New interrogation unit aids in questioning Times Square bomb suspect

Faisal Shahzad is arraigned after he said he no longer wished to speak with interrogators, who included members of a group established to replace a controversial CIA program.

By David S. Cloud and Richard A. Serrano, Los Angeles Times

May 19, 2010

Reporting from Washington

The Pakistani American accused of trying to bomb Times Square has been questioned with the help of a new interrogation unit that replaced a controversial CIA program dismantled by President Obama, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The suspect, Faisal Shahzad, appeared in court for the first time Tuesday, two weeks after his May 3 arrest. Wearing gray pants and a gray shirt, he was formally advised of the five felony charges against him, including the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. In all, he was told, he faces a maximum punishment of two life sentences plus 60 years.

Shahzad did not enter a plea. But he spoke briefly during the 10-minute appearance with his attorney, public defender Julia Gatto, in the courtroom. He reportedly asked earlier in the day for an attorney and said he no longer wished to speak with interrogators, a decision that prompted the court arraignment.

The new unit that has been assisting in Shahzad's questioning is known as the High-Value Interrogation Group, or HIG. It was activated several months ago and is staffed mainly by personnel from the FBI, CIA and Defense Department, according to senior administration officials who on Tuesday provided the fullest description of the unit's procedures to date. They were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The HIG's mandate, the officials said, is to ensure that intelligence about terrorism plots is obtained quickly after the arrest of a terrorism suspect.

Though there was no reference during the arraignment to the HIG's role in questioning Shahzad, Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for Manhattan, said Shahzad had been cooperative and "has provided valuable intelligence from which further investigation action has been taken."

The HIG was created as a replacement for the CIA interrogation program operated during the George W. Bush administration, and the willingness of administration officials to go into detail about its operations appeared aimed in part at rebutting criticism from congressional Republicans and others that the White House is focusing too much on prosecution of terrorism suspects and not enough on obtaining intelligence from detainees.

Obama moved to overhaul interrogation and detention guidelines soon after taking office, including the creation of a task force on interrogation and transfer policies, which recommended creation of the interrogation group.

Though information gathered by HIG interrogators can feed into the prosecution of terrorism suspects, that is not the unit's main focus, the officials said. After an arrest, either by U.S. authorities or a foreign government, a decision is made to activate the unit's personnel, who are deployed overseas or in the U.S. and can participate in the interrogation or merely advise those doing the questioning, the officials said.

The HIG "brings to bear expertise in the U.S. government so we can ensure we optimize intelligence collection from individuals," a senior administration official said.

The group is headed by an FBI official, with deputies from the CIA and Defense Department. Its permanent staff includes linguists, terrorism group experts, regional specialists and interrogators trained in questioning Al Qaeda members and other so-called high-value detainees.

Because of concerns about CIA personnel being involved in domestic law enforcement, its personnel assigned to the HIG only advise FBI and other agencies when suspects are being held on U.S. soil, a senior official said.

But if a detainee is being held by a foreign government, the CIA "may participate in the questioning," the official said.

Meanwhile, a Senate report released Tuesday on the attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day concluded that when a Nigerian was allowed to board the plane, allegedly with explosives in his pants, U.S. intelligence agencies had repeated some of the mistakes they made before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"Some of the systemic errors this review identified also were cited as failures prior to 9/11," the report concluded.

It placed much of the blame on the National Counterterrorism Center, which Congress created after 2001 to analyze intelligence and prevent attacks.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the center, said in a statement that it has already taken "corrective actions," including creating a team of analysts "to thoroughly and exhaustively pursue terrorist threat threads."

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-fg-times-square-20100519,0,1241916,print.story

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In wake of killings by sex criminal John Gardner, San Diego supervisors move to warn residents about sex offenders in their neighborhoods

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors moved Tuesday to establish an e-mail warning system to alert residents that  registered sex offenders are living in their neighborhoods.

The move comes in the wake of sex offender John Albert Gardner III's admission that he raped and murdered two teenage girls in northern San Diego County. In a plea bargain with prosecutors, he was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The warning system, proposed by Supervisor Bill Horn, would give residents the kind of updated information about sex offenders that is already available to police departments. The state attorney general posts such information for the public but Horn said the information is often outdated.

The Escondido Police Department knew that Gardner was a registered sex offender and living in Escondido but never considered him a suspect in the February 2009 disappearance of 14-year-old Amber Dubois.

Gardner lived about two miles from her home. He was required to register as a sex offender after serving a five-year prison sentence for attacking a 13-year-old girl in Rancho Bernardo.

Horn said he made his proposal after meeting with parents suffering from "the heartbreaking news" of two murders by  "a sex offender who had been overlooked by a system that was supposed to keep track of him."

An Escondido police officer questioned Gardner six weeks after Dubois' disappearance when a woman said Gardner was stalking her in his car. In the car was an open can of beer and a 3-year-old child, the son of Gardner's girlfriend.

Gardner told the officer that he wasn't stalking the woman but only following her in a "road rage" moment after she cut him off on the road, Escondido Police Capt. Bob Benton said at a news conference Monday.

The woman left before the officer could question her, Benton said. The officer then wrote Gardner a ticket for the open container, lack of a driver's license, and lack of front license plate and let him go.

"He did everything he could under the law," Benton said of the officer.

The officer did not report the stop to the detectives investigating Dubois' appearance. At the time, Escondido police had a report that she may have been last seen in a red truck; Gardner was driving a gray Ford Focus.

Ten moths after being questioned and released by the Escondido officer, Gardner, 31, murdered Chelsea King, 17, a Poway High honor student. He has admitted killing King and Dubois.

The supervisors voted unanimously to ask staff members to develop a plan and cost estimate for implementing Horn's plan, which would allow residents to sign up for the e-mail alerts.

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

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EDITORIAL

Life sentences without parole: too cruel to the young

For offenses other than murder, the court finds that life without the possibility of parole for juvenile offenders is unconstitutional.

May 18, 2010

When the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that executing juveniles amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, the author of the majority opinion, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, made two convincing arguments: that juveniles are less capable of appreciating the consequences of their actions than are adults (something every parent knows) and that putting them to death violated "evolving standards of decency." On Monday the court, again in an opinion by Kennedy, rightly concluded that the same considerations make it unconstitutional to sentence minors to life in prison without the possibility of parole for offenses other than murder.

By a 6-3 vote, the court overturned the sentence of Terrance Jamar Graham, who was sentenced to life in prison after committing an armed burglary of a restaurant and a home invasion. Graham was 16 when he committed the first crime and 17 at the time of the second. The sentencing judge, while professing sympathy for Graham's "family structure" — both of his parents were crack addicts — leapt to the conclusion that "you have decided that this is the way you are going to live your life and that the only thing I can do now is to try and protect the community from your actions."

Thirty-seven states allow for such sentences, but Kennedy persuasively argued that a better indication of whether they are cruel or unusual — and thus a violation of the 8th Amendment — was the infrequency with which they are imposed. According to the court, only 129 prisoners are serving life without parole for non-homicide offenses committed as juveniles. (The number in California is two.) Kennedy also noted that "the United States is the only nation that imposes life without parole sentences on juvenile non-homicide offenders."

Although five justices agreed with Kennedy that Graham's sentence was unjust, only four agreed that the court should establish a categorical rule prohibiting life in prison for juveniles convicted of anything less than murder. But Kennedy persuasively argued that the alternative to a blanket prohibition is to trust the "discretionary, subjective judgment by a judge or jury that the offender is irredeemably depraved." The truth is that the court often establishes so-called bright-line rules — think of the Miranda warning — to ensure that constitutional rights are protected.

This decision poses a question that the court didn't squarely address: If the state may not execute juveniles or imprison them for life for crimes other than murder, why is it constitutional to sentence juveniles convicted of murder to life in prison without parole? That practice may not be as unusual as the one struck down on Monday, but it's just as cruel. We hope that when a case raising this question presents itself, the court will conclude that even a minor who commits the worst crime possible isn't necessarily "irredeemably depraved."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-juveniles-20100519,0,5817999,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Grim Milestone: 1,000 Americans Dead

He was an irreverent teenager with a pregnant girlfriend when the idea first crossed his mind: Join the Army, raise a family. She had an abortion, but the idea remained. Patrick S. Fitzgibbon, Saint Paddy to his friends, became Private Fitzgibbon. Three months out of basic training, he went to war.

From his outpost in the Kandahar Province of Afghanistan , he complained to his father about shortages of cigarettes, Skittles and Mountain Dew. But he took pride in his work and volunteered for patrols. On Aug. 1, 2009, while on one of those missions, Private Fitzgibbon stepped on a metal plate wired to a bomb buried in the sunbaked earth. The blue sky turned brown with dust.

The explosion instantly killed Private Fitzgibbon, 19, of Knoxville, Tenn., and Cpl. Jonathan M. Walls, a 27-year-old father from Colorado Springs. An hour later, a third soldier who was helping secure the area, Pfc. Richard K. Jones, 21, of Roxboro, N.C., died from another hidden bomb. The two blasts wounded at least 10 other soldiers.

On Tuesday, the toll of American dead in Afghanistan passed 1,000, after a suicide bomb in Kabul killed at least five United States service members. Having taken nearly seven years to reach the first 500 dead, the war killed the second 500 in fewer than two. A resurgent Taliban active in almost every province, a weak central government incapable of protecting its people and a larger number of American troops in harm's way all contributed to the accelerating pace of death.

The mayhem of last August, coming as Afghans were holding national elections, provided a wake-up call to many Americans about the deteriorating conditions in the country. Forty-seven American G.I.'s died that month, more than double the previous August, making it the deadliest month in the deadliest year of the war.

In many ways, Private Fitzgibbon typified the new wave of combat deaths. American troops are dying younger, often fresh out of boot camp, military records show. From 2002 to 2008, the average age of service members killed in action in Afghanistan was about 28; last year, it dropped to 26. This year, the more than 125 troops killed in combat were on average 25 years old.

In the last two years, the number of troops killed by homemade bombs, which the military calls improvised explosive devices , or I.E.D.'s, increased significantly. Earlier in the war, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire took the largest number of American lives. But in 2008, for the first time, more than half of American combat deaths were the result of I.E.D.'s, which — just as they did in Iraq — have become both more powerful and more plentiful in Afghanistan.

Those I.E.D. deaths have increasingly come in batches: Last August, for instance, 17 of the 25 deaths caused by I.E.D.'s — including the one that killed Private Fitzgibbon and Corporal Walls — involved attacks in which more than one soldier or Marine died. In future histories, the summer of 2009 may stand as a turning point in the war, a moment when not only the American public began paying attention again to Afghanistan, but when the Obama administration felt compelled to review and revise its entire approach to the war.

The warm months have long been the prime fighting season in Afghanistan, when insurgents have emerged from mountain havens to plot ambushes and recruit new fighters. But in the weeks before the August presidential elections last year, the Taliban's reach was wider and more potent than at any time since they were driven from power.

Not only did the number of I.E.D. attacks and suicide bombings jump, but the devices themselves became more powerful, capable of flipping or tearing holes into heavily armored vehicles that had once seemed impervious. A bomb estimated at 2,000 pounds killed seven American soldiers and their interpreter riding in a troop carrier last fall.

July, August, September and October went on record as the four deadliest months for American troops since the war began.

After receiving an alarming report about the war from his top commander in Afghanistan, President Obama last fall ordered 30,000 more troops into the war, most of whom will be in place by this summer.

But in calling for more troops, Mr. Obama and other supporters of the new surge warned that casualties, American and Afghan, were almost certain to rise before security improved. The fierce fighting in Helmand Province this year has proved them right, with 16 combat dead in February, compared with just 2 the previous February.

“If the Taliban has obtained political control over important parts of the country, the only way it will get better is if we introduce military forces and contest their control,” said Steven Biddle, a defense policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations who was part of a group that reviewed American strategy last summer. “And that's going to get people killed: their people, our people and civilians.”

Good Days and Bad

They did not know each other well. But the three soldiers from Charlie Company, First Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division out of Fort Carson, Colo., shared a few things in common. All had weathered the breakup of their parents' marriages. None liked school much. And all viewed the Army as a path to a better life.

Pfc. Richard K. Jones had been a star high school wrestler in Person, N.C., near the Virginia border. All arms and legs at 6-foot-2 and 152 pounds, he made it to the state championships one year. The sport gave his life discipline, his mother said, and he thought the Army would be the perfect place to channel it.

His mother, Franceen Ridgeway, prevailed on him to try college instead. But after earning an associate's degree and working as a diesel mechanic for a short time, he asked his mother to support his military ambitions. She consented, saying, “Maybe it's what God wants you to do.”

He graduated from basic training in late January 2009 and was in Afghanistan by May. In one firefight, Private Jones fell and dislocated his shoulder. But the medics popped it back in, gave him a few days off and then returned him to duty.

“He wasn't into death or dying,” Ms. Ridgeway said. “To him, it was an honor to be a soldier. And it was a chance to see the world, to get away from a small town. Maybe he was thinking he might never have that opportunity again.”

Cpl. Jonathan Walls was the son of a Navy man, but he played soldier from the time he could hold a toy gun, his mother, Lisa Rowe, said. In the woods outside Reading, Pa., he spent innumerable hours hunting, target shooting and playing paintball. After high school, he tried community college and worked at a Lowe's. But only the military captured his imagination, and he enlisted in 2005. By 2007, he was in Iraq.

Roadside bombs there gave him a mild traumatic brain injury , Ms. Rowe said, and he returned home suffering migraine headaches that made it difficult to sleep. Nevertheless, he received orders to deploy to Afghanistan, arriving there last May, three months after the birth of his third child.

“I thought they might not send him so that his brain could simmer down,” Ms. Rowe said. “But we're in a time of war. He said, ‘Ma, it's my duty.' ”

On the day before Charlie Company deployed last summer, Private Fitzgibbon took a bunch of soldiers to a strip club near Fort Carson, running up a $3,400 tab that his father paid off. It was typical Patrick. Charmingly roguish, he wore his hair in a brightly tinted Mohawk, drilled holes the size of nickels into his ear lobes and posted comedic homemade videos on YouTube. The military did not seem a natural fit.

But after his girlfriend got pregnant two years ago, he vowed to support her and the child by joining the Army. He was devastated when she had an abortion, his father said, and decided to enlist anyway. Boot camp changed him.

“He went from not caring about nothing to knowing he had responsibilities,” his father, Donald Fitzgibbon, 39, said. “All in a matter of months.”

The day the three men died began with a reconnaissance patrol along dirt paths lined by grape arbors in a place called Mushan Village. By 8:30 a.m., the temperature was already over 100 degrees. After resting in the shade of a mud-brick compound, the soldiers gave brief chase to a pair of suspicious-looking men. But their sergeant ordered them to fall back, worrying about an I.E.D. trap. A few minutes later, Private Fitzgibbon stepped on the pressure plate.

One of the first medics on the scene was Private Fitzgibbon's best friend in the unit. For weeks afterward, the medic felt ripped by guilt because he could not save Private Fitzgibbon or Corporal Walls. Mr. Fitzgibbon tried to ease his grief, telling him, “God knows when it's your turn.”

Now and again the private's father consoles himself with the same thought.

“I feel he would have died whether he was here or in Afghanistan, and that gives me peace with it,” Mr. Fitzgibbon said. “But I still have my good days and bad days.”

‘A Resilient Insurgency'

Just as Private Fitzgibbon's platoon was making its first forays into Kandahar Province last year, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal , the top American commander in Afghanistan, was dispatching a team of experts to review American strategy.

As the group traveled the country last June, they were troubled by how little American intelligence officers seemed to know about local conditions, some of the members said in interviews later. The Taliban had established shadow governors in many provinces and were waging intimidation campaigns against village leaders who defied them.

Yet American commanders did not seem to have answers to some basic questions, group members said. How many district governors spend the nights in their districts? How many police checkpoints are manned on a given day? No one seemed to know.

To many on the panel, the poor intelligence was a sign that American forces could not secure their operating areas and lacked strong relationships with local leaders.

Their final report, endorsed by General McChrystal, concluded that “the situation in Afghanistan is serious” and that American forces faced “a resilient and growing insurgency.”

The solution, many panel members felt, was to increase the presence of American troops. They argued that the situation could be reversed with a new commitment to protecting population centers, a strategy known as counterinsurgency.

Not all of the members agreed. Some argued that sending more troops would simply increase civilian casualties and ultimately aid Taliban recruiting.

“McChrystal's assessment of what went wrong is accurate but his solution is 180-degrees wrong,” said one of the dissenters, Luis Peral, a research fellow at the European Union 's Institute for Security Studies in Paris, in a recent interview.

But that view did not prevail. Under General McChrystal's signature, the final report landed on Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates 's desk on Aug. 30.

The next day, three more American soldiers died in southern Afghanistan.

‘To Grow Me Up'

Pfc. Jordan M. Brochu was one of them.

An adopted child, he had lived in many places but carried himself with a confidence, some said swagger, that belied the disruptions in his life. Perhaps it was his build: 6-foot-1 and muscular, he was a natural athlete who threw the discus for the first time as a senior in high school yet still qualified for the state championships.

But he had another side as well, writing poetry, playing the violin — lovingly, if not proficiently — and cooking. He considered becoming a chef, but jobs were scarce in western Maine, where he attended high school. So upon graduating in 2008, he chose the Army, “to help make a difference and to grow me up,” he declared on his MySpace page.

Before deploying to Afghanistan last year, his culinary arts teacher asked him for a photograph to hang in the classroom as a reminder of the war. With a smile and a touch of bravado, Private Brochu declined.

“Don't stress it, Mr. B,” he told the teacher, Eric Botka. “I'll see you when I get home.”

On Aug. 31, while Private Brochu was on foot patrol in the Arghandab River Valley of Kandahar Province, a mine detonated and killed him at the age of 20, along with another soldier, Specialist Jonathan D. Welch. Before the day was over, a third soldier from their unit, the First Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment out of Fort Lewis, Wash., would be killed. By this week, the battalion had lost 21 soldiers in Afghanistan in less than a year.

Raised in Orange County, Calif., Specialist Welch, 19, was from a close-knit, deeply Christian family. But he rebelled in his freshman year of high school, drinking heavily, using methamphetamine and living on the streets for weeks before his parents sent him to a rehabilitation clinic in Mexico.

When he was 17, Specialist Welch and a good friend decided to visit a military recruiting station. His friend joined the Navy but Specialist Welch chose the Army, declaring, “I just want to shoot a gun.” His parents grudgingly consented.

“You see your child so lost with the drugs, and then you see him saying: ‘I'm passionate about this,' ” recalled his father, Ben Storll, 47. “The only thing he was passionate about before was punk rock music.”

In Afghanistan, he became close to his fire team leader, Sgt. Drew McComber, who was badly wounded in the explosion that killed Specialist Welch. In a letter to the specialist's parents, Sergeant McComber described the soldier as his “go-to guy for everything.”

“Thank you so much for supporting him through his wilder days when he was younger,” Sergeant McComber wrote from his hospital bed. “I've seen the pictures. He certainly has come a long ways in a very short time.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/us/19dead.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Inspectors Find Fraud at Centers for Children

Federal undercover investigators found workers at federally financed child care centers frequently misrepresenting information about applicants' job status and earnings to fraudulently register ineligible children, the Government Accountability Office said in a report issued Tuesday.

The investigators posed as parents or guardians of fictitious children and used bogus pay stubs and other documents to seek to register for day care services at Head Start centers, the report said. In 8 of 15 undercover tests, employees lied on federal forms about the applicants' family income and other information to gain approval for the ineligible children, the report said.

An employee at one New Jersey Head Start center disregarded $23,000 worth of income to qualify a too-affluent, fictitious family the undercover agents were seeking to register.

“Now you see it, now you don't,” the New Jersey employee told the investigators, referring to the $23,000 in income, the G.A.O. report said.

Head Start, an agency of the Health and Human Services Department with a budget of about $9 billion this year, provides child care and other services to nearly one million children nationwide. To be eligible, children must be from families whose incomes do not exceed 130 percent of the poverty level, or about $28,600 a year for a family of four.

Examining records at one nonprofit Head Start center in Texas, federal investigators found that the center had enrolled two families with incomes higher than $110,000, the report said.

“The system is vulnerable to fraud,” Gregory Kutz, the G.A.O.'s managing director for special investigations, told the House education committee in a hearing on Tuesday.

Investigators carried out their undercover inquiries at 13 Head Start centers in California, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin and Washington, D.C. In an initial inquiry after two calls to a G.A.O. fraud hot line, investigators found fraud and abuses at two additional centers, one in the Midwest and one in Texas. Mr. Kutz said in an interview that he could not identify the Midwestern state or the names of any of the centers because the investigation was continuing.

The G.A.O. will soon refer the Head Start findings to the inspector general's office at the Health and Human Services Department for its consideration for a criminal inquiry, Mr. Kutz said.

The report and the hearing left unclear just how widespread the fraudulent practices may be. The investigation found fraud in more than half of all the centers it examined. But those were only a tiny fraction of the 1,600 or so nonprofit operators that receive Head Start money to run more than 3,000 programs.

Republicans on the House committee called for a broader investigation .

“The G.A.O. has brought to light a disturbing pattern of abuse,” said Representative Judy Biggert, Republican of Illinois.

In a letter to the committee , Kathleen Sebelius , the secretary of health and human services, said that President Obama had been briefed on the investigation and that her agency had begun its own internal investigation and would make unannounced visits to Head Start centers.

One in five preschool children live in poverty, but less than half of the children eligible for Head Start are able to receive federally funded child care because of the agency's long waiting lists.

“That's why it's vital that Head Start enrollment procedures are followed and that taxpayer dollars are used as intended,” Representative George Miller, a California Democrat and chairman of the committee, said in opening the hearing .

Minutes later, Mr. Kutz played videotapes in which various employees at Head Start centers, unaware that they were being taped, were seen conversing casually with the undercover investigators about how they would lie on the federal applications.

After viewing the video, Mr. Miller sought to confirm with Mr. Kutz that it had shown “people in different programs appearing to doctor the income requirements.”

“I wouldn't say appearing to,” Mr. Kutz replied. “I'd say they did. They committed fraud.”

Mr. Kutz said the motivation for the employees' behavior was not entirely clear. In some cases, it appeared that the management of the nonprofit agencies receiving Head Start money were pressuring employees to lie on the applications to make sure the agencies met enrollment targets.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/education/19headstart.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Virginia: University Faulted in Rampage

The United States Department of Education says Virginia Tech failed to comply with campus security laws during a 2007 shooting rampage that left 33 people dead, including the gunman. The university released the department's preliminary finding and its response on Tuesday. It disputes the department's finding that it violated the Clery Act's requirement of a “timely warning” to the campus when crimes or threats are reported. The university has previously been criticized for not notifying the campus of the shootings sooner.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/us/19brfs-UNIVERSITYFA_BRF.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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From the White House

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Today, the call to end distracted driving goes global

Cross-posted from DOT Blog .

This is a big day. Later this morning, I'll be at the United Nations in New York, joining Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, and Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin in launching a Global Call to Action on Ending Distracted Driving.

You know, 65 years ago, delegates from 50 countries pledged that they would join together to promote the safety and security of all people.

In so doing, they established a remarkable institution, the UN.

And in that same spirit, Secretary General Ban, Ambassadors Rice and Churkin, and I are joining forces and issuing this global call. We'll be joined by FocusDriven founder and President Jennifer Smith who brings with her today Jacy Good , an extraordinary advocate on this issue.

Why are we coming together on this issue?  Why now ?

Because, during the last few years, distracted driving has evolved from a dangerous practice to a deadly epidemic. In the United States, it's an epidemic because everyone has a mobile device--and everyone thinks they can use it safely behind the wheel.

Well, we've learned. They can't. 

Tragedy after tragedy affirms that fact. In the US alone, distracted driving resulted in nearly 6,000 deaths and more than half a million injuries in 2008--every one of them completely preventable.

As I've said before, the victims of these crashes aren't just statistics. They're parents who lost children, children who lost parents.

When we think of the world's leading causes of death, we think of diabetes or HIV/AIDS, malaria or tuberculosis. But distracted driving is quickly spreading, making its tragic mark around the world. In this era of multitasking and hyperconnectivity, distracted driving isn't just another risk. It's one of the world's most overlooked public safety crises.

Today, we begin working together to end that crisis .In the US, 25 states have prohibited text messaging while driving; six states and the District of Columbia have also prohibited talking on hand-held mobile phones.

Many other governments are also attempting to eradicate distracted driving. To date, 32 countries --including Brazil, France, Japan, Jordan, Spain, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and Zambia--have passed laws that restrict drivers' use of hand-held devices. Portugal has outlawed all phone use -- hand-held or hands-free -- in the driver's seat.

Today, Secretary General Ban will announce a directive barring the UN Secretariat's 40,000 employees from text messaging while operating vehicles on official business. This measure is similar to an executive order President Obama signed last year banning nearly 4 million federal employees from texting behind the wheel.

But getting new regulations on the books and ensuring that police write tickets will be effective only if people around the world understand that distracted driving is both dangerous and irresponsible. Our global call to action is as much about mobilizing people as it is about moving governments and businesses.

That's why we're also asking leaders to educate their citizens through aggressive public outreach and media campaigns.

And we're pleased to model that call for outreach with our " Tweet heard 'round the world " and " Facebook wall scrawl " events. So, if you're on Twitter or Facebook, please post this message:

The global call to end distracted driving--how will you respond? Hang up. Put it down. Just drive. #gcedd

And please share these events with your Facebook friends and your Twitter followers. Participation is easy, and it can save lives.

This is the global call, and we are responding. Won't you please join us? 

Ray LaHood is the Secretary of Transportation

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/05/19/today-call-end-distracted-driving-goes-global

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From the Department of Justice

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An immigration judge in Philadelphia has ordered the removal of Anton Geiser, a resident of Sharon, Pa., who served as an armed SS guard at three Nazi concentration camps in Germany during World War II, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division.

In a 14-page decision, U.S. Immigration Judge Charles M. Honeyman ordered Geiser, 85, removed to Austria, the country from which he immigrated to the United States after World War II. Judge Honeyman found that Geiser is removable under the 1978 Holtzman Amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act because he assisted in Nazi-sponsored persecution. The decision noted that, through counsel, Geiser had, "generally admitted all of the factual allegations" in the government's charging document.

In an earlier civil denaturalization prosecution that resulted in the 2006 revocation of Geiser's U.S. citizenship by a federal district court judge in Pittsburgh, Geiser admitted under oath that he served as an armed SS Death's Head guard at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, near Berlin, Germany, for most of 1943. Geiser admitted that while on duty at Sachsenhausen, he escorted forced laborers to and from work sites, guarded prisoners from an SS watch tower and was under standing orders to shoot any prisoner attempting to escape. Geiser also admitted that he served as an armed guard at Buchenwald Concentration Camp and its Arolsen subcamp from mid-November 1943 until April 11, 1945. At Buchenwald and Arolsen, Geiser was under orders to shoot anyone attempting to escape. Geiser admitted that he escorted prisoners from Buchenwald to Arolsen and then evacuated prisoners from Arolsen back to Buchenwald when the Nazis abandoned the latter camp near the war's end.

"As a Nazi concentration camp guard during World War II, Anton Geiser must be held to account for his role in the persecution of countless men, women and children," said Assistant Attorney General Breuer. "The long passage of time will not diminish our resolve to deny refuge to such individuals."

Geiser immigrated to the United States from Austria in October 1956 and was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in March 1962. His citizenship was revoked by federal district court order in 2006 on the basis of the court's finding that Geiser "clearly assisted in the persecution of people because of race, religion and national origin" and therefore was legally barred from receiving the visa issued to him to come to the United States.

"Without Anton Geiser and other members of the SS Death's Head guard battalions, the Nazi concentration camp system could not have accomplished its diabolical objectives," said Eli M. Rosenbaum, Director of Human Rights Enforcement Strategy and Policy in the Human Rights and Special Prosecution Section (HRSP).

The Department of Justice's Criminal Division announced the formation of HRSP on March 30, 2010, as part of the U.S. government's efforts to bring human rights violators to justice and deny those violators safe haven in the United States. The new section represents a merger of the Criminal Division's Domestic Security Section (DSS) and Office of Special Investigations (OSI).

The Geiser case is a result of the Justice Department's continuing efforts to identify, investigate and take legal action against former participants in Nazi crimes of persecution who reside in the United States. Since the 1979 inception of the department's program to detect and remove Nazi persecutors, it has won cases against 107 individuals. In addition, more than 180 suspected participants in Axis crimes of persecution who sought to enter the United States have been blocked from doing so, through Department of Justice efforts in coordination with the Departments of State and Homeland Security.

The removal case against Geiser was litigated by Senior Litigation Counsel Susan L. Siegal and Senior Trial Attorneys Christina Giffin and Edgar Chen of the Criminal Division's HRSP. The Philadelphia office of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) provided assistance in this case. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania provided assistance in the denaturalization litigation.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/May/10-crm-586.html

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From Ice

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ICE Senior Special Agent Ellen Pierson's long ride in honor of fallen Officer Mark Parker

In honor of 2010 National Police Week, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Senior Special Agent (SSA) Ellen Pierson traveled from Jacksonville Beach, Fla., to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial (NLEOM) in Washington, D.C. Her mode of transportation -- bicycle.

Pierson clocked 1,200 miles, beginning the morning of April 30. Pierson, ICE SSA Jay Ferreria and ICE Resident Agent in Charge Kirk Lockwood are considered "long riders." ICE SSA Stephen Lewis joined them in Portsmouth, Va., and the four agents completed their journey to the NLEOM as part of the Police Unity Tour (PUT).

Pierson has participated in the tour since 2001, four years after it was initiated by a New Jersey police officer as a way to bring public awareness to law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty. Pierson said PUT participants come from all over the U.S. and even England to participate. They are "federal, state and local athletes and 'donut eaters' who all care about the officers who have fallen," Pierson said.

Each cyclist wears a bracelet engraved with the name of an officer who was lost that year. This year, Pierson's bracelet bore the name of Mark Parker, an Orange County Sheriff's Office (OCSO) corrections officer, later made honorary deputy. Pierson said, "I had the pleasure of serving in the OCSO Explorer Program with Mark and, this year, I am riding in his honor."

Pierson related events on January 10, 1984, that forever changed the life of Mark Parker, 19 years old at the time. Parker was on duty at the Orange County Courthouse in Orlando, Fla. A suspect entered the courthouse intending to shoot a police officer who had given him a traffic ticket. The suspect opened fire. He mortally wounded one officer, killed another and shot at the judge, but missed. Exiting the courtroom through a hallway, the suspect exchanged shots with another deputy. Parker, who was unarmed, was caught in the crossfire as he was shielding citizens. The injury left Parker a quadriplegic. He required round-the-clock care for the remainder of his life.

On March 19, 2009, after 25 years of fighting through the many trials of paralysis, Mark succumbed to his injuries. "I attended Mark's memorial service and listened to the stories told by friends, family and law enforcement officers," Pierson said.

"We are all aware of the courage Mark displayed on that horrible day but what was even more moving is how Mark had lived after the incident. Given all of the difficulties he faced every day, Mark smiled continuously, never complained and never asked 'why me.' Rather, he sought opportunities to volunteer, enjoyed many hobbies and lobbied for improved benefits for public safety employees injured in the line of duty," Pierson said.

This year, the PUT raised $1.1 million. The funding will be used to make necessary restorations to the NLEOM.

Read more about SSA Pierson's personal experiences and her dedication and involvement in the annual tour to honor fallen officers.

Read more about ICE's activities honoring fallen agents and officers during National Police Week .

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1005/100518washingtondc.htm

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