by Laura King and My-Thuan Tran, Los Angeles Times

August 8, 2010

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Los Angeles

Taliban fighters gunned down a 10-member international medical team, including six Americans, in the wilds of northern Afghanistan, the aid group and local officials said Saturday, in an ambush that highlighted the growing dangers faced by foreign charity organizations in the country.

The aid workers, who also included two Afghans, a German and a Briton, were attacked Thursday in a remote forested area of Badakhshan province as they were returning from a mission to provide eye care to rural villagers, according to provincial police and the International Assistance Mission, the Kabul-based group that organized the trip.

The ambush was one of the deadliest strikes against foreign aid workers in the nearly nine-year Afghanistan war. It also represented the largest toll for U.S. civilians working in the country since a suicide bomber killed seven members of a CIA team at a base in eastern Afghanistan in December.

The Taliban has increasingly targeted foreign aid workers, whom it views as collaborators with the Western military. Last month, gunmen and suicide bombers stormed the offices of the U.S.-based development group DAI in Kunduz province, also in Afghanistan's north, killing at least five people.

Violence in Afghanistan has burgeoned this year, with Afghan civilians and Western troops suffering record numbers of deaths.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the aid workers' deaths, saying those killed were spies and preachers of Christianity. The details provided in statements by spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid suggested that the killers were insurgents and not bandits, who also roam freely in the area.

Mujahid said insurgents encountered the group in the Kiran Munjan district of Badakhshan and tried to arrest them on suspicion of spying.

"But they tried to escape, then mujahedin attacked and killed all of them on the spot," he said by telephone.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul, the Afghan capital, could not confirm the nationalities of the six who were listed by the group as Americans, but spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said there was "reason to believe that several American citizens are among the deceased."

The charity's executive director, Dirk Frans, said the group was still awaiting positive identification of the bodies but that the police description matched that of its workers and their vehicles. Three of the team members were women, he said.

The dead apparently included the medical team's leader, Tom Little, an optometrist from Delmar, N.Y., who had been with the organization since its early days, Frans said.

Afghan associates in Kabul described the team as dedicated and caring.

"He had worked here for decades, opening clinics all over Afghanistan," Mohammed Yousef Barakai, the head of the group's eye hospital in Kabul, said of Little. "He only wanted to help the Afghan people."

Another member of the team, British surgeon Karen Woo, regularly blogged about her work and life in Afghanistan, calling herself Explorer Kitten. The entries included her impressions working at a medical clinic in Kabul as a bomb detonated nearby and a search for the perfect silk cloth for a tailored gown.

In a July entry, she pondered whether to wear nail polish on the upcoming medical expedition in Nuristan.

"Ridiculous I know but several tense minutes were spent thinking through the consequences of bonding with the women of the village … only to find that nail polish is considered to be the devil's sporn or at the very least the mark of a [harlot] and that my actions are punishable by death," she wrote. "I contemplate not wearing any myself but decide that toes a la nude is a mistake and that I should just risk it with a neutral shade."

In a chilling entry on the website for a nonprofit group called Bridge Afghanistan, Woo recently wrote about the risks of her upcoming trip:

"The expedition will require a lot of physical and mental resolve and will not be without risk but ultimately, I believe that the provision of medical treatment is of fundamental importance and that the effort is worth it in order to assist those that need it most."

The police chief in Badakhshan, Gen. Agha Nur Kamtuz, said villagers told police that the International Assistance Mission workers had been in the area for about two weeks, moving between there and neighboring Nuristan province. Heavy fighting has been taking place over the last month in parts of Nuristan between insurgents and Afghan security forces backed by Western troops.

"People told them it was dangerous," Kamtuz said. "They said they were doctors … and no one had anything against them."

Villagers alerted authorities after they found three bullet-riddled vehicles that belonged to the group in the forest, the police chief said. News reports, which included Taliban assertions that the team members had Bibles in the Dari language, said that an Afghan driver had been spared after pleading for his life and quoting the Koran.

The International Assistance Mission, which has been working in Afghanistan since 1966, describes itself as a charitable nonprofit Christian organization. One of its major projects is a chain of eye hospitals and clinics. The group's website says its expatriate workers are volunteers.

In a statement posted on its website, the group condemned "this senseless killing of people who have done nothing but serve the poor."

Little arrived in Afghanistan with his wife, Libby, in 1979, just before the Soviet invasion. He was a program director of NOOR, an arm of the International Assistance Mission. The name is an acronym, but it also means "light" — a term freighted with meaning for efforts to restore the sight of impoverished Afghans with no other means of help.

Little, who had three children, had wanted the eye care program to run autonomously, he told the alternative New York weekly Metroland in 2004, three years after the Taliban expelled him from the country in the final months of the Islamist regime.

"That way, if we're ever kicked out of the country again," he said, "the hospitals don't have to shut down and people can still get glasses."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan-ambush-20100808,0,7748396,print.story

by Tracy Wilkinson and Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times

August 7, 2010

Reporting from Mexico City

Nearly four years after President Felipe Calderon launched a military-led crackdown against drug traffickers, the cartels are smuggling more narcotics into the United States, amassing bigger fortunes and extending their dominion at home with such savagery that swaths of Mexico are now in effect without authority.

The groups also are expanding their ambitions far beyond the drug trade, transforming themselves into broad criminal empires deeply involved in migrant smuggling, extortion, kidnapping and trafficking in contraband such as pirated DVDs.

Undeterred by the 80,000 troops and federal police officers arrayed against them, gunmen frequently take on Mexican forces in the open. Operatives of one group, the Zetas, did so in northern Mexico this spring when they blockaded army garrisons. In June a group believed to be linked to another organization, La Familia, ambushed federal police in the western state of Michoacan, killing 12 officers in early morning light.

Since Calderon announced the offensive when he took office in December 2006, more than 28,000 people have been killed. Most of them have been traffickers, dealers and associates. But innocent civilians account for a growing portion.

Billions of dollars have been spent on the anti-drug effort with the enthusiastic backing of the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. Calderon and his administration say one reason progress is proving so difficult is that the problem festered far too long. They have predicted that the violence will subside by the end of the year.

But statistics, intelligence reports and interviews with Mexican and U.S. authorities over the last six months make it clear that the effort has failed to dismantle the networks or significantly slow the flow of drugs.

Scarcely a decade after Mexico took a giant step toward genuine multiparty democracy, traffickers may now pose a long-term danger to its stability. Rising chaos "requires us to change our view of the problem, that it is no longer a matter of organized crime but rather of the loss of the state," the leading newspaper El Universal said in an editorial in June.

Calderon himself acknowledged the threat last week in comments at a national security conference: "This criminal behavior is what has changed, and become a challenge to the state, an attempt to replace the state."

Mexican traffickers have increased their shipments of several types of narcotics north across the border, becoming titans of an industry that by some estimates earns $39 billion a year, equivalent to almost 20% of the government's annual budget..

They have muscled aside competitors to gain control over shipments of most types of illegal drugs in the hemisphere: marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

And they are becoming increasingly important producers, a shift from an earlier age when Mexican gangs served chiefly as smugglers for South American producers. Marijuana and poppy fields have flourished for decades in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, but now production has expanded into states from Chihuahua in the north to Oaxaca in the south. Some of the world's largest meth labs have been uncovered in Michoacan.

The Zetas and La Familia have grown into trafficking powerhouses since Calderon became president. They have altered the playing field by employing methods once unthinkable, such as beheading or dismembering rivals and then displaying the remains in squares, on street corners and in other public places.

Trafficking groups flex their muscles by hanging threatening banners from bridges, stringing up corpses or parking buses across key streets to paralyze traffic, actions that appear increasingly aimed at cowing the populace.

Drug gangs armed with military-class weapons smuggled from the United States or, as The Times has reported, left over from U.S.-backed wars in Central America now threaten or hold sway over vital industrial cities such as Monterrey. On July 15, traffickers hit another chilling milestone by detonating a car bomb in an attack on federal police officers in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's deadliest city.

The cartels have diversified, grafting human trafficking onto their drug-smuggling routes, and padding their income with kidnapping, extortion and the movement of a wide range of contraband, including fake luxury products and exotic animals.

In large parts of Calderon's home state of Michoacan, criminal groups charge businessmen to operate, essentially usurping the government's role as tax collector. The same phenomenon occurs in states such as Tamaulipas and Coahuila on the Texas border.

This year, traffickers succeeded for the first time in shutting down major operations of Pemex, the state oil company and top source of national income.

Juan Jose Suarez Coppel, Pemex's general director, acknowledged to a congressional committee that rampant kidnapping of workers forced the closing of oil and liquid gas plants in the Burgos Basin in northeastern Mexico, among the company's most lucrative installations. Traffickers have been stealing oil for years, but the goal in this case was to halt production and control the region.

The kidnapped workers' families told The Times that state officials, prosecutors and the army have proved unable or unwilling to help; hope that their relatives will return alive diminishes daily.

The spread of drug-related chaos across Mexico can be roughly gauged by the list of places the State Department says American citizens should avoid.

Two years ago, Americans were cautioned about border cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. But a warning issued in May includes highways around Monterrey, Mexico's third-largest city, as well as the states of Coahuila, Chihuahua and Tamaulipas along the border, Durango and Sinaloa in the northwest and Michoacan on the Pacific coast.

Gun battles have spilled into the famed resort of Acapulco. The mayor of Cancun, Mexico's top tourist destination, was arrested in May on drug-trafficking charges in the middle of his campaign for governor of the state of Quintana Roo.

An assessment of the drug threat issued early this year by the U.S. National Drug Intelligence Center said Mexican drug-trafficking organizations, or DTOs, "continue to represent the single greatest threat to the United States."

Mexican cartels, with operations in more than 2,500 U.S. cities, are the only ones working in every part of the United States, it said. They have largely displaced Colombian and Italian traffickers.

"The influence of Mexican DTOs, already the dominant wholesale drug traffickers in the United States, is still expanding," said the report, known formally as the National Drug Threat Assessment.

Cultivation and smuggling of Mexican marijuana had doubled since 2004 to an estimated 23,700 tons, it said. Production of heroin had more than quadrupled by 2008, to an estimated 41.9 tons. A separate State Department report said poppy cultivation doubled again between September 2008 and September 2009 and that cannabis production had reached its highest level since 1992.

Production of methamphetamine is also on the rise, despite the Mexican government's efforts to crimp the flow of precursor chemicals. Its availability in the United States has hit a five-year high.

The availability of cocaine north of the border has declined, however. The U.S. drug assessment report cited several possible explanations, including major seizures by Mexico. It also cited a drop in production in Colombia and the increasing flow of cocaine to other markets.

Calderon administration officials have cited the data on cocaine as a sign they are winning the war against drug-trafficking groups.

Seizure rates for marijuana and heroin have often been higher under Calderon than under his three predecessors, according to Mexican government statistics. Yet in some cases, the Calderon record is no better, and comparisons are even less favorable when adjusted for the growth in the drug market.

Mexican forces seized 74.2 tons of cocaine during Calderon's first two years in office. Without a record-setting 25.9-ton seizure in the Pacific port of Manzanillo in November 2007, the total would be about equal to the amount impounded in a similar period under Calderon's predecessor, Vicente Fox, and under Ernesto Zedillo in the mid-1990s. It is far short of the 98.6 tons seized under Carlos Salinas de Gortari in 1989 and 1990.

Only two top-ranking cartel leaders have been killed, Arturo Beltran Leyva and Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel Villarreal. But authorities are arresting more suspects, nearly 78,000 from the start of Calderon's term to January of this year. Of those, roughly 96% were street dealers, lookouts and other low-level helpers. But only about 2% were charged and convicted of a crime, according to official statistics. The rest remained in jail or were released.

The arrests have been unevenly distributed. Fewer than 1,000 of the 53,000 drug-trafficking arrests studied in a report this year by Edgardo Buscaglia, an international expert on organized crime and a legal scholar at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, involved people working for the Sinaloa cartel, the oldest and mightiest of the narco-empires.

Those figures have led many in Mexico to conclude that Calderon's government is going easy on the Sinaloa traffickers, whose leader is the country's most wanted fugitive, billionaire Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman. The motive, this argument goes, would be to reduce violence by allowing one group to essentially win. Calderon has vehemently denied favoritism.

"My government is absolutely determined to continue fighting against criminality without quarter until we put a stop to this common enemy and obtain the Mexico we want," Calderon said in a paid, two-page message in Mexican newspapers in June.

More recently, officials have countered the idea of favoritism by pointing to the killing July 29 of Coronel, a top figure in the Sinaloa conglomerate.

For now, says Guillermo Valdes, head of the secretive national intelligence agency, Mexicans will have to accept that increasing violence is inevitable.

"We have made progress in deploying forces and in slowing down the operational capacity of organized crime," he said in a rare public appearance this month. "But we have not achieved the objective of restoring normal living conditions in regions affected by organized crime."

Officials and institutions remain under threat, particularly poorly protected small town mayors, city council members and police chiefs in the provinces.

A day after Calderon published his defense of his crime strategy, residents in the west-central state of Nayarit were in a near panic. Recent gun battles had left more than 30 dead and rumors circulated on the Internet that schools would be targeted.

It is a threat that would once have sounded preposterous.

No longer. The governor, Ney Gonzalez Sanchez, called an end to the school year three weeks early to prevent what he called a public "psychosis."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-cartels-20100808,0,1615542,print.story

by John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times

August 8, 2010

Reporting from Seoul

Jeong Won-seob soberly recalls the day he says his reputation was destroyed.

In a culture where "face" means everything, police led him, bound by rope and handcuffs, around his small hometown east of Seoul as dozens of friends and neighbors looked on.

The year was 1972 and Jeong, a comic book store owner, had been arrested in the rape and killing of a schoolgirl whose father was a top police official. He later spent 15 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit; decades later, in 2008, a Seoul court overturned his conviction.

But on that long-ago day, even before official charges were filed, Jeong endured what is known here as a crime re-creation: Led by stern-faced police officers to the site of the slaying, a clamoring public in tow, he was ordered to reenact exactly how he committed his alleged crime. But Jeong protested.

"My face was exposed," said Jeong, 77, now a minister. "There were dozens of people screaming. Someone yelled, 'Kill this guy!' I wanted to disappear. I couldn't lift my face to meet people's gaze. It's beyond torture. It kills a person two or three times."

Although suspects in notorious U.S. crimes have been known to face "perp walks," in which police allow the media to take photos and video, the practice is taken to another level in South Korea.

Critics call the crime "reenactments" a shameless way to appease a public ravenous for an appearance of justice. Proponents say the exercises often produce valuable evidence that is used to prosecute the cases.

A law passed this year empowers police to publicize the name, age and image of those arrested but not yet charged in connection with crimes that attract wide public attention, giving legal weight to the reenactments. Activists threaten to challenge the legislation.

"It's a conflict between the public's right to know and an individual's privacy," said Seo Suk-ho, executive director of legislation at the Korean Bar Assn. "Just yesterday, I saw a man arrested for a severe crime. The police covered him up, but people didn't like it. Some said, 'We don't need to protect him.' "

He said public pressure on authorities after major crimes is immense, which in this case he believes has led to an unjust law that has bent to public opinion. "There's a law here called 'national sentiment,' " Seo said. "It means public sentiment stands above the law."

Police insist that they are often pressured by victims' families and the media to show the faces of those suspected of major crimes. In many cases, they say, newspaper reporters assigned to police stations keep tabs on investigations, publishing details of upcoming crime reenactments.

"We'd rather do these events in private," said an official from the Korean National Police Agency, who did not give his name because he wasn't authorized to discuss the matter. "Some people don't trust the police. If we do things privately, they question our investigative tactics."

In March, police released photos of another suspect who had been arrested in connection with the rape and slaying of a girl whose body had been dumped in a water tank near the suspect's house.

Lawyers filed a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission of Korea that police wrongfully exposed the suspect's face to the public. A month later, officials added the new provision to the Special Act on Punishment of Violent Crimes that legally permits police and prosecutors to disclose the photos and identities of violent offenders who have either confessed or are deemed to carry a strong suspicion of guilt.

That means the crime reenactments are here to stay, a fact that disturbs many legal scholars.

"Taking a person not yet charged with a crime for an on-site inspection is simply disturbing," said Kang Dong-wook, a law professor at Dongguk University in Seoul.

Seo of the Korean Bar Assn. is reviewing the legality of the new law, a move that comes too late for Jeong, the minister. He remains haunted by his experience 38 years ago.

"Sometimes I wake up at night. I can't forget the embarrassment, the shame. Even though I know I'm innocent," he said. "People want to see the face of the accused, I understand that. The media calls it the public's right to know. But sometimes people's lives are ruined."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-korea-suspects-20100808,0,7500004,print.story

by Jennifer Martinez, Tribune Washington Bureau

August 8, 2010

Reporting from Washington

When Zachary Berge was diagnosed with autism shortly after his second birthday, he couldn't speak a word. He often threw tantrums because he couldn't express himself.

His parents turned to "applied behavioral analysis," widely known as ABA therapy and recognized by the medical community as one of the most effective autism treatments for children.

But ABA therapy doesn't come cheap, and it has cost the Berge family of Crestview, Fla., nearly $56,000 — a hefty bill they've had to pay out of pocket because the treatment isn't covered by the family's health plan, a program for active and retired military families known as Tricare.

A supplemental benefits program available under Tricare offers families of active-duty members as much as $36,000 a year each to cover the cost of the therapy and other autism treatments. But the Berges are not eligible for that program because Zach's father, Kenneth Berge, retired from the Air Force in 2006.

"I thought it was a fluke that it's not covered," said Dawn Berge, a former college speech instructor whose full-time job now is to take care of Zach. "We believe with our military members serving like they have, this is something they would be covering."

There are nearly 8,800 dependents of retired military personnel who have been diagnosed with autism, according to 2007 Department of Defense figures.

At 5, Zach can put together two-word phrases, eat with utensils and finally say "Mom" and "Dad," something his mother calls "a blessing." His progress, she believes, came in part from his expensive treatments.

ABA therapy breaks down behaviors into small steps that can be taught individually to a child, using rewards as a motivator. For example, to teach a child to say hello to others, an ABA therapist will grant access to a playground only if the child says hello to the other children there.

"Children with autism don't learn these important social behaviors on their own," said Dr. Grace Gengoux, a clinical instructor in child and adolescent psychiatry at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University. "They need this kind of structured teaching."

The Berges have sued the Department of Defense, which administers Tricare. A department spokeswoman declined to comment, saying she was not authorized to speak about an ongoing legal matter — but a government lawyer has informed the Berges that the department is reconsidering their claim.

Tricare representatives told military families that it considers ABA an educational program, not a medical benefit. Because of this, ABA therapy falls under the supplemental benefits program offered by Tricare only to active-duty personnel.

Within the last two years, a host of states has enacted legislation requiring insurance companies to pay for ABA therapy and other autism treatments. Seven states have signed autism insurance bills into law this year alone, according to the autism advocacy group Autism Speaks.

Most state legislation, however, includes age limits and caps on how much insurers are required to cover for ABA therapy and other autism treatments. It often applies only to large group insurance plans.

The federal healthcare bill that passed in March included a provision that will require health plans that sell products in new exchanges to cover ABA therapy and other autism services. Experts said it was not clear whether it will apply to Tricare.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-autism-tricare-20100808,0,5884580,print.story

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OPINION

by Doyle McManus

August 8, 2010

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Muslim clergyman who wants to build a cultural center and prayer room two blocks north of ground zero, has repeatedly denounced Islamist terrorism. He admonishes members of his congregation to be, in his words, "both good Americans and good Muslims." He's not an ally of Osama bin Laden; he's an adversary.

Still, it was predictable that some New Yorkers who lost loved ones on 9/11 would object to building a Muslim institution so near the site of their tragedy. They're entitled to their feelings, and a cultural center that hopes to bridge gaps among Muslims, Christians and Jews needs to take those feelings into account. But they're not entitled to make their feelings a basis for discriminatory government action.

The controversy extends far beyond the question of whether a mosque should be built so near ground zero. Movements to deny Muslims the right to build houses of worship have sprung up all over the country — from Staten Island, N.Y., to Murfreesboro, Tenn., and Temecula as well. (Temecula is 2,407 miles from ground zero.)

And they're being abetted by politicians a long way from New York — including two who may run for president in 2012 — who have seized the opportunity to declare themselves defenders of Western civilization against militant Islam.

First came former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who called the planned mosque in New York "a stab in the heart" and demanded that "peaceful Muslims" prove their good intentions by agreeing with her. Then came former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who managed to make Palin sound like a moderate. Gingrich said the Manhattan mosque was a beachhead in a much more dangerous war. "America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization," he wrote.

Islamists, Gingrich warned, want to impose Muslim religious law, or Sharia, on the entire world, including the United States. As his main example, he cited a 2009 New Jersey trial in which a Muslim man accused of assaulting his wife claimed his actions were allowed under Sharia. Amazingly, a lower court judge accepted that defense; an appeals court reversed the decision. A "cultural-political offensive"? Sounds more like a long-shot argument by one criminal defendant and a dumb decision by one lower-court judge. If that's Gingrich's best case, Judeo-Christian civilization has nothing to fear.

Just in case, though, the Oklahoma state Legislature has approved a ballot measure this fall to make it clear that Muslim law is not a valid legal authority in the Sooner State. No matter how the war on terror turns out, we'll always have Tulsa.

What's seriously wrong here is this: The soapbox crusaders are turning our fight against a small band of Muslim extremists into exactly what Bin Laden wants it to be — a clash between all Muslims and the West.

There's a civil war going on inside Islam, and it's between modernizers like New York's Abdul Rauf, who want to reconcile Muslim life with Western tolerance, and radicals like Bin Laden, who don't.

George W. Bush and Barack Obama don't agree on much, but they do agree that the best way to win the war on terror is to convince Muslim moderates that reconciliation is possible, and to help them win in Islam's civil war.

But the message from those who don't want to allow American Muslims to build their mosques sounds more like this: We don't care how moderate you say you are. If you're a devout Muslim, we think you're part of a fifth column aimed at destroying our civilization.

Back to New York for a moment. Abdul Rauf's less scrupulous critics charge, with no apparent evidence, that he's "linked" in some fashion to terrorists. Do they imagine that the FBI wouldn't have figured that out if it were true? His more scrupulous critics toss out broader political objections: He hasn't specifically condemned Hamas; he supported the seaborne protesters who sought to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip; he isn't a fervent supporter of Israel. One other complaint: Abdul Rauf hasn't revealed who all of his donors are.

It's hard to disagree with that one; who wouldn't like to know where the money is coming from? But even here, there's a double standard at work. Churches and synagogues aren't required to identify their donors. Gingrich doesn't identify his contributors either. ("Our donors have an expectation that we won't disclose their names," Gingrich spokesman Rick Tyler explained. "We don't carry the burden of being a mosque that likely is funded by foreign countries.")

For a reality check, I talked with a wise New Yorker: Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. Hirschfield knows Abdul Rauf and considers him a genuine moderate.

"The rumor-mongering that he's some kind of agent for Islamists is utterly different from everything I know about him," the rabbi said. "With this [cultural center] project, he's proposing a spiritual response to a spiritual problem. This [9/11] was Islamic terror. He's trying to use the tradition to correct itself."

But Hirschfield worries that the process has gone off the rails and that instead of the interfaith understanding that Abdul Rauf hoped to foster, there may be bitterness on both sides.

If Abdul Rauf wants his cultural center to become an instrument of reconciliation, he's got plenty of work to do. The question is whether outside agitators like Gingrich and Palin have made that impossible.

The critics claim that building a mosque at 51 Park Place would be a victory for Islamist extremism. They have it exactly backwards.

If American Muslims are allowed to build mosques only where Christians and Jews are gracious enough to allow, we will be proving the Islamists' point that the West is every Muslim's enemy. If this mosque is blocked by popular prejudice or political demagoguery, that's when Bin Laden will claim a second victory — in the shadow, as they say, of ground zero.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mcmanus-mosque-ground-zero-20100808,0,7097312,print.column

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From the New York Times

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Across Nation, Mosque Projects Meet Opposition

While a high-profile battle rages over a mosque near ground zero in Manhattan, heated confrontations have also broken out in communities across the country where mosques are proposed for far less hallowed locations.

In Murfreesboro, Tenn., Republican candidates have denounced plans for a large Muslim center proposed near a subdivision, and hundreds of protesters have turned out for a march and a county meeting.

In late June, in Temecula, Calif., members of a local Tea Party group took dogs and picket signs to Friday prayers at a mosque that is seeking to build a new worship center on a vacant lot nearby.

In Sheboygan, Wis., a few Christian ministers led a noisy fight against a Muslim group that sought permission to open a mosque in a former health food store bought by a Muslim doctor.

At one time, neighbors who did not want mosques in their backyards said their concerns were over traffic, parking and noise — the same reasons they might object to a church or a synagogue. But now the gloves are off.

In all of the recent conflicts, opponents have said their problem is Islam itself. They quote passages from the Koran and argue that even the most Americanized Muslim secretly wants to replace the Constitution with Islamic Shariah law .

These local skirmishes make clear that there is now widespread debate about whether the best way to uphold America's democratic values is to allow Muslims the same religious freedom enjoyed by other Americans, or to pull away the welcome mat from a faith seen as a singular threat.

“What's different is the heat, the volume, the level of hostility,” said Ihsan Bagby, associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky . “It's one thing to oppose a mosque because traffic might increase, but it's different when you say these mosques are going to be nurturing terrorist bombers, that Islam is invading, that civilization is being undermined by Muslims.”

Feeding the resistance is a growing cottage industry of authors and bloggers — some of them former Muslims — who are invited to speak at rallies, sell their books and testify in churches. Their message is that Islam is inherently violent and incompatible with America.

But they have not gone unanswered. In each community, interfaith groups led by Protestant ministers, Catholic priests, rabbis and clergy members of other faiths have defended the mosques. Often, they have been slower to organize than the mosque opponents, but their numbers have usually been larger.

The mosque proposed for the site near ground zero in Lower Manhattan cleared a final hurdle last week before the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission , and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg hailed the decision with a forceful speech on religious liberty. While an array of religious groups supported the project, opponents included the Anti-Defamation League , an influential Jewish group, and prominent Republicans like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich , the former House speaker.

A smaller controversy is occurring in Temecula, about 60 miles north of San Diego, involving a typical stew of religion, politics and anti-immigrant sentiment. A Muslim community has been there for about 12 years and expanded to 150 families who have outgrown their makeshift worship space in a warehouse, said Mahmoud Harmoush, the imam, a lecturer at California State University , San Bernardino. The group wants to build a 25,000-square-foot center, with space for classrooms and a playground, on a lot it bought in 2000.

Mr. Harmoush said the Muslim families had contributed to the local food bank, sent truckloads of supplies to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina , and participated in music nights and Thanksgiving events with the local interfaith council.

“We do all these activities and nobody notices,” he said. “Now that we have to build our center, everybody jumps to make it an issue.”

Recently, a small group of activists became alarmed about the mosque. Diana Serafin, a grandmother who lost her job in tech support this year, said she reached out to others she knew from attending Tea Party events and anti- immigration rallies. She said they read books by critics of Islam, including former Muslims like Walid Shoebat, Wafa Sultan and Manoucher Bakh. She also attended a meeting of the local chapter of ACT! for America, a Florida-based group that says its purpose is to defend Western civilization against Islam.

“As a mother and a grandmother, I worry,” Ms. Serafin said. “I learned that in 20 years with the rate of the birth population, we will be overtaken by Islam, and their goal is to get people in Congress and the Supreme Court to see that Shariah is implemented. My children and grandchildren will have to live under that.”

“I do believe everybody has a right to freedom of religion,” she said. “But Islam is not about a religion. It's a political government, and it's 100 percent against our Constitution.”

Ms. Serafin was among an estimated 20 to 30 people who turned out to protest the mosque, including some who intentionally took dogs to offend those Muslims who consider dogs to be ritually unclean. But they were outnumbered by at least 75 supporters. The City of Temecula recently postponed a hearing on whether to grant the mosque a permit.

Larry Slusser, a Mormon and the secretary of the Interfaith Council of Murietta and Temecula, went to the protest to support the Muslim group. “I know them,” he said. “They're good people. They have no ill intent. They're good Americans. They are leaders in their professions.”

Of the protesters, he said, “they have fear because they don't know them.”

Religious freedom is also at stake, Mr. Slusser said, adding, “They're Americans, they deserve to have a place to worship just like everybody else.”

There are about 1,900 mosques in the United States, which run the gamut from makeshift prayer rooms in storefronts and houses to large buildings with adjoining community centers, according to a preliminary survey by Mr. Bagby, who conducted a mosque study 10 years ago and is now undertaking another.

A two-year study by a group of academics on American Muslims and terrorism concluded that contemporary mosques are actually a deterrent to the spread of militant Islam and terrorism. The study was conducted by professors with Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy and the University of North Carolina . It disclosed that many mosque leaders had put significant effort into countering extremism by building youth programs, sponsoring antiviolence forums and scrutinizing teachers and texts.

Radicalization of alienated Muslim youths is a real threat, Mr. Bagby said. “But the youth we worry about,” he said, “are not the youth that come to the mosque.”

In central Tennessee, the mosque in Murfreesboro is the third one in the last year to encounter resistance. It became a political issue when Republican candidates for governor and Congress declared their opposition. (They were defeated in primary elections on Thursday.)

A group called Former Muslims United put up a billboard saying “Stop the Murfreesboro Mosque.” The group's president is Nonie Darwish, also the founder of Arabs for Israel, who spoke against Islam in Murfreesboro at a fund-raising dinner for Christians United for Israel, an evangelical organization led by the Rev. John Hagee .

“A mosque is not just a place for worship,” Ms. Darwish said in an interview. “It's a place where war is started, where commandments to do jihad start, where incitements against non-Muslims occur. It's a place where ammunition was stored.”

Camie Ayash, a spokeswoman for the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, lamented that people were listening to what she called “total disinformation” on Islam.

She said her group was stunned when what began as one person raising zoning questions about the new mosque evolved into mass protests with marchers waving signs about Shariah.

“A lot of Muslims came to the U.S. because they respect the Constitution,” she said. “There's no conflict with the U.S. Constitution in Shariah law. If there were, Muslims wouldn't be living here.”

In Wisconsin, the conflict over the mosque was settled when the Town Executive Council voted unanimously to give the Islamic Society of Sheboygan a permit to use the former health food store as a prayer space.

Dr. Mansoor Mirza, the physician who owns the property, said he was trying to take the long view of the controversy.

“Every new group coming to this country — Jews, Catholics, Irish, Germans, Japanese — has gone through this,” Dr. Mirza said. “Now I think it's our turn to pay the price, and eventually we will be coming out of this, too.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/us/08mosque.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

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Slain Workers Undaunted by Risks, Friends Say

Tom Little raised three daughters with his wife in Afghanistan , avoided kidnappings during the Russian occupation, hid in his basement for months during the Taliban rule in the 1990s, survived rocket attacks and endured arrests for one reason, friends and family members said: to provide eye care for indigent Afghans.

After four decades in the country he came to call home, Mr. Little, a 61-year-old optometrist originally from upstate New York, was returning from treating people in a remote valley in Nuristan Province when he was among the 10 aid workers ambushed in the woods and killed.

Another was Dr. Karen Woo, a 36-year-old surgeon from Hertfordshire, England, who specialized in women's health. She had blogged about being a tomboy who loved “sexy dresses and high heels,” as well as her passion to help Afghan people.

Friends, relatives and colleagues remembered the two members of the ill-fated mission on Saturday as fervent humanitarians, dedicated to their cause despite their knowing its risks.

Mr. Little was the coordinator of the National Organization of Ophthalmic Rehabilitation Eye Care Program in Afghanistan, overseeing hospitals and clinics, teaching optometry and administering care in the most rural of areas.

“He consciously put his life on the line for his beliefs,” Mr. Little's brother, John Little, 62, said in a telephone interview from Florida. “He had had so many close calls before. He wasn't fearless, but he was at peace with danger.”

Mr. Little and Dr. Woo had been working with International Assistance Mission, which describes itself on its Web site as an “international charitable, non-profit, Christian organization, serving the people of Afghanistan.” A government inspection team had approved the group's projects and financing in June, the Web site said.

Six Americans, a Briton, a German and four Afghans were working with the group's mission to Nuristan at the time of the attack although the group has not confirmed that its workers were the ones attacked.

Dr. Woo, who was engaged to be married to a man who was also working in Afghanistan, was finishing a documentary about the health system in Afghanistan, and had founded the charity Bridge Afghanistan with Firuz Rahimi, a journalist for the BBC World Service.

“She wanted to go and show the life behind the violence,” Mr. Rahimi said. “She was a very kind, and a very determined person. She was somebody who wanted to make a difference.”

He first met Dr. Woo at a fashion show two years ago in London to benefit Afghan women. Although Dr. Woo was a runner and a former ballet dancer, before she left for Nuristan, she confided in Mr. Rahimi that she was concerned about the physical demands of the trip.

Mr. Little offered similar details to the congregation at Loudonville Community Church in upstate New York when making his presentation there last month.

“Tom and Libby's heart was always dedicated to reach those who had not had access to care, and to share the hope of their faith in the process,” Pastor Mike Conley said. “But they were very careful and knew about the sensitivity of sharing their faith in that region. They expressed their faith in practical ways.”

The Taliban, which claimed responsibility for the attack, accused the aid workers of proselytizing. But the group's director, Dirk Frans, said that although the group was Christian, its policies prohibited proselytizing.

David Evans, 57, a longtime friend of the Little family, and the former director of world missions at Loudonville Community Church, said that Mr. Little was never deterred by the violence around him.

“When the eye hospital was destroyed by a rocket attack,” Mr. Evans said, recalling a time in the late 1980s or early 1990s, Mr. Little had this reaction:

“He said, ‘Let's go out to pick up the bricks, one by one, and let's rebuild,' ” Mr. Evans said.

Mr. Little was known for his calm demeanor, said Mr. Evans, who accompanied Mr. Little on one mission in Afghanistan. “Tom was very patient in dealing with people,” he said. “We dealt with government officials, and day after day we would have cups of tea to get where he wanted to get to provide for the poor.”

For years, Ms. Little was a teacher at an international school in Kabul, assisting her husband when she could, Mr. Evans said. She was recovering from knee surgery and did not make this latest trip back to Afghanistan, John Little said.

Tom and Libby had been high school sweethearts at Ichabod Crane High School in Valatie, N.Y., and Tom's father, Henry O. Little Sr., was a noted ophthalmologist in Kinderhook, N.Y. Tom Little worked in his father's office, learning the trade, but studied theology in Toronto before doing medical relief work in Afghanistan.

“He learned from the seat of his pants,” John Little said. “He probably knew more about eye disease than most doctors in the field.”

In 2007, John said, Mr. Little earned a degree in optometry in Boston so that he could teach the latest techniques in Afghanistan.

The couple's three daughters, Molly, Nelly and Kattie, who grew up in Kabul and for parts of high school attended boarding school in India, have followed their parents' lead in one way or another, John said. Kattie is a doctor in Texas, John said. Nelly worked in Afghanistan for a nongovernmental organization overseeing the 2005 elections, and Molly works for the United Nations , most recently in Iraq, John said.

Connie Frisbee Houde, a freelance photographer who went to high school with Libby Little, visited them several times in Afghanistan.

“With a great deal of humor, the Littles recounted tale after tale of inspiring life and death incidents,” Ms. Houde wrote in her blog in 2005. “How during the Russian occupation they had to flee Herat with their three small children to avoid capture or being ‘disappeared' by the Russians; or how in the early '90s, they spent months living in the basement of their house and driving two hours around the outskirts of the city to avoid the factional fighting at the front lines so they could continue to provide eye care to the needy.”

This undaunted spirit marked the group's other leader, Dr. Woo. She wrote poignantly of her life in Afghanistan in her blog, in which she juxtaposed warm and humorous stories of ball gowns, pedicures, and kittens with the horrors of war zones and kidnappings.

In June, when she learned that two friends of a colleague had died in a plane crash in Afghanistan, she wrote in her blog of her own life and mortality in a war zone:

“Nothing in life is for sure, nothing that you see today will always be here tomorrow,” she wrote. “All of these people come to Afghanistan of their own volition, they come knowing that they may pay with their lives, the black humour is rife, a good way to keep the apprehension low, to keep calm and carry on. Perhaps no one ever expects it to be them, perhaps not their immediate friends either, it always some poor unknown person, a local national, a third country national.

“We count those that matter to us. We say that we are prepared for the loss whatever that may be but is it ever possible to be so? To be so prepared is that at polar opposites to the decision to be there in the first place, that somehow, it will never be me or anyone close to me.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/world/asia/08aidworkers.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Traffic-Camera Debate Heats Up Campaign Trails

It is a common consequence of having a car these days: a driver arrives home, opens the mail and — surprise! — finds a summons attached to a grainy photograph purporting to show the driver (or at least the driver's vehicle) involved in a traffic violation.

Now, as cash-challenged localities increasingly rely on such fines, traffic cameras have become a hot issue on the campaign trail and have even drawn federal scrutiny in a trend reflecting the populist outrage of this political season.

The issue has bubbled up in places like Cleveland, where Matt Brakey, a 29-year-old businessman seeking a spot on the Cuyahoga County Council, has proclaimed his opposition to traffic cameras on his campaign Web site and at events like one he recently held at a busy intersection where he unfurled a banner announcing his stance.

“There were lots of honks,” said Mr. Brakey, a Republican and first-time candidate for office. “This issue really taps into the general dissatisfaction with government.”

Indeed, the outrage over the cameras echoes the general concerns about government that have fueled protests movements like the Tea Party.

But the protests also underscore the sting many Americans feel in these economic times at having to pay fines of $25, $50 or $100 for traffic infractions that, in some cases, they had no idea they committed.

“It's a huge pocketbook issue,” Mr. Brakey said. “I've talked to people who can't renew their driver's license because they have all these tickets.”

Nearly 550 local governments use traffic cameras, according to experts studying the issue. But the grass-roots protests and challenges are having an impact. Fifteen states and 11 cities — including Arlington, Tex.; Anchorage; and Cincinnati — have banned or restricted the use of the devices, according to the National Motorist Association .

The effectiveness of traffic cameras is a matter of debate.

A study of seven communities by the Federal Highway Administration found that while the more dangerous broadside collisions were reduced by 25 percent at intersections with traffic lights that had a camera, there was also a 15 percent increase in rear-end collisions, possibly caused by drivers slamming on their brakes at the sight of the devices.

Still, proponents contend that the cameras have become a valuable tool for protecting the public at a time when police departments are stretched thin under ever increasing budget constraints.

Critics say, however, that the cameras serve no purpose other than to generate money for local governments and the private companies that install the devices.

In many instances, the critics say, local governments have been accused of placing cameras at busy intersections where they could generate high volumes of tickets, regardless of whether those intersections were considered dangerous.

At a Congressional hearing in June, Representative Peter A. DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat who is the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, raised concerns that companies that install the cameras were unfairly profiting from the contracts that local governments awarded them.

“In some cases, the private vendor gets paid a contingency fee per citation, which means they have a financial incentive to issue large volumes of citations,” he said. “An agreement like that really does cause one to wonder if using a contingency fee model is really about safety or lining the pockets of vendors.”

The debate is raging in places like Cook County, Ill., where protests broke out over the Democratic-controlled county board's plan to install cameras on roads in suburban Chicago communities.

Roger Keats, a Republican, has latched on to the issue as he mounts what he acknowledges is a long-shot campaign for president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners in the heavily Democratic county.

Mr. Keats has held news conferences and other public events where, he says, he has found receptive audiences for his anti-camera crusade, even in Democratic areas. “This issue has legs,” he said. “It's like a hidden tax on people — $100 a ticket.”

Mr. Keats, a retired state senator, has poked fun at his Democratic rival, Alderman Toni Preckwinkle of Chicago, for not challenging the Democrats on the county board over that and other issues.

In an interview, Ms. Preckwinkle said she supported the county plan, but believed local communities should have a say in where the cameras were placed.

But Mr. Keats says the local communities just do not want cameras. “They've made it clear,” he said.

In Tennessee, the recent Republican primary for mayor of Knox County turned nasty over the issue.

Tim Hutchison, a popular former sheriff in the race, accused his rival for the party's nomination, State Senator Tim Burchett, of sponsoring a bill in the Legislature that gave local governments the authority to install traffic cameras.

But the senator said Mr. Hutchison was distorting his record, saying the bill actually put restrictions on the fines and other penalties motorists faced as a result of violations captured on the cameras.

Mr. Burchett then struck back, with his campaign digging up information indicating that Mr. Hutchison had once been under consideration for a position on the board of a company that manufactures traffic cameras.

“I let him have it,” Mr. Burchett said. “It basically put him on notice that we weren't going to put up with his shenanigans.”

In the end, Mr. Burchett won the primary, and the general election, which was held on Thursday. But he said the outcome of the primary most likely would have been different if he had been on the wrong side of the traffic camera issue.

“It would have hurt the campaign,” he said. “It's a volatile issue.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/us/08traffic.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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Iran tops US terror list

Ahmadinejad: ‘No evidence' 3,000 people were killed on 9/11

by Hilary Leila Krieger

August 8, 2010

WASHINGTON – Iran has remained the “most active” state sponsor of terrorism, according to the 2009 US annual terrorism report released last week.

Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday questioned the death toll in the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, saying there was no evidence that 3,000 people were killed, according to Reuters.

The US report reads, “Iran's financial, material and logistic support for terrorist and militant groups throughout the Middle East and Central Asia had a direct impact on international efforts to promote peace, threatened economic stability in the Gulf and undermined the growth of democracy.

“Iran remained the principal supporter of groups that are implacably opposed to the Middle East peace process,” the report continued, highlighting the role of the Quds Force – the external operations branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – as the regime's primary for cultivating and supporting terrorists abroad.

The report points to the Islamic Republic's provision of weapons, training and funding to Palestinian groups including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

In addition, Teheran has provided “hundreds of millions of dollars” to support and train Hizbullah, including hosting thousands of the group's fighters at training camps in Iran.

The report also notes that “while Israel remained vulnerable to rocket and mortar attacks launched from inside Gaza, it continued to be largely successful in confronting the threat posed by suicide bombers and rockets from the Palestinian territories.”

It also cited Israel's transfer to the Palestinian Authority of control of territory in the West Bank as security conditions allowed.

Overall, terrorist attacks dropped worldwide by about 6 percent, which corresponded to a 5% decrease in death from such attacks. More than 15,700 people were killed by terrorists in 2009.

More attacks took place in South Asia than in the Middle East, the first time that's occurred since the reports began to be compiled. Congress mandated the annual terror report following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

“In South Asia, incident totals have crept up, so that for the first year, since we've been doing this at least, South Asia has proven to be more violent than the Middle East, [and] the rest of the world basically flat,” National Counterterrorism Center Deputy Director Russ Travers told reporters on Thursday after the report was released. “In the Middle East, what we've seen over the last three or four years is a pretty substantial decline in total number of incidents.”

Ahmadinejad, in his speech on Saturday, also accused the United States of trumping up the September 11 attacks to “create and prepare public opinion” for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and said that no “Zionists” were killed in the attacks because “one day earlier they were told not go to their workplace.”

Ahmadinejad has previously denied the September 11 attacks, calling them “a big fabrication.”

Ahmaedinejad said, “They announced that 3,000 people were killed in this incident, but there were no reports that reveal their names. Maybe you saw that, but I did not.

“What was the story of September 11? During five to six days, and with the aid of the media, they created and prepared public opinion so that everyone considered an attack on Afghanistan and Iraq as [their] right,” he said in the televised speech, Reuters reported.

The Iranian president also repeated his denial of the Holocaust.

http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=184008

(CNN) -- Police have forensic evidence linking a pair of escapees from an Arizona prison to the investigation of a couple found dead in New Mexico this week, an official with the New Mexico Department of Public Safety said Saturday.

The fugitives, who escaped from prison eight days ago, are suspects in the investigation into two burned bodies found in a camper Wednesday in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, according to Peter Olson, communications director for New Mexico Public Safety.

New Mexico police have yet to positively identify the burned bodies, but believe they are Linda and Gary Haas of Oklahoma, whose truck was found 100 miles away in Albuquerque, New Mexico, according to Olson.

Forensic evidence found in that truck links John McCluskey and Tracy Province, the two escaped prisoners, to the investigation into the burned bodies, Olson told CNN. He would not elaborate on the nature of the evidence.

Earlier Saturday, authorities arrested McCluskey's mother and charged her with aiding the escape.

Claudia Washburn, 68, was arrested and charged with conspiracy to facilitate escape and hindering prosecution, Deputy U.S. Marshal Thomas Henman told CNN.

The inmates, who authorities describe as armed and dangerous, have been at large since fleeing an Arizona prison on July 30.

Washburn allegedly provided "financial and other aid" to her son and the second escapee and to a woman who was helping them, Henman said. Washburn was arrested in Jakes Corner, Arizona.

A nationwide manhunt continues for McCluskey, 45, who was serving 15 years for attempted second-degree murder and other charges, and for Tracy Province, 42, who was serving a life sentence for murder and armed robbery.

The two are believed to have left Arizona but to still be in the United States, Henman said.

In an interview with CNN Arizona affiliate KTVK, Washburn's husband said that he'd shoot his stepson McCluskey if he saw him again.

"I told the U.S Marshals I haven't got that long to live," Jack Washburn said. "[I'd] serve my time."

"You think you're Bonnie and Clyde," he continued, referring to the two escapees. "You're not. No comparison."

A female accomplice helped Province, McCluskey and a third inmate, Daniel Renwick, escape by throwing cutting tools over a prison fence, said Charles Ryan, director of Arizona's Department of Corrections.

Authorities have identified the suspected accomplice as Casslyn Mae Welch, 43. Welch is Claudia Washburn's niece and is McCluskey's cousin and fiancée, KTVK reported.

Renwick was captured Sunday in Colorado after getting in a shootout with authorities.

After the break, the inmates and the accomplice abducted two truck drivers at gunpoint on Interstate 40 outside of Kingman, Arizona, and hijacked their 18-wheeler, according to the Mohave County sheriff's department in Kingman.

The truck drivers and the rig were released five hours later in Flagstaff, about 135 miles to the east.

The fugitives were later believed to be driving a 2002 silver Volkswagen Jetta purchased last Saturday in Phoenix. They were later spotted on a security camera in a bank inside a grocery store in Goodyear, Arizona, according to Barrett Marson, spokesman for the Arizona Department of Corrections.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/08/07/arizona.prison.escape.arrest/?hpt=T1

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Miami, Florida (CNN) -- He was born in Saudi Arabia and spent much of his youth in New York and south Florida. Then he vanished.

Investigators now allege that Adnan Shukrijumah has risen to a key position in al Qaeda's leadership.

The FBI says that after he left America, Shukrijumah started off as an al Qaeda dishwasher, doing menial tasks at training camps.

But he's much more than a dishwasher now, according to investigators.

"It's like any other business. He would be equated with being the chief of operations," says Brian LeBlanc, a special agent for the FBI.

As the alleged director of al Qaeda's overseas operations, investigators believe he is "extremely dangerous," LeBlanc says.

"He may not be someone who's going to come into the United States to conduct the attack, but what makes him more dangerous is he's out there plotting the attacks and recruiting people to actively do that," LeBlanc says.

The breakthrough came when LeBlanc, an FBI counter-terrorism agent, linked Shukrijumah to the thwarted New York subway suicide mission last fall -- the biggest post-9/11 terror investigation.

Najibullah Zazi and Zarein Ahmedzay admitted they planned to blow themselves up using homemade bombs.

Prosecutors say it was Shukrijumah who called the shots -- probably from somewhere along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

"[Shukrijumah] was the one that convinced ... them to come back to the United States and conduct the attack here," LeBlanc says.

But Shukrijumah's mother -- who did not wish to be named in order to protect her privacy -- says authorities are using her son as a scapegoat.

"That is not my son. My son is not a violent person. He is very kind, generous," she says.

Shukrijumah -- the eldest son of a Saudi Imam -- came to America as a young child.

They settled in Brooklyn, New York, where his father preached at a mosque. They lived at a nearby house before moving to Florida in the mid-'90s.

His father, who is now dead, opened a small mosque near Fort Lauderdale.

Meanwhile, Shukrijumah worked at odd jobs, including selling used cars. His family says it's how he paid for courses, including computers and chemistry, at a small college in South Florida. He even took classes to improve his English.

A few years later, when the FBI said they wanted to find him, Shukrijumah's English professor remembered videotaping him in class and turned over the tape to the FBI. That proved crucial six years later.

On a hunch, LeBlanc asked agents in New York to show that video of Shukrijumah to would-be bomber Zazi.

"From that video, he was able to make an identification," LeBlanc says.

The FBI says it now has a more detailed profile of Shukrijumah in part, from 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

Just before 9/11, the FBI says Shukrijumah crossed the U.S. by train. Later, he scoped out the Panama Canal as a target.

He went to Trinidad, London and -- by June 2001 -- Afghanistan.

On 9/11, his mother says he called home for the last time.

"He called me and he said, 'Did you hear what happened with so and so and so?' He said, 'They're putting it on the Muslims. I said, 'yes.'"

She says she told him not to come home.

"And he was arguing with me. He said, 'No, I didn't do nothing. I will come, don't worry about this,'" she recalls.

After that, she says, she never heard from him again.

Shukrijumah's mother adamantly denies her son is directing al Qaeda attacks. But when asked about Faisal Shahzad -- who has pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges in the attempted car bomb attack in Times Square in May -- she says that sometimes "you have to do something very alarming for the people to wake up."

"It's not because you hate them or you want to destroy them or you want to hurt them," she says.

When asked if she has a message to send her son, she says she has nothing to say.

"He [has] his own guide in his own heart," she says.

For the FBI, it's all about staying one step ahead. Where will al Qaeda -- and their alleged chief of operations -- strike next?

"He's definitely focused on attacking the United States and other western countries," LeBlanc says.

The FBI believes Shukrijumah is likely in Pakistan's lawless tribal region of Waziristan.

Shukrijumah moved up the ladder after two others who directed outside operations for al Qaeda were killed in suspected U.S. drone attacks, the FBI says.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/08/06/terror.qaeda.leader/?hpt=Mid

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