Iran nuclear scientist drops clue about his disappearance last year

Shahram Amiri says he was 'not completely free, not completely in jail.' Intelligence experts say his remarks suggest he defected; he may have asked to leave the U.S. because he missed his family.

By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times

July 14, 2010

Reporting from Beirut

Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri headed back to Tehran on Wednesday after dropping a cryptic and perhaps inadvertent clue about his mysterious odyssey since disappearing more than a year ago.

"I was in a unique situation: not completely free, not completely in jail," he said in an interview broadcast on Iranian state television. "It is difficult to explain."

For more than a year, Amiri has been at the center of a murky and clandestine tug of war between Tehran and Washington. The case blew open when Amiri showed up Monday evening, apparently escorted by U.S. security officials, at the small Iranian interests section of the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, where he asked to return to his homeland.

It remains impossible to know whether Amiri was kidnapped during a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia last year, as Iranians contend, and subjected to extreme psychological pressure by American officials hoping to extract nuclear secrets, or if, as American officials insist, he voluntarily defected but eventually yearned to return home to his family.

Amiri's televised remark, international intelligence experts say, conjures up the image of a classic defection, in which a foreign national is kept in safe houses under strict official supervision while undergoing weeks of grueling debriefings.

"If he came here of his own free will, as a quid pro quo, then we need to talk to you," said a former CIA analyst, who has himself debriefed defectors. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.

"These debriefings are fairly intensive and involve long hours. Certainly he can't walk around town," he said. "He would be kept out of sight. There would be people to protect him and make sure he's not doing anything stupid."

Western experts say Amiri is almost certainly a defector and not a victim of kidnapping because the information gleaned from someone forced to talk under such circumstances would be suspect.

"If you put pressure on someone like this it's very difficult to have good information," said Eric Denece, a former French intelligence analyst who heads the Center for Intelligence Studies in Paris.

Rather, Amiri was probably afforded the five-star treatment of a prized defector for his knowledge of Iran's steadily expanding nuclear infrastructure. Washington has vowed to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weaponry, a goal Tehran denies it is pursuing.

Very possibly, analysts said, Amiri was approached by or reached out to U.S. or other Western intelligence services long before he disappeared in the spring of 2009.

He may have handed tidbits of information to his handlers before his trip to the U.S. But after living the exciting life of an overseas spy, being stuck in a town such as Tucson, where Amiri had claimed he was being held in videotapes posted to the Internet, must have seemed a major drop in stature.

"This debriefing process takes a long, long time," said the former CIA analyst. "It's not glamorous in films like, 'Here, take the microfiche and run away.' These are exhausting, endless interviews."

He added, "When you're in touch overseas you're treated in a very special away. When you come here it's kind of a letdown. It's time to produce."

As a relatively low-level scientist within Iran's nuclear institutions, working as a radioisotope researcher for the nation's Atomic Energy Organization, Amiri probably didn't have access to the most sensitive aspects of Iran's nuclear program. But because of his job and his affiliation with a university close to the Revolutionary Guard, he could have provided important intelligence about the milieu in which the foot soldiers of Iran's nuclear program operated.

"He probably gave a lot of information about the physical and social context of the nuclear program and the psychological mentality of the people, which could be useful to help recruit people later," Denece said.

After a while, though, Amiri probably outlived his usefulness and was urged to move on with his life.

"Such a scientist is just interesting for three or four months," Denece said. "After that he's of no interest. It's not an asset of very high value."

That's when trouble may have started for Amiri, whose wife and child remained in Iran, analysts said.

Instead of taking up a fellowship at a think tank or embarking on his version of the American dream, Amiri appears to have grown increasingly anxious in the U.S. He posted a series of bizarre and contradictory Internet videos last spring in which he claimed he was either imprisoned under duress, demanding to return to Iran, or just studying in the U.S. Iranian officials clamored for his return.

By the time he showed up Monday at the diplomatic outpost in northwest Washington, he probably had been extensively debriefed about the risks to himself and to his family of returning to Iran, analysts said.

"Obviously this has been preceded by a lot of, 'I'm not happy,' " said the former CIA analyst. "His handlers probably threw up their hands and said, 'Fine, this is your decision.' "

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-amiri-20100715,0,3059693,print.story

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Iran denies that returned citizen is nuclear scientist

Shahram Amiri, standing beside an Iranian official, says he was kidnapped and psychologically tortured in an attempt to get false testimony against Tehran. He says he has no 'expertise in any nuclear domain.'

By Borzou Daragahi

July 15, 2010

Reporting from Beirut

Iran says the man at the center of a murky intelligence caper -- stretching from the deserts of Saudi Arabia to the strip malls of Tucson to the diplomatic outposts of Washington and back to Tehran -- is a nobody, a simple researcher with no special knowledge of the country's nuclear program.

Shahram Amiri, whose plane landed in Tehran on Thursday, had been described by Iranians up until now as a radio isotope scientist employed by the nation's Atomic Energy Organization, as well as an affiliate of an elite university that turns out specialists for the Revolutionary Guard. In a report Thursday, the Washington Post cited unnamed U.S. officials as saying Amiri had been paid $5 million for defecting and cooperating with American intelligence.

But Hassan Qashqavi, a deputy foreign minister appearing alongside Amiri at a press briefing this morning, insisted that Amiri knew nothing about Iran's nuclear program.

"We deny that Amiri is a nuclear scientist," said Qashqavi. "Amiri is a researcher at one of Iran's universities."

In appearances Thursday on the Al Jazeera news channel and Iranian state television, Amiri insisted that he had been kidnapped, psychologically tortured and grilled for information in an attempt to forge intelligence against Iran.

"I can say for sure that I was kidnapped by the CIA with the assistance of Saudi Arabia, and this is definitely what happened," he told Al Jazeera. "Over 14 months, I was subjected to several kinds of pressure inside America."

He added that he did not have "any expertise in any nuclear domain or anything else pertinent to the military nuclear domain."

Still, of the hundreds of Iranians who run into trouble abroad every year, only those connected to elite circles are mentioned constantly by top officials and receive hero's welcomes when they arrive home.

U.S. officials say the 32- or 33-year-old Amiri came to America on his own volition and left after he became either homesick or worried for his wife and child in Iran. They have dismissed his claim of being kidnapped as an ill-conceived ruse meant to smooth his way back into the graces of Iranian authorities.

Sitting at a press briefing alongside Qashqavi, Amiri said in comments broadcast on state television that he was drugged and forced to go to the United States on a military plane. Once in America, he claimed, he was pressured to concoct evidence showing Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons.

"They wanted me to announce in the American media that I had come to seek asylum in the United States of America of my own free will and that in this process of seeking asylum, I handed over to their country some very important documents and files contained in a laptop, including secret documents about Iran's nuclear issue," he said. "By the grace of God, I resisted them."

Iran and the United States are at odds the over ultimate purpose of Iran's nuclear program. Tehran insists that its program is meant only for civilian purposes, but the U.S. and its allies suspect that it aims to acquire nuclear weapons. Even Russia, long a strategic partner of Tehran, has begun to move closer to the American position.

"It is clear that Iran is getting near to possessing a potential which in principle could be used to make a nuclear weapon," Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told Russian state television July 12.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-nuclear-scientist-20100715,0,4558836,print.story

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U.S. home foreclosures reach record high in second quarter

Bank repossessions increased 38% in the second quarter from the same period a year earlier for a record total of 269,952, according to data to be released Thursday by RealtyTrac.

By Alejandro Lazo, Los Angeles Times

July 15, 2010

The number of U.S. homes taken back by banks through foreclosure hit a record high in the second quarter, even as lenders delayed more homes from entering the process through short sales and loan modification efforts, according to data to be released Thursday.

This growing supply of lender-owned properties could set back the nation's housing recovery but probably won't sink it completely if the nation's employment situation doesn't deteriorate further and the economy begins to pick up steam, experts said. Sales of homes have faltered nationally in recent months with the expiration of government tax incentives for buyers.

U.S. bank repossessions increased 38% in the second quarter from the same period a year earlier for a record total of 269,952, according to Irvine research firm RealtyTrac. That was also a jump of 5% from the previous quarter. If that pace continues through the year, the number of homes taken by banks is likely to top 1 million by the end of 2010, said Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac senior vice president.

"It is almost a certainty that we will see over a million over the course of the year, and that would definitely be a record," he said. "It's serious, but it doesn't appear to be that these levels will crater the housing market if the economy at least stabilizes and we do start to see some job creation."

A total of 895,521 foreclosure notices were filed on U.S. properties during the second quarter, an increase of less than 1% from the same quarter a year earlier and a 4% decrease from the first quarter, according to RealtyTrac. Notices of default — the first stage of the foreclosure process — were down 19% from the same quarter a year earlier and 11% from the first quarter.

"What is happening is that the number of loans that are going into delinquency is abating, but the number of loans that are moving through the foreclosure process is rising," said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Economy.com. "This is because many loans got piled up in the foreclosure process as mortgage servicers tried to figure out all the various loan modification plans and policy efforts to mitigate foreclosure activity. Now, at this point, servicers are figuring out these programs and are starting to push loans through the process."

Because housing has stabilized and banks have improved their financial positions since the start of the financial crisis, regulators are pressing them to get rid of their troubled loans.

"There is growing pressure on the banks to get problem residential loans worked out one way or another," said Bert Ely, an independent banking consultant. "And the sense is that, in most markets, we are through the worst of it to the extent the economy improves at all."

California homes received a total of 192,422 foreclosure filings in the second quarter, a 24% decrease from the same quarter a year earlier and an 11% drop from the first three months of the year. Notices of default were down 43% from the same quarter a year earlier and 15% from the first three months of the year.

California also appears to be bucking the trend in bank seizures, with that number up only 1% at the end of the second quarter from the year-earlier quarter and down 1.5% from the first quarter. That relatively moderate increase in home seizures in the Golden State is probably because banks are purposely postponing the auctions of homes to keep a flood of properties off the market, Sharga said, and will not last forever.

"California might be too saturated, in terms of what the banks are willing to put on their books right now," he said. "You will definitely see it coming later."

"Because of how out of control the prices and lending practices got during the boom, and now because of high levels of unemployment, California is probably going to be at the center of the foreclosure crisis until it's over," Sharga said.

http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-foreclosures-20100715,0,6160652,print.story

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Authorities missed a chance to catch Grim Sleeper suspect

Lonnie David Franklin Jr. was on probation when voters passed Prop. 69 requiring offenders to submit DNA samples. By the time L.A. County got the equipment, he was no longer being supervised.

By Jack Leonard, Los Angeles Times

July 15, 2010

Authorities missed an opportunity years ago to catch the suspected Grim Sleeper serial killer before a final victim was slain, because his DNA was never collected as required under a 2004 law, according to interviews and records reviewed by The Times.

Lonnie David Franklin Jr.'s genetic profile was supposed to be added to the state's DNA databank of offenders because he was on probation for a felony when voters approved Proposition 69, a sweeping expansion of the state's DNA collection.

The Los Angeles County Probation Department was given the task of obtaining DNA samples from tens of thousands of local offenders who were on probation when the law went into effect in November 2004.

But by the time the agency began collecting DNA, Franklin was no longer under its supervision. Thousands of other offenders may also have avoided providing a sample during the same period, officials said.

More than a year later, the Grim Sleeper struck again.

A homeless man found the body of Janecia Peters on South Western Avenue on New Year's Day 2007. The 25-year-old had been shot and covered with a garbage bag. DNA tests helped link her killer to other slayings by the Grim Sleeper dating back to the 1980s.

Her mother, Laverne Peters, said the failure to collect Franklin's DNA reinforced her belief that authorities could have done more to catch the serial killer sooner and prevent her daughter's death.

"Her life could have been possibly saved," Peters said. "That's the part I'm going to think about a lot — if only."

Franklin, 57, was charged last week with 10 murders committed during two separate periods. The first, between 1985 and 1988, claimed the lives of seven women.

The next period began in 2002 with the slaying of 15-year-old Princess Berthomieux. A year later, the body of Valerie McCorvey, 35, was discovered in the Westmont area. DNA collected from the crime scenes linked those two slayings to one of the earlier killings.

The California Department of Justice compares DNA from unsolved cases against its database of offenders once a week, resulting in an average of 300 to 400 cold hit matches each month. But the comparisons never produced a match for the Grim Sleeper killings.

In 2007, the LAPD created a task force of detectives to work exclusively on the crimes. The team painstakingly followed lead after lead, sometimes using unconventional tactics in an effort to solve the killings. At one point, police collected DNA samples from men arrested for soliciting prostitutes in the hopes of finding a genetic match to the assailant.

In the end, Franklin was arrested after a "familial" search of state DNA records indicated that a convicted felon was probably related to the killer. Franklin is the felon's father.

LAPD Det. Dennis Kilcoyne, who heads the department's task force, said police could have linked Franklin to the crimes sooner had his genetic sample been in the state's DNA databank. But he said detectives need to focus on the facts, not dwell on what might have been.

"It's tragic all the way around," Kilcoyne said, "but we can't change it now."

The opportunity to obtain Franklin's DNA was missed in the months it took law enforcement agencies to prepare to collect a huge volume of genetic samples under the 2004 law.

Proposition 69 applied to an array of offenders, including those convicted of any felony after the law passed and those who were on probation for a felony conviction. When the law was approved, Franklin was still serving three years of formal probation after his 2003 conviction for receiving stolen property, a felony.

Guidelines published by the California attorney general's office in March 2005 said probation departments were to collect samples from offenders then under their supervision.

A senior Los Angeles County probation official said it took the state and county time after the law's approval to come up with a plan to fulfill the new requirements. He said the probation department did not have the resources to immediately begin collecting samples and could not start until the agency obtained the necessary equipment and trained its employees.

The delays meant that probation officers did not start collecting DNA until late August 2005. Six weeks earlier, a judge changed Franklin's status so that he was no longer being supervised by a probation officer.

"We [did] not have authority over him," Dave Leone, the probation department's acting deputy director for field services, said.

Leone said that once the necessary equipment was in place his agency aggressively pursued offenders under probation. The department, he said, obtained samples from more than 54,900 offenders.

Leone said it is unclear exactly how many probationers avoided providing a sample because they were no longer under the agency's supervision when DNA collection began. But he estimated that about 13,000 offenders had their probation terminated between November 2004 and August 2005 without giving a swab.

"It's a sad situation," Leone said. "We just need to keep collecting DNA, and hopefully something like this will never happen again."

Rockne Harmon, a retired Alameda County prosecutor and an expert on DNA evidence, said the Grim Sleeper case highlights the need for a robust DNA database of criminal offenders to help solve other crimes.

Although Franklin was no longer on supervised probation after July 2005, he did remain on unsupervised probation for several months. Harmon said that meant he was still legally required to provide a DNA sample if asked.

But Harmon cautioned that many counties had difficulties obtaining DNA from unsupervised offenders on probation as they scrambled to comply with the new law.

"It's a huge logistical challenge," he said. "I have a feeling that this guy would have fallen through the cracks in many places."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-grim-sleeper-dna-20100715,0,1737399,print.story

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Immigration now a top concern among Latinos, poll shows

A nationwide survey of Latinos indicates that the issue now ranks with the economy as the most important. The tough new Arizona law is believed to have triggered the shift.

By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times

July 14, 2010

Latinos now view immigration as their leading concern along with the economy in what activists say is a major shift most likely driven by controversy over Arizona's tough law against illegal immigrants.

Nearly a third of Latinos also believe that racism and prejudice are the central issue in the immigration debate, over national security, job competition and costs of public services for illegal immigrants, according to a national survey released Wednesday.

The poll of 504 Latinos, stratified by region, gender, age, foreign-born status and other factors, was conducted by LatinoMetrics from May 26 to June 8 for the Hispanic Federation and the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC.

The poll found that the vast majority of those surveyed strongly opposed the new Arizona law and strongly supported an immigration policy overhaul providing for a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and deportation of felons. Republican Latinos showed similar views on these issues as Democrats and independents.

The Arizona law, which is scheduled to take effect July 29, requires police to determine the status of people they lawfully stop who they suspect are in the country illegally and makes it a misdemeanor to lack proper immigration documents. The Justice Department recently joined several other organizations in suing Arizona to block enforcement of the law.

"This new poll demonstrates a tremendous shift in the importance that immigration has become for a wide cross-section of the Latino population of the United States," Brent Wilkes, LULAC's executive director, said in a statement. "Latinos have taken offense to the way immigrants have been demonized by politicians and political interest groups and are prepared to vote accordingly."

Activists believe that frustration over the immigration issue will unify and galvanize Latinos of all political stripes into voting in November. The poll showed that 80% of those surveyed said they planned to vote in the midterm election and that two-thirds would back candidates who supported an immigration overhaul.

Four in 10 Latinos surveyed said they would not forgive a politician or party who did not work hard enough for change in immigration policy. Arnoldo Torres, an independent political consultant in Sacramento and onetime advisor to the League of United Latin American Citizens, said that finding carried warnings for both major parties.

"The more strident the Republican Party is, they should not anticipate Hispanics will be voting for them in national or congressional elections," Torres said. "But the reality is that neither party is working hard enough for immigration reform, so both parties will suffer."

The poll results mirror the findings of another new poll of 1,600 Latinos in four states conducted for the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund in June. The results, which will be released next week, also shows immigration topping the list of Latino concerns, according to Arturo Vargas, the group's executive director.

Vargas said that immigration has usually ranked fourth or fifth on the list of Latino concerns, after the economy, education and healthcare. In a December poll by LatinoMetrics, twice as many Latinos cited the economy as their top concern compared with immigration.

"We've never seen this before," he said about the widespread concern over immigration. "Latinos are feeling less optimistic and more under siege."

Vargas said he was particularly concerned by poll data suggesting that Arizona-type laws could endanger public safety. About 30% said they would be less likely to report minor crimes, and about 20% said they would be less likely to report major crimes in the face of such laws.

The poll also found that 45% of Arizona Latinos surveyed had decreased attendance at community festivals and street fairs. About a third reported they did not attend as many Latino concerts and sporting events and rode less frequently in vehicles with other Latinos.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-latino-poll-20100715,0,3166641,print.story

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Norwalk girl kidnapped 6 years ago rescued in Phoenix

The girl was allegedly taken by her three aunts at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Norwalk on Sept. 21, 2003, the Sheriff's Department said.

At the time, the child was in the custody of foster parents. The alleged kidnapping occurred during an approved visit, authorities said.

Detectives began tracking down a number of leads, which ultimately led them to Phoenix, the department said. Detectives, aided by Phoenix police and the FBI, found the child at a home. The girl, now 7, was identified by her birth certificate footprint.

She appeared in good health and was returning with detectives Wednesday evening to Norwalk, according to authorities. The investigation is ongoing, and no arrests have been made.

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

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Man pleads guilty in scheme to kidnap child of wealthy Orange County family

A Santa Ana man pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal kidnapping charges in connection with the plot to kidnap the child of a wealthy Orange County family, authorities said.

As part of the plea deal, Cesar Ariel Zapata-Landeros faces 20 years in federal prison when he is sentenced Sept. 27 in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana.

Zapata-Landeros was indicted March 31 after an investigation by the FBI and Westminster police.

Authorities said Zapata-Landeros, who claimed he was a Tijuana police officer, told an informant that he planned to kidnap a child of a wealthy Orange County family, hide the child in a storage facility and then take the victim to Mexico. 

Federal prosecutors allege that Zapata-Landeros intended to run the mother's car off the road in the Tustin Hills area as she took her children to school. He told the informant he would then demand a $300,000 ransom, threatening to cut off two of the child's fingers and send them to the family if they refused to pay.

He also told the informant he had done security work for the family in the past. The name of the family was not provided in court records, and Zapata-Landeros could not be reached for comment.

The FBI conducted the investigation with the Westminster Police Department. Westminster officers and FBI agents arrested Zapata-Landeros on March 16 about 100 yards from the potential victim's home. The suspect was charged in federal court with solicitation to commit kidnapping for ransom.

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

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LAPD complains about parole officials classifying suspect in police shooting as 'low-level, nonviolent'

The Los Angeles Police Department has asked the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to investigate how a parolee who fired nearly a dozen gunshots at two LAPD officers over the weekend in the San Fernando Valley was able to gain early release and why he was classified as a low-level offender.

In the letter to Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck expressed concern that Javier Joseph Rueda, 28, of Panorama City was placed on "non-revocable parole" in May after serving just two years of a 10-year prison sentence.

"If you determine that there were issues regarding Mr. Rueda's status, we would appreciate your feedback on how we can work with you to ensure that incidents of a similar nature do not occur," Beck wrote.

Paul M. Weber, head of the union that represents nearly 10,000 LAPD officers, was far more critical, calling parole policies -- including the state's early-release program and computerized parole classification system -- a threat to officers.

"We have repeatedly warned for months that it's only a matter of time before the Department of Corrections' ‘non-revocable' parole policy — which pushes prisoners back onto the streets and prevents their return to prison — enables a parolee to kill a police officer or an innocent member of our community," Weber said. "It was only by the sheer grace of God that these officers were not killed by this parolee, who still should have been in prison."

Rueda was shot and killed Saturday after he allegedly got out of his car and opened fire on two officers who had been pursuing him on suspicion of driving under the influence. One officer was shot in the lower arm, and his partner injured his wrist after a fall. 

State records show that Rueda, who police described as a Vineland Boys gang member, was classified as a “low-level, non-violent” parolee" and therefore was not being monitored by parole agents with the corrections department.

Known by the gang monikers "Jayboy" and "Ghost," Rueda was paroled Jan. 25 after serving time for a 2007 conviction on charges that included evading an officer, car theft, possession of a silencer and possession of a controlled substance while armed with a firearm.

In recent months, police officials have said more attention needs to be placed on how parolees are monitored. The law has long required different levels of monitoring for those released from state prison, with violent offenders subject to more rigorous checks, including more frequent visits with their parole agents.

A new law that went into effect this year aimed to cut the state inmate population by about 6,500. The reductions, targeting low-level offenders, are achieved in part through good-behavior credits but also by revising parole rules to stop police agencies from returning nonviolent offenders to prison for minor parole violations.

State parole officials contend that the changes in the law allow their agents to concentrate on the most dangerous offenders. They say the average caseload for each parole agent statewide before the law passed was 70 parolees and that when the law is fully implemented, the number will drop to 48.

State corrections spokesman Oscar Hidalgo said it was possible there was confusion about Rueda's gang status. But he added that that even if Rueda had been on supervised parole, Saturday's events might still have occurred.

"Supervised parole is not incarceration," Hidalgo said.

In addition to the supervision of parolees , law enforcement officials -- including Beck and Weber -- have raised questions about the new computer risk-assessment tool called Parole Violation Decision-Making Instrument.

The program is designed to identify parolees who carry a high risk of violence and who need more attention, as well as lower-risk offenders, whom parole agents would spend less time monitoring and who might be eligible for targeted programs rather than being put back behind bars.

The technology has not been without its issues. Some 600 felons were classified as being at "low risk" of reoffending. Of those, 240 that were granted parole were reclassified and were supervised. Corrections officials said 1,700 agents are currently monitoring more than 108,000 parolees across the state. 

Weber, who wrote the governor last year to slam the computer program , said the entire law mandating early release and parole reclassification should be scrapped.

“We are putting the CDCR on notice now — don't you dare come to an officer's funeral and tell us how sorry you are that one of your parolees, who should have been in prison, killed a police officer," Weber said.  "Your chance to make amends is now, when you can correct the problem before someone else is hurt or killed and scrap a policy that puts officers and the public in danger."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/07/lapd-slams-parole-officials-for-classifying-parolee-in-police-shooting-as-lowlevel-nonviolent.html#more

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Man gets life in prison for raping, killing homeless girl in case that brought scrutiny to D.A.'s three-strikes policy

A man whose murder conviction generated controversy over L.A. County District Atty. Steve Cooley's three-strikes policy was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday for raping and killing a homeless teenage girl.

Two years before the girl's murder, Gilton Beltrand Pitre had been eligible for prosecution under the state's three-strikes law when he was charged with a felony for selling $5 worth of marijuana to an undercover police officer.

His two strikes included a 1994 residential burglary and a 1996 rape.

Under the law, prosecutors could have sought a sentence of 25 years to life in prison. Instead, Pitre was allowed to plead guilty to a drug crime in exchange for a 32-month prison sentence, court records show.

Alyssa Gomez, 15, was killed June 4, 2007, four days after Pitre was released from prison.

During Cooley's campaign for attorney general earlier this year, opponents pointed to Pitre's case as evidence that Cooley's policy was soft on criminals. Under Cooley's policy, prosecutors generally do not pursue life sentences for relatively minor offenses.

Cooley has defended his position, saying justice requires that the punishment should fit the crime. His approach has won widespread support during three successful campaigns for district attorney, but it has also drawn fire from critics who say his policy fails to adequately protect society from repeat offenders.

In Gomez's slaying, prosecutors alleged that Pitre visited the Olive Motel on Sunset Boulevard with the runaway, who had been living on the streets since she was 12. Her body, wrapped in a bedspread from the motel, was discovered the next morning in an alley behind a restaurant.

At Wednesday's hearing, Gomez's sister asked Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy to send Pitre to prison for the rest of his life.

"Please, please never let this happen again," a tearful Elaina Novoa said. "She was a little girl. ... I'm sure he will do it again."

Actress Dyan Cannon, who knew the victim from making a documentary on street kids and runaways in Hollywood, told the judge that Gomez "had a lot of heartbreak and was a good girl."

"She wrote beautiful poetry and sang good songs," Cannon said. "I was with her three days before she was killed. I begged her to go to a place where she could receive help."

Kennedy sentenced Pitre to 75 years to life for murder, 25 years for the statutory rape of the teenager before the slaying and an additional 10 years because of his two prior serious offenses. She noted a security videotape in which Pitre is seen placing Gomez's body in the trunk of his car.

"There is no panic. There is no evidence of regret. ... She was disposed of like a piece of trash," Kennedy said. "Mr. Pitre is one of those people who is a predator."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/07/man-gets-life-in-prison-for-raping-killing-homeless-girl-in-case-scrutinizing-das-threestrikes-polic.html#more

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Great Recession's psychological fallout

From lower birthrates to decreased civic participation and volunteerism, economic downturns have many non-economic effects.

by Doyle McManus

July 15, 2010

The economic effects of the Great Recession have been easy to see: a stock market crash, a sickening drop in home values and household wealth, and the throbbing pain of persistent unemployment.

But a deep recession does more than economic damage. When short-term unemployment turns into long-term unemployment, as it has in this recession to a level unseen since the 1930s, rates of depression (the psychiatric kind) increase, anxiety rises and behavior changes in ways both expected and unexpected.

Take birthrates, for example. They have fallen during the last two years, most sharply in states with high unemployment and mortgage foreclosure rates, like California and Arizona. That's not surprising; couples who are worried about keeping their jobs and their houses are likely to hesitate before expanding their families.

But here's something more surprising: As the recession deepens, participation in civic activities — community organizations, volunteer groups, even church attendance and social clubs — is likely to drop. Sociologists once assumed that during hard times people would naturally band together, if only to protest their plight or to give each other solace. It turns out that the opposite is true: Economic distress causes people to withdraw.

"Rather than get together and hold community meetings or march in protest, the effect of unemployment in the Great Depression was to cause people to hunker down," said Robert D. Putnam, the Harvard sociologist whose book, "Bowling Alone," examines Americans' civic engagement in the 20th century. "We found exactly the same thing in the recessions of the 1970s and 1980s … and I'm pretty confident we'll see the same pattern in this recession too."

Though a few political movements, such as the "tea party," may have been invigorated by the downturn, more broad-based civic organizations such as the League of Women Voters have seen their membership drop.

Why does civic participation drop during hard times? Jennie E. Brand of UCLA studied the ripple effect of unemployment among families in Wisconsin, and she says there are several reasons: People who lose their jobs feel depressed; they sometimes feel ashamed of their financial troubles; they lose some of their trust in society; and some of them move to new communities where they have no ties.

Brand's most important finding is that the social and psychological effects of unemployment can be lifelong, even if the economic distress is only transient.

"People who lost their jobs, even once, were roughly 30% less likely to participate in community activities, and that lasted through their lives," she said of her Wisconsin study. "Twenty years later, they were still less likely to participate."

A study just released by the Pew Research Center suggests that if this recession has a similar effect, the impact on American society could be deep and long.

In a Pew poll, more than half of all adults in the labor force said they have lost a job or suffered a reduction in income because of the recession. Six in 10 said they have cut back on their spending. Almost two-thirds said they don't expect their household finances to recover for at least three years.

That "new frugality" can be seen in economic statistics. Sales of luxury goods have dropped; sales at Wal-Mart have grown. The average size of new homes built dropped 6% between 2007 and 2009.

In the Pew poll, fewer than half the respondents said they expect their children to live better than they do — a significant expression of long-term pessimism. (A decade ago, a solid majority said they expected that their children would live better.)

But the poll also suggests that some people are more pessimistic than others. Younger respondents appeared more confident in the future than their parents. Blacks and Latinos were more optimistic than whites, even though they suffered more from unemployment and loss of household wealth (on a percentage basis). The most pessimistic group was middle-aged, middle-class whites — who presumably lost the most wealth in home values and retirement funds and have the least time to make it up.

The contest between pessimism and optimism has real effects on the way we live. Pessimists don't stimulate the economy by buying new houses or big-ticket consumer goods. Pessimists don't invest money in the stock market. Pessimists, as Putnam and Brand both discovered, don't participate in community-building organizations. Pessimists don't even have babies.

And pessimists vote differently from optimists. In the Pew poll, 55% of Democrats said they expect that their children will enjoy a higher standard of living; only 37% of Republicans shared that faith.

Democrats have consoled themselves with the prospect that the economy will recover smartly during the next two years and that, even if they lose seats in Congress in November, a subsequent recovery will make it easy for President Obama to win reelection in 2012, just as Ronald Reagan won after a deep recession in 1984.

But will the recovery be enough to reduce voters' pervasive pessimism?

The enduring impact of a recession depends on how deep and long it is. "What made the Great Depression so great?" asked William A. Galston of the Brookings Institution. "Depth and duration. Garden-variety recessions have had no permanent effect on public consciousness, but the Great Depression shaped a generation."

This recession has already been more than garden variety. The longer it lasts, the deeper and broader the scars will be.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mcmanus-economy-pessimism-20100715,0,5206014,print.column

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The price of defending terrorists

Former attorney Lynne Stewart faces a steep sentence for violating security requirements in the case of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman.

By Petra Bartosiewicz

July 15, 2010

This week Lynne Stewart, a former attorney who in the tradition of activist lawyers spent her career defending cases of the indigent and politically controversial, will learn if she will be sentenced to die in prison.

The charges against Stewart are related to a long-ago client, the infamous "blind sheik," Omar Abdel Rahman, an Egyptian cleric who in 1995 was convicted of "seditious conspiracy" for encouraging his followers to commit terrorist acts in and around New York City.

Stewart's offense came in 2000, as the case was on appeal. She violated what were at the time a novel set of security requirements known as Special Administrative Measures, or SAMs. The measures included a communications ban on Rahman, which Stewart defied by issuing a news release to Reuters on the sheik's behalf that urged his supporters to reconsider their participation in a cease-fire with the Egyptian government.

As a result, Stewart was disbarred and sentenced to 28 months in prison. Citing the "deadly serious nature of her terrorist crimes," the Justice Department sought a far higher penalty: 15 to 30 years. The outcome of that effort culminated in November when an appellate court upheld the verdict against Stewart, revoked her bond and ordered the original trial judge, U.S. District Judge John G. Koetl, to reconsider his "breathtakingly low" sentence. Koetl's revised sentence is expected at a hearing in federal court in New York on Thursday.

Ever since her indictment in 2002, Stewart's case has captured the attention of defense attorneys and the support of groups such as the National Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which filed amicus briefs on her behalf, and George Soros' Open Society Institute, which donated $20,000 to her defense. Supporters believe the government's dogged pursuit of Stewart — whose legal odyssey has now spanned three presidents and five attorneys general — is meant to have a chilling effect. The Center for Constitutional Rights said the case represents "an attack on attorneys who defend controversial figures and an attempt to deprive these clients of the zealous representation that may be required."

But Stewart's plight has larger implications for us all: It is a bellwether of the increasingly stringent secrecy and security measures imposed in federal courts, particularly in terrorism trials — all part of the systemic erosion of due process that reformers expected would end with the election of Barack Obama, but which has been only further institutionalized. Stewart's case has come to symbolize the increasing difficulty attorneys face in zealously advocating for politically unpopular clients — a necessary component of due process in an adversary legal system.

Critics say SAMs, which, along with a handful of other secrecy measures, have been commonly invoked since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, can cripple an effective defense and violate a defendant's right to confront the evidence against him. Defendants with no prior criminal record are in some cases kept in prolonged solitary confinement for years before reaching trial. In April, Syed Hashmi, a U.S. citizen charged with aiding a terrorist (who later turned out to be a government informant) pleaded guilty on the eve of trial, in part, his attorney later said, because of his nearly four years of pretrial solitary confinement.

Meanwhile attorneys are severely limited in the evidence they can share with outside investigators who are part of the trial team, or even with their own clients. The measures are largely invoked in the name of national security with minimal public scrutiny, and include a near-total ban on information that can be shared with the media, sometimes encompassing material already in the public sphere.

Nearly anything an attorney says can be put under a microscope. Stewart's case shows how intrusive the rules allow the government to be: Her indictment was based on two years of government wiretaps of attorney/client conversations that usually would have been privileged.

Stewart, who grew close to Rahman during his trial and came to see him as a freedom fighter, has said she believed the communique she issued was part of a protected "bubble" within the SAMs. She defends her actions as an attempt to mitigate the near-total isolation of a client who had already been sentenced to life in prison, and was cut off from the world by his blindness and limited to very occasional visits from his attorneys and a once-weekly 15-minute phone call with his wife.

That Stewart violated the SAMs is not now in question. It is her misfortune that her pre-Sept. 11 infraction is being judged and rejudged in a post-Sept. 11 context. Back in 2000, when she conveyed the sheik's communication, terrorism trials and the enhanced security measures that accompany them were still a new phenomenon in the federal courts. Janet Reno, the attorney general under whose watch Stewart's violation of the SAMs occurred, declined to prosecute. Stewart's co-counsel in the Rahman case, former U.S. Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark, stated in court filings in defense of Stewart that he repeatedly violated SAMs and the "U.S. has never complained." Among the infractions were reading newspapers with political content to the sheik and even, like Stewart, issuing a news release on Rahman's behalf. But Clark was never prosecuted, perhaps in part because the communique, which signaled the sheik's initial support for the cease-fire, was more palatable.

Even former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft — who first brought charges against Stewart, calling her a "terrorist lawyer" — has violated gag orders like those imposed under the SAMs. In one of the earliest post-Sept. 11 prosecutions (the case of the Detroit sleeper cell) Ashcroft violated a court-ordered communications ban in the case not once but twice by holding news conferences that relayed inflammatory details about the defendants. After nearly being cited for contempt of court, he got off with a reprimand from the judge.

By seeking what could be tantamount to a death sentence for Stewart, who is now a 70-year-old grandmother, it seems clear the Justice Department is intent on making an example of her. This is not just because she breached the rules but because she has remained largely unapologetic for her transgressions. Stewart, who over three decades represented members of the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers and even said she'd represent Osama bin Laden if given the opportunity, spoke out immediately after her original sentence was handed down in 2006. Standing before the courthouse, she told the media that she could do the 2 1/2 years "standing on my head." When she was finally ordered to prison in November to begin serving that sentence, she told Democracy Now, "I'd like to think I wouldn't do anything differently."

Petra Bartosiewicz is writing a book on terrorism trials in the United States, "The Best Terrorists We Could Find," to be published next year.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-petra-stewart-20100715,0,1344221,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Afghans to Form Local Forces to Fight Taliban

KABUL, Afghanistan — After intensive negotiations with NATO military commanders, the Afghan government on Wednesday approved a program to establish local defense forces that American military officials hope will help remote areas of the country thwart attacks by Taliban insurgents.

Details of the plan are sketchy, but Americans had been promoting the force as a crucial stopgap to combat rising violence here and frustration with the slow pace of training permanent professional security forces — the bottom-line condition for the American military to begin pulling back from an increasingly unpopular war. Many parts of Afghanistan have no soldiers or police officers on the ground.

Over 12 days of talks, Gen. David H. Petraeus , the new NATO commander, overcame the objections of President Hamid Karzai , who had worried that the forces could harden into militias that his weak government could not control. In the end, the two sides agreed that the forces would be under the supervision of the Afghan Interior Ministry, which will also be their paymaster.

“They would not be militias,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon spokesman, at a briefing in Washington on Wednesday. “These would be government-formed, government-paid, government-uniformed local police units who would keep any eye out for bad guys — in their neighborhoods, in their communities — and who would, in turn, work with the Afghan police forces and the Afghan Army, to keep them out of their towns.”

It is, he added, “a temporary solution to a very real, near-term problem.”

The program borrows from the largely successful Awakening groups that General Petraeus created in Iraq, though the two programs would not be identical. Unlike the Iraqi units, the Afghan forces would not be composed of insurgents who had switched sides. They would be similar as a lightly armed, trained and, significantly, paid force in a nation starving for jobs.

In fact, the program runs the risk of becoming too popular — it will create a demand in poor communities around the nation that could turn it into an unwieldy and ineffective job creation program.

While some American officials said the forces could have as many as 10,000 people enrolled, Afghan officials indicated that they wanted to keep them small, especially in the beginning.

Questions remain, too, about whether the Interior Ministry will be able to manage the forces. While the ministry's leadership in Kabul has been working recently to reduce graft, the police at every level are widely viewed as corrupt and, in many places, incompetent.

American military officials said, however, that they would be intimately involved, and that United States Special Forces units, which have created smaller-scale programs locally, especially in southern Afghanistan, would continue to set up and train the forces.

The agreement was hammered out during a particularly violent spasm in the war here. Seven American service members were killed on Tuesday and Wednesday in southern Afghanistan, and one NATO soldier died of wounds received earlier in the week in the unstable south of the country.

The negotiations were an early test for General Petraeus, appointed overall commander in Afghanistan last month, both in pushing a difficult war forward and forging ties with Mr. Karzai, an often prickly and unpredictable partner against the Taliban.

The relatively fast agreement on this new force could give momentum to the general's efforts to work closely with Mr. Karzai's government and move forward on other, still harder issues, including improving Afghan governing skills and decreasing corruption.

Depending on how quickly the program starts running, it could also help NATO forces control the Taliban in areas where there are few NATO soldiers. People close to Mr. Karzai said he had resisted earlier efforts to expand another iteration of the program that was largely created by the Americans and organized by Special Forces units because he feared that it could undercut his government's power and foster the creation of militias.

“We have tribal rivalries, and tribes may think they can benefit from this, and it could strengthen rivals in a village,” Waheed Omar, the spokesman for the Afghan president, said in an interview this week. “We don't want a short-term objective to endanger a long-term objective for security.”

Another worry was creating any government structures reminiscent of the period of Communist rule here, when Muhammad Najibullah, then the president, created local armed forces to help bolster the government's fight against rebels — a move that alienated many Afghans.

This week, General Petraeus offered a new proposal that included a number of elements to help make the program more acceptable to Mr. Karzai. Mr. Omar said that the president was looking for agreement on safeguards to ensure that the program did not get out of control.

It was particularly important to Mr. Karzai that it come under his government's jurisdiction, that the forces be uniformed and that their chain of command run through the Interior Ministry because several other local forces created during nearly nine years of war here had only a tangential relationship to the Afghan authorities — or undermined them.

The new Afghan forces will be armed, but their role will be “purely defensive,” said a senior NATO official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

“In some cases people may bring their own stuff, but part of the goal of getting government support is to standardize equipment,” he said. “They will be armed and equipped and trained to defend their communities.”

Community defense has deep cultural roots in Afghanistan, where local men form village watch groups to keep out foes. The hope is that villagers will be comfortable with the new units because they are familiar with the concept.

There are now several different semiofficial armed forces operating in the country; they would all be “gradually disbanded and reintegrated” into a single new force named the Local Police Force, according to a statement released Wednesday by the Afghan National Security Council .

One major risk of the program, which all sides tacitly acknowledge, is that it will multiply the number of well-armed people in Afghanistan, which even with safeguards could foster fighting rather than quell it.

For that reason, perhaps, both Mr. Karzai's administration and the American military are describing it as a short-term remedy to the problem of a lack of police officers and soldiers in many areas of the country.

“Our position has been to develop a solution that bridges between having nothing and having Afghan National Police, and this program does that,” said the senior NATO official. “So it's a good development and especially so since it has consensus within the Afghan government and the ownership that come with that,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/world/asia/15afghan.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Health Plans Must Provide Some Tests at No Cost

WASHINGTON — The White House on Wednesday issued new rules requiring health insurance companies to provide free coverage for dozens of screenings, laboratory tests and other types of preventive care.

The new requirements promise significant benefits for consumers — if they take advantage of the services that should now be more readily available and affordable.

In general, the government said, Americans use preventive services at about half the rate recommended by doctors and public health experts.

The rules will eliminate co-payments, deductibles and other charges for blood pressure , diabetes and cholesterol tests; many cancer screenings; routine vaccinations ; prenatal care; and regular wellness visits for infants and children.

Other services that must be offered at no charge include counseling to help people stop smoking ; screening and counseling for obesity ; and tests for infection with the virus that causes AIDS .

“Getting rid of cost-sharing is a long-overdue step in the right direction,” said Kenneth E. Thorpe , a professor of health policy at Emory University in Atlanta. “But we will have to do a major public education campaign to get people to take advantage of these clinical preventive services.”

The rules stipulate that no co-payments can be charged for tests and screenings recommended by the United States Preventive Services Task Force , an independent panel of scientific experts. The rules apply to new health plans that begin coverage after Sept. 23 and to existing health plans that make significant changes after that date. The administration said the requirements could increase premiums by 1.5 percent, on average.

Kathleen Sebelius , the secretary of health and human services, said the rules would extend benefits to 31 million people in new employer-sponsored plans and 10 million people in new individual plans next year.

In many cases, insurers will be allowed to charge for goods and services needed to treat a condition detected in a screening. For example, consumers can receive free screenings for depression and high cholesterol, but they might be charged co-payments for antidepressants and cholesterol-lowering drugs.

In some cases, the task force has specified how frequently a service, like colonoscopy , should be performed. If the guidelines are silent, the rules say, an insurer may use “reasonable medical management techniques to determine the frequency” of services.

The administration is working on a supplemental list of free preventive services for women.

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America says insurance plans should be required to cover contraceptives without co-payments.

“For women, what could be more basic preventive care than birth control ?” asked Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood .

Other services that must be provided without charge include genetic counseling for certain women with a family history of breast cancer , counseling to promote breast-feeding by new mothers and screening for osteoporosis in older women.

Ms. Sebelius said that 100,000 deaths could be averted each year if doctors and patients effectively used five services: colorectal and breast cancer screening, flu vaccines and counseling on smoking cessation and on aspirin therapy to prevent heart disease.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/health/policy/15health.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Federal Oversight for Troubled N.Y. Youth Prisons

Four of New York's most dangerous and troubled youth prisons will be placed under federal oversight, strict new limits will be imposed on the use of physical force by guards, and dozens of psychiatrists, counselors and investigators will be hired under a sweeping agreement finalized on Wednesday between state and federal officials.

The agreement will usher in the most significant expansion of mental health services in years for youths in custody, the vast majority of whom suffer from drug or alcohol problems, developmental disabilities or mental health problems.

Currently, the state does not have a single full-time psychiatrist on staff to treat young offenders.

Guards at the youth prisons, known as youth counselors, will be barred from physically restraining youths except when a person's physical safety is threatened or a youth is trying to escape from the institution.

Guards will be allowed to use the most controversial method — in which a youth is forced to the ground and held face-down — for at most three minutes, with evaluation by a doctor to follow within four hours.

The accord comes almost a year after the Justice Department threatened to take over New York's juvenile justice system unless the state took significant steps to rectify problems at the four prisons, where physical abuse was rampant and mental health counseling was scant or nonexistent.

“It is New York's fundamental responsibility to protect juveniles in its custody from harm and to uphold their constitutional rights,” Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's civil rights division, said in a statement. “We have worked cooperatively with New York officials to craft an agreement to ensure that the constitutional rights of juveniles at the four facilities are protected, and we commend New York and the New York State Office of Children and Families for their willingness to work aggressively to remedy these problems.”

Federal investigators found that staff members at the four institutions — the Lansing Residential Center and the Louis Gossett Jr. Residential Center, in Lansing, and two residences, one for boys and one for girls, at Tryon Residential Center in Johnstown — routinely used physical force to discipline the youths, resulting in broken bones, shattered teeth, concussions and dozens of other serious injuries in a period of less than two years.

Gov. David A. Paterson said in a statement, “With this historic settlement agreement, New York takes another step towards achieving true transformation of our juvenile justice system.”

Mr. Paterson, who has been trying to address problems plaguing the juvenile system, introduced legislation in June to let judges sentence youths to juvenile prisons only if they had been found guilty of a violent crime or a sex crime or were deemed to be a serious threat to themselves or others. Juvenile prisons house those convicted of criminal acts, from truancy to murder, who are too young to serve in adult jails and prisons.

The federal inquiry began in 2007 after a spate of episodes, including the 2006 death of a disturbed 15-year-old after two employees at the Tryon center pinned him down on the ground.

Two monitors, jointly chosen by federal and state officials, will oversee the state's efforts to carry out the accord over the next two years, making regular progress reports to a federal judge, who must approve the agreement before it goes into effect.

Money for the new staffing — including a full-time psychiatrist at each of the four prisons, five licensed psychologists and more than a dozen social workers and nurse practitioners — was included in parts of the state budget already approved in Albany.

The state-federal accord, filed in United States District Court in Albany, echoes recommendations issued in December by a state task force, which found major shortcomings throughout the youth prison system. The task force recommended substantially expanding mental health care and replacing most residential youth prisons with smaller centers closer to communities where most young offenders and their families are from.

While the accord officially applies just to the four institutions cited, state officials said they hoped to use it as a springboard to seek broad changes through the juvenile system, which now houses 667 youths in 26 facilities around the state.

“It continues to move us in the right direction,” said Gladys Carrión, commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, which oversees the juvenile justice system. “It's an affirmation of the work we have done already and of the recommendations of the governor's task force.”

Ms. Carrión, who has moved aggressively in recent months to cut the number of youths in state custody and to limit the use of force by guards, said she would require all youth prisons in New York to abide by the restrictions on physical restraint. She said the state also planned to hire a chief psychiatrist in the near future to oversee drug regimens and mental health counseling at all of the state's youth prisons.

But advocates for youths in state custody said they would continue to seek a far-reaching transformation in the juvenile justice system in New York, which they say merely warehouses youths who in most cases need intensive psychiatric care and counseling rather than being locked up.

“The changes will only affect those kids who have mental health needs who are already incarcerated,” said Gabrielle Prisco, director of the Juvenile Justice Project at the Correctional Association of New York . “It doesn't get to the fact that any of those young people could be safely treated in their communities without ever seeing the inside of a prison cell.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/nyregion/15juvenile.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Video Shows Failed Bomber Before Attack

An Arabic-language television channel has broadcast excerpts of what it said was a martyrdom video by Faisal Shahzad , who pleaded guilty last month to trying to detonate a bomb in Times Square.

In the excerpt — which the station, Al Arabiya , also posted on its YouTube channel — Mr. Shahzad wears a khaki vest and a black turban and sits next to a gun. He laments that more Muslims are not “fighting in the cause of Allah,” and says Islam will defeat democracy and Communism.

“This attack on the United States will also be a revenge attack,” he said, mentioning the killings of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi , the Jordanian founder of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia , who died in Iraq in 2006, and Baitullah Mehsud , the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, last year. “I really wish the hearts of the Muslims will be pleased with this attack,” Mr. Shahzad said.

The video excerpt, which the channel called the “first proof” of Mr. Shahzad's relationship with the Taliban , also shows heavily armed men walking through mountain passes. On its Web site, Al Arabiya said the clip was part of a longer, 40-minute video “will,” but did not say exactly when it was recorded.

In federal court in Manhattan last month, Mr. Shahzad, a Pakistani-born American, admitted to receiving training and money from a Pakistani militant group for his failed attack.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/world/middleeast/15shahzad.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Seduction, Slavery and Sex

Against all odds, this year's publishing sensation is a trio of thrillers by a dead Swede relating tangentially to human trafficking and sexual abuse.

“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” series tops the best-seller lists. More than 150 years ago, “Uncle Tom's Cabin” helped lay the groundwork for the end of slavery. Let's hope that these novels help build pressure on trafficking as a modern echo of slavery.

Human trafficking tends to get ignored because it is an indelicate, sordid topic, with troubled victims who don't make great poster children for family values. Indeed, many of the victims are rebellious teenage girls — often runaways — who have been in trouble with their parents and the law, and at times they think they love their pimps.

Because trafficking gets ignored, it rarely is a top priority for law enforcement officials — so it seems to be growing. Various reports and studies, none of them particularly reliable, suggest that between 100,000 and 600,000 children may be involved in prostitution in the United States, with the numbers increasing.

Just last month, police freed a 12-year-old girl who they said had been imprisoned in a Knights Inn hotel in Laurel, Md. The police charged a 42-year-old man, Derwin Smith, with human trafficking and false imprisonment in connection with the case.

The Anne Arundel County Police Department said that Mr. Smith met the girl in a seedy area, had sex with her and then transported her back and forth from Washington, D.C., to Atlantic City, N.J., while prostituting her.

“The juvenile advised that all of the money made was collected and kept by the suspect,” the police department said in a statement. “At one point, the victim conveyed to the suspect that she wanted to return home, but he held her against her will.”

Just two days later, the same police force freed three other young women from a Garden Inn about a block away. They were 16, 19 and 23, and police officials accused a 23-year-old man, Gabriel Dreke-Hernandez, of pimping them.

Police said that Mr. Dreke-Hernandez had kidnapped the 19-year-old from a party and had taken her to a hotel room. “Once at the hotel,” the police statement said, Mr. Dreke-Hernandez allegedly “grabbed her around the throat and began to choke her. Hernandez then pushed her head against the wall several times before placing a knife to her throat and demanding that she follow his commands.

“The female further advised that all of the money made was collected and kept by the suspect. At one point, she indicated that she would not prostitute any longer and the suspect subsequently pulled her into the bathroom and threatened her again with a knife.”

Police officials did not release details about the 16-year-old and 23-year-old, though they said customers for the teenager had been sought on the Internet.

There's a misperception in America that “sex trafficking” is mostly about foreigners smuggled into the U.S. That exists. But I've concluded that the biggest problem and worst abuses involve not foreign women but home-grown runaway kids.

In a typical case, a rebellious 13-year-old girl runs away from a home where her mother's boyfriend is hitting on her. She is angry and doesn't trust the police. She goes to the bus station in hopes of getting out of town — and the only person on the lookout for girls like her is a pimp, who buys her a meal, offers her a place to stay and tells her he loves her.

The next thing she knows, she's having sex with four men a night and all the money is going to her “boyfriend.” If she voices reservations, he puts a gun in her mouth and threatens to blow her head off.

Her customers, often recruited on the Internet, may have no inkling that her actions are not completely voluntary. Some mix of fear, love, hopelessness and shattered self-esteem keep her from trying to run away.

No strategy has worked particularly well against human trafficking, and commercial sex may well exist 1,000 years from now. But a starting point is for law enforcement to go after pimps rather than the girls. That's the only way to break the business model of forced prostitution.

Sweden offers us not only the summer's top beach paperbacks, but also a useful strategy for dealing with trafficking. The Swedish model, adopted in 1999, is to prosecute the men who purchase sex, while treating the women who sell it as victims who merit social services.

Prosecution of johns has reduced demand for prostitution in Sweden, which in turn reduces market prices. That reduces the incentives for trafficking into Sweden, and the number of prostitutes seems to have declined there. A growing number of countries are concluding that the Swedish model works better than any other, and it would be wise for American states to experiment with it as well. It's not a panacea, but cracking down on demand seems a useful way to chip away at 21st-century slavery.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/opinion/15kristof.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From the White House

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Progress Report on Cybersecurity

Today, I was honored to host an event at the White House with cybersecurity experts and discuss progress made by increased cybersecurity efforts across the administration. President Obama has recognized that the “cyber threat is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation” and “America's economic prosperity in the 21st century will depend on cybersecurity.” 

We were joined by a broad cross section of stakeholders from the Federal government, State and local government, law enforcement and private sector representatives from across multiple sectors of the economy, as well as representatives from academia and the privacy and civil liberties communities. The purpose was to draw attention to the efforts of these communities to reduce risk and build confidence in our critical information and communications infrastructure. 

In discussing the efforts the Nation has made to make cyberspace more secure, I highlighted the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC), which was recently released for public comment and the soon to be exercised National Cyber Incident Response Plan (NCIRP) as particularly important. Both the private and public sectors should do all they can to secure their parts of cyberspace.

Since the President's speech last year and the release of the President's Cyberspace Policy Review (pdf) , the Administration has taken concrete steps to make cyberspace more secure.

We took the opportunity to release a progress report on our efforts. A few highlights from that report:

• The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace , recently released for public comment, is a plan for secure, voluntary, privacy-enhancing credentials that the public can choose to use to authenticate their identities in cyberspace more securely.
  
  
• The National Cyber Incident Response Plan, which is being developed  by the Department of Homeland Security andwill be exercised as part of Cyber Storm 3 in September, will ensure that there is a coordinated national response to a significant cyber incident.
  
  
• New performance metrics under the Federal Information Management Security Act (FISMA) , moves us from static, paper-based reports to more efficient and more effective continuous monitoring.
  
  
• The appointment of a Cybersecurity Coordinator and a privacy and civil liberties official, as provided in the Cyberspace Policy Review, and the release of documents outlining our cybersecurity initiatives to ensure greater transparency.

Emphasizing the cross-cutting elements of society and the economy that depend on cyber systems, I was pleased that Secretary of Commerce, Gary Locke, and Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, appeared at the event. Secretary Locke emphasized the Commerce Department's efforts to facilitate the introduction of new security protocols into the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure. 

Secretary Napolitano announced the winners of the National Cybersecurity Campaign Awareness Challenge, a competition intended to collect and share the most creative ideas for increasing public awareness of cybersecurity issues. She also highlighted recent key DHS accomplishments, including the development of NCIRP, which will ensure coordinated cyber preparedness and response among all national partners, as well as the deployment of EINSTEIN network intrusion detection technology to 12 of 19 federal agencies.

In addition, a panel of representatives from specific sectors of the economy and privacy and civil liberties groups, outlined the specific activities they have underway in their companies and institutions to reduce cybersecurity risk and improve the trustworthiness of America's cyber systems.

Of course, the real highlight came when the President stopped by to emphasize the increasing importance our society will place on digital communications and information infrastructure as we seek to unleash the potential of these new media. He emphasized the need for continued collaboration between the private sector and government, stating “that's why we're going to need all of you to keep coming together—government, industry, academia, think tanks, media and privacy and civil liberties groups—to work together, to develop the solutions we need to keep America safe and prosperous in cyberspace.”

Howard A. Schmidt is the Cybersecurity Coordinator and Special Assistant to the President

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/07/14/progress-report-cybersecurity

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Remarks by the President on the National HIV/AIDS Strategy

East Room

6:10 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, everybody!  Hello!  (Applause.)  Hello.  Hello, hello, hello.  Hello.  Well, good evening, everybody.  This is a pretty feisty group here.  (Laughter.) 

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  We love you, President!

THE PRESIDENT:  Love you back.  Thank you.  (Applause.)  Thank you.  Well, it is a privilege to speak with all of you.  Welcome to the White House. 

Let me begin by welcoming the Cabinet Secretaries who are here.  I know I saw at least one of them, Kathleen Sebelius, our outstanding Secretary of Health and Human Services.  (Applause.)  I want to thank all the members of Congress who are present and all the distinguished guests that are here -- that includes all of you.

In particular, I want to recognize Ambassador Eric Goosby, our Global AIDS Coordinator.  (Applause.)  Eric's leadership of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is doing so much to save so many lives around the world.  He will be leading our delegation to the International AIDS Conference in Vienna next week.  And so I'm grateful for his outstanding service.  (Applause.)

And I want to also thank the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.  (Applause.)  Thank you -- and the Federal HIV Interagency Working Group for all the work that they are doing.  So thank you very much.  (Applause.)

Now, it's been nearly 30 years since a CDC publication called Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report first documented five cases of an illness that would come to be known as HIV/AIDS.  In the beginning, of course, it was known as the “gay disease” –- a disease surrounded by fear and misunderstanding; a disease we were too slow to confront and too slow to turn back.  In the decades since -– as epidemics have emerged in countries throughout Africa and around the globe -– we've grown better equipped, as individuals and as nations, to fight this disease.

From activists, researchers, community leaders who've waged a battle against AIDS for so long, including many of you here in this room, we have learned what we can do to stop the spread of the disease.  We've learned what we can do to extend the lives of people living with it.  And we've been reminded of our obligations to one another -– obligations that, like the virus itself, transcend barriers of race or station or sexual orientation or faith or nationality.

So the question is not whether we know what to do, but whether we will do it.  (Applause.)  Whether we will fulfill those obligations; whether we will marshal our resources and the political will to confront a tragedy that is preventable. 

All of us are here because we are committed to that cause. We're here because we believe that while HIV transmission rates in this country are not as high as they once were, every new case is one case too many.  We're here because we believe in an America where those living with HIV/AIDS are not viewed with suspicion, but treated with respect; where they're provided the medications and health care they need; where they can live out their lives as fully as their health allows. 

And we're here because of the extraordinary men and women whose stories compel us to stop this scourge.  I'm going to call out a few people here -- people like Benjamin Banks, who right now is completing a master's degree in public health, planning a family with his wife, and deciding whether to run another half-marathon.  Ben has also been HIV-positive for 29 years -– a virus he contracted during cancer surgery as a child.  So inspiring others to fight the disease has become his mission.

We're here because of people like Craig Washington, who after seeing what was happening in his community -– friends passing away; life stories sanitized, as he put it, at funerals; homophobia, all the discrimination that surrounded the disease –- Craig got tested, disclosed his status, with the support of his partner and his family, and took up the movement for prevention and awareness in which he is a leader today.

We're here because of people like Linda Scruggs.  (Applause.)  Linda learned she was HIV-positive about two decades ago when she went in for prenatal care.  Then and there, she decided to turn her life around, and she left a life of substance abuse behind, she became an advocate for women, she empowered them to break free from what she calls the bondage of secrecy.  She inspired her son, who was born healthy, to become an AIDS activist himself.

We're here because of Linda and Craig and Ben, and because of over 1 million Americans living with HIV/AIDS and the nearly 600,000 Americans who've lost their lives to the disease.  It's on their behalf -– and on the behalf of all Americans -– that we began a national dialogue about combating AIDS at the beginning of this administration. 

In recent months, we've held 14 community discussions.  We've spoken with over 4,200 people.  We've received over 1,000 recommendations on the White House website, devising an approach not from the top down but from the bottom up.

And today, we're releasing our National HIV/AIDS Strategy, which is the product -- (applause) -- which is the product of these conversations, and conversations with HIV-positive Americans and health care providers, with business leaders, with faith leaders, and the best policy and scientific minds in our country.

Now, I know that this strategy comes at a difficult time for Americans living with HIV/AIDS, because we've got cash-strapped states who are being forced to cut back on essentials, including assistance for AIDS drugs.  I know the need is great.  And that's why we've increased federal assistance each year that I've been in office, providing an emergency supplement this year to help people get the drugs they need, even as we pursue a national strategy that focuses on three central goals.

First goal:  prevention.  We can't afford to rely on any single prevention method alone, so our strategy promotes a comprehensive approach to reducing the number of new HIV infections -– from expanded testing so people can learn their status, to education so people can curb risky behaviors, to drugs that can prevent a mother from transmitting a virus to her child.

To support our new direction, we're investing $30 million in new money, and I've committed to working with Congress to make sure these investments continue in the future.

The second --

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Mr. President --

THE PRESIDENT:  Let's -- hold on -- you can talk to me after -- we'll be able to talk after I speak.  That's why I invited you here, right?  So you don't have to yell, right?  (Applause.)  Thank you.

Second is treatment.  To extend lives and stem transmission, we need to make sure every HIV-positive American gets the medical care that they need.  (Applause.)  And by stopping health insurers from denying coverage because of a preexisting condition and by creating a marketplace where people with HIV/AIDS can buy affordable care, the health insurance reforms I signed into law this year are an important step forward.

And we'll build on those reforms, while also understanding that when people have trouble putting food on the table or finding a place to live, it's virtually impossible to keep them on lifesaving therapies.  (Applause.)

Now, the third goal is reducing health disparities by combating the disease in communities where the need is greatest.  (Applause.)

We all know the statistics.  Gay and bisexual men make up a small percentage of the population, but over 50 percent of new infections.  For African Americans, it's 13 percent of the population -- nearly 50 percent of the people living with HIV/AIDS.  HIV infection rates among black women are almost 20 times what they are for white women.  So, such health disparities call on us to make a greater effort as a nation to offer testing and treatment to the people who need it the most.  (Applause.) 

So reducing new HIV infections; improving care for people living with HIV/AIDS; narrowing health disparities -- these are the central goals of our national strategy.  They must be pursued hand in hand with our global public health strategy to roll back the pandemic beyond our borders.  And they must be pursued by a government that is acting as one.  So we need to make sure all our efforts are coordinated within the federal government and across federal, state and local governments -– because that's how we'll achieve results that let Americans live longer and healthier lives.  (Applause.) 

So, yes, government has to do its part.  But our ability to combat HIV/AIDS doesn't rest on government alone.  It requires companies to contribute funding and expertise to the fight.  It requires us to use every source of information –- from TV to film to the Internet -– to promote AIDS awareness.  It requires community leaders to embrace all -- and not just some -- who are affected by the disease.  It requires each of us to act responsibly in our own lives, and it requires all of us to look inward -- to ask not only how we can end this scourge, but also how we can root out the inequities and the attitudes on which this scourge thrives.

When a person living with HIV/AIDS is treated as if she's done something wrong, when she's viewed as being somehow morally compromised, how can we expect her to get tested and disclose her diagnosis to others?  (Applause.)

When we fail to offer a child a proper education, when we fail to provide him with accurate medical information and instill within him a sense of responsibility, then how can we expect him to take the precautions necessary to protect himself and others?  (Applause.)

When we continue, as a community of nations, to tolerate poverty and inequality and injustice in our midst, we don't stand up for how women are treated in certain countries, how can we expect to end the disease –- a pandemic -– that feeds on such conditions? 

So fighting HIV/AIDS in America and around the world will require more than just fighting the virus.  It will require a broader effort to make life more just and equitable for the people who inhabit this Earth.  And that's a cause to which I'll be firmly committed so long as I have the privilege of serving as President. 

So to all of you who have been out there in the field, working on this issues day in, day out, I know sometimes it's thankless work.  But the truth is, you are representing what's best in all of us -- our regard for one another, our willingness to care for one another.  I thank you for that.  I'm grateful for you.  You're going to have a partner in me.

God bless you and God bless the United States of America.  (Applause.)

END

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-national-hivaids-strategy

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From the Department of Justice

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Hello all and thank you for that kind introduction. It is a privilege for me to be here with you today. As I look out, I see many colleagues and partners who have dedicated themselves to the work of the Department of Justice and to Project Safe Neighborhoods. My thanks to you for all that you have done, and for giving me the honor of hosting the Project Safe Neighborhoods 2010 Awards Ceremony, as we celebrate the outstanding achievements of those individuals, districts and organizations that are committed to the safety of all of our communities. I also want to thank U.S. Attorney Jim Letten and his staff for this terrific New Orleans hospitality.

One of the best things about my job in Washington, is actually getting out of Washington. I so appreciate the opportunity to spend time with the men and women across the country who dedicate themselves to making our communities and neighborhoods more supportive places for our children and our families to grow and to prosper. Every day, you are on the frontlines on the streets of America. You know, better than most, the toll that gun and gang violence has on our communities, in our schools and playgrounds, and on our streets. That's why you serve as not only the very best role models, but the very best mentors and partners.

What makes Project Safe Neighborhoods so unique as an initiative is that it relies on teamwork that goes beyond law enforcement. A truly successful PSN campaign is one which engages federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement and partners their strategies with community-based organizations that have a pulse on what works – and more importantly what deters and prevents – in their neighborhoods.

No two PSN initiatives are the same – that's what makes this program so exciting. PSN is a community-program that is focused on the unique challenges of our very different urban, suburban, rural and tribal communities. PSN brings together law enforcement strategies, community-based policing, strategic prosecution, and anti-gang initiatives with the resources of social service providers, our educational system, faith-based organizations, government and charitable foundations – all of which are committed to creating and sustaining safe neighborhoods.

One of the issues that I know you have heard about already during this year's conference is that the future of PSN relies on innovative, evidence-based community partnerships. After 8 years, there are many lessons learned that you can share with your colleagues. Maybe there are things you would have done differently, different or new groups you would have invited to the table, or different tactics you would have employed. This is an opportunity to renew coalitions, shift focus if needed, and most importantly, re-evaluate your strategies and their successes within your community.

But today, we celebrate and highlight the work you have done that has truly made a difference. We know that under the Project Safe Neighborhoods initiative, five key elements have been deemed essential to creating a successful gun violence reduction program: partnerships among local, state and federal components; the formulation of a strategic plan to target the specific needs and issues of your district; coordination of resources to provide training opportunities for components involved in the strategic plan; community outreach and awareness campaigns to educate the community about local PSN efforts; and accountability to ensure that components are continually reassessing their program's strengths and weaknesses.

Our awardees were selected because the individuals or groups demonstrated not only a commitment to these five elements, but because they took their initiative a step further. As we as a department move toward not only innovative but evidence-based programs, we focused on PSN projects that included the development of new and unique gun crime and gang prevention policies, programs or funding strategies. We looked at PSN efforts that are sustainable and focused on long-term strategies, not just quick fixes for the short-term. We also looked at the numbers. Which programs have proven successful in reducing gun crime and gangs? Where did we see the largest improvements for the time, resources and efforts put into a community or project?

But as Benjamin Franklin – the Founding Father who organized the first effective police force in America – once said, "A good example is the best sermon." And so, in our remaining time, I'd like to offer you something even better: two incredible examples.

Our first begins in 2001, just under one thousand miles from here, in the Eastern District of North Carolina. For the past decade, that district – the recipient of this year's Outstanding Overall Partnership or Task Force award – has done everything right. And as a direct result, they have saved families, saved neighborhoods, and saved lives.

The Eastern District's Project Safe Neighborhoods is called "Zero Tolerance for Gun Violence." But the rhyming mantra is much more than rhetoric. It is a philosophy of prevention that every attorney, agent, and staff there has internalized – and acted on every day. Just consider that since 2001, the district's PSN initiative has prosecuted more than 2,100 defendants. That's fourth nationwide in federal firearms prosecutions. And now consider that they have done it with fewer than 45 AUSAs. Incredible – like I said.

But why, exactly, has the Eastern District of North Carolina been so successful? The answer is in the details – within the many different neighborhoods and on the many different streets. First, the district has taken an unapologetically community-tailored approach. Since the initiative's inception, the U.S. Attorney's Office has formed eleven Project Safe Neighborhoods task forces, each for a different region. They coordinate regularly but act independently. They strategize in joint meetings but value flexibility above all. They share great ideas often but adapt to changing circumstances daily.

Such shrewd tailoring remains on proud display today in Raleigh. After that city saw in 2007 and 2008 a sudden and dramatic upswing in violent Hobbs Act robberies and other violent crimes, including murders, the Raleigh task force adapted immediately – and engaged in a second practice worth highlighting: they brought all the community's law enforcement together. And they led them with the vigor and vision safety demands.

The task force partnered with the Raleigh Police Department to review relevant cases. They sought the help of the U.S. Attorney's Office, which agreed to adopt many of the cases so the full resources of the federal government – and the lengthier sentences called for by federal law – were in play. They engaged the media – another hallmark of a successful Safe Neighborhoods program – and sent a message that violent crimes would be vigorously prosecuted. And, through all these efforts, they fostered unprecedented collaboration that led to so dramatic a reduction in violent crime that the city's murder rate and gang-related-incident rate plummeted in 2009 by approximately fifty percent.

But there's a fourth takeaway here – that, despite all I've just said, prosecution is only part of the equation. Ever proactive, the Eastern District of North Carolina focuses on training and prevention, as well. They host conferences, provide roll-call training, and offer specialized sessions based on changing regional needs. They train senior executives and staff on the front lines alike. And they sponsor programs tackling everything from gang prevention to bullying prevention – and everyone from at-risk youth to the entire community, through, to take my favorite example, an outdoor summer movie series.

Such techniques are working in North Carolina. And they are working also in Massachusetts, where my second example was founded. More than a decade ago, in 1998, the Salvation Army launched its truly innovative "Bridging the Gap" program in Springfield to help court-involved and at-risk youth to get their lives on track through a twelve-week program focusing on the effects of drug and alcohol, peer pressure, life at school, anger management, self-esteem, and relationships. But that's not all. Crucially, the program makes family participation mandatory and works with parents to address – and destroy – the underlying factors that precipitated their child's arrest in the first place.

This commitment to family engagement – and the focus on early prevention – is only one of many reasons why "Bridging the Gap" won this year's Outstanding Juvenile Program award – which, as the numbers show, is well deserved. Of the more than 2,100 juveniles who have participated in Springfield's Bridging the Gap program over the past twelve years, for example, 87 percent either remained in school or graduated without re-offending or facing more police interaction. That's huge for any city, but it is especially so for Springfield, which suffers from the highest rate of gun assaults per one hundred thousand residents, a drop-out rate double the statewide average, a daily absentee rate of nearly twenty percent, and a gang population of nearly 500 members and associates.

But, once again demonstrating the power of partnership, "Bridging the Gap" – which has since expanded far beyond Springfield – has not done anything alone. They have developed constructive, interactive partnerships with numerous government and service-related entities as wide-ranging as the U.S. Attorney's Office and the YMCA, the police department and the public schools.

And throughout, the program has also served as a great example of what happens when evidence-based – that is, proven and tested – techniques are applied to Project Safe Neighborhoods funding. Under PSN funding, "Bridging the Gap" created "Operation Closing the Gap," in collaboration with the Springfield police and the Hampden County D.A.'s office. The operation extends the original program's proven approach with new focus on gang intervention, suppression, and prevention. And, thanks to mentors that each student is assigned, the positive outcomes are reinforced long after the program ends, resulting in lasting – and not fleeting – self-control and safety.

These two examples, like all of our awardees, employ the five key elements of successful Project Safe Neighborhoods programs that I outlined earlier. But whatever methods are used program to program, there is one thing that remains consistent across all: that Project Safe Neighborhoods is built upon the commitment and personal integrity of the people in this room. It is the law enforcement officer who investigates the crime, while becoming a friend to the people who live and work in his or her precinct. It is the school resource officer who helps a young boy or girl to resist the temptations of gang life. It is the community leader who insists that public safety is a community right.

At the end of the day, PSN is a pledge: it's a pledge made by each and every one of you in this room to work for safe communities and a quality of life that enables all of our citizens to live, work and play together as neighbors and friends. Thank you for all that you do, all that you have sacrificed, and all that you will continue to do in the name of public and community safety.

http://www.justice.gov/dag/speeches/2010/dag-speech-100714.html

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From ICE

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Multi-agency operation dismantles 4 drug trafficking organizations in central Florida

OCALA, Fla. - Representatives from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) joined the sheriffs from Marion and Citrus counties and the police chief of Ocala, Fla., on Tuesday to announce the results of a multi-agency drug trafficking investigation that resulted in 25 arrests and seizures of cash, vehicles, weapons and drugs.

Operation Eclipse uncovered four drug organizations moving more than 180 kilograms of cocaine a year and more than 7,700 pounds of marijuana a year, nearly $12 million in drug trafficking proceeds between Marion and Citrus counties, according to the local sheriffs. The organizations were also trafficking prescription pills.

The alleged leaders of the four drug trafficking organizations, Cresencio Siller, Jason Paul Jones, Brian Graham and Antonio Mathis were arrested among additional members of their organizations.

The investigation started with a cocaine supplier from Marion County who was allegedly supplying a man in Citrus County and led to subsequent investigations into three other drug trafficking organizations, one having ties to Texas.

The Marion County marijuana organization was allegedly run by Cresencio Siller, whose cousin was allegedly the main point of contact for the marijuana coming from Texas. During the investigation, Siller moved to Hernando County, Fla., where two search warrants were served and five arrests were made.

The Citrus County organization was allegedly headed by Jason Paul Jones, who is suspected of trafficking more than 12 kilograms of cocaine and more than 2,500 pounds of marijuana per year.

The other two drug trafficking organizations were dealing in cocaine and prescription pills in Marion County. One organization was allegedly run by Brian Graham. The other organization was allegedly run by Antonio Mathis, who is also accused of supplying Jason Jones in Citrus County.

The investigation conducted by the Unified Drug Enforcement Strike Team, along with assistance from the Citrus County Sheriff's Office, Multi Agency Drug Enforcement Team, FDLE, ICE and the Drug Enforcement Administration is ongoing and seeks the arrest of additional members.

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1007/100714ocala.htm

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