FLE

Homeland Security grants spent on clowns and gyms

Fire departments are using Homeland Security grants to buy gym equipment, sponsor puppet and clown shows, and turn first responders into fitness trainers. The spending choices are allowable under the guidelines of the Assistance to Firefighters grant administered by the Homeland Security Department, which has awarded nearly 250 grants since February totaling more than $25 million out of the current spending pot of $545 million. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff vowed to redirect grant spending based on risk of a terrorist attack, but Congress has ignored his pleas, federal officials say. The Bush administration has specifically asked Congress not to allow funding for physical fitness, but the members who run Congress' appropriation committees keep inserting the language into the department's budget, officials say. The House last year passed the Faster and Smarter Funding for First Responders Act by a 409 to 10 vote to require several first responder grants be based on risk, however the firefighter grant was excluded from the legislation. In Florida, the Plantation City Council recently voted to use its $28,000 grant for treadmills, stationary bikes and training machines for police and firefighters. The Crawfordsville Fire Department in Indiana is using its $55,000 to buy gym equipment, provide nutritional counseling and instruct firefighters on how to become fitness trainers....

FBI Wants Access to Dead Writer's Papers

Not long after columnist Jack Anderson's funeral, FBI agents called his widow to say they wanted to search his papers. They were looking for confidential government information he might have acquired in a half-century of investigative reporting. The agents expressed interest in documents that would aid the government's case against two former lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, who have been charged with disclosing classified information, said Kevin Anderson, the columnist's son. In addition, the agents told the family they planned to remove from the columnist's archive — which has yet to be catalogued — any document they came across that was stamped "secret" or "confidential," or was otherwise classified. "He would be rolling over in his grave to think that the FBI was going to go crawling through his papers willy-nilly," the younger Anderson told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday. His account is similar to conversations described by Mark Feldstein, a George Washington University journalism professor and Anderson biographer. Feldstein said he was visited by two agents at his Washington-area home in March. "They flashed their badges and said they needed access to the papers," said Feldstein, a former investigative reporter. Anderson donated his papers to the university, but the family has not yet formally signed them over. FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko, a spokesman in Washington, confirmed that the bureau wants to search the Anderson archive and remove classified materials before they are made available to the public....

CIA officer fired after admitting leak

In a rare occurrence, the CIA fired an officer who acknowledged giving classified information to a reporter, NBC News learned Friday. The officer flunked a polygraph exam before being fired on Thursday and is now under investigation by the Justice Department, NBC has learned. Intelligence sources tell NBC News the accused officer, Mary McCarthy, worked in the CIA's inspector general's office and had worked for the National Security Council under the Clinton and and George W. Bush administrations. The leak pertained to stories on the CIA’s rumored secret prisons in Eastern Europe, sources told NBC. The information was allegedly provided to Dana Priest of the Washington Post, who wrote about CIA prisons in November and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize on Monday for her reporting. Sources said the CIA believes McCarthy had more than a dozen unauthorized contacts with Priest. Information about subjects other than the prisons may have been leaked as well. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the firing. CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise confirmed the dismissal. Millerwise said she was unsure whether there had ever been a firing before at the agency for leaking to the media. Citing the Privacy Act, the CIA would not provide any details about the officer’s identity or assignments. All CIA employees are required to sign a secrecy agreement upon being hired stating they are prohibited from discussing classified information with anyone not cleared to receive the material....

GAO Faults Agencies' Sharing of Terror Data

Despite more than four years of legislation, executive orders and presidential directives, the Bush administration has yet to comprehensively improve sharing of counterterrorism information among dozens of federal agencies -- and between them and thousands of nonfederal partners, government investigators have concluded. Repeated deadlines set by both President Bush and Congress have not been met, according to a 34-page report issued late Monday by the Government Accountability Office. While acknowledging the "complexity of the task," the report notes that responsibility for the effort has shifted since late 2001 from the White House to the Office of Management and Budget to the Department of Homeland Security, and now resides with the director of national intelligence. "None has yet completed the task," the report noted. The GAO expressed "disappointment" that Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte declined to address its findings beyond a letter saying that "the review of intelligence activities is beyond GAO's purview." Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Susan Collins (R-Maine), who requested the investigation along with several House chairmen, issued a statement yesterday regretting the DNI response and noting that she co-sponsored the 2004 law that mandated the information-sharing and created Negroponte's job. The failure of intelligence and law enforcement agencies to share information that might have warned of a pending terrorist attack was cited by investigations that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Delays in developing a comprehensive system to link counterterrorism efforts and information among federal agencies have long been attributed to what Negroponte has called their individual "cultures" and a reluctance to cooperate with one another....The primary, publicly stated purpose and rationale for the PATRIOT Act was to allow this information sharing. It was one of the few sections in the Act that I supported. Funny how those sections allowing additional spying on U.S. citizens was immediatedly implemented, but here we are 4 years later and the agencies can't change their "cultures" and implement the information sharing. Asking individuals to lose rights and accept change to benefit the war on terrorism is ok, but for God's sake don't ask the Feds to change.

Questions of how far US crackdown can go

A new Homeland Security plan to crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants is being billed by federal authorities as a sharp break from a longstanding policy of giving companies a slap on the wrist when they break the laws. But immigration analysts say that real enforcement of the Homeland Security Department plan would require far more resources than the Bush administration has committed to the new push, and more political spine than it has shown previously. As part of the program, announced Thursday by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the agency will dedicate 171 agents of its 2,500 nationwide to investigate and take action against employers who hire undocumented immigrants. But effectively combating what has become a widespread business practice would require the government to hire thousands of more investigators, to streamline methods for checking workers' legal status, and to show a new willingness to stand up to business interests, the analysts said. ''Nobody has bothered in 20 years to enforce these laws," said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. ''With the number of monitors they've got," Sum said, ''they can only monitor a tiny fraction of the employers." Nationwide, an estimated 7 million undocumented employees work for hundreds of thousands of firms, Sum said. The policy shift was announced as federal officials reported arresting 1,187 employees and seven managers of a national pallet manufacturing company. It signals a new era of immigration law enforcement, said David Palmatier, acting special agent in charge of the Boston office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of Homeland Security....

Canadian Claims Mistreatment by U.S Agents

Akhil Sachdeva, an accountant from India who emigrated to Canada, still wonders why he was seized at gunpoint by U.S. agents and held for months with hundreds of foreigners following the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Chaining him to a bench at the FBI's Manhattan office on Dec. 20, 2001, federal agents demanded to know his religious and political beliefs, asked whether he had taken flying lessons and sought his personal views about the suicide hijackers, he said in an interview with The Associated Press. The 33-year-old is among eight foreign detainees who have sued U.S. officials, contending they were mistreated and terrorized by snarling dogs during four months at the Passaic County Jail in New Jersey. The class-action lawsuit is open to some 800 foreign-born detainees who were held for roughly the same amount of time. "Maybe because of my skin color? I am an Indian and I look like any person from Pakistan or an Arab country," Sachdeva, a Hindu native of New Delhi, said in an interview after completing depositions in Toronto taken by lawyers representing the U.S. government. Sachdeva, now a Canadian citizen, is seeking undisclosed financial compensation for his ordeal by joining the federal lawsuit filed in New York against senior U.S. officials, including FBI Director Robert Mueller and former Attorney General John Ashcroft. "First of all, I want an apology," Sachdeva said by telephone from his home in Brampton, Ontario. "One day I have everything, the next day they destroyed my life and I was not even charged for anything _ I had done no crime. I understand that there was a need of national security then, but how can they treat people that way?"....

New Orleans police giving back weapons confiscated post-Katrina

A handful of people showed up Monday to try to get back guns confiscated by the New Orleans Police Department after Hurricane Katrina — and not many of those walked away with a weapon. "They told me the police took them the first two weeks after the hurricane, after that it was the ATF," said Charles Clark, 62, a retired law officer, who had an antique gun taken from his house after the Aug. 29 storm. "It's very frustrating. I know we had a storm and all, but there should be a way to find out who has your property." Police, national guardsmen and military removed guns from houses during a search after the storm flooded the city, and they confiscated guns from some evacuees — leading to a lawsuit by gun-owner advocates including the National Rifle Association. "Natural disasters may destroy great cities, but they do not destroy civil rights," said Alan Gottlieb, founder of Second Amendment Foundation, which joined the NRA in the suit. Those seeking a weapon must bring either a bill of sale or an affidavit with the weapon's serial number. Police also are running a criminal background check on anyone claiming a weapon. "We were told 25 people went in to get their guns and eight left with their firearms," Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Rifle Association, said Monday afternoon. Percy Taplet, 73, said the national guard and state police confiscated his shotgun from his house when they evacuated him. He said he kept it for protection at his house and adjoining business. Police told him he would have to contact state police about the weapon. "I won't ever see that gun again believe me," Taplet said. "It's gone like everything else in that storm." Although a few people emerged from the police trailer with their weapons, many others were turned away....

Man accused of hitting officer shot, arrested

A man suspected of striking a U.S. Forest Service officer last month was shot and arrested by Riverside County Sheriff's Department deputies Tuesday afternoon when he opened fire on them, authorities said. Sgt. Earl Quinata said a bullet grazed the suspect's leg. Clinton J. Althizer, 28, of Pedley, was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer and doing willful harm to a child in connection with the March incident, as well as attempted homicide of a police officer, narcotics possession, grand theft auto and being a parolee in possession of a handgun, Quinata said. Deputies had been searching for Althizer because he is believed to have struck a U.S. Forest Service officer during a traffic stop March 20, Quinata said. The officer had stopped Althizer, who was riding a motorcycle with a child on the back, at 65th and Kennedy streets....Unless 65th and Kennedy streets are in a National Forest, what is a Forest Service "officer" doing making a traffic stop? At the same time we are seeing news articles about the lack of personnel to protect Federal lands, Forest service employees are making traffic stops off Federal lands? Why wasn't he on US property enforcing Federal lands law? I wonder how many Forest Service and BLM employees have been cross-commissioned by state and local authorities and how much of their time has been spent on non-federal lands activities and projects? Shouldn't the House and Senate Appropriation Committees request this type of information?