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30Nov/10Off

US cuts access to files after leak embarrassment

WASHINGTON -The State Department severed its computer files from the government's classified network, officials said Tuesday, as U.S. and world leaders tried to clean up from the embarrassing leak that spilled America's sensitive documents onto screens around the globe.
By temporarily pulling the plug, the U.S. significantly reduced the number of government employees who can read important diplomatic messages. It was an extraordinary hunkering down, prompted by the disclosure of hundreds of thousands of those messages this week by WikiLeaks, the self-styled whistleblower organization.
The documents revealed that the U.S. is still confounded about North Korea's nuclear military ambitions, that Iran is believed to have received advanced missiles capable of targeting Western Europe and — perhaps most damaging to the U.S. — that the State Department asked its diplomats to collect DNA samples and other personal information about foreign leaders.
While the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, taunted the U.S. from afar on Tuesday, lawyers from across the government were investigating whether it could prosecute him for espionage, a senior defense official said. The official, not authorized to comment publicly, spoke only on condition of anonymity.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley sought to reassure the world that U.S. diplomats were not spies, even as he sidestepped questions about why they were asked to provide DNA samples, iris scans, credit card numbers, fingerprints and other deeply personal information about leaders at the United Nations and in foreign capitals.
Diplomats in the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion, for instance, were asked in a secret March 2008 cable to provide "biometric data, to include fingerprints, facial images, iris scans, and DNA" for numerous prominent politicians. They were also asked to send "identities information" on terrorist suspects, including "fingerprints, arrest photos, DNA and iris scans."
In Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo the requests included information about political, military and intelligence leaders.
"Data should include e-mail addresses, telephone and fax numbers, fingerprints, facial images, DNA, and iris scans," the cable said.
Every year, the intelligence community asks the State Department for help collecting routine information such as biographical data and other "open source" data. DNA, fingerprint and other information was included in the request because, in some countries, foreigners must provide that information to the U.S. before entering an embassy or military base, a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
The possibility that American diplomats pressed for more than "open source" information has drawn criticism at the U.N. and in other diplomatic circles over whether U.S. information-gathering blurred the line between diplomacy and espionage.
"What worries me is the mixing of diplomatic tasks with downright espionage. You cross a border ... if diplomats are encouraged to gather personal information about some people," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said.
Crowley said a few diplomatic cables don't change the role of U.S. diplomats.
"Our diplomats are diplomats. Our diplomats are not intelligence assets," he repeatedly told reporters. "They can collect information. If they collect information that is useful, we share it across the government."
World leaders, meanwhile, were fielding questions about candid U.S. assessments of their countries.
In Kenya, the government was outraged by a leaked cable, published by the German magazine Der Spiegel, in which Kenya is described as a "swamp of flourishing corruption." Kenya's government spokesman called the cable "totally malicious" and said the State Department called to apologize.
In Brazil, officials declined to answer questions about U.S. cables that characterized the South American country as privately cooperative in the war against terrorism, even as it publicly denies terrorist threats domestically.
WikiLeaks has not said how it obtained the documents, but the government's prime suspect is an Army Pfc., Bradley Manning, who is being held in a maximum-security military brig on charges of leaking other classified documents to WikiLeaks. Authorities believe Manning defeated Pentagon security systems simply by bringing a homemade music CD to work, erasing the music, and downloading troves of government secrets onto it.
While world leaders nearly universally condemned the leak, the U.S. and Assange traded barbs from afar. In an online interview with Time magazine from an undisclosed location, Assange called on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to resign because of the cables asking diplomats to gather intelligence. "She should resign, if it can be shown that she was responsible for ordering U.S. diplomatic figures to engage in espionage in the United Nations, in violation of the international covenants to which the U.S. has signed up," he said.
Crowley, at the State Department, showed disdain for Assange.
"I believe he has been described as an anarchist," he said. "His actions seem to substantiate that."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates played down the fallout from the leaks, calling them embarrassing and awkward but saying they would not significantly complicate U.S. foreign policy.
"The fact is governments deal with the United States because it's in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us and not because they think we can keep secrets," Gates said Monday.
Crowley would not say how long the State Department would keep its files off the classified network.
"We have made some adjustments, and that has narrowed, for the time being, those who have access to State Department cables across the government," he said.
—
Associated Press writers Kimberly Dozier and Anne Gearan contributed to this report.

US cuts access to files after leak embarrassment

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30Nov/10Off

WikiLeaks release sparks alarm over diplomacy

JERUSALEM -Is diplomacy in danger?
The torrent of condemnation heaped on WikiLeaks from around the globe did suggest a widespread sense — among the great and the good, but also among the sometimes more jaded observer and analyst class — that in releasing U.S. diplomatic documents the group crossed a dangerous line.
The prime minister of Israel, a man hardly accustomed to representing global consensus, on Monday found himself in lockstep with most of his peers as he warned that statecraft itself was imperiled by a reality in which no secret is safe if it is written.
"It will be more difficult for talented American diplomats to put into cables and reports things they once would have," Benjamin Netanyahu said. Governments would more likely hoard information, he warned, restricting the circle of people in the know to minimize the chances of a leak.
It is a delicate message for elected leaders to make, of course, because it depends on the proposition that there is a limit to what the people should know, or at least when they should know it.
Netanyahu argued that the ability to communicate under a cloak of secrecy was critical to Israel's ability to reach a peace deal with Egypt in 1979. Had the Israeli public known that Prime Minister Menachem Begin was preparing to cede the entire Sinai desert, captured in 1967, the foment might have scuttled the emerging agreement, Netanyahu suggested.
"Transparency is fundamental to our society, and it's usually essential — but there are a few areas, including diplomacy, where it isn't essential," he said.
But that time-honored government effort to control transparency took a massive hit this weekend, when WikiLeaks began publishing more than 250,000 leaked United States embassy cables — a cache it described as the largest set of confidential documents ever released into the public domain.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asserted Monday that WikiLeaks acted illegally in posting the material. She said the administration was taking "aggressive steps to hold responsible those who stole this information."
As world reaction poured in, the condemnation was nearly universal.
Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said "the perpetrators of these leaks may threaten our national security." In Switzerland, the Basler Zeitung newspaper called it a "diplomatic disaster." The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry called it illegal and harmful.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle was a tad more diplomatic, proposing that was hardly "an altruistic act."
Indeed, it was remarkable how absent was the halo that tends to accompany WikiLeaks — that sense among pockets in the public that the exposure, while perhaps illegal and indiscreet, while damaging to certain interests to be sure, served the greater purpose of casting light on an important truth.
Instead there was a sense that a time-honored way of doing things was being challenged for the sake of the challenge itself. And that the art of diplomacy — often seen as a force for good in the world, for avoiding war and resolving conflict — was under attack.
The Italian newspaper La Repubblica lamented that "the history of diplomacy ... must start over on a new basis, knowing that there can always be a pair of electronic eyes looking over the shoulders of the person who is writing." Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini called it a "watershed" and reportedly urged world leaders to stand united "without backtracking on the way of diplomacy."
The United States has certainly used the cloak of secrecy for diplomatic ends: President Nixon's historic opening to China in 1972 was preceded by secret talks in which Pakistan was an intermediary. At one point, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, while on a trip to Islamabad, feigned illness and made a secret trip to Beijing.
But more common, of course, are the reports that diplomats send home — on political issues, key players, economic matters, even gossip.
Michael McKinley, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, said the vulnerability of diplomatic correspondence does "immense damage ... to U.S. diplomats' ability to engage in frank, confidential dialogue not just with government officials but with all manner of politicians and non-governmental actors."
For the system to work, diplomats need their contacts to trust in their discretion.
"Valuable contacts who provide useful understanding and context may now be reluctant to speak candidly in confidence to U.S. officials for fear their comments could reach the media, and political rivals or partners," agreed Ali Engin Oba, a Turkish strategic analyst and his country's former ambassador to Congo and Sudan. It's "a dreadful development for diplomacy."
Echoing a popular view, he said that "the leaks have to usher in a revolution in the way diplomatic cables are sent and archived. There has to be a new technological breakthrough."
It was a recurrent theme in Monday's discussions: Over the years, the diplomatic pouch has been largely replaced by e-mails and phone conversations — sometimes over encrypted lines and sometimes not.
What to do?
Stelian Tanase, a Romanian political analyst, said diplomats will learn to speak in code, "using double-language and metaphors."
Aaron David Miller, former State Department Mideast negotiator, predicted the encryption process is likely to become more elaborate.
Sergio Romano, an Italian analyst and former ambassador to Moscow, told state-run Italian radio that "the first reaction of all governments will be to make the confidentiality rules more strict." "Without confidentiality, diplomacy doesn't work," he said.
Elliot Abrams, a former National Security Council official under President George W. Bush, predicted diplomats would increasingly use secure e-mail, which can be sent to a select audience, instead of traditional diplomatic cables, which routinely reach dozens, even hundreds, of people.
He warned, however, that this could have a price: "Some of the people who need to know are going to end up not knowing," he said.
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden agreed people will "put a lot less in cables now" and stick to phone calls — which could deprive not just policymakers of information but historians of an understanding of what happened as cables are eventually declassified.
For many, it is ironic that the breach of security affected the United States — a country seen as often questioning the security systems of others.
"In the past, it was always the case that the Americans worried about the security of their allies, now it's America's allies who worry about the security of the United States" said Anthony Glees, Director of the Center for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham in Britain. "This is very big ... (It) shifts the relationship with America's allies."
Among the most damaging revelations involved a major ally: the king of Saudi Arabia supposedly urged the United States to attack Iran to wipe out its nuclear weapons program — comments supported in other cables by Jordan and Bahrain.
The remarks are important because they suggest that Arab states had privately supported such a strike, despite what might have been said in public about the program.
Beyond that were some revelations of undiplomatic behavior by diplomats: That some were being asked to gather biometric data on U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other diplomats shocked the United Nations — as it goes beyond what is considered the normal run of information-gathering expected in diplomatic circles. A cable urging diplomats to collect passwords and details of computer system also prompted unease.
"What worries me is the mixing of diplomatic tasks with downright espionage. You cross a border ... if diplomats are encouraged to gather personal information about some people," Ban said.
Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli deputy foreign minister, was among the few who kept an even keel through Monday's tumult: "People will be careful for two to three months and then they will return to their old behavior," said Beilin, whose diplomatic success, the 1993 Israel-PLO Oslo Accords, was the fruit of months of secret talks.

WikiLeaks release sparks alarm over diplomacy

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27Nov/10Off

Feds: Somali-born teen plotted car-bombing in Ore.

PORTLAND, Ore. -Federal agents in a sting operation arrested a Somali-born teenager just as he tried blowing up a van he believed was loaded with explosives at a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, authorities said.
The bomb was an elaborate fake supplied by the agents and the public was never in danger, authorities said.
Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, was arrested at 5:40 p.m. Friday just after he dialed a cell phone that he thought would set off the blast but instead brought federal agents and police swooping down on him.
Yelling "Allahu Akbar!" — Arabic for "God is great!" — Mohamud tried to kick agents and police after he was taken into custody, according to prosecutors.
"The threat was very real," said Arthur Balizan, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon. "Our investigation shows that Mohamud was absolutely committed to carrying out an attack on a very grand scale."
White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said Saturday that President Barack Obama was aware of the FBI operation before Friday's arrest. Shapiro said Obama was assured that the FBI was in full control of the operation and that the public was not in danger.
"The events of the past 24 hours underscore the necessity of remaining vigilant against terrorism here and abroad," Shapiro said. "The president thanks the FBI, the Department of Justice and the rest of our law enforcement, intelligence and Homeland Security professionals who have once again served with extraordinary skill and resolve and with the commitment that their enormous responsibilities demand."
A law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that federal agents began investigating the suspect after receiving a tip from someone who was concerned about the teenager. The official declined to provide more detail about the relationship between Mohamud and that source.
The FBI affidavit that outlined the investigation alleges that Mohamud planned the attack for months, at one point mailing bomb components to FBI operatives, whom he believed were assembling the device.
According to the official, Mohamud hatched the plan on his own and without any instruction from a foreign terrorist organization, and he planned the details, including where to park the van for the maximum number of casualties.
The affidavit said Mohamud was warned several times about the seriousness of his plan, that women and children could be killed, and that he could back out, but he told agents: "Since I was 15 I thought about all this;" and "It's gonna be a fireworks show ... a spectacular show."
Mohamud, a naturalized U.S. citizen living in Corvallis, was charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. A court appearance was set for Monday.
Authorities allowed the plot to proceed in order to build up enough evidence to charge the suspect with attempt.
The alleged plot in Portland follows a string of terrorist attack planning by U.S. citizens or residents, including a Times Square plot in which Faisal Shahzad pleaded guilty to trying to set off a car bomb at a bustling street corner. U.S. authorities had no intelligence about Shahzad's plot until the smoking car turned up in Manhattan.
Late last month, Farooque Ahmed, 34, of Virginia was arrested and accused of casing Washington-area subway stations in what he thought was an al-Qaida plot to bomb and kill commuters. Similar to the Portland sting, the bombing plot was a ruse conducted over the past six months by federal officials.
U.S. Attorney Dwight Holton released federal court documents to The Associated Press and the Oregonian newspaper that show the sting operation began in June after an undercover agent learned that Mohamud had been in regular e-mail contact with an "unindicted associate" in Pakistan's northwest, a frontier region where al-Qaida and Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents are strong. The person Mohamud had been in e-mail contact with was a friend living in Pakistan who had been a student in Oregon in 2007-2008, the official told the AP.
The two used coded language in which the FBI believes Mohamud discussed traveling to Pakistan to prepare for "violent jihad," the documents said.
In June an FBI agent contacted Mohamud "under the guise of being affiliated with" the suspected terrorist.
An undercover agent met with him a month later in Portland, where they "discussed violent jihad," according to the court documents.
As a trial run, Mohamud and agents detonated a bomb in Oregon's backcounry earlier this month.
"This defendant's chilling determination is a stark reminder that there are people — even here in Oregon — who are determined to kill Americans," Holton said.
Friday, an agent and Mohamud drove to downtown Portland in a white van that carried six 55-gallon drums with detonation cords and plastic caps, but all of them were inert, the complaint states.
They left the van near the downtown ceremony site and went to a train station where Mohamud was given a cell phone that he thought would blow up the vehicle, according to the complaint. There was no detonation when he dialed, and when he tried again federal agents and police made their move.
Omar Jamal, first secretary to the Somali mission to the United Nations, condemned the plot and urged Somalis to cooperate with police and the FBI.
"Talk to them and tell them what you know so we can all be safe," Jamal said.
Somalia Foreign Minister Mohamed Abullahi Omaar said his government is "ready and willing" to offer the U.S. any assistance it may need to prevent similar attempts. He said the attempt in Portland was a tragedy for Mohamud's family and the "people he tried to harm."
"Mohamud's attempt is neither representative nor an example of Somalis. Somalis are peace loving people," said Omaar, whose government is holed up in a few blocks of the capital, Mogadishu, while much of the country's southern and central regions are ruled by Islamist insurgents.
Tens of thousands of Somalis have resettled in the United States since their country plunged into lawlessness in 1991, and the U.S. has boosted aid to the country.
In August, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed an indictment naming 14 people accused of being a deadly pipeline routing money and fighters from the U.S. to al-Shabab, an al-Qaida affiliated group in Mohamud's native Somalia,
At the time, Attorney General Eric Holder said the indictments reflect a disturbing trend of recruitment efforts targeting U.S. residents to become terrorists.
Officials have been working with Muslim community leaders across the United States, particularly in Somali diasporas in Minnesota, trying to combat the radicalization.
—
Pickler reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Malkhadir M. Muhumed in Nairobi, Kenya, and Lolita C. Baldor and Darlene Superville in Washington also contributed to this report.

Feds: Somali-born teen plotted car-bombing in Ore.

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23Nov/10Off

Tensions high as North, South Korea trade shelling

INCHEON, South Korea -North and South Korea exchanged artillery fire Tuesday along their disputed frontier, raising tensions between the rivals to their highest level in more than a decade. The communist nation warned of more military strikes if the South encroaches on the maritime border by "even 0.001 millimeter."
Angry at South Korea's refusal to halt military drills near their sea border, North Korea shelled the island of Yeonpyeong, and Seoul responded by unleashing its own barrage from K-9 155mm self-propelled howitzers and scrambling fighter jets. Two South Korean marines were killed in the shelling that also injured 15 troops and three civilians.
Officials in Seoul said there could be considerable North Korean casualties.
The confrontation lasted about an hour and left the uneasiest of calms, with each side threatening further bombardments.
North Korea's apparent progress in its nuclear weapons program and its preparations for handing power to a new generation have plunged relations on the heavily militarized peninsula to new lows in recent weeks.
South Korea's military was put on high alert after the shelling — one of the rivals' most dramatic confrontations since an armistice halted the Korean War in 1953 and one of the few to put civilians at risk.
"I thought I would die," said Lee Chun-ok, 54, an islander who said she was watching TV in her home when the shelling began. Suddenly, a wall and door collapsed.
"I was really, really terrified," she told The Associated Press after being evacuated to the port city of Incheon, west of Seoul, "and I'm still terrified."
The attacks focused global attention on the tiny island and sent stock prices down worldwide. The dollar and gold rose as investors sought safe places to park money. Hong Kong's main stock index sank 2.7 percent, while European indexes fell between 1.7 and 2.5 percent. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 142 points, or 1.3 percent.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who convened an emergency security meeting shortly after the initial bombardment, said an "indiscriminate attack on civilians can never be tolerated."
"Enormous retaliation should be made to the extent that (North Korea) cannot make provocations again," he said.
The United States, which has more than 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea, condemned the attack. The White House said President Barack Obama was "outraged" by North Korea's actions.
Top national security aides planned to meet later Tuesday to discuss the situation. The White House said it would work with its international partners to determine the appropriate next steps.
Gen. Walter Sharp, commander of U.S. forces in South Korea and the U.S.-led U.N. Command, said in a Facebook posting that the U.S. military is "closely monitoring the situation and exchanging information with our (South Korean) allies as we always do."
China, the North's economic and political benefactor, which also maintains close commercial ties to the South, appealed for both sides to remain calm and "to do more to contribute to peace and stability on the peninsula," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned North Korea's artillery attack, calling it "one of the gravest incidents since the end of the Korean War," his spokesman Martin Nesirky said. Ban called for "immediate restraint" and insisted "any differences should be resolved by peaceful means and dialogue," the spokesman said.
The clash "brings us one step closer to the brink of war," said Peter Beck, a research fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, "because I don't think the North would seek war by intention, but war by accident, something spiraling out of control has always been my fear."
South Korea holds military exercises like Tuesday's off the west coast about every three months, and they typically provoke an angry response from North Korea, but Tuesday's confrontation was far from typical.
Skirmishes flare up along the disputed border from time to time, but this clash follows months in which tensions have steadily risen to their worst levels since the late 1980s, when a confessed agent for North Korea bombed a South Korean jetliner, killing all 115 people aboard.
The communist regime in Pyongyang has sought to consolidate power at home ahead of a leadership transition and hopes to gain leverage abroad before re-entering international talks aimed at ending its nuclear weapons programs.
In March, North Korea was blamed for launching a torpedo that sank the South Korean warship Cheonan while on routine patrol, killing 46 sailors. South Korea called it the worst military attack on the country since the war. Pyongyang denied responsibility. South Korea did not retaliate for the sinking of the Cheonan.
Six weeks ago, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il anointed his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, heir apparent. This week, Pyongyang claimed it has a new uranium enrichment facility, raising concerns about its pursuit of atomic weapons.
South Korea faces an uphill struggle if it wants the U.N. Security Council to condemn North Korea for the attack or to impose a third round of sanctions.
While Seoul can count on strong support from the U.S. and other Western powers on the council, it is likely to face opposition from China, a veto-wielding member.
China agreed to two rounds of sanctions against Pyongyang after its nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, and Seoul wanted the U.N.'s most powerful body to condemn North Korea for the Cheonan sinking. But North Korea warned that its military forces would respond if the council questioned or condemned the country over the sinking, and China opposed direct condemnation or a third round of sanctions.
Yeonpyeong lies a mere seven miles (11 kilometers) from — and within sight of — the North Korean mainland. Famous for its crabbing industry, it is home to about 1,700 civilians as well as South Korean military installations. There are about 30 other small islands nearby.
North Korea fired dozens of rounds of artillery in three separate barrages that began in midafternoon, while South Korea returned fire with about 80 rounds, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said. Naval operations had been reinforced in the area, the military said early Wednesday, declining to elaborate.
Columns of thick black smoke rose from homes on the island, video from YTN cable TV showed. Screams and shouts filled the air as shells rained down on the island just south of the disputed sea border.
Island residents fled to some 20 shelters on the island and sporadic shelling ended after about an hour, according to the military.
A North Korean statement said it was merely "reacting to the military provocation of the puppet group with a prompt powerful physical strike," and accused Seoul of starting the skirmish with its "reckless military provocation as firing dozens of shells inside the territorial waters of the" North.
The supreme military command in Pyongyang threatened more strikes if the South crossed their maritime border by "even 0.001 millimeter," according to the North's official Korean Central News Agency.
Government officials in Seoul called North Korea's bombardments "inhumane atrocities" that violated the 1953 armistice halting the Korean War. The two sides technically remain at war because a peace treaty was never signed, and nearly 2 million troops — including tens of thousands from the U.S. — are positioned on both sides of the world's most heavily militarized border.
North Korea does not recognize the western maritime border drawn unilaterally by the U.N. at the close of the conflict, and the Koreas have fought three bloody skirmishes there in recent years.
—
Kwang-Tae Kim reported from Seoul. AP writers Seulki Kim, Kelly Olsen and Foster Klug in Seoul and Anita Snow and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

Tensions high as North, South Korea trade shelling

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6Nov/10Off

Officials: Saudis warned 3 weeks before attack

WASHINGTON -A Saudi tip about a possible al-Qaida effort to bring down airplanes was relayed to U.S. authorities in early October, nearly three weeks before the group's Yemen affiliate tried to ship mail bombs to the U.S. in cargo planes, U.S. intelligence officials said Friday.
The Saudi intelligence tip helped to head off what could have been a devastating series of plane explosions. Western officials credit the Saudis with playing a crucial role in finding two mail bombs recovered last week in Dubai and Britain before they reached the U.S.
On Friday, the Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for sending the two bombs and threatened more attacks on civilian and cargo planes. The group also said it had a role in the crash of a UPS cargo plane in Dubai in September, but investigators so far have insisted an accident was at fault.
The Saudi tip in October contained no mention of cargo planes, or any details of the plot carried out last week, said U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss classified matters. But they said it gave the U.S. and other Western officials enough of a warning to know what to look for when another Saudi tip arrived last week.
A CIA spokesman Friday night cited several allies that have provided key intelligence about terrorist activities.
"Over the past several months, we received intelligence — which was shared across our government — from our foreign partners about threats from AQAP and other terrorist groups," said CIA spokesman George Little. "The United States receives this kind of information from other governments on a regular basis, as you would expect. Last week, we received specific intelligence that allowed the United States and our allies to disrupt the cargo plot. Our actions were swift and aggressive."
Another U.S. official said the Yemeni terror group's interest in plane attacks has been apparent since its failed Christmas Day attempt last year to bring down a Detroit-bound plane with explosives hidden in the underwear of a suicide bomber. Both the Christmas Day attack and the mail bombs sent last week used a powerful industrial explosive PETN, and the AQAP's top bomb maker is considered a top suspect in both attempts.
But although the tip relayed in October did raise alarms about a plane attack, it did not mention cargo planes or where the plot might originate or even who the attackers might be, the official said.
U.S. intelligence had been monitoring steady intelligence on a possible attack such as this since early September, one U.S. official has said. And in late September, authorities also intercepted a group of packages shipped to Chicago which in retrospect is now seen as a likely test run by the terror group to gauge the logistics of shipping bombs by air to the U.S.
The report on the Saudi tip in October was first reported Friday by The New York Times and the German news magazine Der Spiegel.
On Friday, AQAP said it would continue to strike American and Western interests and specifically said it would target civilian and cargo aircraft.
"We have struck three blows at your airplanes in a single year," the group said in a message posted on a militant website. "And God willing, we will continue to strike our blows against American interests and the interests of America's allies."
The authenticity of Friday's claim could not be immediately verified. A U.S. intelligence official said authorities are not surprised to see this claim now.
Authorities in the U.S. and the UAE have said the Sept. 3 crash of the UPS plane in Dubai shortly after takeoff was caused by an onboard fire, but investigators are taking another look at the incident following the parcel bomb plot.
A security official in the UAE familiar with the investigations into the UPS cargo plane crash in Dubai and the mail bombs plot told The Associated Press on Friday that there is no change in earlier findings and that the UPS crash in September was likely caused by an onboard fire and not by an explosive device.
"There was no explosion," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under standing UAE rules on disclosing security-related information.
A UPS spokesman, Norman Black, said his company had "no independent knowledge of this claim by al-Qaida," and noted that both UAE officials and U.S. National Transportation Safety Board officials have so far ruled out the possibility of a bomb as cause in the crash.
In its statement, al-Qaida's Yemeni offshoot said that it "downed the UPS airplane but because the enemy's media did not attribute the act to us, we kept silent about the operation until we could return the ball once more.
"We have done that, this time with two explosives, one of them sent via UPS, the other via FedEx."
It said that its "advanced explosives" give it "the opportunity to detonate (planes) in the air or after they have reached their final target, and they are designed to bypass all detection devices."
Both mail bombs were hidden inside computer printers and wired to detonators that used cell-phone technology and packed powdered PETN, a potent industrial explosive.
The message also directed a warning to Saudi Arabia, warning: "God's curse on the oppressors."
—
Murphy reported from Dubai. Associated Press writers Samantha Bomkamp in New York City and Eileen Sullivan, Adam Goldman and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.

Officials: Saudis warned 3 weeks before attack

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21Oct/10Off

Decatur Inmates Caught, 5 Have Escaped in Last 9 Weeks

Decatur, AL - Three work release inmates who escaped from custody over the past week have been captured.

According to state prison officials, United States Marshals Service found Charles Young at the Night's Inn in Huntsville on Wednesday at about 12:15 p.m. Young was the man who police say escaped from Huntsville Hospital's Emergency Room on Monday night after suffering an injury at his work release job. He had been serving a prison sentence on a credit card theft charge. He's now being held in the Limestone County Jail.

On Wednesday, two other men got loose from the work release program. Robert Alex Michael and Steven Donald Jones were captured Thursday in Trinity. Jones was serving time on a burglary charge, while Michael was there for breaking into a vehicle.

This week's escapes are just the latest in a series of problems for the Decatur Work Release program. In August, 41 year old Danny Moore and 27 year old Brent Smith escaped the facility, and allegedly carjacked a man, forcing him to drive to the Shoals are before he got away. Moore and Smith were also caught a couple of days after their escape.

Web Producer : Mike Brown, brown@waaytv.com

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23Sep/10Off

Tax, spending cuts top GOP campaign-year ‘Pledge’

WASHINGTON -Six weeks before midterm elections, House Republicans vowed to cut taxes and federal spending, repeal President Barack Obama's health care law and ban federal funding of abortion as part of a campaign manifesto designed to propel them to victory in November and a majority in the next Congress.
The "Pledge to America," circulated to GOP lawmakers Wednesday, emphasizes job creation and spending control, as well as changing the way Congress does business. It steered clear of controversial issues such as Social Security and Medicare, big drivers of deficit spending.
It pairs some familiar Republican ideas — such as deep spending cuts, medical liability reform and stricter border enforcement — with an anti-government call to action that draws on tea party themes and echoes voters' disgruntlement with the economy and Obama's leadership.
"Regarding the policies of the current government, the governed do not consent," reads a preamble to the agenda. "An arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites makes decisions, issues mandates, and enacts laws without accepting or requesting the input of the many."
Republicans are favored to add substantially to their ranks, perhaps enough to seize control of the House. Details of their plan emerged as President Barack Obama tried to reintroduce voters to his health care overhaul law, a signature issue of his first two years that Americans don't much like or understand. Democrats, who pursued overhaul for decades, have been surprised by its unpopularity.
GOP leaders are set to go public with their plan Thursday at a hardware store in suburban Virginia, choosing a location outside the nation's capital that's in keeping with the plan's grassroots emphasis.
It calls for every bill to cite its specific constitutional authority, a vote on any government regulation that costs more than $100 million annually and a freeze on hiring federal workers except security personnel. It also has a "read the bill" provision mandating that legislation be publicly available for three days before a vote.
Officials have described the agenda as the culmination of an Internet- and social networking-powered project they launched earlier this year to give voters the chance to say what Congress should do. The "America Speaking Out" project collected 160,000 ideas and received 1 million votes and comments on the proposals, they said.
Much internal debate ensued among party leaders, rank-and-file lawmakers and GOP activists about the contents of the agenda, including whether it should include a reference to "family values" — which some strategists argued could alienate the independent voters Republicans are courting.
They agreed to include the abortion provision and a vaguely worded statement on social issues: "We pledge to honor families, traditional marriage, life, and the private and faith-based organizations that form the core of our American values."
The plan recalled Republicans' 1994 "Contract With America," a list of heavily poll-tested proposals they unveiled about six weeks before the GOP gained 54 House seats and seized control of the House for the first time in 40 years.
But the rollout reflects a national mood far different from the one 16 years ago, and an electorate that national surveys show is fed up with its representatives and disillusioned about government.
"The Contract was done at a time when it was acceptable for a relatively small number of elected officials and trusted aides to go behind closed doors, come up with some ideas, test them in polls and then announce them on the steps of the Capitol," said Michael Franc of the conservative Heritage Foundation, who was a House aide during those days.
"If you did that now, you'd see yourself being hung in effigy most places. ... (Republicans) can't afford to come across as another case of 'government knows best,'" Franc said.
Republican strategists advising House leaders have told them that presenting their own ideas for governing — laser-focused on jobs and recharging the economy — is crucial to their electoral chances.
"It is not enough for the Republican Party just simply to point out that President Obama and the Democrats have failed," said pollster David Winston. "What Americans are looking for is a plan that they have confidence in that will work."
Democrats dismissed the GOP plan as recycled ideas that would further exacerbate the nation's problems.
"Republicans want to return to the same failed economic policies that hurt millions of Americans and threatened our economy," said Nadeam Elshami, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The plan proposes creating jobs through tax cuts, including permanently extending George W. Bush's reductions for people at every income level, now slated to expire in January, and a 20 percent deduction for small businesses. It also calls for repeal of an unpopular new provision enacted to help pay for the health care law that requires nearly 40 million businesses to file tax forms for every vendor that sells them more than $600 in goods.
It offers an array of proposals to limit spending, including cutting back to 2008 levels and placing a hard cap on future government expenditures.
Republicans are calling for replacing the health care law by letting people buy health care coverage outside their states, expanding state programs that cover high-risk patients who can't otherwise get insurance and expanding the use of tax-advantaged savings accounts to cover medical costs.
And the plan also focuses on security, including calling for denying terrorists so-called "Miranda rights," opposing the release of Guantanamo Bay detainees into the United States and full funding for missile defense programs.

Tax, spending cuts top GOP campaign-year 'Pledge'

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31Aug/10Off

Obama to honor troops as Iraq combat mission ends

WASHINGTON -As President Barack Obama prepares to officially end the lengthy and divisive U.S. combat operation in Iraq, he'll personally thank some of the soldiers who fought there for their service to a mission he forcefully opposed from the start.
Many of those soldiers deployed from Fort Bliss, the sprawling Army base in El Paso, Texas, that Obama will visit Tuesday. After speaking with the troops, Obama will return to Washington to address the nation and formally end a combat mission in Iraq that lasted more than seven years, leaving more than 4,400 U.S. troops dead and thousands more wounded.
Obama was an early critic of the war, speaking out against it during the U.S. invasion in early 2003 and promising during his presidential campaign to bring the conflict to an end. The White House sees Tuesday's benchmark as a promise kept and has gone to great lengths to promote it as such, dispatching Vice President Joe Biden to Iraq to preside over a formal change-of-command ceremony and raising Tuesday night's remarks to the level of an Oval Office address, something Obama has only done once before.
Among Obama's goals on Tuesday is honoring those who have served in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, many returning to the battlefield for multiple tours of duty. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Monday that while the Iraq war would have never happened had Obama been commander in chief at the time, the president holds the service and sacrifice of the troops in high regard.
Appearing on nationally broadcast interviews Tuesday morning, Gibbs repeatedly brushed aside questions about whether Obama would credit President George W. Bush's troop surge with helping to pave the way for the withdrawal.
Top Republicans, however, were in no doubt. "Some leaders who opposed, criticized, and fought tooth-and-nail to stop the surge strategy now proudly claim credit for the results," House GOP leader John Boehner said, in excerpts of a speech he was to give to the American Legion convention in Milwaukee. "Today we mark not the defeat those voices anticipated — but progress."
In Gibbs' appearances, he said it's "not up for question" that candidate Obama agreed sending 30,000 more troops to Iraq would bolster security. But "a number of things" brought the United States to this point, including the move toward greatrer political accommodation among the Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions, the spokesman said.
Pressed on this point, Gibbs said, "Again, I think the president has always stated, and always believed" that adding significant numbers of American troops would stabilize the security environment, "but obviously the leaders in Iraq had to make some political accommodation to move that nation forward."
Asked if Obama would support sending combat troops back if new waves of violence threatened the country, Gibbs said that Obama had been assured recently by commander Gen. Ray Odierno that such a scenario would be very unlikely.
"This is not a victory lap," he said. "You're not going to see any 'Mission Accomplished' banners that will be unfurled. "
Since the start of the war, 200,000 personnel from Fort Bliss have deployed to Iraq, serving in every major phase of the war. Fifty-one soldiers from the base died there and many more were wounded.
Last week, some 600 soldiers from the 1st Brigade Combat Team returned to the base as part of Obama's self-imposed Aug. 31 deadline for having all U.S. combat troops out of Iraq. Just about 50,000 U.S. troops will remain, down from a peak of nearly 170,000 in 2007. U.S. troops will no longer be allowed to go on combat missions unless requested and accompanied by Iraqi forces.
Administration officials have been careful to avoid equating the end of the combat mission with a mission accomplished. That was the phrase on the now-infamous banner that flew on an aircraft carrier seven years ago when Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq, a symbol the Bush White House came to deeply regret as the war dragged on.
"You won't hear those words coming from us," Gibbs said Monday. "Obviously tomorrow marks a change in our mission. It marks a milestone that we have achieved in removing our combat troops. That is not to say that violence is going to end tomorrow."
Under a security agreement signed between the U.S. and Iraq before Obama took office, all U.S. forces must leave Iraq by the end of 2011. But the Obama administration insists the U.S. is not abandoning Iraq and is ramping up a diplomatic corps to help stabilize the country's government and economy over the coming years.
"This redoubles the efforts of the Iraqis," Gibbs said. "They will write the next chapter in Iraqi history, and they will be principally responsible for it. We will be their ally, but the responsibility of charting the future of Iraq first and foremost belongs to the Iraqis."
Ahead of Tuesday night's remarks, Obama also planned to speak with Bush. While Bush's decision to invade Iraq was criticized by many, the troop surge Bush ordered in 2007 has been credited with tamping down violence in Iraq and helping keep the country from falling into a civil war.
Gibbs was interviewed on ABC's "Good Morning America," NBC's "Today" show, CBS's "The Early Show," CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC and National Public Radio.

Obama to honor troops as Iraq combat mission ends

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12Aug/10Off

White House: US on track to end Iraq combat role

WASHINGTON -President Barack Obama is satisfied that the United States can safely end its combat role in Iraq at the end of this month and meet the deadline for removing all U.S. troops from the country by the end of 2011, White House officials said Wednesday.
Obama was briefed on the status of the withdrawal from Iraq by his national security team and the top U.S. commander in Iraq. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president was also brought up to date on so far unsuccessful efforts by Iraq to form a new government five months after national elections.
Obama met with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, national security adviser James Jones and, by videoconference, the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno.
"The president heard directly from General Odierno, who said that we were on target to complete our drawdown by the end of August. Already we have removed over 80,000 troops from Iraq since President Obama took office," Gibbs said.
Gibbs and other U.S. officials said an uptick in violence as August 31 draws nearer was expected. They blamed it on the start of the monthlong Islamic observance of Ramadan, and on attempts by factions to further complicate efforts to form a coalition government and by some militants to create the appearance that they were running the U.S. out of the country.
Ongoing attacks against Iraq's security forces come as the U.S. is moving to reduce its troop levels to 50,000 by the end of August.
"There continue to be terrorists in Iraq. There continue to be acts of violence," Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told a group of reporters. "They have not affected the positive trends" happening in Iraq and the overall level of violence is lower than it has been in the past, Rhodes said.
Gibbs said Odierno told Obama the security situation has continued to improve and that Iraqi forces are fully prepared to take over.
Obama has vowed both to end the official U.S. combat mission on schedule and to move all remaining U.S. troops off Iraqi soil by the end of 2011, a timetable set in an agreement with the Iraqi government.
The president also received an update from Vice President Joe Biden and Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, on Iraq's troubled efforts to form a new government.
Biden's national security adviser, Tony Blinken, said frustration is building among the Iraqis over failure to form a coalition government. "There is a sense of urgency to move forward and get a government formed," he said. "We really believe there is forward movement. But it's not up to us."
In a National Public Radio interview from Baghdad earlier in the day, Hill said the pace of political progress has quickened in recent weeks and that "things may be heading in the right direction" even though "more needs to be done."
White House officials sought to blunt suggestions that the end of 2011 deadline for removing all remaining troops might be impossible to meet.
"All systems in the U.S. government are getting down to...there will be no troops (in Iraq) after 2011," said Rhodes. He said an exception would be security forces to protect the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
In the meantime, he said, "50,000 troops are capable of accomplishing a great deal," even though the U.S. mission will change on Sept. 1 to one of support.

White House: US on track to end Iraq combat role

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25Jul/10Off

Deadly Lightning Strike in Marshall County

A lightning strike on Lake Guntersville killed a teenage girl and sent four others to the hospital.

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25Jul/10Off

US aircraft carrier leads drills with South Korea

ABOARD USS GEORGE WASHINGTON -A nuclear-powered U.S. supercarrier led an armada of warships in exercises off the Korean peninsula on Sunday that North Korea has vowed to physically block and says could escalate into nuclear war.
U.S. military officials said the maneuvers, conducted with South Korean ships and Japanese observers, were intended to send a strong signal to the North that aggression in the region will not be tolerated.
Tensions on the Korean peninsula have been particularly high since the sinking in March of a South Korean naval vessel. Forty-six Korean sailors were killed in the sinking, which Seoul has called Pyongyang's worst military attack on it since the 1950-53 Korean War.
The military drills, code-named "Invincible Spirit," are to run through Wednesday with about 8,000 U.S. and South Korean troops, 20 ships and submarines and 200 aircraft. The Nimitz-class USS George Washington was deployed from Japan.
"We are showing our resolve," said Capt. David Lausman, the carrier's commanding officer.
North Korea has protested the drills, threatening to retaliate with "nuclear deterrence" and "sacred war."
The North routinely threatens attacks whenever South Korea and the U.S. hold joint military drills, which Pyongyang sees as a rehearsal for an invasion. The U.S. keeps 28,500 troops in South Korea and another 50,000 in Japan, but says it has no intention of invading the North.
Still, the North's latest rhetoric carries extra weight following the sinking of the Cheonan.
Capt. Ross Myers, the commander of the carrier's air wing, said the exercises were not intended to raise tensions, but acknowledged they are meant to get North Korea's attention.
The George Washington, one of the biggest ships in the U.S. Navy, is a potent symbol of American military power, with about 5,000 sailors and aviators and the capacity to carry up to 70 planes.
"North Korea may contend that it is a provocation, but I would say the opposite," he said. "It is a provocation to those who don't want peace and stability. North Korea doesn't want this. They know that one of South Korea's strengths is its alliance with the United States."
He said that North Korea's threats to retaliate were being taken seriously.
"There is a lot they can do," he said. "They have ships, they have subs, they have airplanes. They are a credible threat."
The exercises are the first in a series of U.S.-South Korean maneuvers to be conducted in the East Sea off South Korea's east coast and in the Yellow Sea closer to China's shores in international waters. The exercises also are the first to employ the F-22 stealth fighter — which can evade North Korean air defenses — in South Korea.
South Korea was closely monitoring North Korea's military but spotted no unusual activity Sunday, the Defense Ministry said.
North Korea, which denies any involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan, warned the United States against holding the drills.
"Our military and people will squarely respond to the nuclear war preparation by the American imperialists and the South Korean puppet regime with our powerful nuclear deterrent," the North's government-run Minju Joson newspaper said in a commentary Sunday headlined, "We also have nuclear weapons."
The commentary was carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
The North's powerful National Defense Commission issued a similar threat Saturday, saying the country "will start a retaliatory sacred war ... based on nuclear deterrent any time necessary in order to counter the U.S."
The country's Foreign Ministry separately said Saturday that Pyongyang is considering "powerful physical measures" in response to the U.S. military drills and sanctions.
Though the impoverished North has a large conventional military and the capability to build nuclear weapons, it is not believed to have the technology needed to use nuclear devices as warheads.
North Korea has been in increasingly difficult diplomatic straits since the Cheonan incident.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Wednesday, after visiting the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas, that the U.S. would slap new sanctions on the North to stifle its nuclear ambitions and punish it for the Cheonan sinking.
On Friday, the European Union said it, too, would consider new sanctions on North Korea.
The George Washington had been expected to join in exercises off Korea sooner, but the Navy delayed those plans as the United Nations Security Council met to deliberate what action it should take over the Cheonan sinking.
The council eventually condemned the incident, but stopped short of naming North Korea as the perpetrator.
—
Associated Press writer Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.

US aircraft carrier leads drills with South Korea

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11Jul/10Off

64 die in bomb attacks in Uganda during World Cup

KAMPALA, Uganda -In simultaneous bombings bearing the hallmarks of international terrorists, two explosions ripped through crowds watching the World Cup final in two places in Uganda's capital late Sunday, killing 64 people, police said. Americans were among the casualties.
The deadliest attack occurred at a rugby club as people watched the game between Spain and the Netherlands on a large-screen TV outdoors. The second blast took place at an Ethiopian restaurant, where at least three Americans were wounded.
Kampala's police chief said he believed Somalia's most feared militant group, al-Shabab, could be responsible for the attack. Al-Shabab is known to have links with al-Qaida, and it counts militant veterans from the Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan conflicts among its ranks.
A head and legs were found at the rugby club, suggesting a suicide bomber may have been to blame, an AP reporter at the scene said.
At least three Americans — part of a church group from Pennsylvania — were wounded at the Ethiopian restaurant. One was Kris Sledge, 18, of Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania
"I remember blacking out, hearing people screaming and running," Sledge said from the hospital. His right leg was wrapped and he had burns on his face. "I love the place here but I'm wondering why this happened and who did this ... At this point we're just glad to be alive."
At the scenes of the two blasts, blood and pieces of flesh littered the floor among overturned chairs.
Police Chief Kale Kaihura originally said at least 30 people had been killed, though the toll could be higher.
Later, a senior police official at the scene said that 64 people had been killed, 49 from the rugby club and 15 at the Ethiopian restaurant. The official said he could not be identified.
Kaihura said he suspected al-Shabab, that country's most feared militant group. Its fighters, including two recruited from the Somali communities in the United States, have carried out multiple suicide bombings in Somalia. If Kaihura's suspicions that al-Shabab was responsible for the Uganda bombings prove true, it would be the first time the group has carried out attacks outside of Somalia.
In Mogadishu, Sheik Yusuf Sheik Issa, an al-Shabab commander, told The Associated Press early Monday that he was happy with the attacks in Uganda. Issa refused to confirm or deny that al-Shabab was responsible for the bombings.
"Uganda is one of our enemies. Whatever makes them cry, makes us happy. May Allah's anger be upon those who are against us," Sheik said.
—
Associated Press reporters Mohamed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu, Somalia, and Godfrey Olukya in Kampala, contributed to this report. Straziuso reported from Nairobi, Kenya.

64 die in bomb attacks in Uganda during World Cup

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8Jul/10Off

Russian, US spy suspects brace for possible swap

MOSCOW -Special riot police beefed up security around Moscow's Lefortovo prison Thursday and a gaggle of TV cameras and photographers jostled for the best position as the world braced for what could be largest spy swap since the Cold War.
A convoy of armored vehicles arrived in the morning at the prison, thought to be the central gathering point for people convicted of spying for the West, including nuclear researcher Igor Sutyagin, serving a 14-year sentence for spying for the United States.
Sutyagin's brother and lawyer say he was transferred to Lefortovo earlier this week to take part in the swap and could be flown out to freedom as early as Thursday. They said Sutyagin saw a list of 11 prisoners in Russia who are being traded for 10 people arrested in the United States for being unregistered Russian agents.
In New York, a federal court was to decide the fate of those 10 suspects later Thursday.
Officials in neither country would confirm an exchange was planned. But the machinations — including a meeting in Washington between U.S. officials and the Russian ambassador on Wednesday — had all the hallmarks as the two former Cold War antagonists moved to tamp down tensions stirred up by the U.S. arrests.
"A swap seems very much on the cards. There is political will on both sides, and actually by even moving it as far as they have, Moscow has de facto acknowledged that these guys were spies," intelligence analyst Pavel Felgenhauer said.
Five suspects charged with spying in the U.S. were hurriedly ordered to New York on Wednesday, joining five others already behind bars there, after Sutyagin, a Russian arms-control researcher, spilled the news of the swap after being transferred to Moscow from his forlorn penal colony near the Arctic Circle.
Dmitry Sutyagin said his brother was told he was among a dozen convicted spies to be exchanged for Russians arrested by the FBI. He said his brother could be sent to Vienna, then London, as early as Thursday.
Defense lawyers in Moscow and New York have expressed confidence that their clients' fates would be settled very soon.
In a federal indictment unsealed Wednesday, the ten suspects in New York and an 11th person, who was released on bail by a court in Cyprus and is now a fugitive, were formally charged.
The indictment charged all with conspiring to act as secret agents and charged nine of them with conspiracy to commit money laundering. It demanded that those accused of money laundering return any assets used in the offense.
Attorney Robert Baum, who represents defendant Anna Chapman, said the case might be settled when she and the other nine people arrested in the United States appear Thursday for arraignment on the indictment, raising the possibility of guilty pleas to the lowest charges and deportation from the U.S..
"Of certain events tomorrow that might occur, the fact the indictment is minimal makes perfect sense. This is a crazy situation," said Robert J. Krakow, an attorney for defendant Juan Lazaro.
Prosecutors released a copy of the indictment as federal judges in Boston and Alexandria, Virginia, signed orders directing that five defendants arrested in Massachusetts and Virginia be transferred to New York. All were charged in Manhattan.
The defendants were accused of living seemingly ordinary lives in America while they acted as unregistered agents for the Russian government, sending secret messages and carrying out orders they received from their Russian contacts.
All have remained in custody except for a man identified as Christopher R. Metsos, the 11th suspect who is charged with being the spy ring's paymaster. Metsos, traveling on a forged Canadian passport, jumped bail last week after being arrested in Cyprus.
U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood in New York signed an order Wednesday requiring that defendant Vicky Pelaez, Lazaro's wife, remain detained until the judge can hear an appeal Friday by the U.S. government of a $250,000 bail package approved last week. Pelaez is a U.S. citizen.
Sutyagin, who worked as an arms control and military analyst at the Moscow-based U.S.A. and Canada Institute, a think tank, was arrested in 1999 and convicted in 2004 on charges of passing information on nuclear submarines and other weapons to a British company that investigators claimed was a CIA cover. Sutyagin has all along denied that he was spying, saying the information he provided was available from open sources.
His case was one of several incidents of Russian academics and scientists being targeted by Russia's Federal Security Service and accused of misusing classified information, revealing state secrets or, in some cases, espionage.
—
AP writers Misha Japaridze, Vladimir Isachenkov, Jim Heintz and Khristina Narizhnaya in Moscow, Calvin Woodward, Pete Yost and Matt Lee in Washington, Matt Barakat in Alexandria, Va., Denise Lavoie in Boston and Larry Neumeister and Tom Hays in New York contributed to this report.

Russian, US spy suspects brace for possible swap

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4Jul/10Off

Petraeus: ‘We are in this to win’ in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan -Gen. David Petraeus formally assumed command of the 130,000-strong international force in Afghanistan on Sunday, declaring "we are in this to win" despite rising casualties and growing skepticism about the nearly 9-year-old war.
During a ceremony at NATO headquarters, Petraeus received two flags — one for the U.S. and the other for NATO — marking his formal assumption of command.
He said it was important to demonstrate to the Afghan people and world that al-Qaida and its extremist allies will not be allowed to once again establish sanctuaries in Afghanistan from which to launch attacks on the United States and other countries.
"We are in this to win," Petraeus told a crowd of several hundred NATO and Afghan officials at the ceremony held on a grassy area just outside coalition headquarters. "We have arrived at a critical moment."
Petraeus succeeded Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was fired last month for intemperate remarks he and his aides made to Rolling Stone magazine about Obama administration officials who were mostly on the civilian side.
"Upfront I also want to recognize the enormous contributions of my predecessor, Gen. Stanley McChrystal," Petraeus said. He said the progress made reflects McChrystal's "vision, energy and leadership."
Petraeus said the change in command did not signal a radical shift in McChrystal's strategy of making the protection of the Afghan people the focus of the military mission.
"Recent months in Afghanistan have seen hard fighting," he said. "As we press on in our vital mission, we must continue our efforts to reduce the loss of innocent civilians to an absolute minimum."
But Petraeus said he would examine the policies "to determine where refinements might be needed."
In a message to his troops, Petraeus said he would "not hesitate to bring all assets to bear to protect you and the Afghan forces with which you are fighting shoulder to shoulder."
That suggested he would review the rules under which NATO soldiers fight, including McChrystal's curbs on the use of airpower and heavy weapons if civilians are at risk. Troops have complained such restraint puts their own lives at risk and hands the battlefield advantage to the Taliban and their allies.
Speaking before Petraeus, German Army Gen. Egon Ramms, commander for the Allied Joint Force Command, also praised the work of McChrystal, saying he took the coalition "forward at a very difficult time."
"We wish Stanley McChrystal well," Ramms said.
Ramms lamented the deaths of civilians due to military operations by coalition forces, but said people should not forget the Afghan citizens who died at the hands of insurgents whose actions are "unlawful."
In southern Afghanistan, four civilians were killed and five others were wounded Sunday by a remote-controlled bomb set up on a motorcycle in a bazaar in Musa Qala, said Dawood Ahmadi, a spokesman for Helmand province. At the time of the blast, police were busy defusing another bomb planted on a donkey, Ahmadi said.
On Saturday, a civilian was killed in a roadside bomb explosion in Tagab district of Kapisa province and another civilian driving a car was killed when his vehicle struck a roadside bomb in Khash Rod district of Nimroz province, the Ministry of Interior said Sunday.
June was the deadliest month for the allied force since the war began in October 2001 with 102 deaths, more than half of them Americans. Britain's Ministry of Defense reported that a Royal Marine was killed Thursday in southern Afghanistan — the fifth international service member killed this month.
Since arriving here Friday evening, Petraeus has sought to make cooperation between the civilian and military parts of the international mission a top priority.
Petraeus, widely credited with turning around the U.S. war effort in Iraq, faces rising violence and growing doubts in Washington and other allied capitals about the effectiveness of the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, which the general himself pioneered.
Later Saturday, Petraeus met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Corruption was one of the issues the two discussed, according to a statement issued by the presidential palace. Karzai used the meeting to complain about what he said were "baseless" allegations made by U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey, a Democrat from New York, who suggested Afghan government officials had misused or pocketed donor funds, Karzai's office said.
Karzai asked Petraeus to review international contracts for private security companies to help keep money from flowing out of the country. According to the statement, Petraeus told the president he would begin his job by emphasizing "unity, accountability and transparency."

Petraeus: 'We are in this to win' in Afghanistan

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29Jun/10Off

Kagan insists she didn’t block military at Harvard

WASHINGTON -Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan clashed Tuesday with a Republican senator over the limits she ordered on military recruiters while dean of Harvard Law School, repeatedly denying she blocked them as she sought to deflect foes' efforts to slow her apparently smooth road to confirmation.
Despite a testy exchange with the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, President Barack Obama's nominee soldiered through her second day of public testimony on Capitol Hill apparently in good shape to win Senate approval — barring a major gaffe — in time to take her seat before the court opens a new term in October. If confirmed, Kagan, 50, would succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens
Republican foes weren't giving up quietly. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama said he emerged from the long day of questioning more "troubled" about Kagan's nomination than he had been previously. During his sometimes heated back-and-forth with Kagan, Sessions said her decision to bar recruiters from the law school's career services office over the Pentagon's prohibition on openly gay soldiers was "punishing" the military at Harvard, treating them in a "second-class way" and creating a hostile environment for the military on campus.
Kagan said she was trying to balance Harvard's nondiscrimination policy, which she believed "don't ask, don't tell" violated, with a federal law that required schools to give military recruiters equal access as a condition of eligibility for federal funds. She said she welcomed the military, and believed her policy of requiring recruiters to work through a student veterans group — first set by a predecessor — was a valid compromise.
"We were trying to make sure that military recruiters had full and complete access to our students, but we were also trying to protect our own antidiscrimination policy and to protect the students whom it is ... supposed to protect, which in this case were our gay and lesbian students," Kagan said.
Sessions rejected her version of events and accused Kagan of defying federal law because of her strong opposition to the military's treatment of homosexuals.
"I know what happened at Harvard. I know you were an outspoken leader against the military policy," Sessions said "I know you acted without legal authority to reverse Harvard's policy and deny those military equal access to campus until you were threatened by the United States government of loss of federal funds."
Kagan was less willing to mix it up with Republicans who closely questioned her on controversial legal topics.
The nominee, who once wrote a strongly worded article denouncing Supreme Court nominees for dodging questions at confirmation hearings, herself refused repeatedly to be pinned down on specific legal issues, her political views or even the passions that animate her to seek a place on the court.
She did call recent Supreme Court rulings upholding gun rights "binding precedent," and she said the court's rulings mandate that in any law regulating abortion "the woman's life and the woman's health have to be protected." She said a 5-4 decision this year that said corporations and unions were free to spend their own funds on political activity was "settled law."
But she was less forthcoming when asked whether she thought that campaign finance case, which she argued for the Obama administration and lost, had been wrongly decided.
"I did believe we had a strong case to make. I tried to make it to the best of my ability," she told Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who questioned her in detail about Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
She also said none of her work arguing the government's cases before the Supreme Court — she was Obama's solicitor general until last month — should be interpreted as reflecting her own positions.
"I want to make a clear distinction between my views as an advocate and any views I might have as a judge," Kagan said.
Across hours of testimony before the committee, Kagan declined to weigh in on virtually any substantive question posed to her, eluding GOP efforts to label her ideology as well as one Democrat's seemingly friendly bid to get her to open up about why she wants to be a justice.
"What motivates me is the opportunity to safeguard the rule of law," Kagan said under questioning by a visibly frustrated Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, who asked her about her passions. "I think I will take this one case at a time if I'm a judge. It would not be right for a judge to come in and say, 'I have a passion for this or that. ...' This isn't a job, I think, where somebody should come in with a substantive agenda."
Later, asked to talk about the justices she most admires, Kagan again dodged, saying it would be a "bad idea" to talk about those currently on the bench. "My oh my oh my," Kohl said, deprived again of an answer as the hearing room erupted in laughter.
Kagan did, however, express admiration for the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, the court's first African-American, whom Republicans have held up as a prime example of a judicial activist.
"I love Justice Marshall. He did an enormous amount for me," Kagan said of the man for whom she once clerked. "But if you confirm me to this position, you will get Justice Kagan. You won't get Justice Marshall, and that's an important thing."
Kohl also failed to persuade Kagan to say whether she agreed with Justice Antonin Scalia's view that the Constitution should be interpreted solely based on its text or with former Justice David Souter's contention that it should be viewed in terms of its words' "meaning for living people."
"I don't really think that this is an either-or choice," Kagan responded.
Asked by Sessions whether she considered herself "a progressive in the mold of" Obama or a "legal progressive," as one of his top aides has called her, Kagan said she'd rather choose her own labels, but declined to give herself one.
"I'm not quite sure how I would characterize my politics, but one thing I know is that my politics would be, must be, have to be separate from my judging," Kagan said. "I've served in two Democratic administrations. You can tell something about me and my political views from that."
Kagan stayed mostly calm throughout hours at a witness table, showing glimmers of humor but hardly ever veering off-script as she fielded questions on sometimes uncomfortable topics.
"You're doing well," Hatch assured her after her intense debate with Sessions on military recruitment. "Relax as much as you can."
Asked by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., for a "heart-to-heart talk," Kagan gamely replied, "Just you and me," to laughter from a hearing room filled with spectators, reporters and news cameras.
Kagan, the former law school dean, sometimes seemed to be teaching an introductory course in constitutional law.
She called the Constitution an "enduring document."
It has some "very specific provisions — it just says what you're supposed to do and how things are supposed to work," she said. But she added that other provisions "were meant to be interpreted over time to be applied to new situations and new contexts."

Kagan insists she didn't block military at Harvard

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18Jun/10Off

Utah firing squad executes convicted killer

DRAPER, Utah -Death row inmate Ronnie Lee Gardner died in a barrage of bullets early Friday as Utah carried out its first firing squad execution in 14 years.
Gardner was strapped into a chair and a team of five marksmen aimed their guns at a white target pinned to his chest.
He was pronounced dead at 12:20 a.m. Corrections officials did not immediately offer any additional details.
Gardner was allowed to choose between the firing squad and lethal injection because he was sentenced to death before Utah eliminated the firing squad as an option in 2004. He told his lawyer he did it because he preferred it — not because he wanted the controversy surrounding the execution to draw attention to his case or embarrass the state.
Some decried the execution as barbaric, and about two dozen members of Gardner's family held a vigil outside the prison as he was shot. There were no protests at the prison.
The executioners were all certified police officers who volunteered for the task and remain anonymous. They stood about 25 feet from Gardner, behind a wall cut with a gunport, and were armed with a matching set of .30-caliber Winchester rifles. One was loaded with a blank so no one knows who fired the fatal shot. Sandbags stacked behind Gardner's chair kept the bullets from ricocheting around the cinderblock room.
"Sometimes they're asked to step up like five officers did tonight to do their duty and they did it," said Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who informed corrections officials by telephone that there were no legal reasons the execution shouldn't be carried out. "And I'm told they did it well."
Gardner was sentenced to death for the 1985 fatal courthouse shooting of attorney Michael Burdell during a failed escape attempt. Gardner was at the Salt Lake City court facing a 1984 murder charge in the shooting death of a bartender, Melvyn Otterstrom.
Gardner and his defense attorneys fought to stop the execution to the end. They filed petitions with state and federal courts, asked a Utah parole board to commute his sentence to life in prison without parole, and finally unsuccessfully appealed to Utah Gov. Gary Herbert and the U.S. Supreme Court.
"Ronnie Lee Gardner will never kill again," Shurtleff said. "He will never assault anybody again."
Gardner even tried to appeal to the general public, setting up an interview with CNN's "Larry King Live." But the Utah Department of Corrections canceled the phone interview minutes before it was scheduled to take place Wednesday.
Gardner spent his last day sleeping, reading the novel "Divine Justice," watching the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy and meeting with his attorneys and a bishop with the Mormon church. A prison spokesman said officers described his mood as relaxed. He had eaten his last requested meal — steak, lobster tail, apple pie, vanilla ice cream and 7UP — two days earlier.
Members of his family gathered outside the prison, some wearing T-shirts displaying his prisoner number, 14873. None planned to witness the execution, at Gardner's request.
"He didn't want nobody to see him get shot," said Gardner's brother, Randy Gardner. "I would have liked to be there for him. I love him to death. He's my little brother."
Gardner's attorneys argued the jury that sentenced him to death in 1985 heard no mitigating evidence that might have led them to instead impose a life sentence for the man who described himself as a "nasty little bugger." Gardner's life was marked by early drug addiction, physical and sexual abuse and possible brain damage, court records show.
"I had a very explosive temper," Gardner admitted.
The execution process was set in motion in March when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request from Gardner's attorney to review the case. On April 23, state court Judge Robin Reese signed a warrant ordering the state to carry out the death sentence.
At that hearing, Gardner declared, "I would like the firing squad, please."
The firing squad has been Utah's most-used form of capital punishment. Of the 49 executions held in the state since the 1850s, 40 were by firing squad.
Gardner was the third man killed by state marksmen since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling reinstated capital punishment in 1976. The other two were Gary Gilmore, who famously uttered the last words "Let's do it" on Jan. 17, 1977; and John Albert Taylor on Jan. 26, 1996, for raping and strangling an 11-year-old girl.
Historians say the method stems from 19th Century doctrine of the state's predominant religion. Early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believed in the concept of "blood atonement" — that only through spilling one's own blood could a condemned person adequately atone for their crimes and be redeemed in the next life. The church no longer preaches such teachings and offers no opinion on the use of the firing squad.
The American Civil Liberties Union decried Gardner's execution as an example of what it called the United States' "barbaric, arbitrary and bankrupting practice of capital punishment."
At an interfaith vigil in Salt Lake City on Thursday evening, religious leaders called for an end to the death penalty.
"Murdering the murderer doesn't create justice or settle any score," said Rev. Tom Goldsmith of the First Unitarian Church.
Burdell's family opposes the death penalty and asked for Gardner's life to be spared. In a taped statement, Burdell's father, Joseph Burdell, Jr., said he believes his son's death was not premeditated, but a "knee-jerk reaction" by a desperate Gardner attempting to escape.
But Otterstrom's family lobbied the parole board against Gardner's request for clemency and a reduced sentence.
George "Nick" Kirk, was a bailiff at the courthouse the day of Gardner's botched escape. Shot and wounded in the lower abdomen, Kirk suffered chronic health problems the rest of his life.
Kirk's daughter, Tami Stewart, said before the execution she believed Gardner's death would bring her family some closure.
"I think at that moment, he will feel that fear that his victims felt," she said.
At his commutation hearing, Gardner shed a tear after telling the board his attempts to apologize to the Otterstroms and Kirks had been unsuccessful. He said he hoped for forgiveness.
"If someone hates me for 20 years, it's going to affect them," Gardner said. "I know killing me is going to hurt them just as bad. It's something you have to live with every day. You can't get away from it. I've been on the other side of the gun. I know."
—
Associated Press Writer Paul Foy contributed to this report.

Utah firing squad executes convicted killer

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