FLE

Border patrol agent held at gunpoint A U.S. Border Patrol agent was held at gunpoint Sunday night by members of the Mexican military who had crossed the border into Arizona, but the soldiers returned to Mexico without incident when backup agents responded to assist. Agents assigned to the Border Patrol station at Ajo, Ariz., said the Mexican soldiers crossed the international border in an isolated area about 100 miles southwest of Tucson and pointed rifles at the agent, who was not identified. It was unclear what the soldiers were doing in the United States, but U.S. law enforcement authorities have long said that current and former Mexican military personnel have been hired to protect drug and migrant smugglers. "Unfortunately, this sort of behavior by Mexican military personnel has been going on for years," union Local 2544 of the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) said on its Web page. "They are never held accountable, and the United States government will undoubtedly brush this off as another case of 'Oh well, they didn't know they were in the United States.' Since 1996, there have been more than 200 confirmed incursions by the Mexican military into the United States. Local 2544, the largest in the NBPC, is headed by veteran Border Patrol agent Edward "Bud" Tuffly II. He noted on the Web page that the local's leadership would "withhold further comment on this incident until we see how our leaders handle it."....
Report: FBI Harassed Ivins Bruce E. Ivins, the FBI's prime suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people, spent last fall drinking heavily, taking large numbers of pills and typing ranting e-mails late at night, a fellow scientist says. But the FBI also offered Ivins' own son and daughter millions of dollars and a new sports car to testify against their father, and even confronted the entire family in public at a shopping mall, The Washington Post reports. vins, a career government infectious-disease researcher, killed himself last week as the FBI was preparing to arrest him in connection with the anthrax attacks. The anonymous fellow scientist tells the Post that Ivins "was e-mailing me late at night with gobbledygook, ranting and raving" regarding the FBI's "persecution" of his family. That scrutiny involved showing Ivins' daughter photos of the victims and telling her "your father did this," the scientist says. The bureau also coaxed her twin brother with the $2.5 million reward offered in what it called the "Amerithrax" case plus any sports car he wanted, the source says. In March FBI agents confronted Ivins, his wife and son at a Frederick, Md., shopping mall, the source tells the Post. "You killed a bunch of people," the agents told Ivins. They asked his wife, "Do you know he killed people?"....
Documents Unsealed in Anthrax Case A federal judge on Wednesday unsealed documents related to the 2001 anthrax attacks, as the Justice Department prepared to declare, over lingering skepticism, that the case had been solved. Federal law enforcement officials planned to address the growing questions about the strength of its evidence against a military scientist who killed himself after investigators linked him to the attacks. Officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation are particularly eager to close the case and publicly rebut accusations from defenders of the scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, that the bureau may have hounded an innocent man into committing suicide. Robert M. Blitzer, who formerly directed the F.B.I.’s section on domestic terrorism, bristled at criticism of the bureau’s methods in the anthrax case and called them a necessary part of tracking down the killer. “You do the best you can, and it’s not always pretty,” he said....
Long, Crooked Road of the Anthrax Probe The bioweapons lab at Fort Detrick north of Washington, where anthrax suspect Bruce Ivins had worked since 1990, became a focus of federal investigators soon after anthrax-laced letters [pictures of the letters here] arrived at media organizations and Senate offices following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Five people died from the anthrax mailings. Many feared that the anthrax letters were the work of al Qaeda or other foreign terrorists. But investigators decided early on that few people in the world had the high degree of technical and scientific sophistication to handle anthrax strains, and that most of those people worked in the United States. In mid 2002, FBI officials said the agency was scrutinizing 20 to 30 scientists who might have had the knowledge and opportunity to send the anthrax letters. That year, Steven J. Hatfill, a bioweapons expert and a former Fort Detrick scientist, was the only scientist called a "person of interest" in the investigation by then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft. Investigators searched Hatfill's apartment, car, a storage unit in Florida and his girlfriend's home. They seized his computer and bags of personal items he had thrown away in preparation for moving. Hatfill vehemently denied any connection with the letters. (Hatfill later sued the government -- and some reporters, seeking their confidential sources -- saying he has struggled to find employment as a scientist after reporters and federal agents tailed him for years. Little more than a month ago, he reached a settlement with the Justice Department valued at $5.85 million.)....
Vital unresolved anthrax questions The FBI's lead suspect in the September, 2001 anthrax attacks -- Bruce E. Ivins -- died Tuesday night, apparently by suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to charge him with responsibility for the attacks. For the last 18 years, Ivins was a top anthrax researcher at the U.S. Government's biological weapons research laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, where he was one of the most elite government anthrax scientists on the research team at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID)...If the now-deceased Ivins really was the culprit behind the attacks, then that means that the anthrax came from a U.S. Government lab, sent by a top U.S. Army scientist at Ft. Detrick. Without resort to any speculation or inferences at all, it is hard to overstate the significance of that fact. From the beginning, there was a clear intent on the part of the anthrax attacker to create a link between the anthrax attacks and both Islamic radicals and the 9/11 attacks...One other fact to note here is how bizarrely inept the effort by the Bush DOJ to find the real attacker has been. Extremely suspicious behavior from Ivins -- including his having found and completely cleaned anthrax traces on a co-worker's desk at the Ft. Detrick lab without telling anyone that he did so and then offering extremely strange explanations for why -- was publicly reported as early as 2004 by The LA Times (Ivins "detected an apparent anthrax leak in December 2001, at the height of the anthrax mailings investigation, but did not report it. Ivins considered the problem solved when he cleaned the affected office with bleach"). In October 2004, USA Today reported that Ivins was involved in another similar incident, in April of 2002, when Ivins performed unauthorized tests to detect the origins of more anthrax residue found at Ft. Detrick....
Was Bruce Ivins the anthrax killer? The media narrative now being woven around the apparent suicide of U.S. government scientist Bruce E. Ivins – a prominent anthrax researcher who worked at Ft. Detrick's U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases bio-weapons research lab (USAMRIID) – is that he was a lone nut, a "homicidal maniac" who poisoned the five people killed in the 2001 anthrax attacks and was determined to go on another killing spree at his workplace as the Feds closed in on him. The Times of London headline says it all: "Mad Anthrax Scientist in Threat to Kill Co-Workers." However, as we sift through the reams of media coverage occasioned by this startling development in a 7-year-old case, we get quite a different story from the alleged objects of his rage: his colleagues on the job at Ft. Detrick. As the Washington Post reported: "Colleagues and friends of the vaccine specialist remained convinced that Ivins was innocent: They contended that he had neither the motive nor the means to create the fine, lethal powder that was sent by mail to news outlets and congressional offices in the late summer and fall of 2001. Mindful of previous FBI mistakes in fingering others in the case, many are deeply skeptical that the bureau has gotten it right this time. "'I really don't think he's the guy. I say to the FBI, "Show me your evidence,"' said Jeffrey J. Adamovicz, former director of the bacteriology division at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, on the grounds of the sprawling Army fort in Frederick. 'A lot of the tactics they used were designed to isolate him from his support. The FBI just continued to push his buttons.'" Another one of his co-workers, Richard O. Spertzel, pointed out that "USAMRIID doesn't deal with powdered anthrax. I don't think there's anyone there who would have the foggiest idea how to do it. You would need to have the opportunity, the capability, and the motivation, and he didn't possess any of those."....
Travelers' Laptops May Be Detained At Border Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed. Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. DHS officials said the newly disclosed policies -- which apply to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens -- are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism. Officials said such procedures have long been in place but were disclosed last month because of public interest in the matter. Civil liberties and business travel groups have pressed the government to disclose its procedures as an increasing number of international travelers have reported that their laptops, cellphones and other digital devices had been taken -- for months, in at least one case -- and their contents examined. The policies state that officers may "detain" laptops "for a reasonable period of time" to "review and analyze information." This may take place "absent individualized suspicion." The policies cover "any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form," including hard drives, flash drives, cellphones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover "all papers and other written documentation," including books, pamphlets and "written materials commonly referred to as 'pocket trash' or 'pocket litter.' "....
State: Just in case, we'll take your gun A new report to the Connecticut state legislature shows police have used the state's unique gun seizure law to confiscate more than 1,700 firearms from citizens based on suspicion that the gun owners might harm themselves or others. The state's law permits police to seek a warrant for seizing a citizen's guns based on suspicion of the gun owner's intentions, before any act of violence or lawbreaking is actually committed. The law has remained hotly debated since its passage, as some point to possible murders and suicides it may have prevented and others worry that police would abuse the law. "It certainly has not been abused. It may be underutilized," Ron Pinciaro, co-executive director of Connecticut Against Gun Violence, told the Waterbury Republican American. "The bottom line from our perspective is, it may very well have saved lives." Attorney Ralph D. Sherman, who has represented several of the gun owners whose firearms were confiscated under the law, disagrees. "In every case I was involved in I thought it was an abuse," he told the newspaper. "The overriding concern is anybody can report anybody with or without substantiation, and I don't think that is the American way." Joe Graborz, executive director of the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union, an affiliate of the ACLU, told WND the law "continues to invest unusual and far-reaching powers in police authority that does not belong there" by requiring "police to act as psychologists in trying to predict and interpret behavior."....
Pentagon shuts down controversial counter-intelligence outfit The Pentagon said Monday it has shut down a secretive counter-intelligence outfit that aroused controversy over tracking the activities of anti-war groups. The so-called Counter-Intelligence Field Activity (CIFA) is being absorbed into a new Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) center that will be in charge of both espionage and counter-intelligence activities, the Pentagon said in a statement. "The Department of Defense activated the Defense Counterintelligence (CI) and Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Center today, and simultaneously disestablished the Department's Counterintelligence Field Activity," the Pentagon said. CIFA was created under former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2002 as a separate entity to conduct counter-intelligence efforts against suspected terrorists in the United States. It came under fire in December 2005 following disclosures that it had kept unverified surveillance reports of anti-war activists in a database. CIFA was empowered to conduct counter-intelligence investigations, but most of its operations remain classified. It reportedly grew to employ about 1,000 people. "CIFA's designation as a law enforcement activity did not transfer to DIA. The new center will have no law enforcement function," the Pentagon said....
Bush Proposes Regulatory Change to Ease Spying With these Bush guys, you’ve got to read the fine print. On July 31, they published in the Federal Register a proposed change to Title 28, Section 23, of the Code of Federal Regulations. This is the section that governs domestic spying. The existing language said that information gathered in an intelligence case could be disseminated only “where there is a need to know and a right to know the information in the performance of a law enforcement activity.” This limitation was designed to protect “the privacy and constitutional rights of individuals,” the statute behind this section states. Well, that limitation would be null and void. The new regulations would allow dissemination “when the information falls within the law enforcement, counterterrorism, or national security responsibility of the receiving agency or may assist in preventing crime or the use of violence or any conduct dangerous to human life or property.” Boy, you can’t get much broader than that. Wait, you can. Because the existing language said you could share this intelligence info with “a government official or any other individual, when necessary to avoid imminent danger to life or liberty.” Now, the Bushies have deleted the word “imminent.”....
Texas defies Hague and executes José Medellín A Mexican man at the centre of an international legal dispute has been executed in Texas for the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl in 1993. While protestors both for and against the death penalty demonstrated outside the Huntsville Unit near Houston last night, José Medellín, 33, died after being given a lethal injection. The execution came just before 10pm shortly after the US supreme court denied a last request for a reprieve. Pleas for a stay came from Washington, Mexico and the international court of justice (ICJ). They had all urged Texas not to execute Medellín until a hearing had been held to determine whether or not his original trial was sound. The state's Republican governor, Rick Perry, rebutted attempts to delay off the execution arguing that the state's courts were not bound by the rulings of the ICJ. The ICJ in the Hague had ordered Medellín's case and those of 50 other Mexicans on death row be reviewed because none had been informed of their right to consular assistance. The US state department said it was powerless to delay the execution, noting that the country's supreme court had ruled in March that president Bush did not have the authority to intervene in the case....