From the Los Angeles Times

LAPD to release images of 160 women taken by alleged 'Grim Sleeper'

In July, when Los Angeles police arrested Lonnie Franklin Jr., the suspected "Grim Sleeper" serial killer, they scoured his South L.A. property for incriminating evidence.

Among the more troubling discoveries were nearly 1,000 still photographs and hundreds of hours of home video showing women, almost all of them partly or completely nude and striking sexually graphic poses.

Detectives on the case have spent the ensuing months trying to identify the women to determine whether they are alive and to learn how they came to be photographed by a man charged with sexually assaulting and killing 10 women.

The attempt has proved fruitless. So Thursday the LAPD plans to publish images of the roughly 160 women in the hope that they, family or acquaintances will recognize them and contact investigators.

“As a police department, we have an obligation to account for the welfare of these women,” said veteran homicide Det. Dennis Kilcoyne, who headed the task force that hunted Franklin. “We're trying to fill in the life and times of Lonnie Franklin over the past 30 years, and talking to people is a big part of that. These are obviously women who had a conversation or two with this guy.”

Franklin is accused of murdering seven young African American women between 1985 and 1988 in South L.A.  Police say he resurfaced in the same area 14 years later, striking three more times between 2002 and 2007.

Authorities said they have linked Franklin, 58, to the killings through a combination of DNA and ballistics evidence. The former city sanitation worker and LAPD garage attendant has pleaded not guilty to all charges. He remains in custody.

Learn more about the Grim Sleeper's known victims on The Times interactive Homicide Report

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

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One toke over the line

The assertion that Prop. 19 is contributing to a rise in teenage marijuana use is unfounded.

December 16, 2010

California, whose initiative to legalize recreational marijuana use drew national headlines this year, is notoriously tolerant of a drug considered an evil weed in some parts of the country. But is our lax attitude creating a school system full of Jeff Spicolis, the iconic California stoner from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High"? R. Gil Kerlikowske, the Obama administration's drug czar, suspects that it is.

After an annual survey of teen drug use nationwide found that marijuana smoking is on the rise among eighth- through 12th-graders, Kerlikowske attributed the uptick to California's Proposition 19 and other states' initiatives to legalize medical marijuana. "Mixed messages about drug legalization, particularly marijuana, may be to blame," he said in a news release. "Such messages certainly don't help parents who are trying to prevent kids from using drugs."

Anecdotal evidence suggests that he has a point. In Los Angeles, where billboards promoting doctors who pass out medical marijuana recommendations are commonplace and green crosses identifying pot "clinics" can be found on hundreds of street corners, cannabis seems as harmless and ubiquitous as nasal spray. It would be surprising if kids weren't influenced by adults' blase attitudes about the drug.

Yet anecdotal evidence is no substitute for rigorous study, and Kerlikowske should have checked such sources as the Congressional Research Service before jumping to conclusions. An April report, issued to advise Congress on whether to loosen federal restrictions on medical marijuana, examined studies comparing teen pot smoking in states with and without medical marijuana laws and found no connection between such laws and drug use. "Concerns that medical cannabis laws send the wrong message to vulnerable groups such as adolescents seem to be unfounded," it stated.

Most studies on the issue were performed about a decade ago, and it's clear that more research is needed on the effects of legalization debates on teen attitudes. Even if a causal connection is discovered, though, it doesn't imply that the solution is to stop discussing legalization — as evidenced by the same National Institute on Drug Abuse survey that prompted Kerlikowske's comments.

Even as teen marijuana use is rising, tobacco and alcohol use is falling, according to the report, which found that 21.4% of high school seniors had smoked pot in the previous month and 19.2% had smoked tobacco — the first time since 1981 that marijuana was more popular than cigarettes. This may indicate that public health campaigns aimed at discouraging alcohol and tobacco use are working, and that similar campaigns aimed specifically at marijuana might be equally effective. There's little evidence that continued criminalization has discouraged teen drug use, but better education might.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-marijuana-20101216,0,7254024,print.story

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'Stinging' would-be terrorists

Atty. Gen. Eric Holder says the FBI is on solid legal ground in its methods and is not luring Muslims into terrorist plots.

December 16, 2010

From Abscam to the arrest of former Washington Mayor Marion Barry on drug charges, sting operations have brought accusations that the government was entrapping its targets. This perennial complaint has acquired a new sensitivity with charges that the FBI, as part of its anti-terrorism activities, is inducing Muslims to take part in fictitious plots and then arresting them. So far the accusations seem exaggerated, but the FBI needs to be careful that it doesn't propose violations of the law to individuals who have shown no propensity to commit crimes.

The latest suggestion of entrapment comes from the lawyer for Mohamed Osman Mohamud, the 19-year-old Somali American accused of plotting to explode a bomb at a Christmas tree lighting in Portland, Ore., last month. The lawyer said undercover agents had been "basically grooming" Mohamud for months to commit a terrorist act, and complained that they failed to record their first meeting with Mohamud — the meeting at which evidence of entrapment would be most evident.

The notion that Mohamud was entrapped brought a defiant response from Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr.. Addressing a group of American Muslims, Holder said he would make no apologies for the FBI's conduct in the case, which included providing Mohamud with a large and elaborate "explosive." More generally, Holder said undercover operations "have proven to be an essential law enforcement tool in uncovering and preventing potential terror attacks."

If the government's recitation of facts in the Mohamud case is to be believed, Holder is on solid ground. Although the word "entrapment" is often used synonymously with "sting operation," entrapment in the legal sense occurs when police induce someone to engage in a crime he otherwise would not have committed. According to the FBI, Mohamud indicated his intention to kill Americans, identified the target and refused to change his mind when he was reminded that children would be harmed in an explosion.

It would be appalling, and illegal, for the FBI to try to tempt Muslims who have shown no propensity to violence to engage in terrorist operations. Besides being insensitive to constitutional rights, such a strategy would be a waste of law enforcement resources. Holder insists that the FBI is engaged in something different: pretending to help suspects plot acts of terrorism only after they have indicated their desire to commit a violent crime. So long as the government abides by that distinction, sting operations are a legitimate tool in combating terrorism.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-entrap-20101216,0,5688042,print.story

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From the New York

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Sweden Bombing Doesn't Soil Image of Tolerance

STOCKHOLM — As they consider the suicide bombing that recently rocked their country, many Swedes have taken comfort from the attack's most enduring image, as captured by a security camera: a man in a red jacket kneeling by the dying bomber, asking if there was anything he could do for the man while other bystanders, spying unexploded pipe bombs still strapped to the man's waist, backed away, shouting, “Bomb! Bomb! Bomb!”

As Swedes sigh in relief at the failure of the attack on Saturday that seemed intended to cause mass casualties among Christmas shoppers, they have taken comfort from that aspect of an otherwise shocking scene. Many have described it as exemplifying the compassion and tolerance Sweden prizes as part of its national character — qualities, they say, that must not be surrendered in a new era of terrorist threats.

On Wednesday, the Swedish security police released a study of Islamic extremism that was commissioned months ago, but released now to allay public disquiet. A summary said the study had concluded that “the terrorist threat in Sweden” involves fewer “than 200 radicalized individuals,” that “they pose no serious threat to the society and government” and that Sweden's response should be confined to “preventive measures” — and, by implication, not broader social or political changes.

Under questioning, officials said that Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, the Iraqi-born Swede who the police say was the perpetrator and the only person to die in the attack, was not among the 200 people under surveillance before the bombing. That disclosure was likely to raise fresh questions about the grasp the Swedes have achieved as they monitor extremism among the country's 400,000 to 500,000 Muslims.

One view among diplomats is that the Swedes' tolerant attitude may have left the security establishment unprepared for the bombing, the first by Islamic extremists in Scandinavia.

A resolve not to let the bombing wrench the country from its moorings has been evident in Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. “This is not the path we want to go down,” he said in his initial response to the bombing. “Sweden is an open society which has demonstrated a will that people must be able to come from different backgrounds, believe in different gods, or not believe in any god at all — and be able to live side-by-side, together.”

But even as investigators seek the accomplices they believe Mr. Abdaly may have had in Sweden, Britain and the Muslim world, a national debate has begun over the whys, as well as the hows, of the attack. Among the questions are these: Why has the culture of suicide bombing come to Sweden, when it has been one of the most generous countries in Europe in opening its doors to Muslims fleeing war and repression? And why now, when the country has looked on for years as other European capitals, notably London and Madrid, have been the targets of deadly bombings?

And why, too, did such a sharp turn come in the life of Mr. Abdaly, who came here as a 10-year-old, his family fleeing the oppression of Saddam Hussein, and gained a reputation in Tranas, the small town where his family settled, as a quiet, well-mannered and amiable boy?

One elected official who thinks the time has come for Sweden to get tough, whatever the cost to its tolerant reputation, is Jimmie Akesson, the leader of a right-wing party, the Sweden Democrats. In a September general election the party campaigned on a program calling for a 90 percent cut in immigration. Sweden's migrant population has soared in recent decades, changing one of the most ethnically homogeneous populations in Europe.

Mr. Akesson, whose party won 20 seats in the 349-seat Parliament, said in an interview that the bombing was predictable, considering the unassimilated lives of most Swedish Muslims. “Up to now, other parties have just laughed at us and said there is no serious threat from extremist forms of Islam in Sweden, but now we know there is,” he said.

Mr. Akesson argues that Sweden's approach to multiculturalism has left many Muslims unable to speak Swedish, unreconciled to Swedish laws and mores that conflict with Islamic beliefs and clustered in what amount to ghettos in big cities like Stockholm, Malmo and Gothenburg.

“They must adapt to Swedish society, instead of Sweden adapting to them,” he said.

On Drottninggatan, the crowded pedestrian mall where Mr. Abdaly attacked, many shoppers walked briskly past when asked to discuss the issue, shaking their heads as if the bombing were too distasteful to consider. But one man who paused said Sweden would have to adapt and become more “realistic” in its policies by assimilating newcomers better.

“Should we now shut the door?” said the man, a 55-year-old businessman who gave only his first name, John. “Absolutely not. We have benefited far too much from the foreigners who have come here to do anything like that.”

Some Muslims condemned Mr. Abdaly. Abdul Rauf, a 30-year-old from Pakistan with a spiky black beard poking from a hooded parka, said of Mr. Abdaly, “You have to be mad to do something like that.” Had Mr. Rauf, with his Islamic-style beard, been hassled over the bombing? “Not at all,” he said. “Swedish people are very polite, very kind.”

But his was not a universal view. Masoud Kamali, a professor of social work who wrote a multivolume report on discrimination in the country, said Sweden lived an illusion in seeing itself as the world's fairest, least discriminatory society.

“When I travel to the United States, people are always saying, ‘Oh, Sweden is very tolerant, very open,' ” said Mr. Kamali, who arrived from Iran in the 1970s. “It's an established myth. But it's not.”

Mr. Kamali said Sweden would have to take radical steps to decrease the segregation and marginalization of Muslims, or face what he described as “many burning areas” across the country. He said Swedish governments had followed a social democratic model of equality for decades, emphasizing barriers of class and gender, but ignoring or underestimating the force of ethnic and religious bias.

“It's a question of belonging,” he said. “Are you accepted as you are, living as a true Muslim in a modern European country?

“The answer is no, so you have to find something else, and he found the bombing.” He added, “And I can promise you this, it's going to happen again.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/world/europe/16sweden.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Town Mute for 30 Years About a Bully's Killing

SKIDMORE, Mo. — The murder of Ken Rex McElroy took place in plain view of dozens of residents of this small farm town, under the glare of the morning sun. But in a dramatic act of solidarity with the gunman, every witness, save the dead man's wife, denied seeing who had pulled the trigger.

The killing was a shocking end for a notoriously brutal man who had terrorized the area for years with seeming impunity from the law until he was struck down in a moment of vigilante justice. It was also the first major case for a young county prosecutor, not far removed from law school and just months into the job, who said he was confident that the case would be solved soon.

But the silence of the townspeople held. Now, nearly 30 years later, that prosecutor, David A. Baird, is preparing to leave office with his first and most famous case still unsolved.

No one has ever been brought to trial in Mr. McElroy's death, and, although there is no statute of limitations on murder, most people around here suspect that no one ever will be.

“Once the shroud of silence fell, there was going to be no one talking,” said Cheryl Huston, whose elderly father had been shot by Mr. McElroy and who watched the killing of Mr. McElroy from her family's grocery store but, like the others, said she did not see the gunman. “They could have pushed and dug, pushed and dug and gotten nothing.”

“We were so bitter and so angry at the law letting us down that it came to somebody taking matters in their own hands,” she said. “No one has any idea what a nightmare we lived.”

As his long tenure comes to an end questions about the lack of resolution in the murder case — perhaps the most infamous in the area since Jesse James was shot nearby a century earlier — continue to follow Mr. Baird. He was charged with wading through the sensational details and moral ambiguities of the case to ensure that, in his words, justice was served.

But justice is a loaded term in a case that challenges the usual assumptions of victim and perpetrator. And Mr. Baird, all these years later, is still unwilling to give his own view on whether justice was served even though — or because — the killer was never tried.

“You could talk to everybody in this case, and they'd give you a different answer,” he said in an interview at his office in the red brick county courthouse in nearby Maryville. “I'm never going to answer that question. It's never going to happen.”

Richard McFadin, 87, a lawyer, now retired, who represented Mr. McElroy in numerous cases and, after the killing, his widow, said he believed there was enough evidence for a prosecution. He believes one of the gunmen was the suspect named by the widow. “The town got away with murder,” Mr. McFadin said.

The police chief who oversaw the investigation, Hal Riddle, disagrees. He said that Mr. Baird pushed aggressively to bring a case to trial, but that investigators were never able to secure enough evidence to charge someone with a crime.

“If we could have proved who done it, he would have prosecuted him,” said Mr. Riddle, 72 and also retired, who describes the case as the most frustrating of his career.

The last three decades have been tough on this agricultural community of 342, about an hour and a half north of Kansas City. Like so many other small towns, Skidmore has shrunk inside itself, watching businesses close and residents depart.

Perversely, the town's share of tragedy has grown. Road signs bear a picture of a young man who disappeared nine years ago and is feared dead. A memorial in the tiny downtown park displays the name of an expectant mother murdered six years ago, her fetus cut from her womb.

Even with these raw wounds, the memory of the nightmare surrounding Mr. McElroy — during his years of troublemaking and after a killing that many here feel was forced by an impotent criminal-justice system — continues to loom large.

“After all these years, people talk about it still,” said Marla Messner, 37, a restaurant manager who remembers being hurried inside her home for safety anytime Mr. McElroy came to town. “I think it's something that's going to define this town forever.”

Just months after Mr. Baird became county prosecutor — a post he was encouraged to take because “nothing exciting ever happens in Nodaway County”— he found himself in a courtroom for the first time with Mr. McElroy, who had shot an elderly Skidmore grocer in the neck with a shotgun. Known for stealing livestock, harassing women, destroying property and threatening lives, Mr. McElroy had been charged with numerous felonies over the years — his lawyer estimated at least three a year — but had never been convicted.

The streak ended when a jury convicted Mr. McElroy of second-degree assault in the grocer's shooting. A conviction should have been a victory for the people of Skidmore, but the jury set a maximum sentence of two years, and the judge, without protest from Mr. Baird, released Mr. McElroy on bond pending appeal. Mr. McElroy was quickly rearrested after he appeared in town with a rifle, but he was again released.

When a court hearing was postponed, there was a meeting in town, with the mayor and the sheriff attending, to discuss Mr. McElroy.

Within hours, Mr. Baird heard that there had been a shooting downtown. He was sure it was Mr. McElroy who had done the shooting. It was hours before he learned that it was Mr. McElroy who had been shot, sitting in the front seat of his pickup truck alongside his wife, after picking up some beer at the town bar. Bullet casings from two guns were found. As many as 60 people were reported to have been at the scene, but not one of them would say who had wielded the weapons.

The local major-cases squad investigated, then the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Three grand juries heard evidence. But even after a federal prosecutor forwarded to Mr. Baird what he called “substantial” new evidence, no one was indicted. Instead of playing out in court, the details emerged in newspaper and magazine accounts, as well as a best-selling book, “In Broad Daylight: A Murder in Skidmore, Missouri,” which was later made into a television movie.

Reached by phone, Mr. McElroy's wife, who has since remarried and left the state, said she was not interested in talking about the case.

Mr. McElroy has been dead for almost three decades now, a round number that has residents here bracing for the next round of visits by reporters. The bar that provided the backdrop for the shooting is closed and for sale for $20,000. The man identified by the widow as the main gunman recently died, something Mr. Baird raised in suggesting that the case may never be reopened.

And Mr. Baird lost his first election, in the Democratic primary this year, by just 25 votes, a loss noted by The Kansas City Star because of his connection with the case. He said he was not at all disappointed to leave office with the case still unsolved. “My experience is that trying a case is not always good at bringing closure,” Mr. Baird said.

As he packed up his office last week, he gave his successor a memo that listed a dozen or so unsolved cases in Nodaway County including, down toward the end, the killing of Mr. McElroy. “Just to be aware,” he explained.

His successor, Robert Rice, already knew how Mr. McElroy died. He grew up hearing the story. And he has already asked the sheriff's office to re-examine some of the unsolved cases. But not that one.

“I don't know if I will,” Mr. Rice said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/us/16bully.html?ref=us

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U.S. Rethinks Strategy for the Unthinkable

Suppose the unthinkable happened, and terrorists struck New York or another big city with an atom bomb. What should people there do? The government has a surprising new message: Do not flee. Get inside any stable building and don't come out till officials say it's safe.

The advice is based on recent scientific analyses showing that a nuclear attack is much more survivable if you immediately shield yourself from the lethal radiation that follows a blast, a simple tactic seen as saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Even staying in a car, the studies show, would reduce casualties by more than 50 percent; hunkering down in a basement would be better by far.

But a problem for the Obama administration is how to spread the word without seeming alarmist about a subject that few politicians care to consider, let alone discuss. So officials are proceeding gingerly in a campaign to educate the public.

“We have to get past the mental block that says it's too terrible to think about,” W. Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said in an interview. “We have to be ready to deal with it” and help people learn how to “best protect themselves.”

Officials say they are moving aggressively to conduct drills, prepare communication guides and raise awareness among emergency planners of how to educate the public.

Over the years, Washington has sought to prevent nuclear terrorism and limit its harm, mainly by governmental means. It has spent tens of billions of dollars on everything from intelligence and securing nuclear materials to equipping local authorities with radiation detectors.

The new wave is citizen preparedness. For people who survive the initial blast, the main advice is to fight the impulse to run and instead seek shelter from lethal radioactivity. Even a few hours of protection, officials say, can greatly increase survival rates.

Administration officials argue that the cold war created an unrealistic sense of fatalism about a terrorist nuclear attack. “It's more survivable than most people think,” said an official deeply involved in the planning, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The key is avoiding nuclear fallout.”

The administration is making that argument with state and local authorities and has started to do so with the general public as well. Its Citizen Corps Web site says a nuclear detonation is “potentially survivable for thousands, especially with adequate shelter and education.” A color illustration shows which kinds of buildings and rooms offer the best protection from radiation.

In June, the administration released to emergency officials around the nation an unclassified planning guide 130 pages long on how to respond to a nuclear attack. It stressed citizen education, before any attack.

Without that knowledge, the guide added, “people will be more likely to follow the natural instinct to run from danger, potentially exposing themselves to fatal doses of radiation.”

Specialists outside of Washington are divided on the initiative. One group says the administration is overreacting to an atomic threat that is all but nonexistent.

Peter Bergen, a fellow at the New America Foundation and New York University's Center on Law and Security, recently argued that the odds of any terrorist group obtaining a nuclear weapon are “near zero for the foreseeable future.”

But another school says that the potential consequences are so high that the administration is, if anything, being too timid.

“There's no penetration of the message coming out of the federal government,” said Irwin Redlener, a doctor and director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. “It's deeply frustrating that we seem unable to bridge the gap between the new insights and using them to inform public policy.”

White House officials say they are aware of the issue's political delicacy but are nonetheless moving ahead briskly.

The administration has sought “to enhance national resilience — to withstand disruption, adapt to change and rapidly recover,” said Brian Kamoie, senior director for preparedness policy at the National Security Council. He added, “We're working hard to involve individuals in the effort so they become part of the team in terms of emergency management.”

A nuclear blast produces a blinding flash, burning heat and crushing wind. The fireball and mushroom cloud carry radioactive particles upward, and the wind sends them near and far.

The government initially knew little about radioactive fallout. But in the 1950s, as the cold war intensified, scientists monitoring test explosions learned that the tiny particles throbbed with fission products — fragments of split atoms, many highly radioactive and potentially lethal.

But after a burst of interest in fallout shelters, the public and even the government grew increasingly skeptical about civil defense as nuclear arsenals grew to hold thousands of warheads.

In late 2001, a month after the Sept. 11 attacks, the director of central intelligence told President George W. Bush of a secret warning that Al Qaeda had hidden an atom bomb in New York City. The report turned out to be false. But atomic jitters soared.

“History will judge harshly those who saw this coming danger but failed to act,” Mr. Bush said in late 2002.

In dozens of programs, his administration focused on prevention but also dealt with disaster response and the acquisition of items like radiation detectors.

“Public education is key,” Daniel J. Kaniewski, a security expert at George Washington University, said in an interview. “But it's easier for communities to buy equipment — and look for tech solutions — because there's Homeland Security money and no shortage of contractors to supply the silver bullet.”

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005 revealed the poor state of disaster planning, public and private officials began to question national preparedness for atomic strikes. Some noted conflicting federal advice on whether survivors should seek shelter or try to evacuate.

In 2007, Congress appropriated $5.5 million for studies on atomic disaster planning, noting that “cities have little guidance available to them.”

The Department of Homeland Security financed a multiagency modeling effort led by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The scientists looked at Washington, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other big cities, using computers to simulate details of the urban landscape and terrorist bombs.

The results were revealing. For instance, the scientists found that a bomb's flash would blind many drivers, causing accidents and complicating evacuation.

The big surprise was how taking shelter for as little as several hours made a huge difference in survival rates.

“This has been a game changer,” Brooke Buddemeier, a Livermore health physicist, told a Los Angeles conference. He showed a slide labeled “How Many Lives Can Sheltering Save?”

If people in Los Angeles a mile or more from ground zero of an attack took no shelter, Mr. Buddemeier said, there would be 285,000 casualties from fallout in that region.

Taking shelter in a place with minimal protection, like a car, would cut that figure to 125,000 deaths or injuries, he said. A shallow basement would further reduce it to 45,000 casualties. And the core of a big office building or an underground garage would provide the best shelter of all.

“We'd have no significant exposures,” Mr. Buddemeier told the conference, and thus virtually no casualties from fallout.

On Jan. 16, 2009 — four days before Mr. Bush left office — the White House issued a 92-page handbook lauding “pre-event preparedness.” But it was silent on the delicate issue of how to inform the public.

Soon after Mr. Obama arrived at the White House, he embarked a global campaign to fight atomic terrorism and sped up domestic planning for disaster response. A senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the new administration began a revision of the Bush administration's handbook to address the issue of public communication.

“We started working on it immediately,” the official said. “It was recognized as a key part of our response.”

The agenda hit a speed bump. Las Vegas was to star in the nation's first live exercise meant to simulate a terrorist attack with an atom bomb, the test involving about 10,000 emergency responders. But casinos and businesses protested, as did Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. He told the federal authorities that it would scare away tourists.

Late last year, the administration backed down.

“Politics overtook preparedness,” said Mr. Kaniewski of George Washington University.

When the administration came out with its revised planning guide in June, it noted that “no significant federal response” after an attack would be likely for one to three days.

The document said that planners had an obligation to help the public “make effective decisions” and that messages for predisaster campaigns might be tailored for schools, businesses and even water bills.

“The most lives,” the handbook said, “will be saved in the first 60 minutes through sheltering in place.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/science/16terror.html?ref=us

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Kilpatrick Indicted in Criminal Ring

DETROIT — The city's imprisoned former mayor, Kwame M. Kilpatrick, and two top aides rigged contracts, collected millions of dollars in bribes and defrauded taxpayers, the federal government said on Wednesday in a 38-count indictment that characterizes Mr. Kilpatrick's inner circle as a long-running criminal organization.

The indictment, the result of an investigation that began in 2004, also names Mr. Kilpatrick's father, Bernard, who is accused of collecting kickbacks, and a contractor, Bobby Ferguson, who received “tens of millions of dollars” for work he either did not perform or was awarded through extortion, the authorities said.

The Kilpatrick Enterprise, as the indictment refers to the five defendants, dates to Mr. Kilpatrick's time in the Michigan Legislature and became more powerful when he was elected mayor in 2001, Barbara L. McQuade, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, said at a news conference. Also named in the indictment were Victor Mercado, who was indicted for his actions as head of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, and Derrick Miller, a former top aide to Mr. Kilpatrick, who is accused of taking bribes.

“The defendants used the power and authority of Kwame Kilpatrick's public offices to unjustly enrich not only themselves but their families and their associates at the expense of taxpayers and donors,” Ms. McQuade said.

If convicted, the defendants could be sentenced to up to 30 years in prison, Ms. McQuade said. The charges include bribery, extortion, fraud and racketeering. The five were indicted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which is used to fight organized crime and allows the government to seek stiffer penalties.

Fourteen people, including the former City Council president, Monica Conyers, have already pleaded guilty to felonies in the case.

Mr. Kilpatrick, 40, is serving a prison sentence of up to five years for violating probation. He pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and resigned as mayor in 2008, after text messages showed that he had engaged in an extramarital affair with his chief of staff and that he agreed to an $8.5 million settlement with police officers whom he fired to prevent the affair from being revealed. He and the chief of staff, Christine Beatty, were charged with perjury for denying their affair in court testimony.

The indictment accuses Mr. Ferguson of giving Mr. Kilpatrick at least $424,000 in kickbacks. In addition to that money, it says Mr. Kilpatrick deposited nearly $500,000 in unexplained cash.

Mr. Kilpatrick's father put more than $600,000 into his bank accounts during the Kilpatrick administration, according to the indictment.

The indictment says that Kwame Kilpatrick used donations to a charity known as the Kilpatrick Civic Fund to pay for golf clubs, summer camp for his children, yoga classes and antibugging equipment. As a state representative, Mr. Kilpatrick diverted $280,000 in grant money meant to help the elderly and children; the funds instead went to nonprofits controlled by his wife and Mr. Ferguson, who used it for personal expenses, the indictment says.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/us/16kilpatrick.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Border Patrol Agent Dies in Shootout in Arizona

PHOENIX — A late-night shootout Tuesday between Border Patrol agents and gunmen in a remote area of Arizona near the border with Mexico left one agent dead and four suspects in custody, and the authorities said they were searching Wednesday for one man who got away.

“The Border Patrol came across five suspects who fired at them, and the agents returned fire,” said Agent Brenda Lee Nath, a spokeswoman with the F.B.I. in Phoenix. “Unfortunately, one agent was fatally shot.”

Killed in the cross-fire was Brian A. Terry, 40, who had been an agent since 2007, the authorities said. Mr. Terry, a Michigan native, had military and law enforcement training and was in the Border Patrol's tactical unit, said T. J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the agents' union.

Mr. Bonner said Mr. Terry had been attacked by bandits who prey on illegal immigrants crossing the border, robbing and sexually abusing them. Border Patrol and F.B.I. officials declined to comment on the attackers.

One of the four suspects under arrest was being treated at University Medical Center in Tucson, officials said. The shootout took place about 11 p.m. Tuesday near Rio Rico, about 10 miles north of the border, and ranchers in the area were told early Wednesday morning that a fifth suspect, described as potentially dangerous, was on the loose and possibly heading toward the border.

“Border Patrol has a rancher liaison unit, and we received a phone call about 6 a.m. about the incident,” said Danny Bell, who owns a cattle ranch several miles from the scene of the shootout.

Ranchers said the Peck Canyon area was frequently used by smugglers. On Wednesday, helicopters flew overhead and law enforcement officers searched the area. Edith Lowell, an 82-year-old rancher, said she locked her doors after learning of the shootout. “We don't usually lock them,” she said.

Officials with the federal Customs and Border Protection agency said they were being assisted by the F.B.I. and the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office.

There have been 111 Border Patrol agents killed over the years, Mr. Bonner said. “For such a small force to have lost so many agents just punctuates the danger that the men and women face every time they put on their uniform,” he said. “Even with all their training, sometimes evil gets the upper hand.”

Sheriff Antonio Estrada said the last killing of a Border Patrol agent in Santa Cruz County was in 1998.

“That it's dangerous, there's no doubt, but I don't want to overstate it,” Sheriff Estrada said. “It's not like we're seeing this happen every day. The border is a lot more secure, but it's not sealed and never will be.”

Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security and a former Arizona governor, said prosecuting those responsible would be a priority. “We will honor his memory by remaining resolute and committed to the serious task of securing our nation's borders,” she said.

The current governor, Jan Brewer, who has clashed with the Obama administration on whether enough is being done to secure the border, ordered state flags flown at half-staff to honor Mr. Terry. “Although we needed no reminder of the ever increasing dangers along our southern border, this tragedy serves as stark notice that the threats facing all who serve in protecting our state and nation are real, and are increasing on a daily basis,” she said in a statement.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/us/16border.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Pennsylvania: Oversight for School

School district officials in Philadelphia agreed Wednesday to state and federal oversight for the next two and a half years to address anti-Asian violence at a troubled high school that prompted a student boycott and an investigation by the Justice Department. The city's School Reform Commission unanimously agreed to the consent decree involving South Philadelphia High School, where 30 Asian students were injured in racially motivated attacks last year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/us/16brfs-OVERSIGHTFOR_BRF.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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OPINION

Heroic, Female and Muslim

What's the ugliest side of Islam? Maybe it's the Somali Muslim militias that engage in atrocities like the execution of a 13-year-old girl named Aisha Ibrahim. Three men raped Aisha, and when she reported the crime she was charged with illicit sex, half-buried in the ground before a crowd of 1,000 and then stoned to death.

That's the extremist side of Islam that drives Islamophobia in the United States, including Congressional hearings on American Muslims that House Republicans are planning for next year.

But there's another side of Islam as well, represented by an extraordinary Somali Muslim woman named Dr. Hawa Abdi who has confronted the armed militias. Amazingly, she forced them to back down — and even submit a written apology. Glamour magazine, which named Dr. Hawa a “ woman of the year,” got it exactly right when it called her “equal parts Mother Teresa and Rambo.”

Dr. Hawa, a 63-year-old ob-gyn who earned a law degree on the side, is visiting the United States to raise money for her health work back home. A member of Somalia's elite, she founded a one-room clinic in 1983, but then the Somalian government collapsed, famine struck, and aid groups fled. So today Dr. Hawa is running a 400-bed hospital.

Over the years, the hospital became the core of something even grander. Thousands and thousands of people displaced by civil war came to shelter on Dr. Hawa's 1,300 acres of farmland around the hospital. Today her home and hospital have been overtaken by a vast camp that she says numbers about 90,000 displaced people.

Dr. Hawa supplies these 90,000 people with drinking water and struggles to find ways to feed them. She worries that handouts breed dependency (and in any case, United Nations agencies can't safely reach her now to distribute food), so she is training formerly nomadic herding families to farm and even to fish in the sea.

She's also pushing education. An American freelance journalist, Eliza Griswold, visited Dr. Hawa's encampment in 2007 and 2008 and was stunned that an unarmed woman had managed to create a secure, functioning oasis surrounded by a chaotic land of hunger and warlords. Ms. Griswold helped Dr. Hawa start a school for 850 children, mostly girls. It's only a tiny fraction of the children in the camp, but it's a start. (Ms. Griswold also wrote movingly about Dr. Hawa in her book “The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam.")

In addition, Dr. Hawa runs literacy and health classes for women, as well as programs to discourage female genital mutilation. And she operates a tiny jail — for men who beat their wives.

“We are trying an experiment,” she told me. “We women in Somalia are trying to be leaders in our community.”

So Dr. Hawa had her hands full already — and then in May a hard-line militia, Hizb al-Islam, or Party of Islam, decided that a woman shouldn't run anything substantial. The militia ordered her to hand over operations, and she refused — and pointedly added: “I may be a woman, but I'm a doctor. What have you done for society?”

The Party of Islam then attacked with 750 soldiers and seized the hospital. The world's Somalis reacted with outrage, and the militia backed down and ordered Dr. Hawa to run the hospital, but under its direction.

She refused. For a week there were daily negotiations, but Dr. Hawa refused to budge. She demanded that the militia not only withdraw entirely but also submit a written apology.

“I was begging her, ‘Just give in,' ” recalled Deqo Mohamed, her daughter, a doctor in Atlanta who spoke regularly to her mother by telephone. “She was saying, ‘No! I will die with dignity.' ”

It didn't come to that. The Party of Islam tired of being denounced by Somalis at home and around the world, so it slinked off and handed over an apology — but also left behind a wrecked hospital. The operating theater still isn't functional, and that's why Dr. Hawa is here, appealing for money (especially from ethnic Somalis). She has worked out an arrangement with Vital Voices, a group that helps to empower female leaders, to channel tax-deductible contributions to her hospital.

What a woman! And what a Muslim! It's because of people like her that sweeping denunciations of Islam, or the “Muslim hearings” planned in Congress, rile me — and seem profoundly misguided.

The greatest religious battles are often not between faiths, but within faiths. The widest gulfs are often not those that divide one religion from the next, but those between extremists and progressives within a single faith. And in this religious season, there's something that we can all learn from the courage, compassion and tolerance of Dr. Hawa Abdi.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/opinion/16kristof.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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EDITORIAL

Cartel Gunmen Buy American

As the body count in the Mexican drug wars mounts beyond 30,000, federal authorities have tracked more than 60,000 guns in the past four years back across the border to American dealers. Congress, enthralled with the gun lobby, has done nothing about a legal loophole increasingly at the heart of the carnage — the dealers' freedom to make multiple sales of AK-47s and other battlefield assault rifles without having to report to federal authorities, as the law requires for handgun sales.

No wonder one dealer felt free to sell 14 AK-47s to one trafficker in a single day.

The gun lobby previously convinced an obeisant Congress that “long guns” like military rifles and shotguns were not favored by criminals and deserved a pass at dealers supposedly catering to sportsmen. But the drug war toll is proving otherwise, with use of high- power long guns more than doubling in the past five years as cartel gunmen turn to the rat-a-tat annihilators easily obtainable across the border.

A big reason for that preference is the failure to require reports on multiple rifle sales, according to a new inspector general's report at the Justice Department. In Texas, the traffic is white hot. Eight of the top 12 dealers in Mexican crime guns are nestled profitably near the border, according to The Washington Post, which spent a year penetrating some of the data secrecy that Congress has enacted to protect the gun industry.

With a more Republican Congress in the wings and Democratic lawmakers openly fearful of the gun lobby's political clout, there is no expectation of courageous legislating to close the loophole. But executive order is another possibility. It has enough traction lately among Justice Department officials to prompt a “grass-roots alert” by the National Rifle Association to its four million members, according to The Post.

It is hard to believe that most ordinary N.R.A. members would not agree something must be done about the cross-border sale of war weapons that underpins the drug scourge. If it takes an executive order to cut the carnage, President Obama should not hesitate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/opinion/16thurs4.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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Serial-slay house raid

By KIERAN CROWLEY, SELIM ALGAR and CHUCK BENNETT

December 16, 2010

Long Island police and FBI agents yesterday swarmed an oceanfront home where a missing prostitute was last seen alive as they ramped up their investigation of four corpses mysteriously dumped on a nearby secluded beach.

The renewed interest in the disappearance of Jersey City call girl Shannan Gilbert came as Suffolk County police confirmed that all the bodies, found Saturday and Monday, were those of women.

The victims were likely murdered by a serial killer, which is why the FBI was called in for assistance, said Suffolk Police Commissioner Richard Dormer.

Gilbert, 24, was last seen on May 1 at a party at the ritzy home of Joseph Brewer in the exclusive Oak Beach gated community, a short drive from Gilgo Beach off Ocean Parkway where the bodies were discovered.

Brewer, who hosted the party and invited Gilbert via Craigslist.com, told investigators the woman was dropped off by a driver. However, she became agitated during the evening and ran out of the house in near-hysterics.

She banged on the door of neighbor Gustav Coletti.

She spent some time inside before fleeing after Coletti said he had called the cops.

Gilbert was never seen again.

"That was the last time she was seen. We saw her footprints in the sand," said Justin Canning, 20, who lives down the street.

"She was in a panic. We thought she was on drugs."

Her mother, Marci Gilbert, told The Post that Shannan called 911 that night screaming, "He's trying to kill me! Help me!' " and shouting a man's name.

Brewer has repeatedly denied any involvement in the woman's murder.

Aside from the Oak Beach home, Brewer's family owns several rental properties across Suffolk.

Neighbors said he had been living at the Oak Beach home until several months ago when he moved back into his mother's West Islip home.

Also living there are his young daughter and the girl's mother.

The mother said Brewer is "cooperating" with investigators.

"I don't know what's happening right now. He's talking to who he needs to talk to," she said outside his home.

A neighbor who spotted Brewer Tuesday recalled commenting about bodies being "dumped" at Oak Beach.

"He [Brewer] just shrugged his shoulders and didn't say anything," said the neighbor, who declined to be identified.

Meanwhile, Lorraine Ela, mother of another possible prostitute victim, Megan Waterman, submitted a DNA sample to help investigation determine if one of the bodies is that of her daughter. She also implored her daughter's imprisoned pimp to talk.

"He knows what happened to her," she told The Post from her home in Scarborough, Maine.

The pimp, Brooklyn-born Akeem Cruz, 21, is in a Maine jail on drug charges.

His attorney, Robert Napolitano, said Cruz "is not willing to say anything to anyone but me."

Waterman was last seen in June with Cruz at a Hauppauge hotel about 15 miles from where her body was found.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/serial_slay_house_raid_icUSVNRrW8naxbU8gaK5AJ

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Server hacked at OSU; 760,000 affected

Personal data of faculty, students are at risk; free credit protection offered

Ohio State University is notifying up to 760,000 students, professors and others that their names and Social Security numbers might have made it to cyberspace in one of the largest and most costly breaches to hit a college campus.

Ohio State expects to spend about $4 million to pay for the forensic investigation and credit-protection services for those whose personal information was on a server that was hacked.

University officials started notifying current and former students, employees and businesses that have done work with the school about the breach yesterday.

"We regret that this has occurred and are exercising an abundance of caution in choosing to notify those affected," said Provost Joseph A. Alutto.

There is no indication that any personal information was taken or that the incident will result in identity theft for any of the affected people, Alutto said. Still, the university is offering 12 months of free credit-monitoring services through Experian as a precaution.

In late October, a routine computer security review uncovered suspicious activity on a campus server with the names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and addresses of up to 760,000 people associated with the university, including applicants, contractors and consultants, he said. No OSU Medical Center patient records or student health records were involved.

Ohio State isolated the server and hired Columbus-based Interhack to investigate whether any personal data had been compromised. The university also turned to well-regarded cyberforensic consultants Stroz Freidberg of New York. Both firms confirmed that hackers illegally gained access to the server, but neither found evidence that any data had been accessed, Alutto said.

Instead, the expert found signs that the hackers were trying to use the OSU server to launch cyberattacks on agencies and businesses.

"We didn't start notifying people until now because we didn't receive our first report until late November, and the second in early December," he said.

Ohio State will continue to work with the cyberforensic consultants to strengthen its systems against further attacks. The matter also has been referred to campus police for investigation, and the FBI has been notified.

Ohio State officials have investigated an average of 10 potential data breaches annually during the past three years but have found only a few actual breaches, involving minor problems and no more than a few hundred people.

OSU's largest incident occurred in 2008, when a vendor doing work for the school's student health-insurance plan mistakenly stored the names of 18,000 current and former students on a computer open to the Internet. No identity thefts were ever reported from the incident, campus spokesman Jim Lynch said.

Since 2008, colleges have discovered 158 breaches resulting in the possible compromising of more than 2.3million records, according to Application Security Inc., a New York security firm.

Ohio University experienced what was then one of the worst information security breaches in higher education in spring 2006, when hackers gained access to the medical data of thousands of Ohio University students. The Hudson Health Center data contained identifying information on 60,000 students, including Social Security and personal identifier numbers, addresses and data on medical treatments.

That breach followed an attack on a network server containing data on 300,000 Ohio University alumni and donors, including 137,000 Social Security numbers. The university's Innovation Center also was hacked, leading to the exposure of intellectual property files, e-mails and Social Security numbers.

Two OU computer-system administrators lost their jobs after a report found that they failed to protect the confidential information.

Universities are frequently a target of hackers and cyberattacks because of their large databases of personal information and large bandwidths, said Rodney Petersen, director of Cybersecurity Initiative for Educause, a nonprofit group that promotes information technology in higher education.

Colleges have made vast improvements to security of personal data, but "today's security measures will be circumvented by tomorrow's hackers," he said.

For more information about Ohio State's credit protection for people affected in this latest incident, go to www.osu.edu/creditsafety.

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/12/16/server-hacked-at-osu-760000-affected.html?sid=101

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Panel: Arrest 'johns' to curb sex trafficking

State study group makes final report

After sizing up the human-trafficking problem in Ohio, expanding victim services and crafting a tough new law, a state panel got to the bottom line: busting "johns."

"Men have to be arrested," said Jewel Woods of the Renaissance Male Project, a subcommittee leader of the Ohio Trafficking in Persons Study Commission.

"There is no substitute for arresting men who are involved in commercialized sex," Woods said.

The panel established by Attorney General Richard Cordray focused yesterday in its final report on the "demand" side of human sex trafficking, making a series of recommendations to law enforcement, prosecutors and community agencies.

Woods' committee said the demand for sex is fueled by "the limitless profits that traffickers and pimps generate from repeatedly selling sexual services of those under their control."

The panel suggested reducing demand by increasing arrests of "buyers of prostitution," typically men who quite often escape punishment while the woman goes to jail. There should be more "john" schools (Columbus and four other cities already have them), and community agency staff members should be trained to recognize human-trafficking cases, the committee said.

The "boys will be boys" attitude must be abandoned, Woods emphasized.

His committee also called on law-enforcement and social-service agencies to be more diligent in pursuing child pornography and child sexual-abuse cases. Both are often markers of men who later become involved with "consumer sex" with human trafficking victims.

Even bullying bears watching, said Clark County Sheriff Gene Kelly, a commission member. Those who bully others, or who witnesses bullying and do nothing, "won't step out of the darkness and into the light" to report more-serious incidents, he said.

The committee report cited studies that found that the average "john" is an adult male in his late 30s, unmarried or separated. One out of five men surveyed said he had visited a prostitute at least once in his life.

A U.S. State Department study estimated international sex-trafficking profits at $27.8 billion and labor-trafficking at $31.6 billion.

Cordray, who lost his re-election bid to Republican Mike DeWine, said he is confident that his successor will continue the work of the human-trafficking panel.

"We put this crime on the map in Ohio," he said. "There's much more work that remains to be done."

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/12/16/panel-arrest-johns-to-curb-sex-trafficking.html?sid=101

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From the White House

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Protecting Seniors, Military Families and Their Doctors

Today, President Obama signed legislation that will stop a significant pay cut for doctors who treat Medicare patients from taking effect. The pay cut was called for under an old formula called the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) that governs how much doctors are paid to treat seniors on Medicare and military families enrolled in the TRICARE program. President Obama and members of both parties agree this formula needs to be changed. Without the action the President took today, doctors who see Medicare patients and families enrolled in TRICARE would have seen their payments slashed by 23 percent.

The pay cut wouldn't have just hurt doctors – seniors and families across America would have suffered as well. Many doctors would have simply stopped seeing Medicare patients and military families if this pay cut took effect, effectively denying patients the chance to see the doctor they know and trust.

That wasn't acceptable to President Obama or leaders in Congress and the law the President signed today delays the pay cut from taking effect for another year.

The law wouldn't have been possible without volunteers like Brenda Kelley of Woodbridge, Virginia and Robert Sargeant of Fairfax, Virginia. Brenda and Robert were two of the thousands of AARP members who worked hard to make this legislation a reality. They made phone calls, wrote letters, and helped ensure this important legislation was enacted.

They weren't alone. American Medical Association President Cecil Wilson and Board Chair Ardis Hoven, along with doctors from across the country spoke out about the importance of ensuring doctors knew how much they would be paid for treating seniors on Medicare. Together with AARP CEO Barry Rand, AARP Board Chair Lee Hammond and Military Officers Association of America President Admiral Norbert Ryan, these individuals who helped protect seniors, military families and doctors celebrated with President Obama as he signed this legislation into law in the Oval Office.

They were also joined by some of the bipartisan leaders in Congress who helped pass this law including:

• Senator John Barrasso, R-WY
• Senator Max Baucus, D-MT
• Representative Henry Waxman, D-CA

Today was an important milestone, but signing this law is just the first step. For years, Congress and Presidents from both parties have acted to stop pay cuts for doctors called for by the Sustainable Growth Rate. Each solution was temporary, forcing Congress to continually deal with this matter and leaving doctors to wonder if they would be forced to take a pay cut in the future.

After years of temporary measures, the President believes it's time for a permanent solution. Over the next year, the President and his team will work with Congress to address this matter once and for all. We all agree that this formula needs to be changed. Now's the time to get it done.

Nancy-Ann DeParle is the Director of the White House Office of Health Reform

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/12/15/protecting-seniors-military-families-and-their-doctors

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Honoring the Memory of Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry

The fatal shooting of Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry last night is an unconscionable act of violence against the men and women of the Border Patrol and all those who serve and defend our country.

Agent Terry was killed in the line of duty while confronting several suspects near Rio Rico, Ariz. It is a stark reminder of the very real dangers our men and women on the frontlines confront every day as they protect our communities and the American people.

We are working with other federal, state and local authorities to ensure those responsible for this horrendous act are held responsible. We will leave no stone unturned as we seek justice for the perpetrators.

I want to extend my deepest condolences to Agent Terry's family at this difficult time. We will honor his memory by remaining resolute and committed to the serious task of securing our nation's borders. I ask that all of us keep Agent Terry and his family in our prayers.

Janet Napolitano is Secretary of Homeland Security

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/12/15/honoring-memory-border-patrol-agent-brian-a-terry

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From the Department of Homeland Security

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Readout of Secretary Napolitano's Call with Southwest Border Sheriffs and Police Chiefs

December 14, 2010

WASHINGTON—Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano today held a quarterly conference call with sheriffs and police chiefs from 30 jurisdictions along the Southwest border to discuss the Department's ongoing support for state and local law enforcement in their efforts to keep their communities safe from violence and other threats.

On the call, Secretary Napolitano underscored the vital role played by state and local law enforcement agencies in securing the U.S.-Mexico border and emphasized DHS' commitment to working with them to confront ongoing border challenges.

Since January 2009, DHS has committed unprecedented resources along the Southwest border. The Border Patrol is better staffed today than at any time in its 86-year history, having doubled the number of agents from approximately 10,000 in 2004 to more than 20,500 today. In addition, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has doubled the number of personnel assigned to Border Enforcement Security Task Forces; increased the number of intelligence analysts working along the U.S.-Mexico border; quintupled deployments of Border Liaison Officers; and begun screening 100 percent of southbound rail shipments for illegal weapons, drugs, and cash—for the first time ever.

Secretary Napolitano also highlighted critical programs that assist state and local law enforcement in making their communities safer. In July, DHS announced more than $47 million in fiscal year 2010 Operation Stonegarden grants for Southwest border states. Based on risk, cross-border traffic and border-related threat intelligence, 82 percent of 2009 and 2010 Operation Stonegarden funds went to Southwest border states—up from 59 percent in 2008.

DHS has also expanded the Secure Communities initiative—which uses biometric information and services to identify and remove criminal aliens in state prisons and local jails—from 14 jurisdictions in 2008 to more than 800 today, including all jurisdictions along the Southwest border.

In fiscal year 2010, ICE set a record for overall removals of illegal aliens. Half of those removed—more than 195,000—were convicted criminals. These statistics represent an increase of more than 81,000 criminal removals compared to fiscal year 2008—a more than 70 percent increase in removals of criminal aliens from the previous administration.

For more information, visit www.dhs.gov

http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1292378762785.shtm

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From ICE

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9 indicted on federal drug charges, accused of conspiring to distribute methamphetamines in the Washington, D.C. area

WASHINGTON - Nine people have been indicted on federal charges of conspiring to sell large quantities of crystal methamphetamine in the Washington area, following an investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD).

The announcement was made by U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ronald C. Machen Jr., MPD Chief Cathy L. Lanier and Special Agent in Charge of ICE HSI in Washington, D.C., John P. Torres.

The indictments were returned yesterday by a grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. They followed the arrests of eight of the nine defendants in recent days at various locations in Atlanta, Ga., and Winston-Salem, N.C. The ninth person remains at large.

As part of the investigation, authorities also conducted numerous searches on Dec. 10 and Dec. 11, 2010. They seized more than 50 pounds of methamphetamine, six pounds of marijuana, three firearms and more than $35,000 in cash in these coordinated law enforcement activities. In addition, five pounds of methamphetamine, one kilogram of cocaine and about five pounds of marijuana were recovered in the weeks leading to the arrests.

According to MPD estimates, the street values of the seized drugs included more than $3.5 million worth of methamphetamine, $118,000 of cocaine and $49,500 of marijuana.

The defendants allegedly have ties to "La Familia," a Mexican drug cartel that operates in that country and the United States. According to an affidavit in support of the arrest warrants, the cartel is known to distribute large quantities of cocaine, marijuana and crystal methamphetamine.

One of the defendants - Esteban Almontes Rodriguez - is described in the affidavit as a major cocaine and marijuana trafficker and is purported to be the main supplier for the cartel in the Washington, D.C. area. Another - Alberto Garcia Calderon - is described in the affidavit as the leader of the distribution route into Washington and the supplier of the drugs for Rodriguez.

Rodriguez, Calderon and the other seven defendants were indicted on a charge of conspiracy to distribute and possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine, punishable by a minimum of 10 years and a maximum of life in prison. They have been ordered held without bond after court hearings in Georgia and North Carolina.

"Drug trafficking organizations, like the one just dismantled through our cooperative law enforcement efforts, must be aggressively attacked at all levels - from the street dealer to the international supplier and cartel leaders," said Special Agent in Charge Torres.

"Through the coordinated efforts of our federal, state and local law enforcement partners, we have effectively stopped this organization from expanding its market into the Washington, D.C. area."

The defendants will be brought to Washington for future proceedings in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Rodriguez, 25, most recently of Temple Hills, Md., and Calderon, 36, were among those arrested in Winston-Salem on December 10. Also arrested in that city were Alejandro Quintana Cardenas, 25, and Moises Ramirez-Perez, believed to be 19. In Atlanta, authorities arrested: Alfonso Martinez-Cruz, 39; Jesus Bustos-Penaloza, 52; Felipe Alvarado-Ponce, 36, and Sergio Garcia-Virelas, 24. The ninth defendant is referred to in the indictment only as "Jorge," because his last name is currently unknown.

"These arrests and seizures cut off a pipeline for trafficking dangerous narcotics from Mexican drug traffickers into the Washington D.C. area and along the Northeast Corridor," said U.S. Attorney Machen. "Our success in shutting down this operation was the result of rock-solid partnerships among federal and local law enforcement. Together, we will continue to disrupt and dismantle drug trafficking organizations that threaten our community."

"This was an extremely dangerous operation and I applaud the officers from the Metropolitan Police Department's Narcotics and Special Investigations division for their selfless and heroic actions," said MPD Chief Lanier. "With the assistance of our federal partners, we are happy to send the resounding message that this city will not tolerate the proliferation of drugs, and anyone who tries to do so will be arrested and prosecuted."

According to the affidavit, Calderon and others in his organization kept methamphetamine in a home that was being used as a laboratory in the Atlanta area. During a search of that home, authorities found at least 50 pounds of methamphetamine in various states, including crystal and liquid methamphetamine, along with two firearms. Another firearm was found in a search of an apartment in the Atlanta area. About six pounds of marijuana was recovered in a search of an apartment in Winston-Salem.

The indictment also includes a forfeiture allegation seeking any money or property obtained through the drug conspiracy.

Numerous agencies provided assistance during the investigation. In Georgia, they included the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Atlanta; DEA Task Force Officers from the Fayette County Sheriff's Office; Alpharetta, Ga. Police, Fire and HAZMAT teams; the Georgia State Patrol; the Sandy Springs Police Department; and ICE HSI Task Force officers from the DeKalb County Sheriff's Office, the Cobb County Sheriff's Office, and Marietta and Conyers police departments. In North Carolina, they include the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office, Stokes County Sheriff's Office, and the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles, Bureau of License and Theft. The U.S. Attorney's Offices in the Northern District of Georgia and the Middle District of North Carolina also assisted in the investigation and court hearings.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Karla-Dee Clark, Vincent Caputy and Nihar Mohanty, of the District of Columbia.

http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1012/101215washingtondc.htm

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Organized crime leader sentenced to 30 years for transporting drugs and weapons across US-Mexico border

PENSACOLA, Fla. - The head of a multi-state cocaine trafficking ring was sentenced last week to 30 years in federal prison for drug and firearms charges, following an investigation conducted by the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDEFT), which included agents and officers from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI); the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF); the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); the Pensacola Police Department and the Escambia County Sheriffs Office.

Alejandrino Popoca, 33, of Foley, Ala., was the leader of an armed cocaine distribution organization responsible for transporting kilogram quantities of cocaine from Mexico to Texas, Alabama, and Florida, using vehicles equipped with hidden compartments, between 2007 and 2010.

Two of Popoca's co-defendants were also sentenced to prison last week. On Dec. 9, Francisco Torres-Rodriguez, 22, was sentenced to serve 162 months in federal prison and Juan Jalomo-Ruiz, 44, was sentenced to serve 78 months.

All three were convicted at the conclusion of a jury trial held in U.S. District Court in Pensacola earlier this year. Evidence developed during the OCDEFT Operation "Bayou Run" established that Popoca and his nephew, Torres-Rodriguez, boasted of membership in the "Gulf Cartel," an organized crime and narcotics organization primarily based out of Mexico. Their involvement in the organization included attempting to arrange the murders of at least two cooperating federal witnesses.

"Stopping the flow of drugs, weapons and other contraband across our borders is a national security issue and a top priority for ICE," said Susan McCormick special agent in charge of ICE HSI in Tampa, which oversees Pensacola. "We will continue to work aggressively with our law enforcement partners to disrupt these kinds of activities, which serve to fuel the violence taking place across the Southwest border."

Both Popoca and Torres-Rodriguez were arrested after a high speed chase in Pensacola, where witnesses testified that they and others had crossed state lines with the intent to murder another co-conspirator they suspected of stealing a shipment of cocaine destined for delivery to Pensacola on May 23. Unbeknownst to Popoca and Torres-Rodriguez, the person they were dealing with was cooperating with law enforcement, and the missing load of cocaine was not stolen, but was in the custody of federal agents in Pensacola. The Nissan pick-up in which both Popoca and Torres-Rodriguez were riding at the time of their arrest contained multiple firearms, a .45 caliber pistol and .38 caliber revolver, both of which were loaded.

Operation "Bayou Run" has resulted in the federal convictions of 19 defendants in Northern District of Florida and Southern District of Alabama, including the convictions of Popoca's remaining four co-defendants, Juan Jalomo-Ruiz, Jorge Laureano-Arvayo, Phillip DeWayne Parker and Charles Wade.

U.S. Attorney Pamela C. Marsh said, "There's absolutely no question that multi-billion dollar Mexican drug cartel networks are funneling illegal drugs and firearms into our communities. These cartels engage in horrific violent acts that pose a threat to citizens in both Mexico and the United States. It is one of the Department of Justice's highest priorities to stem the flow of drugs, cash and weapons to and from Mexico by focusing on investigations of east and southbound smuggling across our District."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas P. Swaim prosecuted this case.

http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1012/101214pensacola2.htm

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From the FBI

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Abdul Kadir Sentenced to Life in Prison for Conspiring to Commit Terrorist Attack at JFK Airport

Kadir and Coconspirators Plotted to Explode Fuel Tanks at Airport

BROOKLYN, NY—Earlier today in the Eastern District of New York, United States District Judge Dora L. Irizarry sentenced Abdul Kadir to life in prison for conspiring to attack John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York, by exploding fuel tanks and the fuel pipeline under the airport. Kadir and his coconspirators believed their attack would cause extensive damage to the airport and to the New York economy, as well as the loss of numerous lives.

The sentence was announced by Loretta E. Lynch, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in New York.

A federal jury convicted Kadir and coconspirator Russell Defreitas in July 2010, after a nine-week trial. A third defendant, Abdel Nur, pleaded guilty before trial to supporting the plot and faces a sentence of up to 15 years. A fourth member of the plot, Kareem Ibrahim, faces trial on the same charges as Defreitas and Kadir.*

The evidence at trial established that Defreitas, a naturalized United States citizen from Guyana, originated the idea to attack JFK Airport and its fuel tanks and pipelines by drawing on his prior experience working at the airport as a cargo handler. During multiple trips to Guyana and Trinidad in 2006 and 2007, Defreitas recruited Kadir and others to join the plot. Between trips, Defreitas engaged in video surveillance of JFK Airport and transported the footage back to Guyana to show Kadir and their coconspirators. Kadir, a trained engineer with connections to militant groups in Iran and Venezuela, provided the conspirators with links to individuals with terrorist experience, advice on explosive materials, and a bank account through which to finance the terrorist attack. The members of the plot attempted to enlist support from prominent international terrorist groups and leaders, as well as the government of Iran, including Abu Bakr, leader of the Trinidadian militant group Jamaat Al Muslimeen, and Adnan El Shukrijumah, an al Qaeda leader.

At trial, Kadir, a former member of the Guyanese parliament, admitted that he regularly passed information to Iranian authorities about sensitive topics, including the Guyanese military, and believed himself bound to follow fatwas from Iranian religious leaders. On June 2, 2007, Kadir was arrested in Trinidad aboard a plane headed to Venezuela, en route to Iran. He was subsequently extradited to the United States.

The specific charges Kadir was convicted of were: conspiracy to attack a public transportation system, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2332f; conspiracy to destroy a building by fire or explosive, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 844(n); conspiracy to attack aircraft and aircraft materials, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 32; conspiracy to destroy international airport facilities, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 37; and conspiracy to attack a mass transportation facility, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1992(a)(10).

“The sentence imposed on Abdul Kadir sends a powerful and clear message,” stated United States Attorney Lynch. “We will bring to justice those who plot to attack the United States of America.” Ms. Lynch extended her grateful appreciation to the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force for its role in investigating and prosecuting the case, as well as to the Guyanese and Trinidadian law enforcement authorities who assisted with the investigation and apprehension of the defendants.

The government's case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Marshall L. Miller, Jason A. Jones, Berit W. Berger, and Zainab Ahmad.

The Defendant:
ABDUL KADIR, also known as “Aubrey Michael Seaforth”
Age: 58

* The charges against Ibrahim are only allegations, and Ibrahim is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

http://newyork.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel10/nyfo121510a.htm

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Fugitive Extradited from Mexico to Face Trial

Man Associated with Drug Tunnel Case Fled to Mexico Before 2001 Trial

TUCSON, AZ—Victor Flores, 51, was extradited to the U.S. from Hermosillo, Mexico and had his initial appearance before Magistrate Judge Marshall on Tuesday, December 14. The defendant will be detained until his trial on February 8, 2011 in front of Chief Judge John Roll.

Flores was to face trial in 2001 on cocaine charges related to a Naco, Ariz. drug tunnel that the defendants used to smuggle 20 tons of cocaine from its inception in 1996 until May 1999 when the tunnel was discovered.

Flores is charged in seven counts of the indictment with a variety of drug and gun violations, and he is alleged to have possessed with intent to distribute over 6,660 lbs of cocaine. An additional count alleges that he possessed three fully automatic machine guns to guard the load.

"The defendant fled to Mexico thinking that he was beyond the reach of this country's justice system and that he would not have to stand trial for his conduct. He was wrong on both counts. This extradition brings a defendant to Arizona to stand trial and marks a significant milestone in dismantling one of the largest border drug schemes in Arizona," said U.S. Attorney Dennis K. Burke. "This defendant's extradition is evidence of that the partnerships between the U.S and Mexico are working and that we are together gaining ground against violent drug trafficking organizations."

The investigation began after the seizure of 5.6 tons of cocaine from a warehouse in Tucson in December 1996. During the course of the investigation an additional 2,660 lbs. of cocaine, three fully automatic machine guns, and $1.5 million in cash were seized. Over 50 people connected to the Naco tunnel have been convicted, and Flores was one of five that remained at large.

There have been three trials involving the Naco Tunnel thus far. Two took place in 2001 and the third in 2007. In the 2007 trial Francisco Valle-Hurtado, 38, and Ruben Ultreras-Estrada were convicted of possession with intent to distribute 17,715 lbs. of cocaine. Valle-Hurtado was also convicted of possessing a machine gun while committing the cocaine violations. He used the machine gun to guard the cocaine after it had passed through the tunnel that extended 210 feet from Mexico to Naco, Ariz. Both defendants were sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The overall investigation was conducted in partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Arizona Department of Public Safety. The prosecution is being handled by James T. Lacey, Assistant U.S. Attorney, District of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.

http://phoenix.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel10/px121510.htm

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