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As Pace of Deportation Rises, Illegal Families Are Digging In
NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — The day after his wife was deported to their home country, Honduras, Lilo Mancía grieved as though she had died.
Neighbors arrived with doughnuts and juice for their two small children, while Mr. Mancía, an illegal immigrant like his wife, María Briselda Amaya, took telephone calls from relatives and tried not to break down.
“The first thing I thought of was the children,” Mr. Mancía, who is fighting his own deportation order, told the visitors gathered in his second floor walkup apartment in New Bedford a couple of weeks ago. “The future we imagined for them, it all collapsed.”
Last year on May 1, hoping to influence Congress to adopt legislation making illegal immigrants legal, hundreds of thousands of immigrants held marches and work stoppages across the country. This May 1 there will be another round of rallies and marches, but this time immigrants will also be protesting a surge in deportations.
The events are expected to be much smaller than a year ago, organizers said, as stepped-up enforcement by the authorities has made illegal immigrants wary of protesting in public and more doubtful that Congress will soon act to give them a chance at legalization.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, facing intense political pressure to toughen enforcement, removed 221,664 illegal immigrants from the country over the last year, an increase of more than 37,000 — about 20 percent — over the year before, according to the agency’s tally.
While President Bush and many Democrats have called for a path to legalize some 12 million illegal immigrants, a significant number of Republicans in Congress reject the plan because they view it as amnesty for lawbreakers. They advocate a broader campaign of deportations that would expel many illegal immigrants and, they say, drive millions more to give up and go home.
“We are not calling for I.C.E. to become the Gestapo knocking on doors in the middle of the night,” said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations for NumbersUSA, a group in Washington that seeks to curb immigration. “But we have to increase the likelihood that if you are here illegally you will be caught.”
So far, many of the deportations have caused illegal families to hunker down and plot ways to avoid detection and resist deportation, not run voluntarily for the border, immigrant advocates said. In Massachusetts, immigration agents have been challenged by lawyers, labor unions and state officials who question their raid tactics and are fighting trench by legal trench to block deportations.
Mr. Mancía was amazed at the offers of help he received, including from the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, the state’s Department of Social Services and Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts.
Mr. Mancía has been given emergency aid to pay his bills while his deportation case proceeds, and Elizabeth Badger, a public service lawyer in Boston, was still fighting his wife’s deportation after she was on the ground in Honduras.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Mr. Mancía declared defiantly to a downstairs neighbor. “I’m going to stand my ground here until I win.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say their priority is to locate and deport fugitive immigrants with criminal records or convicts who are finishing prison sentences. Still, thousands of illegal immigrants like the Mancías with no criminal history have been caught in raids, the officials acknowledge.
Also, new expedited procedures have allowed agents greater flexibility to deport illegal immigrants caught in border areas, bypassing court hearings. Many immigrants, when caught, agree to leave voluntarily because it means they are not barred from returning legally in the future.
Seen from the working class communities like New Bedford, the deportations are a blunt instrument. Frequently the deported immigrants were not alone in the United States, but came from families with a mix of legal and illegal members who were well settled in this country.
A growing number of deportee families have children who were born here and are United States citizens. (The Mancía’s younger son, Jeffrey, was born in Texas.) More than 3.1 million American children have at least one illegal immigrant parent, said Jeffrey S. Passel, a demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center.
Mr. Mancía and his wife were among 361 workers arrested on March 6 in an immigration raid at Michael Bianco Inc., a leather goods factory in this faded manufacturing town. She remained in detention while he was released to care for their boys, Jeffrey, 2, and Kevin, 5.
On April 18, Ms. Amaya was awakened at 4 a.m., driven by immigration agents to Kennedy Airport in New York and placed on a passenger flight to Honduras, Mr. Mancía said. Telephoning her husband as soon as she could place an international call, she said little, only that she was disoriented and more afraid of her home country than an American jail. She has no house, property or job in Honduras.
“She has no words right now,” Mr. Mancía said, explaining why his wife refused to be interviewed by telephone.
Mr. Mancía has been left to fight off his own deportation and face a series of difficult choices.
He must decide, he said, whether to press his case in the United States or declare defeat and take the boys to rejoin their mother in Honduras. If forced to depart, he will weigh whether to leave his sons with friends in New Bedford to get a quality of schooling he believes they will not have in Honduras. Mr. Mancía said he and his wife had decided to leave their home in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, for their safety, because criminal gangs used the streets as a combat zone. Ms. Amaya’s sister was on a public bus returning from Christmas shopping on Dec. 23, 2004, when gang gunmen shot it up, killing her and 27 other passengers, he said.
“We walked over dead bodies in Honduras,” Mr. Mancía said. “The children see that and they don’t grow up well.”
He was the first to come to the United States, crossing at night at Laredo, Texas. In January 2005 Ms. Amaya took the same route, carrying Kevin, then a toddler. Caught by the Border Patrol, she applied for political asylum and was released temporarily. After Jeffrey was born in Houston, they came to New Bedford. Her asylum petition was eventually denied.
Stitching military backpacks in the Bianco factory at $7.00 an hour, the couple achieved stability that felt almost like prosperity. They bought a white aluminum kitchen set and a microwave oven. Kevin was content in kindergarten, reciting his ABC’s and chattering in English, which neither parent speaks.
Soon they had a family cluster in New Bedford, as three other relatives from Honduras, drawn by word of jobs at Bianco, came to work there as well.
“We knew it would be hard to get legal papers,” Mr. Mancía said. “Since so many people were in the same situation, we learned to live like the rest.”
After the March 6 raid, immigration lawyers appealed Ms. Amaya’s asylum case and she became optimistic. But she remained in immigration detention in the Bristol County jail, unable to receive visits from the children.
“He is refusing to eat and needs to be coaxed to take sustenance,” Arthur Dutra, a teacher at the John Hannigan School, wrote in a March 15 letter about Kevin’s condition. “He asks for his mother repeatedly.”
A nurse at the Greater New Bedford Community Health Center, Jacqueline Arieta, wrote in a separate letter that Jeffrey was having recurring earaches and losing his appetite due to “acute sadness.”
A gaunt man with a mild voice, Mr. Mancía said he did not mind cooking for the boys or washing their clothes at the Laundromat. He said he and his wife, balancing two factory jobs, had learned they both had to do housework.
The help he has received in fighting his deportation has allowed him to believe that he might avoid his wife’s fate, even though he has no papers, no job skill to offer other than hard work and very limited legal avenues to pursue. Although Jeffrey is an American citizen, he would not be able to petition for his parents to be admitted to the country legally until he was 21.
Mr. Mancía said he was preparing for any outcome, even the prospect of a separation from one or both sons so they could remain at least temporarily in the United States.
“My son is an American,” Mr. Mancía said “He needs to be educated in American schools, to speak English. He needs this country.”
Ms. Jenks, of NumbersUSA , said the responsibility for the impact on children of the deportations rests with their parents.
“If parents are going to come here illegally, unfortunately the child faces the consequences as well,” she said.
[NY Times]
Immigration Rallies Planned Nationwide
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Hispanic and other civil rights groups wrapped up plans for immigration reform marches and rallies Tuesday in dozens of cities, but conceded that a replay of last year’s huge turnout was unlikely.
Still, organizers said the demonstrations reflect a robust movement determined to win a path to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country.
“There was a sort of energy last year,” said Gordon Mayer, a vice president of the Community Media Workshop, which helped groups organize the Chicago march. “This year that boulder has split up into a lot of smaller rocks.”
Marches, meetings and voter registration drives were planned from Oregon to Florida.
In Miami, Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean planned to speak to immigrant groups. In Washington, D.C., about 400 members of Asian groups from across the country were set to lobby lawmakers. Two large demonstrations were planned in Los Angeles County – home to an estimated 1 million illegal immigrants.
Last year’s May 1 boycott brought out more than a million protesters across the nation. But later rallies failed to produce large turnouts, as legislation stalled in Congress and bipartisan proposals for illegal immigrants to gain citizenship have become more conservative.
The developments have disheartened many would-be marchers, but organizers said the frustration with Congress also brought out new supporters.
“It used to be that Hispanic immigrants, those who came legally, were more conservative on the issue,” said Joe Garcia, a Cuban-American who heads the Democratic Party’s Miami-Dade County chapter.
“But now it’s become so wrapped up with issues of racism and identity, even Puerto Ricans and Cubans care about immigration,” he said.
Yet stepped-up raids in recent months have left many immigrants afraid to speak out in public – a major change over rallies in 2006 when some illegal immigrants wore T-shirts saying “I’m illegal. So what?”
“The raids are intended to terrorize people and make President Bush look tough,” said Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. “But they are not a solution.”
Some Los Angeles area groups called for an economic boycott and hoped for a repeat of last year, when thousands of immigrants and students stayed away from work and school in a sign of solidarity.
Others have rejected the boycott, arguing that it puts immigrants’ livelihoods at risk and deprives children of valuable classroom time. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Cardinal Roger Mahony, head of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, urged students to stay in school.
“This is a very decentralized and organic movement, so in all different cities people will be doing what they feel is important in their area,” said Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, a major organizer of rallies.
Among the events planned:
- In New York, groups are planning an “American Family Tree” rally, where immigrants will pin paper leaves on a large painting of a tree to symbolize the separation of families because of strict immigration laws.
- In Chicago, demonstrators will march more than three miles through downtown, ending at a lakefront park.
- In Fresno, Calif., organizers planned a rally focusing on children whose parents had been deported. The San Joaquin Valley is home to thousands of seasonal workers who cross the Mexican border illegally each year to work in the fields and construction industry.
- In Milwaukee, Ricardo Chavez, the brother of famed agricultural labor leader Cesar Chavez, was expected to speak, as protesters demanded a stop to immigration raids. A raid last year in Whitewater, Wis., saw the arrests of 25 workers and the owner of a packaging plant. Mothers were separated from their children.
- In Florida, voter registration drives and vigils were planned in Miami, Tampa, Orlando and West Palm Beach, along with after-hours rallies in agricultural towns in the Everglades.
- In Los Angeles, marches will include demands for a legalization program, a stop to the raids and an anti-Iraq war message. City and transportation officials were planning for as many as 500,000 people in downtown, believing it could be the largest in the city so far this year.
‘I Abhor Injustice,’ Alleged Madam Says
“Miz Julia” doled out a steady stream of advice, both practical and philosophical.
From her California home, she e-mailed tips to the 132 women who worked across the Washington area for the firm Pamela Martin & Associates. Her newsletters, now excerpted in court records, were a virtual how-to manual for avoiding all kinds of trouble in a business said to specialize in erotic fantasies.
“One never quite knows where evil, i.e., the vice squad is lurking in this business,” read one arch entry from 1995. “The misogynists get a real kick out of surprising (shocking) you girls, when you give them the opportunity!!! . . . Therefore, you are to lock, double lock, triple lock all doors!!! . . . Figure it out, before they ‘get cha’!!!”
Miz Julia was the pseudonym for Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the woman at the center of a sex scandal that has caused a deputy secretary of state to resign and has lawyers calling around town trying to keep their clients’ names out of public view. A one-time law student, Palfrey ran for 13 years what she insists was a legal escort service. Federal prosecutors allege she was providing $300-an-hour prostitutes, and a grand jury indicted her in February on federal racketeering charges.
Palfrey piqued fascination — and anxiety — by first threatening to sell phone records that could unveil thousands of clients, and then handing them over, apparently for free, to ABC News. She is scheduled to appear tomorrow in U.S. District Court in the District.
On Friday, Randall L. Tobias resigned as deputy secretary of state one day after confirming to Brian Ross of ABC that he had patronized the Pamela Martin firm. Speaking yesterday on “Good Morning America,” Ross said Tobias told him Tobias’s number was on Palfrey’s phone records because he had called “to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage.” There had been “no sex,” Ross quoted Tobias as saying, and that recently he has used another service, “with Central American gals,” for massages.
Tobias, who is 65 and married, was director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. He previously held a top job in the Bush administration overseeing AIDS relief, in which he promoted abstinence and a policy requiring grant recipients to swear they oppose prostitution.
Palfrey’s flamboyant attorney, Montgomery Blair Sibley, said Friday that he has been contacted by five lawyers recently, asking whether their clients’ names are on Palfrey’s list of 10,000 to 15,000 phone numbers. Some, Sibley said, have inquired about whether accommodations could be made to keep their identities private. ABC is expected to air a report on Palfrey and her clients on “20/20″ on May 4, during sweeps.
More revelations are in the offing. Ross said the list includes the names of some “very prominent people,” as well as a number of women with “important and serious jobs” who had worked as escorts for the firm.
The disclosures have been made sparely and artfully. Two weeks ago, in court documents about calling former clients to testify on her behalf, Palfrey named Harlan K. Ullman, an academic whose main claim to fame was a scholarly paper he wrote more than a decade ago on the military strategy known as “shock and awe.” Responded Ullman: “It doesn’t deserve the dignity of a response.”
Sibley also filed notice that he intends to depose political consultant Dick Morris in a separate civil proceeding. Morris would not comment.
Palfrey also declined to comment on either Tobias’s resignation or other names that could arise.
“As the old saying goes, ‘I need to dance with the guy who brung me,’ ” she wrote in an e-mail to a Washington Post reporter. “I have promised ABC News that the ‘20/20′ interview will be an exclusive one. I am sure you can understand my situation.”
For all the attention she is attracting, Palfrey retains an air of mystery. She has dropped intriguing hints about herself over the years but demurs when asked for an interview about her life.
“I am not a quitter,” Palfrey wrote in another e-mail to The Post. “Additionally, I abhor injustice, on any level and in any forum. I frankly persist despite life’s barriers. It is no more complicated than this.”
She sees herself as an entrepreneur being railroaded by an all-powerful government, in a “David and Goliath scenario.” Prosecutors have made much of her history: In 1992, she pleaded guilty to attempted felony pimping. She started her Washington business while on probation in California.
The little that is known about Palfrey comes from court records in California and Washington, interviews with acquaintances and a series of e-mails. Through her writing — facile, self-assured, with triple exclamation points for emphasis — she shows contradictions and gumption, a woman who says she lives by “the Golden Rule” and who describes herself as sophisticated, a perfectionist and “a cat person” who will not go away without a fight.
Old friends can’t decipher the contrasting images.
“I thought I was a pretty good friend in high school,” said Debbie Blozik, who lives in Birmingham, Ala. “But I’m thinking now how many things I really didn’t know about her.”
Home was Charleroi, Pa., population 5,000, which sits on a hillside overlooking the Monongahela River, south of Pittsburgh, its older homes clustered on steep streets.
The elder of two girls, Palfrey was born in 1956 to Frank Palfrey, who worked for a grocery company and died in 2002, and Blanche, a homemaker now living in Florida. The family resided for a while in Orlando but returned to Charleroi when Palfrey was 10, to a modest house with striped awnings on Shady Avenue.
Neighbors viewed “Debbie” as a bright, attractive girl. In high school, she was a majorette. She performed a modern dance solo in the senior talent show. But before graduation, she left abruptly, finishing in Florida. She said that she couldn’t take the bullying anymore.
Palfrey graduated with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., attended a year at what is now Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego and completed a nine-month paralegal course.
She got into the escort business in San Diego, she said, because she was “appalled and disgusted” by how “seedy, lazy and incompetent” other escort agencies were, she wrote in court papers. An avowed teetotaler, she said she did not like the drug-related atmosphere in the other agencies.
“I decided to branch out, so to speak, from my solo state and began working with one or two (maybe three at the most) other women,” she said in her California legal pleadings.
She told Thomas Czech, a career Marine who said he dated Palfrey for about two months, that she was an interior designer. Things ended badly, and Czech took out a restraining order against her in San Diego County in 1989.
Palfrey’s professional life also took a turn for the worse. Her business crashed when she was arrested in 1990; an employee’s angry mother apparently tipped off police. Palfrey employed about a dozen women and would have made $100,000 that year, she said.
She said her employees were “independent agents” and allowed that she should have “done something to police/eliminate such conduct from occurring.”
Palfrey was a no-show at her scheduled trial in August 1991. She was captured that October in Montana. She explained to the court that the stress from the criminal proceedings had caused her to flee. Her mother, she said, was so upset that she developed a life-threatening aneurysm and required surgery. She said her parents “just can’t comprehend how my offense could be viewed so harshly.” Once free, she said, she planned to go into business exporting “authentic American Western and Indian art to the United Kingdom.”
Instead, after 18 months in state prison, Palfrey started Pamela Martin. The firm recruited escorts through the University of Maryland student newspaper and Washington City Paper. It advertised in the Yellow Pages and on Web sites, touting itself as “undoubtedly the best adult agency around.”
Her career path apparently was lucrative, but not spectacularly so. Prosecutors say she made about $2 million running Pamela Martin over 13 years — on average, less than $160,000 a year. Her Escondido, Calif., home was valued at about $480,000 last year, and her Vallejo, Calif., house at about $495,000, according to court papers related to their seizure by the federal government.
Recently, Charleroi has exerted a pull on Palfrey as she returned, quietly. In late 2002, she launched a Charleroi Area High School alumni association Web site. On it, she expressed her interest in the Innocence Project for wrongly convicted prison inmates: “Never could stomach injustice, social or otherwise,” she wrote, adding a photograph of herself as a young girl with shiny bangs by a Christmas tree.
In 2004, the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Postal Service launched a joint investigation of Pamela Martin & Associates. Palfrey, who conducted most of her business by e-mail and phone, allegedly instructed her “subcontractors” to convert her share of fees into money orders and mail them to her post office box in California.
Palfrey’s legal strategy is to aver she had no idea that the women working for her ever engaged in prostitution. In papers filed in U.S District Court, Palfrey alleged that a former escort identified as Paula Neble and 15 “Jane Does” breached their contracts by engaging in illegal sex. Neble’s attorney, Kathy Voelker, said she has “no comment at all.”
Palfrey has had a lot of setbacks lately. She says she is “indigent.” But she is not likely to go quietly.
“I should just ‘cave’ and defend myself,” she wrote in a recent e-mail. “Otherwise, this ridiculous caricature people seem to have of someone in my position . . . sadly will be at my expense.”
War Report Accuses PM of Failure
JERUSALEM (AP) – A government commission that probed Israel’s summer war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon accused Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday of “severe failure,” saying he hastily led the country into the conflict without a comprehensive plan. A copy of the report obtained by The Associated Press cited a “severe failure in the lack of judgment, responsibility and caution.”
Olmert, after receiving a copy of the panel’s findings, said that “failures will be remedied.”
The report was being officially released later Monday.
Olmert already faced strident calls for his resignation from coalition partners as well as opponents, and the harsh report further weakened his hold on power.
Olmert and his defense minister, Amir Peretz, who took office with limited security experience less than two months before the war, already had lost much of their public support because of the conflict, launched when Hezbollah guerrillas captured two soldiers and killed three others in a cross-border raid on July 12.
Relying heavily on massive airstrikes recommended by the military chief, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, Olmert pledged to his people that Israel would crush Hezbollah and force return of the captured soldiers. Neither goal was accomplished, and Halutz already has resigned.
Hezbollah pounded northern Israel with nearly 4,000 rockets, halting only when the U.N. Security Council imposed a cease-fire, its short- range rocket capacity intact. Israel launched a late, costly ground offensive with the Security Council nearing completion of its cease- fire resolution.
In 34 days of fighting, between 1,035 and 1,191 Lebanese civilians and combatants were killed, as were 119 Israeli soldiers and 39 civilians.
The report covers the first six days of the war, when Israel battered Lebanon with massive airstrikes as Hezbollah pounded Israel with rockets. Also, the report looks at developments during the six years that followed Israel’s overnight pullout from southern Lebanon in 2000—tracing the Hezbollah buildup across from the Israeli border.
According to TV reports confirmed by Israeli officials, the commission appointed by Olmert and chaired by a retired judge, Eliyahu Winograd, aims withering criticism at Olmert and Peretz over their decision- making, inexperience and failure to question plans presented by the military.
The report also says that Halutz, a former air force commander, did not provide political leaders with a sufficient range of military options, played down the rocket threat and silenced dissenting opinions within the army command, Israeli media said.
The Winograd panel does not have the authority to fire officials, but the scathing report could ignite public protests and demonstrations, coupled with political infighting, that could force the resignation of Olmert and Peretz. Noisy public demonstrations were expected to back demands that they step down.
Already Sunday, a demand their for resignations came from Labor Party lawmaker Ofir Pines-Paz, who is challenging Peretz for party leadership in a May primary election.
“They should follow the example of Halutz, who did not wait for the Winograd commission to show him the door,” he said.
Opposition lawmakers from the dovish Meretz as well as the hard-line National Religious Party also called for the government to step down.
Olmert’s office declined comment until the report’s official publication, but aides said Olmert was confident he would weather the storm and that he had no intention of quitting.
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Vice Premier Shimon Peres pledged that the report’s findings would be taken seriously. “We shall correct everything that calls for correction,” he said.
Olmert’s popular support is nearing single figures in newspaper polls, mostly because of the Lebanon war, but also because of allegations of his involvement in alleged corruption including real estate deals and undue interference in government transactions to favor friends and backers. Olmert has denied any wrongdoing.
5 Convicted in London Bomb Plot
LONDON — A judge sentenced five men to life in prison Monday for plotting to attack targets in London, including a popular nightclub, power plants and shopping mall, with bombs made from a half-ton stockpile of fertilizer.
The trial for the first time exposed connections between the defendants and the deadly 2005 al-Qaida-linked attack on the city’s transit system.
Details kept secret to ensure a fair trial showed that counterterrorism agents tracking the five men had also stumbled onto the transit plotters. And despite disturbing signs that the transit plot was in the works, the agents failed to piece them together in time to prevent the July 7, 2005 bombings that killed 52 people, testimony and official briefings during the trial showed.
The revelations are at odds with statements by Tony Blair’s government after the 2005 attack. Senior ministers, who a month earlier had lowered the country’s alert status, said the 2005 attack was unexpected and the perpetrators unknown.
Omar Khyam was found guilty of conspiracy to cause explosions made from a chemical fertilizer that could endanger life. Also found guilty were Anthony Garcia, Jawad Akbar, Waheed Mahmood and Alahuddin Amin.
“All of you may never be released. It’s not a foregone conclusion,” Judge Michael Astill told them.
Two others, Nabeel Hussain and Shujah Mahmood, were cleared of conspiracy to cause explosions. All were arrested on March 30, 2004.
The jury that convicted the five men deliberated for nearly a month after nearly a year of testimony in Britain’s longest terror trial. The men, all British citizens, were accused of plotting a series of attacks using more than 1,300 pounds of fertilizer they had placed in a storage unit.
Court-imposed restrictions prohibited reporters from revealing links between the men and the four 2005 suicide transit bombers until the case ended.
Counterterrorism officials acknowledged that intelligence that could have raised alarms before the July 7 transit attacks was never thoroughly investigated, explaining they were overwhelmed by seemingly more urgent threats.
A government security official gave one-on-one briefings with reporters toward the end of the trial, detailing the path that security agents had followed.
As agents monitoring the fertilizer plot listened in on a bug, they heard one of the July 7 bombers, Mohammed Siddique Khan, warn that he planned to kill non-Muslims, the security official said during the briefing, demanding anonymity to discuss sensitive details of the cases.
A tracking device was placed in Khan’s car a year before the 2005 suicide bombings and details of his phone calls and meetings with radicals were reported to Britain’s domestic spy agency, MI5, on at least four occasions, he said.
Khan also took militia training in Pakistan with at least some of the fertilizer plotters, a witness in the case and officials said.
But, lacking resources, MI5 never pieced together the shreds of intelligence, the official acknowledged.
“There needs to be that killer fact and it just wasn’t there,” he said, noting that Khan had used several aliases.
Mohammed Junaid Babar, an American FBI al-Qaida informant, had reported that a Briton using an alias _ later identified as Khan _ attended a Pakistan militia camp with al-Qaida linked radicals from Britain and the United States in 2003.
With accomplice Shehzad Tanweer, Khan visited Pakistan again in 2004.
A surveillance team recorded Khan and Tanweer during a 2004 operation to monitor the fertilizer plot _ bugging 100 phone lines, a vehicle and two houses. Agents also took pictures of Khan in the company of suspected terrorists.
As agents eavesdropped, Khan _ who called himself Milly _ warned he would join the “Arab mujahedeen to fight abroad.” But his threat was not uncommon or enough to prompt his arrest, the security official said.
In 2004, Babar told U.S. officials that Khan _ whom he recognized from a blurred surveillance photograph _ had sought meetings with al-Qaida leaders. But a tip to London authorities was too vague to prompt action, the official said.
Fellow transit bomber Germaine Lindsay’s phone number was later discovered among records in a separate plot officials still won’t discuss, he said. Only bomber Hasib Hussain was totally unknown.
“The government said there was no way of preventing what happened,” said Graham Foulkes, whose son David, 22, was killed by Khan’s bomb. “That was a lie.”
When the fertilizer gang were arrested in March 2004, police and MI5 uncovered 15 “essential” targets amid their associates _ those thought to be preparing imminent attacks on Britain.
Another 40 _ including Khan and Tanweer _ were ranked “desirable,” to be trailed when resources allowed.
Intelligence on Khan and his cell was pieced together only months after the attack, the official said _ when their identities and aliases were established. Charges against three alleged accomplices were leveled last month.
Links between plots appear to strengthen claims the July 7 attacks were directed by al-Qaida, a senior police official conceded, demanding anonymity to discuss the case.
Officials say since July 2005, six other planned terrorist strikes have been halted _ but that brings no comfort for Foulkes.
“The fact is,” he said. “A known terrorist was allowed to kill my son and 51 others.”
Iraq reconstruction ‘not working’
Six out of eight Iraqi reconstruction projects hailed as successes by the US government are in fact failures, a US federal investigation has found. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (Sigir) examined works including a hospital, a barracks and Baghdad international airport.
Blaming ongoing unrest and spiralling corruption they said most were falling apart within as little as six months.
Faulty plumbing and wiring and looting have reportedly worsened the situation.
Corruption amongst Iraqi officials is cited as one of the main causes for the chaos.
According to the report $5bn is lost annually to the fraud and abuse which “afflicts virtually every Iraqi ministry”, particularly the oil, interior and defence ministries.
Rise in violence
It also said that the continuing violence gripping Iraq was severely jeopardising the building and maintaining of facilities.
The US defence department says there are on average 1.4 attacks on critical electricity, water, oil and gas facilities each week.
And in addition “repair teams sent in after attacks continue to face threats, including kidnapping and murder,” the Sigir report says.
In a separate development, an annual state department report on global terrorism said that 45% of terror attacks around the world in 2006 took place in Iraq. The report said that worldwide there were 14,338 attacks, not including attacks on US troops in Iraq, a rise of 29% on the previous year.
Sigir was set up by the US Congress in 2004 after reports of widespread fraud and waste in US reconstruction efforts in Iraq.
It publishes quarterly reports on the situation, most of which have complained about a serious lack of progress despite almost $400bn (£200bn) having been spent.
Its latest report, published on Monday, is no different.
Long term concerns
Of the eight projects inspected, some just six months after being declared a success by the US officials, six were no longer functioning properly, the report said.
At Baghdad international airport the inspectors discovered that $11.8m had been spent on new electricity generators, but that already $8.6m-worth were not working.
It was a similar scene at a barracks built for special forces in Baghdad where four large generators, each costing $50,000, were not working.
And at a maternity and children’s hospital in Irbil a sophisticated oxygen distribution system was not used because staff did not trust it.
In the same hospital needles and bandages were tossed into the sewer system, which frequently blocked, because an incinerator installed to deal with such waste was not in use.
According to the report, this was “because those initially trained to operate the incinerator were no longer employed at the hospital” and because the door to the incinerator was padlocked and no-one knew who had the key.
And at a recruiting centre in the town of Hilla faulty wiring was rife and blocked drains had caused the bathrooms to warp, inspectors said.
The Sigir team said that the speed and scale of the deterioration was so bad that it was doubtful whether some of the projects would even survive.
“These first inspections indicate that the concerns… about the Iraqis sustaining our investments in these projects are valid,” Sigir chief Stuart Bowen said.
[BBC]
US snubs Russian request for joint moon exploration: space chief
The head of Russia’s space agency Sunday said the US has rebuffed an offer from Moscow to jointly explore the moon, while announcing a separate contract with NASA for nearly one billion dollars for the International Space Station. Roskosmos chief Anatoly Perminov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency that Russia had proposed pooling resources to explore the moon.
“We were ready to cooperate but for unknown reasons, the United States have said they will undertake this programme themselves,” he said.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in December said it envisaged setting up a manned base, possibly on the moon’s south pole, by around 2020, powered by sunlight and perhaps hydrogen and oxygen, with astronauts cruising over the lunar surface in pressurized rovers.
Perminov said Roskosmos had meanwhile signed with NASA a “contract for nearly one billion dollars” — an unprecedented sum — to supply cargo shuttles between now and 2011 for the US segment of the International Space Station.
The US-led ISS draws upon the scientific and technological resources of 16 nations: Canada, Japan, Russia, 11 nations of the European Space Agency and Brazil.
‘I was a little nervous’ at debate: Obama
COLUMBIA, S.C. — White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), known for his soaring rhetoric, stumbled during the first Democratic debate Thursday at South Carolina State University. “Last night I was a little nervous,” Obama said at a rally in Charleston on Friday, where he filled the gym at Burke High School.
Constrained by a 60-second limit for replies that worked against Obama’s speaking style — a very long windup to the pitch — his tendency to generalize meant he did not directly answer some questions. Even when asked something noncontroversial, what he personally did to improve the environment, he said 3,000 campaign volunteers planted trees on Earth Day. With a prod from moderator Brian Williams, the NBC anchor, Obama added he’s “been working” to install energy efficient light bulbs at home. He sounded out of touch.
Some examples:
• Obama failed to cast himself as a forceful commander in chief.
Obama was asked how he would “change the U.S. military stance overseas” if two U.S. cities were attacked by al-Qaida. After a reference to the botched response to Hurricane Katrina, he said “review how we operate in the event of not only a natural disaster, but also a terrorist attack.”
Contrast that with the reply from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) — her best during the 90-minute debate. “Retaliate,” she said. “Focus on those who have attacked us and do everything we can to destroy them.”
Obama knew he blew it because a few minutes later he added “enemies” of the U.S. “have to be hunted down.”
• • Obama did not use an opening he had to reassure Jewish voters about Israel.
On Tuesday, Obama spoke to the National Jewish Democratic Council in Washington. “My commitment to you is unwavering,” he told them. Obama heavily courts wealthy Jewish donors and some have questions about his Muslim ties. His campaign produced a 29-page “American-Israeli Relationship Issue Packet” on his views that an Obama staff fund-raiser was handing out at the NJDC conference.
The Rezko connection
Asked at the debate to name America’s three most important allies, Obama said the European Union, NATO and Japan. He added Israel at Williams’ prodding, a lapse that could hurt him with Jewish voters. • • Obama’s debate claim that the Iraq war could end with “one signature” from President Bush or “16 votes,” referring only to the Senate, is wrong.
Bush’s expected veto of the Iraq War funding bill — with timelines for troop withdrawals, can only be overridden by supermajorities in the Senate and the House.
• • Referring to Monday’s Sun-Times story, Williams asked Obama about his “questionable ties” to slumlord Tony Rezko. Obama replied that while a state senator, “The first bill I ever passed was campaign finance reform legislation.” He’s wrong. It was not his first bill.
Sun-Times Springfield Bureau Chief Dave McKinney reports that as a chief co-sponsor, Obama played an important role in passing that legislation May 22, 1998. Obama’s first bill passed on his own in the state Senate required the state’s community colleges to publish a directory of students with vocational and technical skills. That bill passed the Senate unanimously on March 13, 1997, and was signed by former Gov. Jim Edgar on Aug. 22, 1997.
Britain becoming a Big Brother society, says data watchdog
Britain is in danger of “committing slow social suicide” as such Big Brother techniques as surveillance cameras and recording equipment spread into every aspect of our lives, the nation’s information watchdog will warn this week.
A new report from Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, will say that the public needs to be made more aware of the “creeping encroachment” on civil liberties created by email monitoring, CCTV and computer tracking of our buying habits.
It is understood that one of the concerns in Mr Thomas’s report is the use of special listening devices which can be placed in lamp posts, street furniture and offices. These are already widely used in the Netherlands to combat crime and anti-social behaviour.
More than 300 of the cameras with built-in microphones have been fitted in benefit offices and city centres. The equipment can pick up aggressive tones on the basis of decibel level, pitch and speed at which words are spoken.
Westminster council has already started piloting the listening devices, but experts say the use of these microphones raises questions about how surveillance can be used to intrude into the private lives of citizens.
He will also call for greater regulation of companies that supply surveillance technology which provides “convenience or safety for the more affluent majority”, but not for the vulnerable such as children, immigrants and the elderly.
His warning comes as MPs launch their first inquiry into the impact of surveillance in Britain. The Home Affairs Select Committee will investigate the use of video cameras to monitor high streets and residential areas as well as the holding of personal information on both government and commercial databases.
On Tuesday, Mr Thomas, who last year warned that Britain was “sleepwalking into a surveillance society”, will tell the committee at its first hearing that new safeguards must be introduced to protect the public from the increasing intrusion of surveillance into their daily lives.
Civil liberty campaigners have already warned that Britain is becoming a Big Brother society where its citizens are increasingly being watched. There are more than four million CCTV cameras in this country, one for every 14 people, and the national DNA database which was set up by police to combat crime now holds 3.5 million profiles.
Failure Is Not An Option
There is no question that the war in Iraq is a very contentious issue to say the least. The level of violence in that country has skyrocketed to a level that is almost unprecedented in modern society. The takeover of Congress by the Democrats combined with the Presidential aspirations of some has turned the war in Iraq into a political football.
It is completely understandable that many are just tired of seeing our brave soldiers being killed, and simply want this war to end now. However, it is important to study the broader implications of a defeat in that part of the world or even a perceived defeat. We would undoubtedly be confirming the suspicions of Osama & Co. that the U.S. is a “paper tiger” that doesn’t have the stomach for any type of sustained conflict.
In 1998 Osama Bin Laden was asked by ABC report John Miller about the “Black Hawk Down” incident and the role of Al Qaeda in that attack. Bin Laden said this, “The youth were surprised at the low morale of the American soldiers and realized more than before that the American soldier was a paper tiger and after a few blows ran in defeat. And America forgot all the hoopla and media propaganda … about being the world leader and the leader of the New World Order, and after a few blows they forgot about this title and left, dragging their corpses and their shameful defeat.”
A precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would send a clear message to Al Qaeda and the rest of our enemies that the U.S. is indeed weak, and all it takes is 3,344 dead soldiers to make America fold like a cheap suit. The loss of every last one of those soldiers is a tragedy and they will be missed, but do you think they would have wanted to die for something we couldn’t even finish?
Chris J.
Keeping His Word, Spitzer Asks for Same-Sex-Marriage Law
ALBANY, April 27 — Gov. Eliot Spitzer proposed legislation on Friday that would make New York the second state in the country to legally sanction same-sex marriage, fulfilling a longtime pledge to supporters of gay rights.
Mr. Spitzer has acknowledged that he does not expect the bill to pass the State Legislature and return to his desk anytime soon. Earlier this week, he said that he would submit the proposal anyway, “because it’s a statement of principle that I believe in, and I want to begin that dynamic.”
Only Massachusetts currently allows same-sex marriages, a result of a 2004 court decision. Many states have taken steps to ban such unions through legislation or ballot initiatives, but Mr. Spitzer is the country’s only governor to propose legislation to formally legalize such marriages.
Whether or not the bill passes in these final weeks of the legislative session, Mr. Spitzer’s proposal is likely to make same-sex marriage a live issue in Albany in a way that it never was before.
Many members of the State Legislature have never taken a position on the issue, something that will be harder to avoid doing with the governor’s bill now a reality. So it was no surprise that the proposal immediately reignited what has been an emotional and bitter debate.
Gay rights advocates were effusive in their praise. “Promise made, promise kept,” said State Senator Thomas K. Duane, Democrat of Manhattan, who has introduced similar bills several times, including one this year.
Opponents lashed out, particularly from the ranks of religious conservatives. State Senator Rubén Díaz Sr., a Bronx Democrat and a Pentecostal minister, said that the governor’s proposal was “a slap in the face to the millions of New Yorkers who support the moral, legal and traditional definition of marriage as between man and woman.”
A spokesman for New York State Catholic Conference, the Roman Catholic Church’s official public policy arm in the state, said that New York’s bishops would strongly oppose the proposal.
“The governor said that on Day 1, everything changes. But we didn’t think that included society’s definition of marriage and traditional morality,” said the spokesman, Dennis Poust. “We think that in his first year to try and overturn the fundamental building block of society is the height of arrogance.”
This was Mr. Spitzer’s latest foray this week into the kind of sharply ideological, red-meat issues he had largely avoided during his first few months in office. It was also one of several proposals he has made recently that have met with a palpably cold reception from one or both chambers of the Legislature.
After the Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, the governor on Wednesday proposed new legislation to shore up the abortion rights guaranteed by state law. On Thursday, Mr. Spitzer asked state lawmakers to put legislative redistricting in the hands of an independent commission and to increase the pay of state judges, though the lawmakers themselves have not had a raise since 1999.
Joseph L. Bruno, the Republican majority leader of the State Senate, said: “In just the last week, Governor Spitzer has sent us bills dealing with gay marriage, abortion, court reform and reapportionment and campaign finance reform. While these proposals may fulfill campaign promises, they do not speak to the pressing needs of the majority of the people of this state.”
Mr. Bruno said lawmakers should focus on tax relief and reinstating the death penalty for killers of law enforcement officers, among other issues. Sheldon Silver, Democrat of Manhattan and the speaker of the Assembly, has not yet taken a position on same-sex marriage.
Befitting the bill’s poor prospects for passage — and the fact that the governor’s plan to propose it was well telegraphed — Mr. Spitzer did not stage any event to make his proposal. His staff issued a press release and a statement in the middle of the day, well after several gay-rights groups, alerted earlier to his plans, had issued their own statements praising the governor.
In his statement, Mr. Spitzer said that “this legislation would create equal legal protection and responsibilities for all individuals who seek to marry or have their marriage protected in the State of New York. Strong, stable families are the cornerstones of our society. The responsibilities inherent in the institution of marriage benefit those individuals and society as a whole.”
Under the bill, no application for a marriage license could be denied on the grounds that the parties were of the same sex. All rights, benefits, privileges and protections offered to spouses — including property ownership, inheritance, health care, hospital visitation, taxation, insurance coverage, child custody and pension benefits — would have to be offered to same-sex spouses, too. But no clergy member or religious institution would be required to perform such marriages.
Alan Van Capelle, the executive director of Empire State Pride Agenda, a leading gay-rights group, said, “I think that most legislators are astute enough to know that this was coming. They have formed opinions. We’re going to make sure that they hear from their constituents.”
Gay-rights groups had already scheduled a lobbying day in Albany next Tuesday, before this bill was announced.
Existing legislation to legalize same-sex marriage, sponsored this year and in years past by Senator Duane and other lawmakers, has the official support of only 61 members of the Assembly and 18 of the Senate, he noted.
“I think most legislators believe this will be a difficult issue for them to vote on,” Mr. Van Capelle said. “But in reality, there is enormous support in New York State for marriage equality, from people of faith, from organized labor, from the business community.”
[NY Times]
The White House Scales Back Talk of Iraq Progress
WASHINGTON, April 27 — The Bush administration will not try to assess whether the troop increase in Iraq is producing signs of political progress or greater security until September, and many of Mr. Bush’s top advisers now anticipate that any gains by then will be limited, according to senior administration officials.
In interviews over the past week, the officials made clear that the White House is gradually scaling back its expectations for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. The timelines they are now discussing suggest that the White House may maintain the increased numbers of American troops in Iraq well into next year.
That prospect would entail a dramatically longer commitment of frontline troops, patrolling the most dangerous neighborhoods of Baghdad, than the one envisioned in legislation that passed the House and Senate this week. That vote, largely symbolic because Democrats do not have the votes to override the promised presidential veto, set deadlines that would lead to the withdrawal of combat troops by the end of March 2008.
On Friday, during an appearance with Japan’s prime minister at Camp David, President Bush said that he would invite congressional leaders to the White House on Wednesday, immediately after his expected veto message, to talk about a “way forward.”
Several American officials who have spoken recently with Mr. Maliki say they believe that he would like to achieve the kind of political reconciliation that Mr. Bush outlined in January as the ultimate goal of the troop increase. But they say the Iraqi prime minister appears to have little ability to manage the required legislation, including bills requiring fair distribution of oil revenues among Iraq’s Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, and reversing the American-led de-Baathification that barred many Sunnis from participation in the new government.
Even as administration officials have been telling Congress that Mr. Bush would accept no time limits on success, they have been pushing Mr. Maliki to move faster.
“He is trying to fight fires coming from every direction,” Ryan C. Crocker, the newly arrived American ambassador to Iraq, said of Mr. Maliki this week, speaking by telephone. “We have to be clear to him on where our priorities are, so that we can buy him the time he needs. And we have to buy the time now because he is going to need it in the future.”
Mr. Crocker said that he had told Mr. Maliki that evidence of progress “is important in American terms” because “to sustain American support we have to be able to see that Iraqis are stepping up to hard challenges.”
But the new view of Mr. Maliki’s limitations was put bluntly by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, who spent the week pressing Congress not to put limits on either the timing or conduct of his operations, as he described what he discovered upon returning to Iraq after a two-year hiatus.
“He’s not the Prime Minister Tony Blair of Iraq,” General Petraeus said of Mr. Maliki on Thursday. “He does not have a parliamentary majority. He does not have his ministers in all of the different ministries,” and they “sometimes sound a bit discordant in their statements to the press and their statements to other countries. It’s a very, very challenging situation in which to lead.”
Mr. Bush was careful when he announced his new strategy in January to avoid public estimates of how quickly Mr. Maliki might take steps toward political reconciliation. Even now, White House officials are being careful not to describe with any precision the mix of benchmarks they expect Mr. Maliki to deliver.
By the time Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus complete a comprehensive assessment of progress in September, three months after the troop increase has been fully in place, American officials are hoping that some of the pieces of crucial legislation will have passed.
But Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates found himself pressing Mr. Maliki last week to keep Parliament from taking a two-month summer break. If lawmakers remain in Baghdad, said one senior American official who did not want to be identified because he was discussing internal White House deliberations, “we’ll have some outputs then.”
He added, “That’s different from having outcomes,” drawing a distinction between a sign of activity and a sign of success, which could take considerably longer.
In public, Mr. Bush has remained enthusiastic about Mr. Maliki, with whom he talks over a secure video link every few weeks. But Mr. Bush was also publicly supportive of several of Mr. Maliki’s predecessors, even though White House officials now dismiss many of them as ill-suited for the job.
In January, Mr. Bush characterized Mr. Maliki as an architect of the troop increase plan, even while telling visiting Congressional leaders that “I said to Maliki this has to work or you’re out,” according to two officials who were in the room. Pressed on why he thought the new strategy would succeed where previous efforts had failed, Mr. Bush shot back, “Because it has to.”
That, in short, is the same position he is taking now with Congress. In interviews, his aides said Mr. Bush is convinced that once he vetoes the troop funding plan, because of its timetable for withdrawal, he will have the upper hand in negotiations.
“There is a segmented market” among the Democrats, the senior American official said. “Harry Reid has declared the war is lost, but there are a lot of people in his own party who have said they do not agree. Some of them are telling us privately that if they see some progress by the fall they would support us, because they do want this to succeed.”
But the Democrats say that if there is no measurable success by August, they believe several more Republicans will defect from Mr. Bush’s camp and vote for a staged pullout. Moderate Republicans like Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who grudgingly backed the administration in the Senate vote this week, have said they are not willing to back an open-ended commitment.
Other Republicans have urged Mr. Bush to explain the political strategy more clearly, arguing that the troop increase is merely a tactic, and not one that can be sustained for long.
“We’ve tried that with the president several times,” said a Republican who spoke with him about the issue in the past week. “But he knows that it doesn’t pay to say what you expect Maliki to get done.”
[NY Times]
