taking to reduce the threat and importance of nuclear weapons, pointing to a new arms reduction agreement with Russia, a revamped U.S. nuclear policy and other measures.

"The United States is showing it is being increasingly transparent in respect to its own nuclear weapons program," said a senior Defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid overshadowing Clinton's remarks.

The figures released Monday show the number of U.S. warheads in each year from 1962 to 2009, as well as the number of warheads dismantled each year from 1994 to 2009. In 1993, the Department of Energy released historical data on the size of the atomic arsenal for the years before 1962.

The only figure not released is the number of warheads awaiting destruction. Officials said there were several thousand of those weapons, and that they expect to release an exact number in the near future.

The administration also did not disclose how many weapons are active, or nearly ready for use, and those that are inactive, or held in reserve. The figures also do not specify how many are strategic, long-range weapons and how many are shorter-range tactical weapons.

The stockpile will shrink further as the number of strategic warheads is cut to 1,550 if the New START treaty with Russia is ratified.

Hans M. Kristensen, the director of the nuclear information project for the Federation of American Scientists, said the release of the numbers showed it was never really necessary to make them classified information.

In his speech, Iran's president said U.S. leaders had become "among the most hated … in human history" for their use of nuclear weapons in World War II against Japan. U.S. and European diplomats walked out to show their displeasure.

U.S. officials and their allies are crafting a fourth set of U.N. Security Council economic sanctions in hopes of pressuring Iran to abandon nuclear enrichment. Iran hopes to appeal to non-nuclear developing nations, who resent the nuclear powers' unwillingness to abandon their own stockpiles.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-fg-nuclear-conference-20100504,0,5384204,print.story

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Man charged with possession of improvised firearm similar to one used in Hemet police attack

A man suspected of being a white supremacist gang member has been charged with possession of an improvised firearm similar to that used to booby-trap the front gate of the Hemet-San Jacinto Valley Gang Task Force in February.

Patrick Nugent Jr., who authorities say is a member of the Coors Skins gang, was also charged with having a pair of nunchucks – weapons usually constructed of two pieces of wood held together by a short chain.

Nugent was arrested and his weapons were found during an April 20 sweep by Hemet police investigating a rash of attacks aimed at them and the gang task force. He was charged three days later.

During the sweep, officers arrested 23 people on parole, weapons and drug violations.

In February, an officer narrowly missed being killed when he opened the front gate of the gang task force offices and a shot rang out. Investigators later found a zip gun in the gate that had been rigged to fire when the door opened.

In January, someone redirected the natural gas line outside the gang task force headquarters into the building, setting up a situation in which a spark could have caused an explosion.

Then a device police said was "dangerous" was found under the car of a task force member. After that, someone set fire to code enforcement vehicles at City Hall, and recently a police shooting range was torched. Police sources have said skinheads are among those suspected of being behind the attacks.

According to the complaint against 40-year-old Nugent, he had the zip gun and nunchucks "at the direction of and in association with a criminal street gang with the specific intent" to promote criminal conduct among gang members.

There is a $200,000 reward out for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the attacks.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/05/man-charged-with-possession-of-improvised-firearm-similar-to-one-used-in-hemet-police-attack.html#more

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Homeless women on L.A.'s skid row to receive Mother's Day makeovers

Hundreds of women on skid row will celebrate Mother's Day early this year with a free makeover at the Fred Jordan Mission in downtown Los Angeles.

The Mother's Day event was started almost two decades ago with about 50 women, but as many as 1,000 are expected to show up this year from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m, said Peter Jordan, the mission's director.

“Many of these women have been homeless for a long time. They have not felt like a woman,” Jordan said. “We have to reach out directly to these moms. It is something that goes directly to their self esteem.”

About 200 hair stylists, manicurists and makeup artists will be on hand to volunteer their services. Some are students from cosmetology and hair-styling schools.

“We will also be giving out whole outfits, something they can really go to a job interview with,” Jordan said. “This is something that touches women's hearts the way handing out a food bag does not. We all need a day, and this is their day.”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/05/homeless-women-on-los-angeles-skid-row-to-receive-mothers-day-makeovers.html#more

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From the New York Times

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Poll Shows Most in U.S. Want Overhaul of Immigration Laws

LOS ANGELES — The overwhelming majority of Americans think the country's immigration policies need to be seriously overhauled. And despite protests against Arizona's stringent new immigration enforcement law, a majority of Americans support it, even though they say it may lead to racial profiling.

These are the findings of the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

With the signing of the Arizona law on April 23 and reports of renewed efforts in Washington to rethink immigration, there has been an uptick in the number of Americans who describe illegal immigration as a serious problem.

But the poll — conducted April 28 through May 2 with 1,079 adults, and with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points — suggests that Americans remain deeply divided about what to do.

The public broadly agrees, across party lines, that the United States could be doing more along its border to keep illegal immigrants out. The view was shared by 78 percent of the respondents.

That unity, however, fractures on the question of what to do with illegal immigrants who are already here and the role of states in enforcing immigration law, normally a federal responsibility.

A majority of the people polled, 57 percent, said the federal government should determine the laws addressing illegal immigration. But 51 percent said the Arizona law was “about right” in its approach to the problem. Thirty-six percent said it went too far and 9 percent said it did not go far enough.

The law has recharged the national debate over securing the border and what to do about the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already in the country.

The Arizona law gives local police officers broad power to detain people they suspect are in the country illegally and check their legal status. Lawsuits have already been filed on several grounds, including the argument that it will lead to the racial profiling of legal residents and that the state has unconstitutionally intruded on federal authority.

Under a torrent of criticism, the Arizona Legislature and Gov. Jan Brewer made changes to the law on Friday that they say explicitly ban the police from racial profiling and allow officers to inquire about immigration status only of people they stop, detain or arrest in enforcing existing state law. But the new immigration law also now includes civil violations of municipal codes as grounds to check papers, and opponents were not mollified by the changes.

In follow-up interviews, poll respondents who embraced the thrust of the Arizona law still called for a national solution.

“The Arizona law is fine, but the federal government has to step in and come up with something — and they're not doing it,” said Pat Turkos, 64, a library worker and Republican from Baltimore.

She said: “I don't think they should be stopped just walking down the street, only if they're stopped for speeding, for example. I believe everybody has the right to come here, but I think they have to be made legal citizens.”

Although the respondents broadly agreed that the Arizona law would result in racial profiling, overburden local and state law enforcement agencies and decrease the willingness of illegal immigrants to report crimes for fear of deportation, large majorities said it would reduce the number of illegal immigrants in the state, deter illegal border crossings and, to a lesser extent, reduce crime.

Some attitudes about immigration have remained stable among the public. Most still say illegal immigrants weaken the nation's economy rather than strengthen it, and public opinion remains divided over how the United States should handle illegal immigrants currently in the country.

But American attitudes toward the law and whether illegal immigrants already here should have a path to citizenship differed markedly across regions and parties. Westerners and Northeasterners, for example, are significantly more likely than those in other regions to say the recent law in Arizona goes too far. And Democrats are much more likely than Republicans or independents to support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants now in the country.

Just 8 percent of Americans said the immigration system needed only minor changes. The vast majority said it needed reworking, including 44 percent who said it needed to be completely rebuilt and 45 percent who said it needed fundamental changes.

Three quarters said that, over all, illegal immigrants were a drain on the economy because they did not all pay taxes but used public services like hospitals and schools. Nearly 2 in 10 said the immigrants strengthened the economy by providing low-cost labor and buying goods and services, a chief argument among many of their advocates.

“I do think the federal government should deal with it, because illegal immigrants don't pay taxes and don't contribute to our government,” said Deborah Adams, 53, a Democrat from Ephrata, Pa., and a paramedic who called the Arizona law a “necessary evil.”

“They take jobs from American citizens who need to work and pay into Social Security ,” Ms. Adams said.

In fact, many illegal immigrants do pay taxes into the Social Security system, but never see a return on their contributions.

At immigration rallies in several cities on Saturday, demonstrators pressed the case for overhauling immigration law.

So far no bill has been introduced in Congress. President Obama , while supportive of the idea of immigration reform, has questioned whether lawmakers have the appetite for a divisive battle over it after a year of other political fights and in the middle of a campaign.

A delegation of Arizonans opposed to the law, including Mayor Phil Gordon of Phoenix, plans to meet with Justice Department officials on Tuesday to urge them to step into the brewing legal battle over the law.

On Monday, one of the law's staunchest advocates, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County in the Phoenix area, announced that after toying with the idea, he would not run for governor.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/us/04poll.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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A Moment Kent State Won't Forget

KENT, Ohio — Black pillars mark four sites on the east side of Kent State University — each memorializing one of the four college students killed by the Ohio National Guard during antiwar protests on May 4, 1970.

Torey Wootton, now a freshman, wants to lie in one of those sites, to understand what her uncle Paul Ciminero felt on that warm and sunny day 40 years ago as he stood watching Jeffrey Miller, a fellow student, die in that spot. Mr. Miller was shot in the mouth by a National Guardsman.

“It's just to take a moment and reflect and appreciate, more than try to connect to it,” said Ms. Wootton, 19, a musical theater major from nearby Akron.

“I want to look at the space around because that might have been the last thing that they got to see,” she said of the fallen students.

To commemorate the anniversary , on Tuesday the university will host about a dozen speakers, including John Filo, the Pulitzer Prize -winning photographer of the famous image of 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over Jeffrey Miller's body just after the shooting; Russ Miller, Jeffrey's brother; and Florence Schroeder, the mother of another student who was killed, William Schroeder.

In downtown Kent, an event where witnesses to the shootings will narrate their stories will be streamed live by the filmmaker Michael Moore , on his Web site, www.michaelmoore.com .

While Ms. Wootton said she understood the killings as a turning point in American history, she seemed to be an exception.

Fourteen of 15 freshmen interviewed on the campus said they did not feel any connection with the lives of the students who were protesting the United States' invasion of Cambodia at the time.

The university requires first-year students to watch a historical video of what happened that day and the events leading to it: the violent confrontation between protesters and local police and the burning of the R.O.T.C. building near the Commons.

Freshmen attribute their lack of interest to the time span.

“Our generation doesn't necessarily really care because it happened so long ago none of us were alive,” said Ethan Moore, a freshman majoring in nursing. “Though it definitely shouldn't be forgotten because they were people, too.”

Eboni Pringle, director of the university's Student Success Programs, said that with years students developed a deeper understanding of May 4.

A sophomore photojournalism major, Nora Rodriquez, is the co-chairwoman of the May 4 Task Force , a student organization that tries to raise awareness among peers on the historic relevance of the shootings.

“I like politics, and I'm pretty sure that it could have been me in the protest,” said Ms. Rodriquez, who joined the group after attending in her freshman year a candlelight vigil for the students who were killed.

“The task force tries to understand all of the misunderstood truths surrounding May 4,” Ms. Rodriquez said. “There are things we still don't know about that day.”

In addition to Mr. Miller, 20, and Mr. Schroeder, 19, the other students killed were Allison Krause, 19, and Sandra Scheuer, 20. Nine other students were injured.

Ms. Wootton and her uncle, Mr. Ciminero, plan to attend Tuesday's commemoration ceremony.

And until she graduates, Ms. Wootton will follow the advice her parents, both Kent State alumni, gave her when she left for college. “We don't want to see you in the news,” they said, “and we don't want to see you get shot.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/us/04kent.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Unexploded Car Bomb Left Trove of Evidence

Among the enduring images left by car bombings, overseas or in the United States, is investigators on their hands and knees, crawling through the wreckage searching for clues: a blasting cap or a timing device, a piece of the explosive's casing or a trace of the chemicals used.

Car bombs, by design, do their best to devour any evidence of their existence, or send it flying.

On Saturday in Times Square, a homemade bomb built inside a Nissan Pathfinder did not explode — and as a result, a trove of evidence was left behind for investigators to pore over, not only for physical evidence or forensic clues, but also as a reflection of an assailant's methods, mind-set and possible motives.

“There is a lot there to read into the case that really helps them,” said James M. Cavanaugh, a former bomb expert with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who investigated car bombs and tracked the Unabomber, Theodore J. Kaczynski, and Eric R. Rudolph, the bomber of abortion clinics and other sites .

Or, put another way by Kevin B. Barry, who retired in 2002 as a detective in the bomb squad of the New York Police Department and is now an official with the International Association of Bomb Technicians and Investigators : “He was trying to cover his tracks, but he left more clues than a guy walking into a bank to rob it without a mask. This guy left everything here but his wallet.”

The evidence has yielded much: police detectives and F.B.I. agents, using the vehicle's identification number, have already located and spoken with its registered owner and learned that it was sold for cash two weeks ago in Bridgeport, Conn.

Like the 17-character identification number, each bit of material from the car or its insides will be traced to divine its provenance, investigators said.

And when the bomb in the Pathfinder did not go off, the authorities had not only the vehicle, but also the raft of explosive elements packed inside: two neon-color alarm clocks and the time one was set to, some batteries, two five-gallon gasoline containers, three propane tanks, firecrackers, fertilizer packed in clear plastic bags bearing a store's logo, a cooking pot and a 78-pound metal gun box, a GC-14P 14-gun steel security cabinet manufactured by Stack-On , the police said.

Moreover, a car is an ideal receptacle for microscopic or invisible traces of who might have been inside. The authorities have been dusting the outside of the Pathfinder for fingerprints. Inside, they can search for traces of hair or skin cells that might have sloughed off on a steering wheel or a seat cover. They may find literature tucked into a glove box, or some food under a seat.

Each clue will be its own mini-investigation, in an inquiry that is involving “hundreds” of officers and agents, said Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the Police Department's chief spokesman.

Mr. Cavanaugh, who retired last month from the federal agency, said: “You could have hair, fingerprints, the skin cells, DNA, blood. This is a great way to start. Of course, the world is not all ‘CSI.' But once you get someone to look at, you can go back to see if they match what you've got, and that is a beautiful thing.”

On Monday, Mr. Browne said that “some forensic evidence” had been developed, but he declined to say if it was fingerprints, DNA or something else that had been culled from the vehicle, or if literature had been found. “We are in the middle of a sensitive investigation,” he said. ”There are only so many things I can disclose.”

“The fact that it was not destroyed was an opportunity to develop evidence from it,” Mr. Browne said. “It led us to the registered owner, which was an important development.” Finding the identification number “continues to pay dividends,” he added late Monday.

In the broadest sense, Mr. Cavanaugh said, the device and the way it was designed speak to a “grandiose purpose.”

It was apparently fashioned in short order and with seemingly common tools. The clocks were on the floor of the back seat area, and the plastic gas containers were on the rear seat, on either side of a 16-ounce canister with M88 firecrackers. Behind that, the three propane containers were arrayed, one with some firecrackers affixed to it. And behind that was the gun locker, inside a cardboard box, containing eight bags of nonexplosive fertilizer.

“I call this a Rube Goldberg contraption,” Mr. Cavanaugh said.

“It's the ‘swing-the-arm-with-the-shoe-that-hits-the-ball-and-knocks-over-a-stick-that-knocks-something-off-a-shelf,' ” he said, “and it is all supposed to work.”

It malfunctioned, for reasons that are still being pieced together, though Mr. Browne said the packet of M88s attached to one of the propane tanks went off partially, dispersing some of its force.

“I don't know for certain what the designer had in mind,” Mr. Browne said.

Some psychology is also involved, Mr. Cavanaugh said, as investigators must be imagining what the bomber or bombers were thinking. “I can tell you that they thought it was the atomic bomb,” he said. “They have more desire than ability.”

Car bombs, or “vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices ,” can have a range of effects on what evidence is left behind, depending on how the vehicle is situated and what materials are used, said an explosives expert who dealt with bombs in the United States Marine Corps but declined to be identified by name.

In the 1996 truck bomb attack on the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia , which killed 19 American airmen, the explosion could have been even more devastating if the truck had been parked alongside the complex, rather than backed into it.

Mr. Barry recalled a Manhattan car bomb from the 1970s that blew the hood onto a building's roof 21 stories high.

Sometimes, streets and sewers must be searched for blocks.

Having the Nissan intact in this case, the former military analyst said, was a good thing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/nyregion/04evidence.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Militia Members Released Until Trial in Michigan Plot

DETROIT — A federal judge on Monday ordered that nine members of an extremist militia accused of plotting to kill police officers be freed on bond until their trial, saying that prosecutors did not demonstrate that the defendants would pose a danger if released.

The judge, Victoria A. Roberts of Federal District Court, said the defendants would be subject to home detention, electronic monitoring and curfews. Judge Roberts said they were not allowed to have access to weapons or have contact with one another unless their lawyers were present.

The defendants' release could be delayed if prosecutors appeal.

The order, overturning rulings made last month, followed more than 10 hours of testimony and arguments, during which Judge Roberts repeatedly asked prosecutors to show that the defendants planned “imminent” attacks against law enforcement. The defendants' lawyers admitted that some of their clients made “stupid, hateful” comments but said that they were not planning any violence.

“The United States is correct that it need not wait until people are killed before it arrests conspirators,” Judge Roberts wrote in her ruling. “But, the defendants are also correct: their right to engage in hate-filled, venomous speech is a right that deserves First Amendment protection.”

Last week's hearing, and Judge Roberts's decision to grant bond, have raised questions about the government's case against the militia members, who call themselves Hutaree and trained in rural southern Michigan. Prosecutors presented little evidence and based much of their argument on the idea that the charges were serious enough to deny the defendants bond.

The nine — including the group's leader, David B. Stone Sr., and his wife and two sons — were arrested in late March and charged with seditious conspiracy and attempting to use weapons of mass destruction.

Prosecutors assert that the Hutaree members intended to kill a police officer, then attack other members of law enforcement who came to the officer's funeral. Talk of such a plan is heard in an audio recording made by an undercover agent and played during the hearing, but the defendants' lawyers argued that it was idle talk, a mere fantasy casually mentioned amid laughter and other overlapping conversations.

“It is simply talk,” said Mr. Stone's lawyer, William W. Swor. “There is nothing that was done to advance from talk to anything else.”

Prosecutors disagreed, saying that Mr. Stone intended to put his plan into action during activities he described to his followers as training on either the second or fourth Saturday of April.

“They were talking about killing police officers,” Leslie Larsen, the Federal Bureau of Investigation agent in charge of the Hutaree investigation, testified. “I don't think you can joke around about that.”

Judge Roberts and the defendants' lawyers expressed frustration that Ms. Larsen was unable to answer most questions she was asked, generally saying that she needed to review her notes or that she had not read many of the reports her colleagues had prepared about the group.

Ronald W. Waterstreet, an assistant United States attorney, told the judge that about 25 Hutaree members had not been indicted and could potentially help the defendants flee if they were released. But Judge Roberts cited the other members who had not been charged with any crimes as reason to believe “the offenses charged against these defendants may not be as serious as the government contends.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/us/04militia.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Paterson Move May Help Immigrants Facing Deportation

ALBANY — Gov. David A. Paterson announced on Monday that the state would accelerate consideration and granting of pardons to legal immigrants for old or minor criminal convictions, in an effort to prevent them from being deported.

The move sets up a confrontation between the governor and federal immigration officials, who have taken more aggressive action to increase deportations in recent years. Immigration lawyers on both sides called the step extraordinary and said it could ultimately affect thousands of people in New York.

“Some of our immigration laws, particularly with respect to deportation, are embarrassingly and wrongly inflexible,” Mr. Paterson said in a speech on Monday at an annual gathering of the state's top judges. “In New York we believe in renewal,” he added. “In New York, we believe in rehabilitation.”

Mr. Paterson is establishing a special five-member state panel to review the cases; while few such cases are currently pending, the administration expects an influx of hundreds of new pardon applications by the end of the year.

The move thrusts the governor into the middle of the country's immigration debate and could give new hope to legal immigrants facing deportation.

Mr. Paterson said the new policy was in the works weeks before Arizona enacted a law late last month to give the police there broad authority to question people about their immigration status. It was spurred in part by his pardon in March of Qing Hong Wu , a 29-year-old information technology executive who The New York Times reported had been threatened with deportation because he participated in a series of muggings as a 15-year-old. He had not lived in his native China since he was 5.

“We just feel that some of these charges are very minor in nature and some of these conversations go back beyond a decade for people who've demonstrated that they've lived productive lives in the interim,” Mr. Paterson said. “We're separating these cases from ones where there are egregious crimes.”

The White House referred calls to the Department of Homeland Security , which would not comment directly on the governor's plan.

“D.H.S. continues to focus on smart, effective immigration enforcement that prioritizes criminal aliens who present the greatest risk to the security of our communities,” Matt Chandler, a spokesman for the agency, said. “At the same time, we are applying common sense and using discretion on a case-by-case basis to ensure that our enforcement is meeting our priorities.”

Mr. Paterson does not need legislative approval to undertake the new policy. Federal immigration laws enacted in 1996 greatly expanded the categories of legal immigrants subject to mandatory deportation as “aggravated felons,” including people who had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor drug possession.

For years after the laws' passage, immigration authorities had neither the resources nor the political will to track down or detain legal permanent residents with relatively minor convictions. Because of that, many people years ago pleaded guilty to criminal charges in exchange for probation or no jail time, without having been advised by their lawyers that the plea made them subject to deportation.

Now, however, stepped-up enforcement, huge new criminal databases and expanded use of detention are resulting in deportation proceedings against more people with old convictions, while immigration judges have no discretion to consider their individual cases.

Only a governor's pardon can prevent deportation in such cases, even when the legal immigrant is married to a United States citizen and has citizen children.

“This is huge,” said Bryan Lonegan, a veteran immigration lawyer who is an expert on the immigration consequences of criminal convictions. “So many legal permanent residents are being arrested and detained based on trivial convictions — the guy being deported for swiping a MetroCard when he fell on hard times, people with minor marijuana convictions, people who shoplifted in a moment of weakness,” he added.

Nationally, more than 97,000 noncitizens are deported annually based on criminal convictions, rather than lack of lawful immigration status, and the great majority are believed to be legal permanent residents, said Nancy Morawetz, who teaches law at New York University and directs the N.Y.U. Immigrant Rights Clinic. She estimates that about 10 percent are from New York.

Thousands of other New Yorkers with green cards — like other legal immigrants elsewhere — are now afraid to travel or apply for citizenship for fear that they will be detained and deported based on an old conviction, she said.

But while immigrant advocates were quick to embrace Mr. Paterson's initiative, supporters of tougher immigration enforcement sounded a different note.

“There are people out there, maybe the governor included, who don't want to deport anybody, even people who have committed crimes,” said Jan Ting, a professor at Temple University Law School, and a former assistant immigration commissioner. “I understand the impulse, but it's an impulse that leads to open borders.”

Nationally, much of the debate about immigration has focused on those who are here illegally. But the governor's proposal underscores the degree to which lawful permanent residents also have been greatly affected by toughened enforcement measures.

There is scant precedent for the policy Mr. Paterson is enacting. Among the unanswered questions, people on both sides said, is how Congress and the Board of Immigration Appeals will react to the governor's effort.

In a more limited step, in the 15 months after the 1996 law was enacted, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole granted 138 pardons to permanent residents who had suddenly faced deportation retroactively.

But much has changed since then; most significantly, the federal government has become more aggressive, in practice, in seeking deportations.

And Mr. Paterson is essentially issuing a broad invitation for members of a large class of people with criminal convictions to come forward and seek pardons.

The governor is drawing on existing state employees to serve on the five-member Special Immigration Board of Pardons. Review of individual cases is expected to take weeks.

The governor said he hoped his new policy could “set an example for how other states might consider softening the blow that people who get caught up in this web of the national immigration laws are experiencing.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/nyregion/04deport.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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