History > 2011 > USA > FBI (I)

In Dark Brooklyn Doorway,

Officer Confronts Gunman, and Dies

December 12, 2011
The New York Times
By MICHAEL WILSON

The 911 caller reported a robbery in progress early Monday, and the first officers who arrived at the Brooklyn basement apartment found a tenant bloodied from a beating. They had no idea that the robbers were still there, hiding in a dark room behind them.

The robbers, in turn, did not know that backup was on the way, and so when they moved to slip out of the apartment unnoticed, they were met by two more police officers. Everyone was surprised, and in the frame of a darkened door, one robber raised a pistol and fired, striking an officer in the face, the police said.

The officer, Peter J. Figoski, 47, of West Babylon, N.Y., died five hours later at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center. His four daughters had been rushed to his side; two had been hurried aboard police helicopters at colleges in upstate New York.

The police identified the gunman as Lamont Pride, 27, a felon who served a prison term in North Carolina and was wanted by the authorities there for a shooting in August. He was arrested on a drug charge in Brooklyn in November but released.

Officer Figoski served 22 years with the New York Police Department. He was sworn in amid the crack-cocaine epidemic of the late 1980s and early 1990s and witnessed plummeting crime rates. His death at the barrel of a semi-automatic Ruger pistol, the same kind of gun used in the 1993 shootings on the Long Island Rail Road and the sort of firearm that continues to vex the city, served as a reminder of those days, and of the way an officer’s routine shift can end in an instant.

The shooting, the first fatal one in more than four years, revived the familiar mechanics that follow an on-duty death. Some grieving officers — many who did not know Officer Figoski — rushed to the hospital, while others pulled black bunting out from storage at the station house where he had spent his entire career.

Officer Figoski’s partner, Officer Glenn Estrada, had been struggling outside the basement apartment with a second robber when he heard the shot and saw the gunman run, the police said; Officer Estrada chased the gunman on a zigzag sprint of four blocks and arrested him.

The second suspect was still at large several hours later; the police released video footage of him calmly strolling on a nearby sidewalk minutes after the shooting.

The events leading to the shooting began at 2:15 a.m., when the two robbers pounded on the basement door of 25 Pine Street, a two-story home, claiming they were police officers. The owner, who lives upstairs, called 911. Neighbors told the police that both intruders were armed. The area, in Cypress Hills, is known as a relatively quiet pocket of a busy precinct that includes East New York; officers once called the precinct “the killing fields.”

The men entered the apartment, which was narrow and messy. The building’s oil tank, marked with graffiti, was in the hallway, under a bare light bulb. They confronted the tenant, a 25-year-old bodega worker who lived in a cramped bedroom, and demanded money, the police said the tenant had told them. Mr. Pride, wearing a ski mask, forced the tenant to the floor, he told detectives, then pistol-whipped him and took his watch as well as $770 in cash. The police said they were investigating whether the money might have come from drug-dealing.

The robbers moved deeper into the apartment, looking for a way out and finding none, the police said. One of them is believed to have stashed his revolver — an unloaded black Smith and Wesson that was jammed — in a dirty microwave oven in the kitchen, where officers found it later.

The robbers turned and headed back the way they had come, presumably stepping over the bleeding tenant. He later told the police that he knew the officers were close by when he heard the crackle of their radios. The robbers may have heard them too, and ducked into a dark room with tools and debris close to the front door. A neighbor walked in to care for the wounded tenant.

Two officers entered and saw the neighbor standing over the tenant, and they hurried to them, not knowing whether the neighbor was an attacker. They probably did not even notice the door to the room where the robbers were hiding, the police said.

Backup officers arrived: Officers Figoski and Estrada, who had been partners for several years. Both had been given commendations: Officer Figoski was awarded a medal for recovering a gun during an arrest in a livery cab robbery; Officer Estrada received a congratulatory letter after a driver in a traffic stop offered him $100 to walk away and he arrested the driver on bribery charges.

One of the robbers emerged from the room and ran outside, where Officer Estrada confronted him. They fought in front of the building while Officer Figoski came upon Mr. Pride trying to make his escape. Mr. Pride fired, the police said, and a single round struck Officer Figoski below his left eye; it exited from the back of his head. Officer Figoski left behind a bloody palm print on the wall, perhaps seeking to steady himself as he fell. A small pin with the number 75, for his precinct, fell from his uniform to the ground.

Mr. Pride ran and Officer Estrada chased him, south on Pine and around three corners, before he was apprehended. His gun, which contained 10 bullets but had jammed, was found under a nearby car, near a black ski mask, the police said.

According to a transcript of Mr. Pride’s court hearing after his arrest on a drug charge in November, Justice Evelyn Laporte of Brooklyn Criminal Court was told that there was an active warrant for his arrest in connection with a shooting in North Carolina, but she released him without bail. According to David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the state court system, the warrant appeared to say that North Carolina would not seek his extradition if he were arrested outside that state.

A law enforcement spokeswoman in Greensboro, N.C., disputed that.

“It is our understanding, based on conversations with the district attorney’s office, that we had a warrant with full extradition that was in place at the end of September,” said Susan Danielsen, a spokeswoman for the Greensboro Police Department, adding that a New York police detective had notified the Greensboro police of Mr. Pride’s arrest.

“We had intended to travel to New York to pick him up and bring him back to North Carolina,” Ms. Danielsen said.

The last New York City police officer killed in the line of duty was Alain Schaberger, 42, who died on March 13 when he was pushed over a railing during a domestic violence episode in Brooklyn. The last officer fatally shot in the line of duty was Russel Timoshenko, 23, during a traffic stop in Brooklyn on July 9, 2007.

After Officer Figoski’s shooting, the State Police rushed to his two older daughters, at colleges in Plattsburgh and Oneonta. They were flown in helicopters to Albany. There, they boarded a police airplane to Kennedy International Airport, where officers met them and sped them to the hospital.

Officer Figoski’s younger daughters are in high school. He and their mother are divorced.

The police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg praised Officer Figoski’s career, with more than 200 arrests, about half for felonies.

Mr. Bloomberg called the shooting a “horrible, depraved criminal attack.”

 

Reporting was contributed by Matt Flegenheimer, Andy Newman, Noah Rosenberg, Mosi Secret and Nate Schweber. Toby Lyles contributed research.

    In Dark Brooklyn Doorway, Officer Confronts Gunman, and Dies, NYT, 12.12.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/nyregion/at-scene-of-brooklyn-robbery-a-police-dept-veteran-is-fatally-shot.html

Informer’s Role in Terror Case Is Said to Have Deterred F.B.I.

November 21, 2011
The New York Times
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

The suspect had little money to speak of, was unable to pay his cellphone bill and scrounged for money to buy the drill bits that court papers said he required to make his pipe bombs. Initially, he had trouble drilling the small holes that needed to be made in the metal tubes.

The suspect, Jose Pimentel, according to several people briefed on the case, would seek help from a neighbor in Upper Manhattan as well as a confidential informer. That informer provided companionship and a staging area so Mr. Pimentel, a Muslim convert, could build three pipe bombs while the Intelligence Division of the New York Police Department built its case.

But it was the informer’s role, and that of his police handlers, that have now been cited as among the reasons the F.B.I., which had its own parallel investigation of Mr. Pimentel, did not pursue the case, which was announced on Sunday night in a news conference at City Hall. Terrorism cases are generally handled by federal authorities.

There was concern that the informer might have played too active a role in helping Mr. Pimentel, said several people who were briefed on the case, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity, either because of the tense relations between the Intelligence Division and the F.B.I. or because the case was continuing.

Some of those officials said the state’s prosecution of Mr. Pimentel was strong enough to most likely gain a conviction, emphasizing that Mr. Pimentel, who was nearing completion of the pipe bombs, had to be arrested.

But there are other issues that could complicate the case, in which Mr. Pimentel has been charged with criminal possession of a weapon in the first degree as a crime of terrorism, for which he could face 25 years to life in prison if convicted, and other charges, including conspiracy as a crime of terrorism.

Mr. Pimentel, 27, who lived with his uncle in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood after his mother threw him out recently, appears to be unstable, according to several of the people briefed on the case, three of whom said he had tried to circumcise himself.

And Mr. Pimentel, several of the people said, also smoked marijuana with the confidential informant, and some recordings in which he makes incriminating statements were made after the men had done so. His lawyer, Joseph Zablocki, did not return a call on Monday seeking comment.

Asked about the F.B.I.’s concerns, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said: “I’ve never heard that issue about the C.I. at all. I don’t think the person telling you that is familiar with the investigation.”

“It sounds like some people speaking anonymously who are not particularly familiar with the case are trying to undermine it,” he added, suggesting that the evidence in the case was considerable. “The fact remains that the words and actions of the suspect speak for themselves.”

Intelligence Division detectives have had Mr. Pimentel, a native of the Dominican Republic and naturalized American citizen, under surveillance for more than two years and made more than 400 hours of secret recordings, but his efforts to make the pipe bombs did not develop until mid-October, according to the criminal complaint against him.

The news conference at City Hall on Sunday night was the second time in six months that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; his police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly; and Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, announced the break-up of what Mr. Kelly cast as a major terrorism case that federal authorities had chosen not to pursue.

In the earlier case, in May, the police and the district attorney’s office, using undercover officers, had discovered a terrorist plot in which two men were set on bombing synagogues and churches. But a grand jury declined to bring charges of second-degree conspiracy as a crime of terrorism and as a hate crime, the top charges sought against the two men, Ahmed Ferhani and Mohamed Mamdouh.

In the current case, federal agents were first told of Mr. Pimentel about a year ago, or more, when the Police Department’s Intelligence Division asked the F.B.I.-N.Y.P.D. Joint Terrorism Task Force, staffed with police detectives and federal agents, if they wanted to pursue a case.

Then, in recent days and weeks, the Intelligence Division again approached federal agents when it became apparent that Mr. Pimentel had begun building a bomb. But the federal government again declined.

As late as Saturday, after Mr. Pimentel was arrested, the Intelligence Division invited the task force to interview Mr. Pimentel and view the partially constructed incendiary device, a person briefed on the investigation said.

In the task force, investigators were concerned that the case raised some entrapment questions, two people said. They added that some investigators wondered whether Mr. Pimentel had the even small amount of money or technical know-how necessary to produce a pipe bomb on his own, had he not received help from the informer.

A spokesman for the New York F.B.I. office, Timothy Flannelly, said that the task force was consulted regarding the New York police investigation into Mr. Pimentel, and that the decision was made to take the case to the Manhattan district attorney.

One federal law enforcement official said the tensions between competing agencies could sometimes obscure what he said was their primary goal. “There is an overarching important good picture to this which is the whole point of what we do — trying to keep people safe and protect them,” the official said.

There is a practical advantage to bringing the case in New York State court: state prosecutors said they were allowed to charge Mr. Pimentel with a conspiracy, even if he were acting with just the informant; federal law does not permit charging such a conspiracy.

The Police Department became aware of Mr. Pimentel in May 2009, when it was told by a police department in the Albany area that he was speaking about plans to go to Yemen for terrorism training and then to return to the United States, Mr. Browne said.

He said Mr. Pimentel’s talk did not “turn to action” until recently; Mr. Kelly, at the Sunday news conference, said Mr. Pimentel clearly “jacked up his speed after the elimination” of the Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by an American drone strike in September.

At the building where Mr. Pimentel lived on West 137th Street, his uncle said Sunday that the only recent change he noticed in his nephew was his conversion to Islam. On Monday, Mr. Pimentel’s mother, Carmen Sosa, apologized to the city — “I’m sorry about my son,” she said at one point as she faced reporters in the hallway of the apartment building. She also thanked the police.

But she said, in Spanish, “My son is not a terrorist.” She added, in English, “My son was like an normal boy, like a normal guy.”

“He likes the way of the Muslims,” she said, explaining that he had converted from Roman Catholicism. She also said: “In the beginning, he wasn’t fanatic. He was a regular Muslim.”

Reporters asked her if her son had ever talked about Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden or had ever said he wanted to harm American soldiers, as the criminal complaint said. She answered each question no.

Some in the neighborhood described Mr. Pimentel as a somewhat solitary figure who at times appeared to be lost in his own thoughts. At the Cachet barber shop on 138th Street and Broadway, people said he would sit on a bench there for hours without talking. “He’s like a zombie; he’s in limbo all the time,” Ralphie Sanchez, 59, said.

One reporter asked Mr. Pimentel’s mother if her son had deserved to be arrested. “Deserves is a strong word,” she said. “It’s difficult to say. Justice has to be done.”

 

Reporting was contributed by James Barron, Matt Flegenheimer,

Colin Moynihan and Scott Shane.

    Informer’s Role in Terror Case Is Said to Have Deterred F.B.I., NYT, 21.11.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/nyregion/for-jose-pimentel-bomb-plot-suspect-an-online-trail.html

Scientists’ Analysis Disputes F.B.I. Closing of Anthrax Case

October 9, 2011
The New York Times
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and SCOTT SHANE

A decade after wisps of anthrax sent through the mail killed 5 people, sickened 17 others and terrorized the nation, biologists and chemists still disagree on whether federal investigators got the right man and whether the F.B.I.’s long inquiry brushed aside important clues.

Now, three scientists argue that distinctive chemicals found in the dried anthrax spores — including the unexpected presence of tin — point to a high degree of manufacturing skill, contrary to federal reassurances that the attack germs were unsophisticated. The scientists make their case in a coming issue of the Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense.

F.B.I. documents reviewed by The New York Times show that bureau scientists focused on tin early in their eight-year investigation, calling it an “element of interest” and a potentially critical clue to the criminal case. They later dropped their lengthy inquiry, never mentioned tin publicly and never offered any detailed account of how they thought the powder had been made.

The new paper raises the prospect — for the first time in a serious scientific forum — that the Army biodefense expert identified by the F.B.I. as the perpetrator, Bruce E. Ivins, had help in obtaining his germ weapons or conceivably was innocent of the crime.

Both the chairwoman of a National Academy of Science panel that spent a year and a half reviewing the F.B.I.’s scientific work and the director of a new review by the Government Accountability Office said the paper raised important questions that should be addressed.

Alice P. Gast, president of Lehigh University and the head of the academy panel, said that the paper “points out connections that deserve further consideration.”

Dr. Gast, a chemical engineer, said the “chemical signatures” in the mailed anthrax and their potential value to the criminal investigation had not been fully explored. “It just wasn’t pursued as vigorously as the microbiology,” she said, alluding to the analysis of micro-organisms. She also noted that the academy panel suggested a full review of classified government research on anthrax, which her panel never saw.

In interviews, the three authors said their analysis suggested that the F.B.I. might have pursued the wrong suspect and that the case should be reopened. Their position may embolden calls for a national commission to investigate the first major bioterrorist attack in American history.

But other scientists who reviewed the paper said they thought the tin might be a random contaminant, not a clue to complex processing. And the Justice Department has not altered its conclusion that the deadly letters were mailed by Dr. Ivins, an Army anthrax specialist who worked at Fort Detrick, Md., and killed himself in 2008 as prosecutors prepared to charge him.

Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, said the paper provided “no evidence whatsoever that the spores used in the mailings were produced” at a location other than Fort Detrick. He said investigators believe Dr. Ivins grew and dried the anthrax spores himself.

“Speculation regarding certain characteristics of the spores is just that — speculation,” Mr. Boyd said. “We stand by our conclusion.”

The tin is surprising because it kills micro-organisms and is used in antibacterial products. The authors of the paper say its presence in the mailed anthrax suggests that the germs, after cultivation and drying, got a specialized silicon coating, with tin as a chemical catalyst. Such coatings, known in industry as microencapsulants, are common in the manufacture of drugs and other products.

“It indicates a very special processing, and expertise,” said Martin E. Hugh-Jones, lead author of the paper and a world authority on anthrax at Louisiana State University. The deadly germs sent through the mail to news organizations and two United States senators, he added, were “far more sophisticated than needed.”

In addition to Dr. Hugh-Jones, the authors of the new paper are Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a biologist, and Stuart Jacobsen, a chemist; both have speculated publicly about the case and criticized the F.B.I. for years.

In 2008, days after Dr. Ivins’s suicide, the bureau made public a sweeping but circumstantial case against him. Last year, the bureau formally closed the case, acknowledging that some scientific questions were unanswered but asserting that the evidence against Dr. Ivins was overwhelming.

Investigators found that the microbiologist had worked unusual late-night hours in his lab in the days before each of the two known anthrax mailings in September and October 2001; that he often mailed letters and packages under assumed names; that he had a history of homicidal threats and spoke of “Crazy Bruce” as a personality that did things he later could not remember.

Dr. Ivins had hidden from family and friends an obsession with a sorority — Kappa Kappa Gamma — with an office near the Princeton, N.J., mailbox where the letters were mailed. The F.B.I. recorded Dr. Ivins’s speaking ambiguously to a friend that he did “not have any recollection” of mailing the letters, that he was “not a killer at heart” and that “I, in my right mind, wouldn’t do it.”

Yet no evidence directly tied Dr. Ivins to the crime. Some of the scientist’s former colleagues have argued that he could not have made the anthrax and that investigators hounded a troubled man to death. They noted that the F.B.I. pursued several other suspects, most notoriously another former Army scientist, Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, whom the bureau eventually exonerated and paid a $4.6 million legal settlement.

In its report last February, the National Academy of Sciences panel sharply criticized some of the F.B.I.’s scientific work, saying the genetic link between the attack anthrax and a supply in Dr. Ivins’s lab was “not as conclusive” as the bureau asserted.

If the authors of the new paper are correct about the silicon-tin coating, it appears likely that Dr. Ivins could not have made the anthrax powder alone with the equipment he possessed, as the F.B.I. maintains. That would mean either that he got the powder from elsewhere or that he was not the perpetrator.

If Dr. Ivins did not make the powder, one conceivable source might be classified government research on anthrax, carried out for years by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency. Dr. Ivins had ties to several researchers who did such secret work.

The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, is conducting its own review of the anthrax evidence. Nancy Kingsbury, the official overseeing the project, said the agency had spoken with the paper’s authors and judged that “their questions are reasonable.”

Beyond the world of forensics, tin is a humdrum additive used to kill micro-organisms in products like paint, wood preservatives and even toothpaste. But microbiologists say that the nutrients and additives used to grow Bacillus anthracis, the anthrax bacteria, are typically free of tin.

So in late 2002, when the F.B.I. found significant quantities of tin in the mailed powders, it set out to find its source. By 2003, the bureau was calling tin “an element of interest” — echoing its terminology for human suspects — according to disclosures culled from 9,600 pages of F.B.I. documents by The Times.

Over the years, the bureau performed hundreds of tests to explore tin’s use in microbiology and significance in the attack germs. It also hunted for clues to how the spores had become laced with silicon, which the United States had used decades ago as a coating in germ weapons. In 2005, scientists at an internal F.B.I. symposium called tin a possible fingerprint of the attack germs.

After that, the forensic clue disappeared from public discussion, except for a passing mention in a 2009 press release. “Although the chemical fingerprint of the spores is interesting,” the release said, “it was not relevant to the investigation.”

In the end, the F.B.I. — without alluding to its private tin labors — declared publicly that the attack germs had no special coating, saying that conclusion supported its finding that Dr. Ivins had grown and dried the spores alone, using standard equipment in his lab at Fort Detrick.

Several anthrax scientists who reviewed the new paper at the request of The Times said they believed it neglected the possibility that the tin and silicon were meaningless contaminants rather than sophisticated additives.

Johnathan L. Kiel, a retired Air Force scientist who worked on anthrax for many years, said that the spores “pick up everything” and that the silicon might be residue of a commercial product used on laboratory glassware to keep spores from sticking. He said tin might even be picked up from metal lab containers, though he has not tested that idea.

“It doesn’t have to be some super-secret process,” Dr. Kiel said. Other experts suggested that the tin might have come from anti-foam products, disinfectants or water.

The trouble with such conjecture is that the F.B.I. spent years testing for tin in microbiology lab supplies — and reported none, according to bureau documents.

Dr. Gast, the head of the National Academy of Sciences panel, noted that her group strongly recommended that future investigations of the attacks examine the government’s classified work on anthrax.

She called access to secret records “an important aspect of providing more clarity on what we know and what we don’t know.”

    Scientists’ Analysis Disputes F.B.I. Closing of Anthrax Case, NYT, 9.10.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/science/10anthrax.html

Dozens Arrested in Drug Raid at Pa. Boeing Plant

September 29, 2011
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Federal agents on Thursday raided a Boeing plant that makes military helicopters in a Philadelphia suburb and charged more than three dozen people with distributing or trying to get prescription drugs, among them powerful painkillers.

The arrests were made by the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration at the 5,400-employee plant in Ridley Park, where workers build aircraft including the H-47 Chinook helicopter and the V-22 Osprey. The plant is part of Boeing's Defense, Space and Security unit.

It did not appear to be an organized drug ring, but rather a "nebulous" series of independent actors, authorities said.

"These sales placed the individual abusers, as well as society at large, at risk," said DEA agent Vito S. Guarino.

All but one of the 37 people charged were current or former Boeing employees, U.S. Attorney Zane Memeger said at a news conference. He did not know what kind of jobs they had and said he wasn't aware of any accidents or problems involving aircraft made by the suspects.

Indictments were unsealed charging 23 people with illegal distribution of a prescription drug, federal prosecutors said. In addition, 14 others were charged with attempted possession of the various drugs — including the painkillers fentanyl, oxycodone and others — allegedly being sold by their co-workers. Prosecutors said all but one of those charged had been arrested, but they declined to comment on the status of the 37th.

Boeing informed authorities of their suspicions about drug activity on the property after an internal investigation, company spokesman Damien Mills said in a statement.

"Boeing commends the U.S. Attorney's Office, and other federal law enforcement agencies for their rigorous and thorough investigation, throughout which we took appropriate steps to ensure safety of our employees and the absolute integrity and quality of the products we produce for our customers," the statement read.

Employees are tested if they're suspected of being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, the statement said.

A man who answered the telephone at the union for workers at the plant declined to comment. A message left for a spokeswoman for the Department of Defense was not immediately returned.

Prosecutors said they don't think there was any connection between the drug arrests and a 2008 error at the plant.

In November that year, Boeing temporarily shut down two production lines that make the Chinook and Osprey after a plastic cap was found in the fuel line of an in-production Osprey. Boeing later submitted a corrective action plan and restarted production.

In May that year, the factory was shut down when a disgruntled employee used his work-issued wire cutters to sever about 70 electrical wires in a nearly finished Chinook. That employee, Matthew Montgomery, of Trevose, pleaded guilty to destroying property under contract to the government. Authorities said he was upset about a job transfer.

___

Associated Press writer Randy Pennell contributed to this report.

    Dozens Arrested in Drug Raid at Pa. Boeing Plant, NYT, 29.9.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/09/29/business/AP-US-Aircraft-Plant-Raid.html

New Push for Help in Solving a Prosecutor’s 2001 Murder

September 28, 2011
The New York Times
By WILLIAM YARDLEY

SEATTLE — Ten years after a federal prosecutor here was shot to death while sitting at a computer in his basement, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and other federal law enforcement officials announced a new effort on Wednesday to seek public help in the investigation through a multimedia advertising campaign.

The prosecutor, Thomas C. Wales, 49, was killed late on the night of Oct. 11, 2001, by a gunman who investigators said stood in Mr. Wales’s backyard in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle and fired through a window.

Law enforcement officials say they have investigated several suspects, pursued more than 15,000 leads and meticulously traced and tested copies of a rare type of gun barrel used in the shooting. But they still have not solved the crime. A $1 million reward remains in place.

Investigators have not publicly identified a motive for the killing. If Mr. Wales, who was an assistant United States attorney, was killed in retaliation for his work, he would be the first federal prosecutor killed in the line of duty. He also was president of a group that campaigned against gun violence.

“Although this case remains unsolved and Tom’s killer remains unknown, our resolve to uncover the truth and to help Tom’s family, friends and colleagues and neighbors find the answers and find the closure that they deserve, that has never been stronger,” Mr. Holder said.

Officials also sought the public’s help around the time of the fifth anniversary of the killing in 2006. This time, the government is placing newspaper, radio, television and Internet advertisements as well as buying space on billboards. A special Web site was to go up late Wednesday.

“This is still not a cold case,” Greg Fowler, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s office in Portland, Ore., said in an interview on Wednesday.

“The case team works every day on this,” said Mr. Fowler, who is now overseeing the inquiry. “It’s their full-time job.”

He said that “some investigative considerations, which I’m not prepared to discuss,” played a role in the new public push for information, “but for the most part it’s timed to the anniversary.”

“Hopefully, this will stir something in people’s minds or spark a memory,” he said.

For years, a principal suspect in the case was a commercial airline pilot who was among four people Mr. Wales indicted on conspiracy and fraud charges in 2000. The next year, the government dismissed that case after the defendants pleaded guilty to charges related to the sale of a military helicopter. The pilot sued for legal fees four months before Mr. Wales was killed. The lawsuit was later dismissed.

Mr. Fowler would not say whether the pilot remained under investigation. Larry Setchell, a lawyer for the pilot, would not comment.

    New Push for Help in Solving a Prosecutor’s 2001 Murder, NYT, 28.9.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/us/new-push-to-solve-prosecutor-thomas-waless-murder-in-seattle.html

Even Those Cleared of Crimes

Can Stay on F.B.I.’s Watch List

September 27, 2011
The New York Times
By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — The Federal Bureau of Investigation is permitted to include people on the government’s terrorist watch list even if they have been acquitted of terrorism-related offenses or the charges are dropped, according to newly released documents.

The files, released by the F.B.I. under the Freedom of Information Act, disclose how the police are instructed to react if they encounter a person on the list. They lay out, for the first time in public view, the legal standard that national security officials must meet in order to add a name to the list. And they shed new light on how names are vetted for possible removal from the list.

Inclusion on the watch list can keep terrorism suspects off planes, block noncitizens from entering the country and subject people to delays and greater scrutiny at airports, border crossings and traffic stops.

The database now has about 420,000 names, including about 8,000 Americans, according to the statistics released in connection with the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. About 16,000 people, including about 500 Americans, are barred from flying.

Timothy J. Healy, the director of the F.B.I.’s Terrorist Screening Center, which vets requests to add or remove names from the list, said the documents showed that the government was balancing civil liberties with a careful, multilayered process for vetting who goes on it — and for making sure that names that no longer need to be on it came off.

“There has been a lot of criticism about the watch list,” claiming that it is “haphazard,” he said. “But what this illustrates is that there is a very detailed process that the F.B.I. follows in terms of nominations of watch-listed people.”

Still, some of the procedures drew fire from civil liberties advocates, including the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which made the original request and provided the documents to The New York Times.

The 91 pages of newly disclosed files include a December 2010 guidance memorandum to F.B.I. field offices showing that even a not-guilty verdict may not always be enough to get someone off the list, if agents maintain they still have “reasonable suspicion” that the person might have ties to terrorism.

“If an individual is acquitted or charges are dismissed for a crime related to terrorism, the individual must still meet the reasonable suspicion standard in order to remain on, or be subsequently nominated to, the terrorist watch list,” the once-classified memorandum says.

Ginger McCall, a counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said: “In the United States, you are supposed to be assumed innocent. But on the watch list, you may be assumed guilty, even after the court dismisses your case.”

But Stewart Baker, a former Homeland Security official in the Bush administration, argued that even if the intelligence about someone’s possible terrorism ties fell short of the courtroom standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt,” it could still be appropriate to keep the person on the watch list as having attracted suspicion.

Mr. Baker noted that being subjected to extra questioning — or even kept off flights — was different than going to prison.

The guidance memo to F.B.I. field offices says someone may be deemed a “known or suspected terrorist” if officials have “particularized derogatory information” to support their suspicions.

That standard may be met by an allegation that the suspect has terrorism ties if the claim is corroborated by at least one other source, it said, but “mere guesses or ‘hunches’ are not enough.”

Normally, it says, if agents close the investigation without charges, they should remove the subject’s name — as they should also normally do in the case of an acquittal. But for exceptions, the F.B.I. maintains a special file for people whose names it is keeping in the database because it has decided they pose a national security risk even they are not the subject any active investigation.

The F.B.I.’s Terrorist Screening Center shares the data with other federal agencies for screening aircraft passengers, people who are crossing the border and people who apply for visas. The data is also used by local police officers to check names during traffic stops.

The December memorandum lays out procedures for police officers to follow when they encounter people who are listed. For example, officers are never to tell the suspects that they might be on the watch list, and they must immediately call the federal government for instructions.

In addition, it says, police officers and border agents are to treat suspects differently based on which “handling codes” are in the system.

Some people, with outstanding warrants, are to be arrested; others are to be questioned while officers check with the Department of Homeland Security to see whether it has or will issue a “detainer” request; and others should be allowed to proceed without delay.

The documents show that the F.B.I. is developing a system to automatically notify regional “fusion centers,” where law enforcement agencies share information, if officers nearby have encountered someone on the list. The bureau also requires F.B.I. supervisors to sign off before an advisory would warn the police that a subject is “armed and dangerous” or has “violent tendencies.”

The F.B.I. procedures encourage agents to renominate suspects for the watch list even if they were already put on it by another agency — meaning multiple agencies would have to be involved in any attempt to later remove that person.

The procedures offer no way for people who are on the watch list to be notified of that fact or given an opportunity to see and challenge the specific allegations against them.

Chris Calabrese, a counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, called the watch list system a “Star Chamber” — “a secret determination, that you have no input into, that you are a terrorist. Once that determination is made, it can ripple through your entire life and you have no way to challenge it.”

But Mr. Healy said the government could not reveal who was on the list, or why, because that would risk revealing intelligence sources. He also defended the idea of the watch list, saying the government would be blamed if, after a terrorist attack, it turned out the perpetrator had attracted the suspicions of one agency but it had not warned other agencies to scrutinize the person.

Mr. Healy also suggested that fears of the watch list were exaggerated, in part because there are many other reasons that people are subjected to extra screening at airports. He said more than 200,000 people have complained to the Department of Homeland Security about their belief that they were wrongly on the list, but fewer than 1 percent of them were actually on it.

    Even Those Cleared of Crimes Can Stay on F.B.I.’s Watch List, NYT, 27.9.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/us/even-those-cleared-of-crimes-can-stay-on-fbis-terrorist-watch-list.html

16 Arrested as F.B.I. Hits the Hacking Group Anonymous

July 19, 2011
The New York Times
By SOMINI SENGUPTA

SAN FRANCISCO — In the most visible law enforcement response to a recent spate of online attacks, the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday announced the arrests of 16 people across the country in connection with strikes carried out by a loose, secretive federation of hackers called Anonymous.

In an indictment unsealed Tuesday afternoon in United States District Court in San Jose, Calif., 14 people were charged in connection with an attack on the Web site of the payment service PayPal last December, after the company suspended accounts set up for donating funds to WikiLeaks. The suspects, in 10 separate states, are accused of conspiring to “intentionally damage protected computers.”

Anonymous had publicly called on its supporters to attack the sites of companies it said were turning against WikiLeaks, using tools that bombard sites with traffic and knock them offline.

A Florida man was also arrested and accused of breaching the Web site of Tampa InfraGard, an organization affiliated with the F.B.I., and then boasting of his actions on Twitter. And in New Jersey, a former contractor with AT&T was arrested on charges that he lifted files from that company’s computer systems; the information was later distributed by LulzSec, a hacker collective that stemmed from Anonymous.

The PayPal attack came in response to the release by WikiLeaks last November of thousands of classified State Department cables. Members of Anonymous, a clique of worldwide hackers with a vague and ever-changing menu of grievances, have claimed responsibility for a number of attacks on government and corporate Web sites over the last eight months.

In recent weeks, police in Britain and the Netherlands have arrested several people suspected of having participated in those attacks. Justice Department officials said British and Dutch police also made related arrests on Tuesday. FoxNews.com reported Tuesday that the police in London had arrested a 16-year-old boy who they believed was a core member of LulzSec and used the alias Tflow.

The arrests of suspected Anonymous supporters in the United States were among the first known in this country.

Ross W. Nadel, a former federal prosecutor who founded the computer hacking and intellectual property unit at the Federal District Court in San Jose, said the arrests could be “a highly visible form of deterrence.”

The prosecution is expected to face at least two major challenges, said Jennifer Granick, a San Francisco-based lawyer who specializes in computer crimes and has defended hackers in the past. Because hackers often use aliases and other people’s computers when they carry out attacks, prosecutors will have to prove that those arrested “were the ones with their fingers on the keyboard,” she said.

Second, the conspiracy charge could be especially difficult to prove, given that Anonymous boasts of being leaderless and free-floating. “When you have a decentralized group,” Ms. Granick said, “the question is, Are there big fish, and are any of these people big fish?”

The charge of “intentional damage to a protected computer” is punishable by a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, while conspiracy carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Cyberattacks are made possible by a combination of two features of the Internet economy. Poor security at many companies and agencies makes sensitive government and private data vulnerable to breaches. And mounting an attack is inexpensive and, with the right skills, relatively simple.

In the San Jose case, all 14 suspects are accused of using a free program called Low Orbit Ion Cannon to hurl large packets of data at PayPal’s site with the intention of overwhelming it.

With the exception of one suspect, whose name was redacted by the court for reasons that federal officials did not explain, those arrested were identified by their real names and nicknames, ranging from Anthrophobic to Toxic to MMMM. Most were in their 20s, and just three were above the age of 30. It is unclear if any of them knew one another.

    16 Arrested as F.B.I. Hits the Hacking Group Anonymous, NYT, 19.7.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/technology/16-arrested-as-fbi-hits-the-hacking-group-anonymous.html

Review Faults F.B.I.’s Scientific Work

in Anthrax Investigation

February 15, 2011
The New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON — A review of the F.B.I.’s scientific work on the investigation into the anthrax letters of 2001 concludes that the bureau overstated the strength of genetic analysis linking the mailed anthrax to a supply kept by Dr. Bruce E. Ivins, the late Army microbiologist whom the investigators blamed for the attacks.

The review, by a panel of experts convened by the national Academy of Sciences, says the genetic analysis “did not definitively demonstrate” that the mailed anthrax spores were grown from a sample taken from Dr. Ivins’s laboratory at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md. It does add, however, that the evidence is “consistent with and supports an association” between anthax found in Dr. Ivins’s laboratory flask and anthrax used in the attacks.

The academy’s report faults the F.B.I. for failing to take advantage of new scientific methods developed between the mailings in 2001 and its conclusion after Dr. Ivins’s suicide in 2008 that he was the sole perpetrator. “In subsequent years, the investigators did not fully exploit molecular methods to identify and characterize” anthrax samples, the report said.

Nothing in the academy report directly refutes the conclusion of what was by most estimates the most expensive and manpower-intensive criminal investigation in American history. The academy panel, which was paid more than $800,000 by the F.B.I. for its review, assessed only the scientific aspects of the investigation and not the traditional detective work.

In a joint statement, the F.B.I. and Justice Department did not directly dispute the weaknesses identified by the academy. Instead, the statement said, the panel of scientists “reiterates what is and is not possible to establish through science alone in a criminal investigation of this magnitude.”

The F.B.I. “has long maintained that while science played a significant role, it was the totality of the investigative process that determined the outcome of the anthrax case.” The statement said Dr. Ivins “was determined to be the perpetrator of the deadly mailings.”

In an interview, three investigators who spent years working on the case expressed frustration with the academy’s findings but said the report had raised no questions that change the conclusion about Dr. Ivins. The investigators, who were not authorized to speak on the record, said the report merely underscored the difference between pure science and the reality of gathering evidence in a criminal case.

“The totality of the evidence incriminating Dr. Ivins is overwhelming,” one investigator said. He noted, among a long list of circumstantial evidence, the unusually late hours Dr. Ivins spent alone in his lab in the days leading up to the two mailings and a recorded conversation with a colleague in which he expressed uncertainty about whether he might have been the anthrax killer.

But Dr. Ivins’s guilt in the case has been adamantly denied by many of his colleagues at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infections Disease, where he was seen as eccentric but popular. The academy’s report is likely to renew claims by the F.B.I.’s critics that the bureau merely took advantage of Dr. Ivins’s suicide to close the case.

The academy report calls for new attention to possible evidence of anthrax found at a primitive lab used by Al Qaeda; the report does not give its location, but such a lab was found in Afghanistan after the American invasion. But the anthrax investigators said an exhaustive review of the evidence, including interviews with Qaeda operatives who used the facility, found no evidence that it was capable of producing the anthrax powder in the mailings.

Dropped in a Princeton, N.J., mailbox in September and October 2001, the letters killed five people and sickened at least 17 others. Coming shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, they set off a national scare over bioterrorism and led to a huge increase in government spending on biodefense.

The F.B.I. and the Postal Inspection Service devoted 600,000 work hours in the investigation, which involved 10,000 witness interviews, 80 searches and 5,750 grand jury subpoenas, according to the F.B.I., which declined to estimate the total cost. The case also involved 29 government, university and commercial laboratories and helped develop a new branch of science, called microbial forensics, which uses genetics and other evidence to trace the source of biological pathogens.

    Review Faults F.B.I.’s Scientific Work in Anthrax Investigation, NYT, 15.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/us/16anthrax.html

F.B.I. File on Ted Stevens Has Color but Little News

February 12, 2011
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — The F.B.I. has released a roughly 3,600-page file on Ted Stevens, painting a colorful picture of the longtime Alaska senator and chronicling the coverage of the 2008 corruption trial that ended his political career.

Mr. Stevens, who died in a plane crash in August, was convicted of lying about gifts on financial-disclosure forms, including renovations at his Alaska home, that were investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A judge threw out the convictions, finding that prosecutors had withheld evidence.

The release of the F.B.I. documents on Friday was expected to shed greater light on the circumstances surrounding Mr. Stevens’s indictment and trial. But besides a copious amount of news clippings, there is little new mention of the case.

Mr. Stevens, a Republican, represented Alaska in the Senate for 40 years. The file includes documents detailing threats that were made against him, complaints against him that seemingly went nowhere and requests from the senator that his office be swept for listening devices during the Watergate scandal.

The F.B.I. often releases the files of high-profile public figures after they die. These offer a glimpse into Mr. Stevens’s legislative style and personality, as well as signs of a sometimes rocky relationship with the F.B.I. dating to his days as a federal prosecutor. It also underscores Mr. Stevens’s staying power on the political scene spanning from the rough-and-tumble days when Alaska was a territory to his days as one of the nation’s most powerful senators.

One descriptive document stems from the days before Alaskan statehood, when Mr. Stevens was a federal prosecutor in Fairbanks. The F.B.I. was investigating a complaint against a federal judge, Vernon Forbes, who was accused by an unidentified source of being drunk in public and frequenting “disreputable places of entertainment.” The judge denied any misconduct.

Mr. Stevens, in an interview with investigators, described a night of drinking and club hopping, including seeing a midnight show by the vocalist Tommy Roberts. At one point, Mr. Stevens said, he invited a deputy federal marshal to join them because he did not want a federal judge in a South Fairbanks night club “without having someone armed along for protection.”

In 1954, Mr. Stevens put himself on the F.B.I.’s bad side by claiming that the bureau refused to investigate a jailbreak. According to a memorandum written by an assistant director, R. T. Harbo, a review showed that the bureau acted appropriately.

“Mr. Stevens is a young man, short in stature, with a crew cut, quite outspoken, does not appear unfriendly,” Mr. Harbo wrote, “but the statement made by him when he thought no F.B.I. representative was present reflects at the least a lack of a full appreciation of our position.”

A memorandum from 1971, during Mr. Stevens’s first Senate term, indicates that he arrived late for an F.B.I. National Academy graduation and then grumbled — after giving no notice that he would attend — about having to wait for “accommodations” until after the president left. “Bureau files reflect that Senator Stevens made remarks regarding the F.B.I. which caused us to treat him circumspectly in 1954,” the memo states. “Bureau files further indicate he is a ‘drinker.’ ”

A 1973 memo cites a request by Mr. Stevens to have his Senate office swept for “possible ‘bugs’ ” ahead of “very sensitive meetings.” Handwriting on the memo indicates that the sweep was approved. It came at a time when President Richard M. Nixon was secretly recording conversations, although the F.B.I. did not mention any connection.

Complaints about threats against Mr. Stevens and harassing phone calls are also detailed.

In one, according to a memo dated Sept. 1, 1970, Mr. Stevens said the only clue he had to a caller’s identity was that he said he was from California. Someone with the same name or a similar one had been thrown out of his office earlier, Mr. Stevens said, after showing up in “homemade Nazi garb” and appearing to be “mentally unbalanced.”

    F.B.I. File on Ted Stevens Has Color but Little News, NYT, 12.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/us/13stevens.html

Escaping the Law, One Final Time

February 1, 2011
The New York Times
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

By all accounts, the F.B.I.’s concern was clear: Just make sure he’s really dead.

This unusual directive was inspired by one formidable man’s cunning, his central role in a yearlong investigation into the mob’s grip on the waterfront, and his body count: a dozen murders — several victims were F.B.I. informers — that for a time helped transform New Jersey into the Genovese crime family’s abattoir.

Still, the seemingly simple task of confirming that the man, Tino Fiumara, had indeed died of pancreatic cancer last year was not without its complications — a testament to the notion that even in death, his reputation for being elusive lived on.

If merit outweighed mortality, Mr. Fiumara’s name certainly would have been added to the list of 127 reputed organized-crime figures who were arrested on racketeering and other charges in a multistate roundup two weeks ago, according to several people briefed on the matter.

It was also likely, the people said, that had he lived to make the list, the names of his victims, whom investigators believe he either killed himself or ordered murdered, would have been listed on a separate roster as part of the murder charges that the government was seeking to bring against him.

There were Flat Nose Pete and the Colucci brothers, shot to death inside a Newark social club in 1967.

More than a decade later, Richard Santos, known as Sir Richard for his fine haberdashery, had an unfortunate encounter with a sawed-off shotgun as he walked out the front door of his home. Kid Candy made it a few steps farther: He got it in his driveway.

In the intervening years, six other fringe mob figures fell: four shot with the same .22-caliber pistol; one strangled; one stabbed. In 2005, a capo in the Genovese crime family who was on trial in Brooklyn ended up in the trunk of a car parked outside the Huck Finn Diner in Union, N.J. He had two bullet holes in his head.

An imposing figure who kept fit in his later years and favored cashmere sports jackets and turtleneck sweaters, Mr. Fiumara, at the time of his death, was on the three-man panel that ran the Genovese family, yet was not a household name. But he had a reputation on both sides of the law for being as canny as he was ruthless.

He once traveled in the trunk of a car to defeat surveillance, according to an account provided to investigators by an informer. He also routinely drove the wrong way down one-way streets, traveled up highway off-ramps, regularly switched cars and even rode a bicycle — sometimes traveling through parks into which cars could not follow — to lose his F.B.I. pursuers, according to court papers.

He never used his home phone to discuss mob business and eschewed cellphones, communicating only with pagers and pay phones, and maintaining a list of some 20 locations at any given time where he knew he could be neither watched nor overheard, according to court papers.

Indeed, Paul J. McCarthy, a veteran F.B.I. agent who spent at least four years investigating Mr. Fiumara in the 1990s, said in a 1998 affidavit that the man had used “more extensive countersurveillance techniques than I have ever seen in all my years in law enforcement.” The application was for a roving wiretap so agents could listen in on his pay phone calls.

And Mr. Fiumara was nothing if not discreet. For example, it was not widely known that his brother was married to an aunt of Chris Christie, New Jersey’s governor.

When Mr. Christie became the United States attorney in New Jersey in 2002, his distant familial relationship led him to recuse himself from his office’s investigation into Mr. Fiumara. But Mr. Christie, who as a 29-year-old lawyer visited Mr. Fiumara in prison in 1991, did not disclose the tie when his office announced a plea bargain in that case.

It was Mr. Fiumara’s reputation for cunning, though, that prompted initial skepticism in some quarters when word came that he had died on Sept. 16.

One F.B.I. supervisor sent two agents to confirm Mr. Fiumara’s demise. They visited the Long Island funeral home that had buried him; the proprietor assured them that Mr. Fiumara, who had moved to South Huntington, N.Y., to live with his girlfriend after his 2005 release from prison, was indeed dead, according to one person familiar with that inquiry who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the matter.

But the funeral director also noted that he had been one of Mr. Fiumara’s close friends, and that response did not instill confidence in the official, the person said. The investigators were then ordered to go to the hospital where Mr. Fiumara was being treated when he died. There, they were finally satisfied: Mr. Fiumara, the head of the Genovese family’s waterfront rackets, was indeed dead.

Salvatore T. Alfano, a Bloomfield, N.J., lawyer who had represented Mr. Fiumara in several criminal cases, said that his client had not been charged in any murders, and that he was unaware of any evidence the government had linking him to any of the killings.

“Law enforcement vilified him, and people who knew him liked him, so he was a complex guy,” Mr. Alfano said last week.

The lawyer, who had also represented Mr. Fiumara during the recent investigation by the F.B.I., federal prosecutors in Newark and Brooklyn, the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor and several other agencies, was hesitant to answer questions about his client’s history.

“All I can tell you is he was always a gentleman with me, and I’m very sorry that he passed away,” Mr. Alfano said.

It was not because Mr. Fiumara exemplified the qualities of a gentleman, however, that fellow crime figures held him in such high esteem.

Court papers filed last year in the case of another Genovese crime family figure said a government informer had told the federal authorities that in the late 1970s, the man and Mr. Fiumara were both part of a Genovese family hit team known as “the Fist.”

Four of the old murders for which the authorities were investigating Mr. Fiumara — in which the same .22-caliber pistol was used to kill informers or potential witnesses — have been linked to the group, officials said. The four men had either talked to the authorities about Mr. Fiumara’s mob supervisor, John DiGilio, or had been planning to do so but were killed first.

Among them were the 35-year-old principal of East Side High School in Newark, who was linked to Mr. Fiumara’s bookmaking activities, and a wiretapping expert who had bugged the office of Mr. DiGilio’s lawyer, apparently as part of an effort to make it appear that the F.B.I. had done so illegally.

That man, Franklin Chin, had earlier had the distinction of being something of an unorthodox literary muse. He had put a bug in a brothel at the request of the establishment’s madam, Xaviera Hollander, who later used the tapes to write her book “The Happy Hooker.”

    Escaping the Law, One Final Time, NYT, 1.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/nyregion/02mob.html