The manager of Denny's Restaurant in Avon, Colorado (on I-70, past Vail, just before Eagle) is certain that two of the seven most wanted terrorists stopped in for salads Wednesday night. He says they were acting rude and obnoxious. They told him they were Iranian and driving from New York to the West coast. The manager says he had difficulty getting the FBI interested in his sighting.

We're not suprised. After Timothy McVeigh's photo and perp walk were published following the OKC bombing, there were hundreds of reports of sightings of him around Oklahoma City on the days leading up to the bombing. All of them were subsequently discredited.

Also, the al-Qaeda terrorists from 9/11 who came to this country in the months prior to the attacks reportedly were polite and obviously trained to avoid calling attention to themselves. These guys don't seem to fit the terrorist profile--only a Middle Eastern one. Cross-racial identification is a particular problem in eyewitness identifications.

How wise is it to tie up FBI agents with phone calls from anxious citizens instead of having them coordinate with Homeland Security and intelligence agencies to track the terrorists down and find them on their own? America's Most Wanted really is just a tv show, even if they occasionally get their suspect.

by TChris

Can deception turn a soldier into a slave? Former Denver Bronco Reggie Rivers argues that many U.S. soldiers never would have enlisted had they known that they would be sent to war under false pretenses.

And I don't think "slave" is too strong a word to describe someone who is not permitted to quit his job no matter how dangerous it becomes or how much he hates it. For most of us, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery and guaranteed that we have the right to withhold our labor. It doesn't protect soldiers.

Camilo Mejia learned that lesson when he refused to return to Iraq after deciding that he couldn't further an immoral war -- a very different campaign from the honorable and necessary war of liberation he was told he'd be fighting. Rather than participating in the violent occupation of Iraq, he's spending a year in prison for desertion. He may not be a slave, but he's sure not free.

According to Rivers, kids are induced to sign up for something that's very different from the reality in Iraq:

[O]ur kids get bombarded with formal and informal recruiting messages -- and they sign up. One day, they find themselves sitting in a Humvee in Iraq, with their best friend lying dead on the floor next to them, and they suddenly realize the deception of their recruitment and the shackles of their slavery.

As a general rule, if you're induced by a false representation to enter into a contract, you can get out of the contract. Should soldiers be entitled to ditch the military when they realize they've been sold a boat that doesn't float?

by TChris

Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer is being investigated in the death of Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, a top officer in Saddam Hussein's military at a Qaim detention facility on Nov. 26, 2003.

Mowhoush, who had turned himself in Nov. 10, died during an interrogation conducted by Welshofer and another officer, according to a summary of investigative reports obtained by The Denver Post. Investigators also are looking into whether "Other Governmental Agency" employees, a term often used to describe CIA officers, beat Mowhoush in the days before his death, according to the summary.

There isn't any doubt that the Geneva Conventions applied to Mowhoush, who was a military officer. Nor is there much doubt that the protections afforded by those agreements were ignored.

"It is estimated that MG Mowhoush was interrogated at least once each day he was in custody," the investigative summary says. "Approximately 24 to 48 hours prior to (Nov. 26), MG Mowhoush was questioned by (other governmental agency officials), and statements suggest that MG Mowhoush was beaten during that interrogation." A CIA spokeswoman declined to comment.

When Welshofer and his partner took over, they slid a sleeping bag over Mowhoush's head and rolled him from his back and to his stomach while asking questions, the documents allege. Then, Welshofer sat on Mowhoush's chest and placed his hands over the general's mouth, the report says. Mowhoush died during the interrogation, and both officers were reprimanded, the documents say.

The military later issued a press release stating that Mowhoush died of natural causes. No word yet on whether the investigation will affect the Welshofer's anticipated transfer to Fort Huachuca, Ariz., "to teach military intelligence."

NBC reports that experts doubt the credibility of Attorney General John Ashcroft's most recent terror threat announcement. Here's what Ashcroft said:

In warning Americans to brace for a possible attack, Ashcroft cited what he called “credible intelligence from multiple sources,” saying that “just after New Year's, al-Qaida announced openly that preparations for an attack on the United States were 70 percent complete.… After the March 11 attack in Madrid, Spain, an al-Qaida spokesman announced that 90 percent of the arrangements for an attack in the United States were complete.”

Here's what the experts are now saying:

There's no evidence a credible al-Qaida spokesman ever said that, and the claims actually were made by a largely discredited group, Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, known for putting propaganda on the Internet....The group has claimed responsibility for the power blackout in the Northeast last year, a power outage in London and the Madrid bombing. None of the claims was found to be credible.

A senior U.S. intelligence official previously told NBC News that this group has no known operational capability and may be no more than one man with a fax machine.

Ashcroft is now blaming the FBI for giving him the information.

Columnist Nat Hentoff recounts a Justice Department official's comment that the Government knows it is losing the fight over the Patriot Act.

by TChris

The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 (a/k/a Laci and Conner's Law, named after Laci Peterson and her unborn child) creates a separate crime when the victim of a federal crime is pregnant and the crime causes death or injury to "a child, who is in utero at the time the conduct takes place." For the most part, "the punishment for that separate offense is the same as the punishment provided under Federal law for that conduct had that injury or death occurred to the unborn child's mother." The law took effect on April 1 over the objection of critics who believe that equating the life of a woman to the life of her fetus is a sneaky way of undermining the right to abortion.

It turns out that the law has a salutary effect, although one not envisioned by the politicians who were eager to exploit Laci Peterson's death for their own political purposes. Relying on that law, a federal judge ruled that a pregnant Mexican woman who is alleged to have falsely claimed citizenship while entering the U.S. cannot be deported because her unborn child is a citizen and the government has no right to deport citizens.

The Constitution provides that every person born in the U.S. is a citizen of the U.S. The woman's child hasn't been born, but under Laci and Conner's Law, that's a minor technicality; if a child who hasn't been born enjoys the same legal protections as a child who has been born, shouldn't the unborn child also be entitled to citizenship? If so, the government can't deport the noncitizen without simultaneously deporting the citizen, something the government is powerless to do.

The judge's decision will likely be overturned on appeal, but by then, the child will have been born and there will be no dispute about citizenship. The child, at least, will be entitled to stay in the country with its citizen father.

by TChris

Concerned about your privacy? You should be. Despite the Bush administration's asserted desire (back in 2002) to protect privacy by appointing a "privacy czar" to oversee each federal agency's "privacy advocate," the administration is more concerned about its own privacy than yours.

First there was the Patriot Act. Government agents can sneak into your home, snoop, and never tell you they were there. (TalkLeft recently reported on the use of the Patriot Act to seek evidence against Brandon Mayfield.) Then there were aborted attempts to implement the Total Information Awareness Project (TalkLeft coverage here) and DARPA's plan to spy on entire cities using blimps (TalkLeft coverage here). And then there's Matrix, the floundering attempt to create a crime-fighting database (TalkLeft coverage here).

Now the GAO tells us that the federal government has more than 120 programs to collect and analyze personal data so they can predict the behavior of individuals. According to Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI), who asked for the GAO study:

"I am disturbed by the high number of data mining activities in the federal government involving personal information. The federal government collects and uses Americans' personal information and shares it with other agencies to an astonishing degree, raising serious privacy concerns."

Cynthia Webb has a good overview of privacy issues in the federal government. Meanwhile, where's the privacy czar that the administration promised back in 2002? Democrats are still trying to find one.

by TChris

More than 600 detainees were released from Abu Ghraib today, to the joy of their families, friends, and supporters.

Raising their voices in slow, melodic chants of "God is Greater," hundreds of Iraqis took over a highway in front of Abu Ghraib prison today to greet busloads of men freed from months of detention. Women wept and clung to each other as they strained to glimpse husbands or sons through the dusty windows of each bus that bounced along the dirt road leading out of the prison and rolled past them onto the highway. Men whistled and pumped their fists into the air in a show of solidarity.

The emotional scene at the prison was a testament to the extent that Iraqis have banded together in their outrage over the abuse, which Iraqi citizens have said reminded them of the treatment prisoners suffered under Saddam Hussein.

About 3,000 detainees remain, down from a high of 7,000. Most have been held without charges. More are expected to be released before June 30.

by TChris

Pennsylvania's prisons seem to be having management problems. From Westmoreland County:

Westmoreland County's prison warden was threatened with a contempt hearing and a potential involuntary stay in his own building Thursday over repeated failures to release an inmate on work release. Warden John Walton said he attempted to comply with the court orders but was looking after the county's financial interests when a self-employed inmate didn't have any workplace insurance.

Here's a clue, Warden: that's a problem for the judge to worry about. Your job is to follow the judge's orders, not to ignore them because you think it's in the county's "best interests" to do so.

From Fayette County, a problem that involved a corrections officer, rather than an inmate:

Fayette County has reached a nearly $16,000 settlement with a correctional officer who was temporarily fired 10 years ago for urinating in a prison office. William Prinkey, 48, who was dismissed in 1994 after relieving himself at his duty post when he was denied a restroom break, will receive $15,800.

When ya gotta go, ya gotta go.

by TChris

Add one more name to the list of wrongly convicted prisoners: Randy Steidl.

Steidl, 52, of Paris, Ill., spent a dozen years on death row for the murder of Paris newlyweds Dyke and Karen Rhoads and about five additional years after he was resentenced in 1999 to life in prison.

An Illinois State Police detective concluded four years ago that Steidl and a second Paris man convicted in the case, Herbert Whitlock, were innocent and that strong evidence linked an unnamed individual to the murders.

A federal judge ordered a new trial for Steidl after concluding that a jury would probably have acquitted him if his lawyer had done a better job. Developments after the trial also provided reason to question Steidl's guilt. A prosecution witness who said she saw Steidl killing the couple has recanted, and new DNA testing supports his innocence.

As is typical, the prosecutor in the case refuses to concede that he prosecuted an innocent man. Nonetheless, the prosecutor filed a motion asking that the charges be dismissed because he deems it impossible to pull together enough evidence to secure a conviction within the 120 day window during which (according to the federal judge's order) the state must either retry Steidl or set him free. He says -- presumably to save face -- that the case will require more investigation and that the charges will eventually be refiled. Translation: "I hope that after awhile everybody forgets about this case."

Whitlock is still in prison, but his lawyer is hopeful that these developments will eventually lead to Whitlock's freedom as well.

More about the Stanford study in 1971 showing inmate abuse in the U.S. much like that at Abu Ghraib. The lesson: What happened at Abu Ghraib was predictable--and therefore (in our view) preventable. There's even a name for the syndrome: The "Lord of the Flies Effect."

It's 2:30 a.m. Bored prison guards pull prisoners from their cells, strip them naked, chain them together and force them to simulate sodomy. The guards know someone is recording their activities, but they don't let concerns about future consequences interfere with the degradation and abuse. Sound familiar? It might sound like abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, but these pictures were taken over 30 years ago — at Stanford University.

In 1971 a group of 24 college men volunteered to act as either guards or prisoners in an experimental prison. Under the watchful eye of Dr. Philip Zimbardo, esteemed professor of psychology and former president of the American Psychological Foundation, volunteers went through several rounds of testing to ensure psychological and physical health and "normalcy." They were then designated either guards or prisoners by the simple flip of a coin.

[Ed. Date of study corrected]

Not only are 1 in every 75 men in the U.S. in jail, but the rate in some states is dramatically higher than in others. Who leads? Texas...not just in the number of texecutions but also in the number of inmates:

A federal study released Thursday shows that Texas led the nation in the number of inmates incarcerated in state prisons and county jails in June 2003.
Texas had 164,222 inmates on the last day of that month, about 800 more than California. The Texas inmate population was up by 4.2 percent, or 6,578 inmates, from June 2002, according to the study by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Texas' June 2003 incarceration rate also was the highest in the nation, with 692 inmates per 100,000 population. Mississippi ran a close second with an incarceration rate of 688 per 100,000 residents.....Overall, the report said the nation's federal, state and local prisons and jails were holding more than 2 million people on June 30, 2003, the largest number in four years.

Here's DOJ's Press Release on the report.

America. Prison Nation.