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From the Los Angeles Times

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CIA has slashed its terrorism interrogation role

The agency has stopped trying to detain or interrogate suspects caught abroad, except those captured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

by Ken Dilanian, Los Angeles Times

April 10, 2011

Reporting from Washington

He's considered one of world's most dangerous terrorism suspects, and the U.S. offered a $1-million reward for his capture in 2005. Intelligence experts say he's a master bomb maker and extremist leader who possesses a wealth of information about Al Qaeda-linked groups in Southeast Asia.

Yet the U.S. has made no move to interrogate or seek custody of Indonesian militant Umar Patek since he was apprehended this year by officials in Pakistan with the help of a CIA tip, U.S. and Pakistani officials say.

The little-known case highlights a sharp difference between President Obama's counter-terrorism policy and that of his predecessor, George W. Bush. Under Obama, the CIA has killed more people than it has captured, mainly through drone missile strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas. At the same time, it has stopped trying to detain or interrogate suspects caught abroad, except those captured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The CIA is out of the detention and interrogation business," said a U.S. official who is familiar with intelligence operations but was not authorized to speak publicly.

Several factors are behind the change.

Widespread criticism of Bush administration interrogation and detention policies as brutal and degrading led Obama to stop sending suspected terrorists to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Public exposure also forced the CIA to close a network of secret prisons. That left U.S. officials with no obvious place to hold new captives.

In January 2009, Obama ordered the CIA to abide by the interrogation rules of the U.S. Army Field Manual, which guides military interrogators and includes prohibitions on the use of physical force against detainees. Critics warn that Al Qaeda operatives could study the manual, which is available on the Internet, to learn how to resist its techniques, although no evidence has emerged suggesting that has happened.

In addition, some CIA officers are spooked by a long-running criminal investigation by a Washington special prosecutor into whether CIA officers broke the law by conducting brutal interrogations of suspected terrorists during the Bush administration.

"Given the enormous headaches involved … it's not surprising there are fewer people coming into our hands," said Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA official.

Patek, described by intelligence officials and analysts as a central figure among Islamic extremists in Southeast Asia, could reveal links between Al Qaeda sympathizers across the region. He is a prime suspect in the 2002 nightclub bombings that killed 202 people on the Indonesian island of Bali.

In the years after the Bali bombings, Patek is believed to have led a terrorist cell in the Philippines, where U.S. Special Forces have helped the military hunt Islamic militants on Mindanao island for years, said Sidney Jones, a Jakarta-based analyst for the International Crisis Group, an independent nonprofit organization that studies conflicts.

Patek's information "would be a gold mine" to U.S. intelligence, she said.

Pakistani officials say they plan to deliver Patek to authorities in Indonesia, where he is wanted in the Bali case. Although seven Americans were among those killed in the bombings, no U.S. criminal charges are pending against him, a senior Justice Department official said.

A Pakistani intelligence source said no one from the CIA or any other U.S. agency had asked to question Patek.

U.S. officials say they expect the CIA will be given access to intelligence gleaned from Indonesia's interrogations of Patek, and may even be allowed to sit in and provide guidance, given the close ties between U.S. and Indonesian counter-terrorism officials.

But that is not the same as controlling the questioning, critics say. "Having access to someone in someone else's custody is never the same as setting the conditions of their interrogation," said a congressional aide who is briefed on intelligence issues but who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Senior Republican lawmakers say the U.S. may be giving up valuable intelligence by not acting more aggressively to detain and question suspects captured overseas.

"It is a shame that our administration has made the decision to defer to others to pursue the detention and interrogation of our enemies," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. "Now we'll have to rely on a foreign government to grant us access to this terrorist to obtain vital intelligence, if we're lucky."

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said: "The tangled mess of legal and policy issues surrounding detention right now makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to gain complete access for questioning. This forces us to work through the host country, which is not always optimal for a number of reasons."

CIA spokesman George Little defended the policy, saying the agency has a "wide range of effective capabilities at our disposal to pursue terrorists and thwart their activities. Our efforts in recent years have led to a number of counter-terrorism successes that have saved lives."

The current rules may be flexible in any case. At a hearing in February, Chambliss asked CIA Director Leon E. Panetta what would happen if the U.S. caught Osama bin Laden or his top aide, Ayman Zawahiri. Both men are believed to be hiding in Pakistan.

"We would probably move them quickly into military jurisdiction" for questioning at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, "and then eventually move them probably to Guantanamo," Panetta replied.

James R. Clapper, director of national intelligence, quickly added that the question had not been resolved, however.

That indecision has led to frustration in one recent case.

In February 2010, the CIA helped Pakistani intelligence officers arrest Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban's military leader, in Karachi. U.S. officials describe him as the most senior Taliban figure captured since the Afghanistan war began in 2001.

Baradar remains in Pakistani custody, and CIA officers are not satisfied with their access to him, according to two U.S. officials who have been briefed on the matter.

"We just don't have something in place that works" outside Iraq and Afghanistan, said Louis Tucker, former staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "We're kind of just flying by the seat of our pants."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-cia-interrogation-20110411,0,1071699,print.story

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Prisons seek ally in crackdown on cellphones

Bidders on the upcoming contract for inmates' pay phone service will be asked to include equipment to block cellphone calls. Civil libertarians say cellphones help inmates' positive behavior.

by Jack Dolan, Los Angeles Times

April 11, 2011

Reporting from Sacramento

Frustrated by the state's inability to prevent thousands of illicit cellphone calls made by inmates from its prisons, California's corrections chief is seeking help from an industry that has a big financial interest in his cause.

Prisons Secretary Matthew Cate said he will offer a deal to companies that bid for the next contract to provide phone service for state inmates: Install costly equipment that will block cellphone calls and see profits surge as prisoners use authorized services to connect with the outside world.

"If cellphones are inoperable, the company will make more money," Cate said in a recent interview.

Prisoners are supposed to use pay phones mounted on the walls of their housing units to call people outside. They are charged collect call rates, and the conversations are recorded and monitored by prison staff. But the proliferation of smuggled cellphones in recent years has reduced use of the authorized phones and the ability to monitor them, and officials say they cannot afford the technology to block cellular signals.

The contract for inmate phone service is up for renewal. Cate wants the winning bidder to pay the estimated $16.5 million to $33 million that it would cost to install "managed access" systems in all 33 state prisons.

In one day earlier this year, a test of the system intercepted more than 4,000 attempts to place calls, send text messages and access the Internet from smuggled cellphones at a single prison, said California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Paul Verke. He would not reveal which prison, citing security concerns.

Use of authorized phones went up by 64% in the days after the test, Verke said.

Dorothy Cukier, an attorney for Global Tel Link, the Alabama company that supplies pay phones and collect call service to California's prisons, said that "contraband cellphones certainly have had an impact" on the number of calls placed from her company's phones. The firm "welcomes the opportunity to discuss" Cate's proposal, she said.

Prisoners' rights advocates and civil libertarians say Cate's plan would lead to financial exploitation of inmates and their families, many of whom struggle to pay for daily necessities. A typical 15-minute call from an inmate costs about $2.

"When the prison system gives the phone company a monopoly, they jack up the price," said Margaret Winter, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union's national prison project. "What we want to do is encourage more contact. That's a prime predictor of [inmates'] success in the future."

Bobby Taylor, who was recently released from Avenal State Prison in Central California, where he served part of a 19-month sentence for drunk driving, said he had a Samsung phone for most of his time there. He stayed out of trouble checking Facebook, following his favorite fishing websites and staying in touch with his 13-year-old daughter, he said.

"The prison system is mad because nobody uses the phones on the wall anymore," Taylor said.

The state's take from the pay phone concession was $26 million in 2008, when legislation was passed to bring down the cost of inmates' calls. The government's share has been reduced by $6.5 million per year since, prison officials said, and will be reduced further, to $800,000, this year.

Prison officials have been warning legislators that the explosion of smuggled cellphones — guards confiscated 261 devices in 2006 and more than 10,000 in 2010 — poses a public safety threat. Inmates use them to run criminal enterprises from behind bars and arrange assaults on enemies inside. Even the most closely watched inmates have been caught with them. Notorious killer Charles Manson has been caught with two.

Legislators complain that prison employees are the most likely sources of smuggled phones because, unlike visitors who must go through metal detectors, employees are not searched on their way into work.

Taylor said he rarely saw anyone using the wall-mounted pay phones during his sentence at Avenal.

"I think the only time people would use the wall phones," he said, "was to call their people" on the outside "and get another cellphone."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prison-phones-20110411,0,4444011,print.story

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Jim Newton: Public has a right to know names of police officers involved in shootings

California's police unions are waging fruitless and self-defeating campaigns to protect their members from legitimate public accountability in shootings.

by Jim Newton

April 11, 2011

In this season of discontent with public employee unions, California's police officer associations are waging costly, fruitless and self-defeating campaigns to protect their members from legitimate public accountability. Police unions have recently inserted themselves in battles in Pasadena, Long Beach and the county of Los Angeles, all to prevent the release of names of officers involved in shootings.

That's awful public policy. A police officer on duty performs a consummately public responsibility. Officers are identifiable to the public — they wear their names on their uniforms — because it's crucial that people in the community know their identities. Police are armed and allowed to use force, but they must do so in the service of the public, and under its scrutiny.

And yet, in a spate of cases, police unions are fighting that premise. Last December, for instance, Long Beach officers shot a man carrying a garden hose nozzle. When reporters asked for the names of the officers involved, the Long Beach union intervened, saying the release of that information would violate the officers' privacy. Similarly, in two shootings involving Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies — one late at night on Sept. 14, 2009, the other on a summer afternoon in Compton — their union is making the same argument.

In all these recent cases, police unions have argued that the names of officers involved in shootings should be withheld from the public, even when their police chiefs have said they believe the public should be informed. The unions have gone to court in an attempt to prevent disclosure. That means police unions are inserting themselves into the management of these departments, asserting that their members' desire for anonymity trumps the obligations of police chiefs to discuss the workings of their departments with the public.

The unions argue, naturally, that it's a matter of officer safety — that it's dangerous for the names of officers involved in shootings to become public.

"There are always those people who are extremely critical of police actions," the union representing Long Beach police officers argues in its case. "The best way to keep officers safe from these unknown people who may try to bring harm is not to let them know which officer was involved."

That's a sad statement of resignation: The best way to protect police officers is to disguise their identities? Wouldn't a better way be to conduct police work openly and in collaboration with the public, to build public support for the police rather than encourage public suspicion? And surely this argument extends in other directions: Is the best way to protect social workers from criticism to let them be anonymous? How about schoolteachers? Or doctors accused of malpractice? Should priests accused of molesting children remain anonymous?

The larger point here is one of the appropriate place of organized labor in fashioning public policy. Unions have an obligation to their members to argue for wages and benefits and for workplace safety; they can and should vigorously represent those interests. But they shouldn't carry the day in the formation of public policy about holding those same employees accountable for their actions. As they are proving, police unions will invariably press for secrecy — anyone who can get away with not being accountable would happily do so. But police departments cannot be effective if they lack public confidence and trust. We have seen that clearly in Los Angeles (where the names of officers involved in shootings were routinely released for decades). These are policy matters of significant consequence; they are not appropriately left to bargaining units.

Finally, there is the laughable futility of these efforts. Within two hours of sitting down to write this column, I was able — using documents filed in open court — to ascertain the names of the Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies involved in the two shootings. They are Kevin Brown and Sergio Reyes. Their union is fighting to prevent the sheriff from releasing their names, even though the deputies are named in the lawsuits brought by the families of Darrick Collins and Avery Cody Jr., whom those deputies shot.

The union knows that, but it fights anyway, disingenuously arguing that disclosure might reveal the deputies' identities to those who might harm them. As the union well knows, those who might most wish to harm them already have their names. The union's real effort is aimed at keeping the general public in the dark.

That officers are named in lawsuits or involved in shootings in no way suggests that they are guilty of anything. They are entitled to every presumption of innocence. But when a police officer shoots a suspect, the public is entitled to know that the officer acted properly and within the law, and that investigators will treat it as they would any other case. That is a public right, not a union privilege.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-newton-police-secrecy-20110411,0,7821831,print.column

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From Google News

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Search for missing woman expands as police look for serial killer

New York (CNN) -- Police say the search for a missing woman, which led investigators to the closely grouped remains of eight bodies in Long Island, New York, will expand Monday.

Investigators -- now embroiled in a manhunt for a potential serial killer -- are expected to spread out along the Nassau County line, working westward from Jones Beach in their search for Shannan Gilbert, who has been missing since May.

"We will be looking for human remains and any possible evidence," said Nassau Police spokesman Kevin Smith.

On Thursday, investigators said they were nearly finished with at least one part of the search effort in the Oak Beach area, where four female bodies were found stuffed in bushes along a quarter mile strip of beachfront property in December.

"Our search for (Gilbert) will continue, even though this component of the search is nearly over," Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer told reporters. K-9 units and dive teams had been added to the search operation in an effort to locate the missing woman, who was last seen alive in the neighboring Gilgo Beach area.

Police say the remains of three more bodies found last week were uncovered within a few miles of each other, fueling speculation that they could be the work of a serial killer.

A woman's body was also found March 29 off Ocean Parkway, west of Cedar Beach.

The case has drawn international attention as state and federal investigators pieced together evidence alongside local authorities.

Gilbert's sisters said Shannan was an escort who was visiting a client. They said she ran from the man's house and called 911, claiming that someone was trying to hurt her.

Several neighbors also called 911, witnesses say.

Police came more than 30 minutes later, but by then Gilbert was gone and has never been heard from again.

"You want to believe everything was OK with her," Sherre Gilbert said. "But at the same time, so much time has passed it's impossible to really think that she is still alive."

Police say the hunt for a potential serial killer continues, as does the search for Gilbert.

She, like the women whose bodies have been identified, advertised for prostitution services on internet sites such as Craigslist, police said.

Sherre Gilbert said even if her sister isn't ever found, the search has led to one positive outcome: the discovery of eight other women.

Police have not yet confirmed the identities of the remaining four bodies.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/04/11/new.york.bodies.search/?hpt=T2

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AP Exclusive: US blocks 350 suspected terrorists

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government has prevented more than 350 people suspected of ties to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups from boarding U.S.-bound commercial flights since the end of 2009, The Associated Press has learned.

The tighter security rules — imposed after the attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas 2009 — reveal a security threat that persisted for more than seven years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Until then, even as commercial passengers were forced to remove their shoes, limit the amount of shampoo in their carry-on luggage and endure pat downs, hundreds of foreigners with known or suspected ties to terrorism passed through security and successfully flew to the United States each year, U.S. officials told the AP. The government said these foreigners typically told Customs officers they were flying to the U.S. for legitimate reasons such as vacations or business.

Security practices changed after an admitted al-Qaida operative from Nigeria was accused of trying to blow himself up on a flight to Detroit on Christmas 2009. Until then, airlines only kept passengers off U.S.-bound planes if they were on the no-fly list, a list of people considered a threat to aviation.

Now before an international flight leaves for the U.S., the government checks passengers against a larger watch list that includes al-Qaida financiers and people who attended training camps but aren't considered threats to planes. The government was checking this list before, but only after the flight was en route. If someone on the flight was on the watch list, the person would be questioned and likely refused to enter the country after the plane landed.

"As terrorists keep adapting and changing their approach, so must we," Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., told the AP. During a Senate hearing shortly after the attempted Christmas attack, Rockefeller raised concerns about divisions among the different watch lists.

Hundreds of people linked to al-Qaida, Hamas, Lashkar-e-Taiba and other terror groups have been kept off airplanes under the new rules. They include what U.S. officials described as a member of a terrorist organization who received weapons training, recruited others, fought against American troops and had a ticket to fly to the U.S. Another traveler prevented from boarding a U.S.-bound flight was a member of a terrorist organization whom intelligence officials believe had purchased equipment for terrorism.

A third case, in January, involved a Jordanian man booked from Amman, Jordan, to Chicago, who was considered a threat to national security, according to a law enforcement official. The State Department had already revoked his visa. He was on the terrorist watch list but not the no-fly list. He was not considered a threat to aviation.

After U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers performed the now-routine check, the man was kept off the flight. Before the change, he would have arrived in Chicago, where he would have likely been stopped at customs, questioned and sent home.

The law enforcement official and other U.S. officials insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues. They would not provide the names of the people suspected of terror ties or some key details about the cases for security reasons.

"We've gotten better with our techniques and applying them predeparture, ensuring we're looking at as broad a section of potential risk as possible," said Kevin McAleenan, deputy assistant commissioner of field operations at Customers and Border Protection.

CBP said the gap in U.S. security practices wasn't obvious until after the attempted Christmas attack. Officials were prepared to question the accused bomber when he landed in Detroit — but that turned out to be too late.

"We had the skill set, the systems and the techniques, and we needed to move backwards in time," McAleenan said.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the terror watch list and its derivative, the no-fly list, became some of the government's best-known counterterrorism tools. They also became some of the most criticized, as innocent travelers were inconvenienced when they were mistaken for terrorism suspects. Outrage forced the government to pare the lists, which airlines checked before allowing people to fly.

After the attempted Christmas attack, the intelligence community took a closer look at the names on the terror watch list and set new standards for adding names. The watch list and no-fly list are constantly reviewed, and names are added and removed each day. There are about 30,000 people on the no-fly list and a companion list for people who must receive extra screening at airports, a counterterrorism official told the AP.

The more expansive terror watch list includes about 450,000 names of people the U.S. intelligence community believes are, or could be, a threat to national security because of terrorist ties. Some of the people on the watch list are still being investigated, and there is not enough information for the government to arrest them.

The new policy has not turned the 450,000-person terror watch list into the no-fly list. Simply being on the terror watch list does not mean a person won't be allowed to enter the U.S., McAleenan said. When CBP reviews passenger lists and matches someone on the terror watch list, CBP will review information available on the person before it recommends to the airline whether the person can board the plane, McAleenan said. In most cases, if CBP recommends against allowing the passenger to board, it's because the person would be turned away upon arrival inside the United States due to security concerns.

Most people on the watch list are foreigners. About 6,000 are U.S. citizens.

American citizens who are not considered threats to aviation but are on the terror watch list cannot automatically be prevented from flying to the U.S.

Customs officers will likely question a U.S. citizen who is on the terror watch list when he or she comes into the country. But without grounds for arrest, the officers must let them arrive. This also applies to a U.S. citizen who is on the no-fly list but who walks or drives back into the U.S. through land-border crossings.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iEqKKDCAWWadLrG8BpIqD02N0uIg?docId=a90604f5ac3644ddb3e808e3dadaf95f

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