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Doubts persist on Ivins' guilt A day after the Justice Department released hundreds of documents purporting to link Bruce E. Ivins to the 2001 anthrax killings, scientists and legal experts criticized the strength of the case and cast doubt on whether it could have succeeded. Federal investigators presented a raft of circumstantial evidence this week intended to prove Ivins' guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. But officials lacked direct evidence, such as hair fibers, DNA samples or handwriting analysis, that the eccentric microbiologist created the deadly powder in his Fort Detrick lab. Questions also remain about Ivins' ability to convert the spores stored in his lab into the powder sent through the mail. More than half a dozen experts in law and bioterrorism pointed out yesterday what they consider major flaws in the government's case and said they were not convinced that Ivins acted alone in mailing the letters that killed five people - or that he was involved at all. They said that the science that led the FBI to Ivins has not been explained and that the other evidence did not amount to conclusive proof....
The FBI's selective release of documents in the anthrax case...What is most conspicuously absent from these FBI documents is any real forensic evidence linking Ivins to the anthrax that was sent. That's particularly striking because the FBI took numerous swabs of Ivins' residence, his office space, his laboratory devices (presumably including the lyothilizer he used), his locker, his cars. If they had discovered any anthrax traces that genetically matched what was sent in 2001, they certainly would have said so. But they don't. It's long been claimed that the property that rendered so dangerous the anthrax sent to Daschle and Leahy was that it was airborne. At times it was even claimed that the anthrax was aerosolized. Under all circumstances, in order for it to be inhalation anthrax, it would have to disperse rather easily. Wouldn't one expect that the FBI's swabs would reveal traces of anthrax somewhere on the clothes, in the home or other physical surroundings of the anthrax attacker? Yet apparently those multiple swabbing episodes turned up nothing, at least based on the documents that were released today. Nor are there any real answers to the question of how Ivins would have manufactured, on his own and without being detected, anthrax grade of the type that was used in the attacks. The numerous hours he spent alone in the lab doesn't address what many of his colleagues said would have been his technological inability to produce anthrax of this type....
F.B.I. Says It Obtained Reporters’ Phone Records The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Friday that it had improperly obtained the phone records of reporters for The New York Times and The Washington Post in the newspapers’ Indonesia bureaus in 2004. Robert S. Mueller III, director of the F.B.I., disclosed the episode in a phone call to Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, and apologized for it. He also spoke with Leonard Downie Jr., the executive editor of The Washington Post, to apologize. F.B.I. officials said the incident came to light as part of the continuing review by the Justice Department inspector general’s office into the bureau’s improper collection of telephone records through “emergency” records demands issued to phone providers. The records were apparently sought as part of a terrorism investigation, but the F.B.I. did not explain what was being investigated or why the reporters’ phone records were considered relevant. The Justice Department places a high bar on the collection of reporters’ records in investigations because of First Amendment concerns, and obtaining such records requires the approval of the deputy attorney general. That requirement was not followed when the F.B.I. obtained the records of two reporters for The Times in Indonesia, Raymond Bonner and Jane Perlez, as well as two reporters there for The Post, Ellen Nakashima and Natasha Tampubolon, officials said....
Former President Ford secretly told FBI about panel's doubts on JFK murder Former President Ford secretly advised the FBI that two of his fellow members on the Warren Commission doubted the FBI's conclusion that John F. Kennedy was shot from the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository in Dallas, according to newly released records from Ford's FBI files. Ford, still a congressman at the time, also told a senior FBI official about internal panel disputes over hiring staff, Chief Justice Earl Warren's timetable for completing the final report on the assassination and what panel members said about the FBI. In turn, Assistant FBI Director Cartha "Deke" DeLoach confidentially advised Ford of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's position on panel disputes; discussed where leaks were coming from; and, with Hoover's personal approval, loaned him a bureau briefcase with a lock so he could securely take the FBI report on the 1963 assassination with him on a ski trip. The new details were included in 500 pages of the FBI's large file on Ford, released in part this past week in response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act that The Associated Press and others made on the day Ford died in December 2006. The FBI intends to release additional documents about Ford in several batches, all with parts censored for law enforcement and privacy reasons....
Border agents unevenly spread on boundary Despite efforts to add Border Patrol agents to areas where immigrant traffic is high and drug violence is flaring, officers assigned to the 2,000-mile boundary with Mexico are bunched up near the California coast. And some critics see politics at play. An Associated Press analysis of Border Patrol staffing shows that the San Diego sector, with the shortest section of border and fences covering half the boundary, has four times the number of agents per mile that West Texas does and three times as many as most of Arizona. That is the case even though the Tucson sector in Arizona has been the busiest spot for illegal crossings for years and El Paso sits next to a Mexican city that has seen a surge in drug-cartel violence so severe that Mexicans are pleading for asylum in the U.S. Border Patrol officials defend the staffing levels, saying San Diego's transportation routes and year-round balmy weather make it an attractive spot for smugglers. Others suggest, however, that members of Congress who most embrace the agency's push are rewarded with more agents....
File Keepers If someone develops a practical mind-reading device, you can expect the Department of Homeland Security to argue that skulls are merely another "closed container" that officers guarding the border may search at will. After all, government agents have long been allowed to read documents in briefcases carried by Americans returning from abroad. Why should the medium in which information is stored make a constitutional difference? That argument is only slightly more far-fetched than the one DHS uses to justify its policy regarding border searches of laptop computers. Given the nature and quantity of the data they contain, portable computers are in many ways extensions of our brains. Yet DHS is treating them as if they were no different from purses or fruitcake tins. Recently publicized DHS guidelines confirm that the department for years has been examining the contents of computers at airports and other points of entry "absent individualized suspicion." The guidelines say officers "may detain documents and electronic devices, or copies thereof, for a reasonable period of time to perform a thorough border search," which "may take place on-site or at an off-site location." In practice, this means a customs agent can seize your computer for any reason or no reason at all. He may rummage through your files while you stand there, hoping nothing embarrassing pops up, or he may take the computer to a back room. It may disappear for weeks or months as its contents are copied, analyzed, and shared with various federal agencies trying to determine whether you've broken any laws....
TSA weighs airport gun ban in unsecured areas The Transportation Security Administration may allow airports to ban firearms from terminals, parking lots, roads and other airport areas where many states currently allow passengers to carry lethal weapons. Airport officials and lawmakers are watching closely as the TSA weighs a request by Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to modify its security program to impose an airportwide ban on guns. It is the first such request to TSA from an airport. "Any decisions we make that affect (Atlanta) could affect every other airport in the country," TSA spokesman Christopher White said Thursday. Federal law bars passengers from bringing weapons to or past airport checkpoints. But in many airports, state law allows passengers to carry guns and knives in unsecured areas such as a main terminal — often to airport officials' dismay. In Atlanta, the issue arose last month after the state passed a law to allow Georgia residents with gun licenses to carry firearms onto public transportation, including subways, buses and airports. When the city-owned airport vowed to maintain its longstanding firearms ban, GeorgiaCarry.org, a gun rights group, sued. On July 17, after the lawsuit was filed, the request from Hartsfield officials asked the TSA to amend its airport security program to include a gun ban. Each of the nation's 450 commercial airports has a detailed written security program that can be changed only with TSA approval....
Believe the NRA when it says gun ban extremists are lying One of the loudest voices of warning about the gun ban lobby's true intentions is the National Rifle Association. And now, if one can believe the leftist Mother Jones magazine, we may have even more reason to believe the NRA when they say groups like the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Freedom States Alliance, States United to Prevent Gun Violence and the Violence Policy Center are lying about their true goals: They had a (wo)man on the inside. From the Mother Jones story: This is the story of two Marys. Both are in their early 60s, heavyset, with curly reddish hair. But for years they have worked on opposite ends of the same issues. Mary McFate is an advocate of environmental causes and a prominent activist within the gun control movement. For more than a decade, she volunteered for various gun violence prevention organizations, serving on the boards of anti-gun outfits, helping state groups coordinate their activities, lobbying in Washington for gun control legislation, and regularly attending strategy and organizing meetings. Mary Lou Sapone, by contrast, is a self-described "research consultant," who for decades has covertly infiltrated citizens groups for private security firms hired by corporations that are targeted by activist campaigns. For some time, Sapone also worked for the National Rifle Association. But these two Marys share a lot in common—a Mother Jones investigation has found that McFate and Sapone are, in fact, the same person. And this discovery has caused the leaders of gun violence prevention organizations to conclude that for years they have been penetrated—at the highest levels—by the NRA or other pro-gun parties.....
New Yorkers' Gun Rights May Rest on Hot Dog Vendor's Case If New York's strict antigun laws are overturned in the near future, it may be the work of a hot dog vendor. The vendor, Daniel Vargas, is due next month in court to fight misdemeanor charges that he kept an unlicensed revolver loaded on a basement shelf in his apartment. The case, which has generated 23 hearings and been heard by no fewer than 10 different judges as it winds through Brooklyn's lowest criminal court, would be of little general interest, except for the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that the Second Amendment protects a right to keep a handgun at home for self-defense. Now, suddenly, Mr. Vargas's case, as well as a handful of other cases, are testing the authority of district attorneys to prosecute people for gun possession, a strategy that Mayor Bloomberg has emphasized in his criminal justice policies....