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From the Los Angeles Times

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Russian spies were succeeding, FBI official says

The 10 sleeper agents exposed in 2010 were reportedly succeeding in efforts to rise in American society and gain connections to policymakers. Newly released documents detail the investigation.

by Ken Dilanian, Los Angeles Times

October 31, 2011

Reporting from Washington

Brush passes. Dead drops. Secret electronic messages. All under the watchful eye of the FBI.

Documents released Monday, including photos, videos and papers, offered new details about the FBI's decade-long investigation into a ring of Russian sleeper agents who, U.S. officials say, were trying to burrow their way into American society to learn secrets from people in power.

The investigation was code-named Operation Ghost Stories because six of the 10 agents had assumed the identities of dead people.

The agents, whom the U.S. sent to Russia in July 2010 in the largest spy swap since the Cold War, are not accused of stealing any U.S. secrets. But they were more dangerous than commonly believed, C. Frank Figliuzzi, FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, said in an interview.

They were "the cream of the crop" of trained Russian intelligence agents, he said, and they were sent here to blend in and befriend American policymakers. They were succeeding, Figliuzzi said.

"Several were getting close to high-ranking officials," he said. One had gone to work for a confidant of a U.S. Cabinet member, he added, declining to offer details.

One of the Russians, who identified herself as Cynthia Murphy of Montclair, N.J., provided financial planning for Alan Patricof, a New York venture capitalist and top Democratic donor who was finance chairman of Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, according to news reports.

The agents were known as "illegals," because they weren't operating out of Russian embassies or military missions. Instead, they led seemingly normal lives in the U.S.

Figliuzzi noted that one of the spies, Donald Heathfield of Cambridge, Mass., attended Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, which trains many senior government officials. One of the photos released Monday showed Heathfield, who purportedly stole the identity of a Canadian infant who had died decades ago, graduating from Harvard in 2000. The university has revoked the degree.

One of Murphy's neighbors remarked: "How could she be a spy? Look at her hydrangeas," Figliuzzi said.

The FBI released the documents, many of them heavily redacted, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Associated Press.

After watching the Russian network for a decade, the FBI decided to wrap it up last year. "We had seen enough of the reporting going back to Moscow Center to trouble us," including a report about one of the agent's classmates who had joined the CIA, Figliuzzi said.

By early 2010, the FBI had penetrated the ring's communication. Investigators were able to record the Russians sending secret messages, and posing as Russian handlers they used the spy ring's own lingo to get members to incriminate themselves.

In one videotape, Anna Chapman, the former New York real estate agent whose youth and good looks made her the face of the spy saga when it became public knowledge, is shown shopping in a New York department store. She was also transmitting coded messages though a laptop to her Russian handler, Figliuzzi said.

Other agents sent information to their handlers by leaving it at a prearranged location (known as a dead drop) or by handing it off quickly while walking by a person (a brush pass).

Chapman, who has since become an international celebrity, was not as well-trained as most of the others, Figliuzzi said. She was sent to the U.S. after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks because she could operate in an era of greater scrutiny using her real name, he said.

Months later, in a Manhattan coffee shop, an undercover FBI agent got Chapman to acknowledge her affiliation with Moscow.

The U.S. government reportedly learned about the spy ring from Col. Alexander Poteyev, an American mole in Russian foreign intelligence who fled Moscow days before the FBI arrested the Russians. A Russian military court convicted him in absentia for high treason and desertion.

The U.S. ultimately arrested the 10 Russians and swapped them for four Russians who were serving time after being convicted of spying for the West.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev awarded the 10 freed spies Russia's highest honors at a Kremlin ceremony. Chapman, a diplomat's daughter, has kept a high profile in Russia, working as a model and doing paid celebrity endorsements.

An 11th suspect, Christopher Metsos, who delivered money and equipment to the sleeper agents, absconded after a court in Cyprus freed him on bail. The FBI released surveillance photos of Metsos, who reportedly claimed to be Canadian, on Monday.

The FBI documents, photos and videos can be found at http://www.fbi.gov.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-russian-spies-20111101,0,4213990,print.story

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Supreme Court hesitates to extend rights on plea deals

Justices show reluctance to reopen the cases of criminal defendants who missed out on good plea deals because of their lawyers' mistakes.

by David G. Savage, Washington Bureau

November 1, 2011

Reporting from Washington

The Supreme Court showed little enthusiasm Monday for reopening the cases of criminal defendants who lost out on good plea deals based on bad advice or bungling by their lawyers.

In the past, the court has said that criminal defendants not only have a right to a lawyer, but a right to reopen their cases if a lawyer's bungling denied them a right to a fair trial.

These days, however, about 95% of crime cases are resolved through a plea agreement, not a trial. At issue in two cases Monday was whether to extend the right to competent legal advice to plea deals.

Most of the justices made clear they were reluctant to give defendants a new trial or a shorter prison term because a lawyer's mistake caused them to miss out on a favorable plea deal.

"It was the defendant's choice, not the lawyer's choice" to plead guilty, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. told one advocate. And the defendant has to live with his or her decision, he suggested.

One case from Missouri involved a lawyer who failed to tell his client about a good deal. Gailin Frye was charged with driving with a revoked license, and a prosecutor offered Frye's public defender a deal: Plead guilty to a misdemeanor and he would recommend 90 days in jail. The lawyer failed to tell Frye about the offer. A few months later, Frye pleaded guilty to a felony and received three years in prison. In the interim, however, he had also been arrested again for driving without a license.

His new lawyer argued that as a matter of "fundamental fairness," Frye's guilty plea should be voided.

"Why? Why is it unfair for the law to apply to this individual the punishment he deserved for the crime he committed?" asked Justice Antonin Scalia.

He and other justices emphasized that there was "no right to a plea deal." And they said the judge would have insisted on a longer jail term for Frye because of his multiple convictions.

The second case involved a Michigan man who passed up a deal that would have sent him to prison for four to seven years for shooting a woman four times. His lawyer told him he would not be convicted of assault with intent to murder because he shot her below the waist. Anthony Cooper then went to trial, was convicted on all counts and received a sentence of up to 30 years in prison.

The justices said there was no fair way to start all over again after a defendant had been tried and convicted. "There is just no way to unscramble the eggs in this situation," said Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

"Mr. Cooper is guilty of shooting Kali Mundy. He also got exactly the sentence that the people prescribed for the crime that he committed," said Michigan Solicitor Gen. John Bursch. "There is very little unfair in holding him to that sentence."

By the end of the argument, most of the justices sounded as if they agreed.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-plea-20111101,0,3405773,print.story

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Computer program could point police to gang-crime suspects

UCLA mathematicians devise an algorithm based on data from the Los Angeles Police Department for the Hollenbeck area east of downtown.

by Joel Rubin, Los Angeles Times

October 31, 2011

A team of UCLA researchers has delved again into the world of crime fighting, this time developing a computer program capable of pointing police to potential suspects when feuds between rival gangs erupt into violence.

The work is the latest contribution in the fast-emerging field of predictive policing — a broad area of study rooted in the notion that it is possible, through sophisticated computer analysis of information about previous crimes, to predict where and when crimes will occur or, in this case, to calculate the probability a certain gang committed a crime.

Some of the most ambitious work is being done at UCLA, where researchers are concentrating largely on the ways criminals behave in urban settings.

In the recent research, mathematicians devised an algorithm to crunch information the Los Angeles Police Department collected on more than 1,000 gang-related crimes and suspected gang crimes in the LAPD's Hollenbeck Division — an area east of downtown L.A. that is home to more than two dozen active gangs. Often, a perceived or real affront by one gang to another can set off a spiral of retaliatory violence.

The goal was to bring some mathematical order to this murky, shifting landscape in Hollenbeck, where rivalries and alliances between groups are difficult to track.

The computer model the researchers built sifted through a decade's worth of crime data in search of patterns and relationships between gangs undetectable to a person. From that analysis, the program was designed to identify which gangs were most likely involved in particular crimes.

To test it, the researchers created an imaginary set of crime data that closely mirrored the shootings, assaults and other gang-on-gang crimes that occurred in Hollenbeck. They then removed pieces of important information, such as the name of one or both of the involved gangs, and tested whether the computer algorithm could come up with the missing data.

About 80% of the time, the computer calculations were able to identify the three gangs most likely to have committed a crime against a rival, the researchers said.

"That narrows it down quite a bit," said Martin Short, co-author of the study, in an announcement released by UCLA. It is "significantly better than chance," he said.

Short and the others also found that the algorithm identified the correct gang, rather than just the top three, half of the time. Simple chance produced the right gang only 17% of the time.

"If police believe a crime might have been committed by one of seven or eight rival gangs, our method would look at recent historical events in the area and compute probabilities as to which of these gangs are most likely to have committed crime," said the study's senior author, Andrea Bertozzi, director of applied mathematics at UCLA.

Bertozzi said the same mathematics used in the gang rivalry study can be applied in other areas of law enforcement and other industries. Identifying and tracking down computer hackers is one possibility, she suggested, as is trying to determine members in a terrorist cell.

Put simply, wherever there are distinct events that occur in a certain time frame and involve members of a distinct group, it is possible to use the mathematics to come up with the probability that a certain member of the group is involved. With a terrorist cell, for example, law enforcement agents might be trying to monitor the cell's email exchanges, but not know the names of the senders and recipients of all the messages. The algorithm could potentially be used to fill in the blanks.

The team of researchers has been picking apart other types of crime data as well. They have built a mathematical model that allows them to identify crime hot spots and predict how those areas would respond to an influx of police officers. And a Times article last year profiled their efforts to devise another predictive algorithm — one that eventually could enable police to anticipate, and possibly prevent, many types of crimes.

The LAPD has positioned itself at the center of the quickly emerging field of predictive policing, sharing crime data with the UCLA researchers and seeking federal grants to run pilot programs within the department. Bertozzi said it was not immediately clear how the LAPD would put the gang algorithm to use. The LAPD official who oversees the department's predictive policing efforts could not be reached for comment.

The latest research can be found on the website of the mathematical journal Inverse Problems, which will publish the findings in a future print edition, the university said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ucla-gang-computer-20111101,0,4024302,print.story

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Phoenix worker convicted of nine slayings in Baseline Killer case

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/

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A rizona busts massive Mexican drug smuggling operation

Arizona officials have arrested 76 people suspected in the smuggling of at least $2 billion worth of drugs through the state's western desert in coordination with Mexico's Sinaloa cartel.

“We in Arizona continue to stand and fight the Mexican drug cartels, who think they own the place,” Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said in a statement about the investigation, dubbed Operation Pipeline Express.

“While this is a historic drug bust, sadly this represents only a fraction of what my deputies face every day,” Babeu said.

The arrests were made during a series of recent raids.

Officials said the ring, based in Chandler, Stanfield and Maricopa, used backpackers and trucks to move drugs from the border to a network of stash houses in the Phoenix area. After arriving in Phoenix, the smugglers sold the drugs, which included marijuana, cocaine and heroin, to distributors from various states.

Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the smugglers succeeded at first because they had established control over an 80-mile stretch of the border from Yuma to Sells, Ariz.

"They had gained a virtual monopoly over a swath of the Arizona border," she said.

Kice said investigators believe some of those arrested are U.S.-based bosses in the Sinaloa cartel.

“Through our joint efforts, we've sent a resounding message to the Mexican cartels that Arizona is off limits to their operatives,” Matthew Allen, special agent in charge of Homeland Security investigations in Arizona, said in a statement.

Officials posted video from the investigation online, including surveillance video of trucks being loaded and driven down desert roads, Border Patrol officers inspecting a roofing truck packed with large bricks of marijuana, and sheriff's teams making arrests during nighttime raids.

The 17-month investigation, which began with a traffic stop by Pinal County sheriff's deputies, included three “large-scale enforcement actions”: one last week, another earlier this month and a third last month, according to ICE.

During last week's raids, authorities seized more than 2 tons of marijuana, 19 weapons and nearly $200,000 in cash, the agency said. It estimates that the drug ring smuggled more than 3.3 million pounds of marijuana, 20,000 pounds of cocaine and 10,000 pounds of heroin into the United States during the last five years.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/

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From Google News

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Massachusetts

Cops and community unite to fight crime

The weather may not have been ideal this past weekend, but an effort to put a damper on crime in Fall River neighborhoods helped send a message that many eyes were watching to fight against crime this Halloween weekend. The Community On Patrol public safety initiative was championed by Fall River Mayor Will Flanagan and supported by the city's police unions and neighborhood associations.

Under the program, which took place Saturday, several police officers — on their own time — volunteered to team up with neighborhood watch members to patrol streets in the Flint, St. Anne's, the Highlands and Maplewood neighborhoods during the day. For the police, the volunteer effort was a way to give back to the community and show that their dedication to the city is about more than getting a paycheck. After all, community policing is about being visible and building relationships within the community.

In addition to the walking beats, which targeted some of Fall River's less crime-ridden neighborhoods, an evening component involved “Crime Caravans” to patrol high-crime neighborhoods on Saturday night. Flanagan, who sees the initiative as a pilot program, got the idea from another mayor, Cory Booker of crime-plagued Newark, N.J. Booker had instituted that program in 2009.

Here in Fall River, about 20 city residents joined the volunteer police effort, consisting of seven civilian vehicles and three police cruisers. Flanagan explained that the president of the police union had approached him about getting another volunteer effort going, as had been done with “Operation Blue Thunder,” the March 2010 weekend initiative, in which 43 officers volunteered to serve warrants and walk a beat.

Operation Blue Thunder targeted the highest crime areas in Fall River by sending officers out to make sweeping arrests of those wanted on outstanding warrants. While Operation Blue Thunder made for splashier headlines and arguably put a larger dent in the city's crime rate, that type of operation was too dangerous to include civilians.

Saturday's COP initiative, however, took a more proactive role in fighting crime, increasing police visibility and building community relationships, rather than taking a reactive role in making warrant arrests and seizing contraband. Saturday's program helped boost police morale and involvement in the community. It helped the officers get to know the neighborhoods better and helped the neighborhoods get to know their local beat cops.

While Operation Blue Thunder represented a strong, sudden blast of police force, COP represented a show of community force. Operation Blue Thunder had immediate tangible results in the form of arrests and seized weapons and drugs taken off the street. With community policing — which is the aim of COP — results take time to build.

One of the main organizers of the COP initiative was Patrolman Nelson Sousa, secretary of Massachusetts Coalition of Police Local 1854. Souza explained that city police use the volunteer effort as a way to give back to the community. “We want to thank the neighborhood associations for all they've done.” As Sousa — who helped recruit the police volunteers — said, officers “have a stake in the community as well. This is supporting all of us.” Mass. COP was joined in the effort by the Superior Officers Union.

There is no question that Fall River has a high crime rate, but efforts like this go a long way in making people feel safer and empowered. While no criminal activity was spotted on Saturday (likely due to the nasty weather), the visibility effort was accomplished. It makes the city's residents feel safer and fights citizen apathy. Saturday's Community On Patrol initiative sent a powerful message that “the good guys” in this scrappy city are ready to fight back against crime.

http://www.heraldnews.com/features/x213520886/OUR-VIEW-Cops-and-community-unite-to-fight-crime

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From the White House

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Why We Can't Wait: Taking Action to Reduce Prescription Drug Shortages

Sometimes the most important component of a patient's treatment is the type of medication they receive and the consistency at which they receive it. For some Americans, a change in their treatment regimen or a substitution of a medication can seriously threaten their ability to get better.

Between 2005 and 2010, the number of prescription drug shortages nearly tripled. While the FDA successfully prevented 137 drug shortages between January 1, 2010 and September 26, 2011, prescription drug shortages continue to threaten the health and safety of the American people. Today, too many people are waiting for their prescription to become available. Some are forced to switch from the medication they prefer, while others go without their medicine altogether. In some cases, drug shortages can even force people to stop a course of treatment before it finishes.

We cannot control the factors that cause these drug shortages. But we are committed to doing our part to counteract them. Which is why President Obama signed an Executive Order today that will lead to earlier FDA notification of any impending shortages for certain prescription drugs. Early notification can help prevent a shortage from becoming a crisis by allowing hospitals, doctors and manufacturers to take action to ensure medications remain available.

In addition, the President's Executive Order will call on FDA to work with the Justice Department to examine whether “gray market” profiteers are responding to potential drug shortages either by hoarding medications or charging exorbitant prices. In recent months, we've heard reports of enormous markups such as a blood pressure medicine usually priced at $26 being sold for $1,200. And under this Executive Order, the Justice Department will watch the market closely to make sure companies are not exploiting drug shortages to raise their profits at the expense of patients.

The Executive Order also requires FDA to expand its current efforts to expedite review of new manufacturing sites, drug suppliers, and manufacturing changes to help prevent shortages. This work is well underway, but we will redouble our efforts.

But the Executive Order is only one in a series of steps that will help address the prescription drug shortages our nation faces. Today, the Obama Administration sent a letter to drug manufacturers reminding them of their responsibility to report the discontinuation of certain drugs to the FDA and encourages companies to voluntarily disclose to FDA potential shortages in cases where disclosure is not currently required by law.

We also released two reports, one from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) that asses the underlying factors that lead to drug shortages and an FDA report on their role in monitoring, preventing, and responding to these shortages. In order to continue the work we do at FDA, we will also increase our staffing resources for the FDA's Drug Shortages Program to address the increased workload that will result from additional early notification of potential shortages by manufacturers.

While the root causes and many of the solutions are outside of the FDA's authority, including the need for additional manufacturing capacity in the private sector, the Administration will continue its ongoing work with manufacturers and other stakeholders to help address drug shortages.

We need to guarantee that Americans don't have to leave their pharmacies empty-handed. Especially at a time when so many families are struggling, we need to do everything we can to ensure that people can get the medications that allow them to manage their conditions. This Administration won't wait because the American people can't wait.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/10/31/why-we-can-t-wait-taking-action-reduce-prescription-drug-shortages

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By the Numbers: 650 Percent

The number of prescription drug shortages tripled between 2005 and 2010 . Besides having serious consequences for people's health and well-being, drug shortages drive vendors to charge outragous prices for drugs that are normally affordable when in stock. One report found that price-gouging vendors mark up prices on drugs in short supply by 650 percent, on average.

Another report about these “grey market vendors”—companies that inflate prices of drugs running in short supply—found that a leukemia drug whose typical contract price is about $12 per vial was being sold at $990 per vial. At the extreme, a drug used to treat high blood pressure that was normally priced at $25.90 was being sold at $1,200 due to a drug shortage.

Only a very small number of drugs are affected by such shortages, but for many patients, changing medications may be the difference between getting healthier and getting sicker. Drugs affected by shortages include cancer treatments, anesthesia drugs, and other medications that are critical to the treatment and prevention of serious diseases and life-threatening conditions.

Today, President Obama signed an Executive Order that will help prevent shortages that lead to this type of price gouging. The order directs the Food and Drug Administration to expand reporting about situations that might lead to drug shortages, and also to http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/10/31/numbers-650-percent work with the Department of Justice to investigate illegal price gouging.

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From the Department of Homeland Security

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Cybersecurity is Everyone's Business

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