Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
JULIA CHILD PART OF WWII-ERA SPY RING
Documents: Julia Child part of WWII-era spy ring By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE and RANDY HERSCHAFT, Associated Press Writers
31 minutes ago
Famed chef Julia Child shared a secret with Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world. They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt.
The secret comes out Thursday, all of the names and previously classified files identifying nearly 24,000 spies who formed the first centralized intelligence effort by the United States. The National Archives, which this week released a list of the names found in the records, will make available for the first time all 750,000 pages identifying the vast spy network of military and civilian operatives.
They were soldiers, actors, historians, lawyers, athletes, professors, reporters. But for several years during World War II, they were known simply as the OSS. They studied military plans, created propaganda, infiltrated enemy ranks and stirred resistance among foreign troops.
Among the more than 35,000 OSS personnel files are applications, commendations and handwritten notes identifying young recruits who, like Child, Goldberg and Berg, earned greater acclaim in other fields — Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a historian and special assistant to President Kennedy; Sterling Hayden, a film and television actor whose work included a role in "The Godfather"; and Thomas Braden, an author whose "Eight Is Enough" book inspired the 1970s television series.
Other notables identified in the files include John Hemingway, son of author Ernest Hemingway; Quentin and Kermit Roosevelt, sons of President Theodore Roosevelt, and Miles Copeland, father of Stewart Copeland, drummer for the band The Police.
The release of the OSS personnel files uncloaks one of the last secrets from the short-lived wartime intelligence agency, which for the most part later was folded into the CIA after President Truman disbanded it in 1945.
"I think it's terrific," said Elizabeth McIntosh, 93, a former OSS agent now living in Woodbridge, Va. "They've finally, after all these years, they've gotten the names out. All of these people had been told never to mention they were with the OSS."
The CIA had resisted releasing OSS records for decades. But former CIA Director William Casey, himself an OSS veteran, cleared the way for transfer of millions of OSS documents to the National Archives when he took over the agency in 1981. The personnel files are the latest to be made public.
Information about OSS involvement was so guarded that relatives often couldn't confirm a family member's work with the group.
Walter Mess, who handled covert OSS operations in Poland and North Africa, said he kept quiet for more than 50 years, only recently telling his wife of 62 years about his OSS activity.
"I was told to keep my mouth shut," said Mess, now 93 and living in Falls Church, Va.
The files will offer new information even for those most familiar with the agency. Charles Pinck, president of the OSS Society created by former OSS agents and their relatives, said the nearly 24,000 employees included in the archives far exceeds previous estimates of 13,000.
The newly released documents will clarify these and other issues, said William Cunliffe, an archivist who has worked extensively with the OSS records at the National Archives.
"We're saying the OSS was a lot bigger than they were saying," Cunliffe said.
___
On the Net:
CIA OSS page: http://tinyurl.com/6bvmhf
Index to National Archives OSS personnel files: http://www.archives.gov/research/arc/
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Questions or Comments
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31 minutes ago
Famed chef Julia Child shared a secret with Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world. They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt.
The secret comes out Thursday, all of the names and previously classified files identifying nearly 24,000 spies who formed the first centralized intelligence effort by the United States. The National Archives, which this week released a list of the names found in the records, will make available for the first time all 750,000 pages identifying the vast spy network of military and civilian operatives.
They were soldiers, actors, historians, lawyers, athletes, professors, reporters. But for several years during World War II, they were known simply as the OSS. They studied military plans, created propaganda, infiltrated enemy ranks and stirred resistance among foreign troops.
Among the more than 35,000 OSS personnel files are applications, commendations and handwritten notes identifying young recruits who, like Child, Goldberg and Berg, earned greater acclaim in other fields — Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a historian and special assistant to President Kennedy; Sterling Hayden, a film and television actor whose work included a role in "The Godfather"; and Thomas Braden, an author whose "Eight Is Enough" book inspired the 1970s television series.
Other notables identified in the files include John Hemingway, son of author Ernest Hemingway; Quentin and Kermit Roosevelt, sons of President Theodore Roosevelt, and Miles Copeland, father of Stewart Copeland, drummer for the band The Police.
The release of the OSS personnel files uncloaks one of the last secrets from the short-lived wartime intelligence agency, which for the most part later was folded into the CIA after President Truman disbanded it in 1945.
"I think it's terrific," said Elizabeth McIntosh, 93, a former OSS agent now living in Woodbridge, Va. "They've finally, after all these years, they've gotten the names out. All of these people had been told never to mention they were with the OSS."
The CIA had resisted releasing OSS records for decades. But former CIA Director William Casey, himself an OSS veteran, cleared the way for transfer of millions of OSS documents to the National Archives when he took over the agency in 1981. The personnel files are the latest to be made public.
Information about OSS involvement was so guarded that relatives often couldn't confirm a family member's work with the group.
Walter Mess, who handled covert OSS operations in Poland and North Africa, said he kept quiet for more than 50 years, only recently telling his wife of 62 years about his OSS activity.
"I was told to keep my mouth shut," said Mess, now 93 and living in Falls Church, Va.
The files will offer new information even for those most familiar with the agency. Charles Pinck, president of the OSS Society created by former OSS agents and their relatives, said the nearly 24,000 employees included in the archives far exceeds previous estimates of 13,000.
The newly released documents will clarify these and other issues, said William Cunliffe, an archivist who has worked extensively with the OSS records at the National Archives.
"We're saying the OSS was a lot bigger than they were saying," Cunliffe said.
___
On the Net:
CIA OSS page: http://tinyurl.com/6bvmhf
Index to National Archives OSS personnel files: http://www.archives.gov/research/arc/
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Questions or Comments
Privacy Policy -Terms of Service - Copyright/IP Policy
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Invisibliity Cloak One Step Closer, Aug 10, 2008
Invisibility cloak one step closer, scientists say
Sun Aug 10, 6:55 PM
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have created two new types of materials that can bend light the wrong way, creating the first step toward an invisibility cloaking device.
One approach uses a type of fishnet of metal layers to reverse the direction of light, while another uses tiny silver wires, both at the nanoscale level.
Both are so-called metamaterials -- artificially engineered structures that have properties not seen in nature, such as negative refractive index.
The two teams were working separately under the direction of Xiang Zhang of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center at the University of California, Berkeley with U.S. government funding. One team reported its findings in the journal Science and the other in the journal Nature.
Each new material works to reverse light in limited wavelengths, so no one will be using them to hide buildings from satellites, said Jason Valentine, who worked on one of the projects.
"We are not actually cloaking anything," Valentine said in a telephone interview. "I don't think we have to worry about invisible people walking around any time soon. To be honest, we are just at the beginning of doing anything like that."
Valentine's team made a material that affects light near the visible spectrum, in a region used in fiber optics.
"In naturally occurring material, the index of refraction, a measure of how light bends in a medium, is positive," he said.
"When you see a fish in the water, the fish will appear to be in front of the position it really is. Or if you put a stick in the water, the stick seems to bend away from you."
These are illusions caused by the light bending when it moves between water and air.
NEGATIVE REFRACTION
The negative refraction achieved by the teams at Berkeley would be different.
"Instead of the fish appearing to be slightly ahead of where it is in the water, it would actually appear to be above the water's surface," Valentine said. "It's kind of weird."
For a metamaterial to produce negative refraction, it must have a structural array smaller than the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation being used. This was done using microwaves in 2006 by David Smith of Duke University in North Carolina and John Pendry of Imperial College London.
Visible light is harder. Some groups managed it with very thin layers, virtually only one atom thick, but these materials were not practical to work with and absorbed a great deal of the light directed at it.
"What we have done is taken that material and made it much thicker," Valentine said.
His team, whose work is reported in Nature, used stacked silver and metal dielectric layers stacked on top of each other and then punched through with holes. "We call it a fishnet," Valentine said.
The other team, reporting in Science, used an oxide template and grew silver nanowires inside porous aluminum oxide at tiny distances apart, smaller than the wavelength of visible light. This material refracts visible light.
Immediate applications might be superior optical devices, Valentine said -- perhaps a microscope that could see a living virus.
"However, cloaking may be something that this material could be used for in the future," he said. "You'd have to wrap whatever you wanted to cloak in the material. It would just send light around. By sending light around the object that is to be cloaked, you don't see it."
Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.
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Sun Aug 10, 6:55 PM
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have created two new types of materials that can bend light the wrong way, creating the first step toward an invisibility cloaking device.
One approach uses a type of fishnet of metal layers to reverse the direction of light, while another uses tiny silver wires, both at the nanoscale level.
Both are so-called metamaterials -- artificially engineered structures that have properties not seen in nature, such as negative refractive index.
The two teams were working separately under the direction of Xiang Zhang of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center at the University of California, Berkeley with U.S. government funding. One team reported its findings in the journal Science and the other in the journal Nature.
Each new material works to reverse light in limited wavelengths, so no one will be using them to hide buildings from satellites, said Jason Valentine, who worked on one of the projects.
"We are not actually cloaking anything," Valentine said in a telephone interview. "I don't think we have to worry about invisible people walking around any time soon. To be honest, we are just at the beginning of doing anything like that."
Valentine's team made a material that affects light near the visible spectrum, in a region used in fiber optics.
"In naturally occurring material, the index of refraction, a measure of how light bends in a medium, is positive," he said.
"When you see a fish in the water, the fish will appear to be in front of the position it really is. Or if you put a stick in the water, the stick seems to bend away from you."
These are illusions caused by the light bending when it moves between water and air.
NEGATIVE REFRACTION
The negative refraction achieved by the teams at Berkeley would be different.
"Instead of the fish appearing to be slightly ahead of where it is in the water, it would actually appear to be above the water's surface," Valentine said. "It's kind of weird."
For a metamaterial to produce negative refraction, it must have a structural array smaller than the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation being used. This was done using microwaves in 2006 by David Smith of Duke University in North Carolina and John Pendry of Imperial College London.
Visible light is harder. Some groups managed it with very thin layers, virtually only one atom thick, but these materials were not practical to work with and absorbed a great deal of the light directed at it.
"What we have done is taken that material and made it much thicker," Valentine said.
His team, whose work is reported in Nature, used stacked silver and metal dielectric layers stacked on top of each other and then punched through with holes. "We call it a fishnet," Valentine said.
The other team, reporting in Science, used an oxide template and grew silver nanowires inside porous aluminum oxide at tiny distances apart, smaller than the wavelength of visible light. This material refracts visible light.
Immediate applications might be superior optical devices, Valentine said -- perhaps a microscope that could see a living virus.
"However, cloaking may be something that this material could be used for in the future," he said. "You'd have to wrap whatever you wanted to cloak in the material. It would just send light around. By sending light around the object that is to be cloaked, you don't see it."
Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.
Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! Canada Co. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy - Terms of Service
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Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Emotiv's New Mind-Control Headset for PCs
Tech & You July 30, 2008, 7:34PM EST text size: TT
Emotiv's New Mind-Control Headset for PCs
Its wireless sensors help users run some programs with their thoughts
by Cliff Edwards
More and more these days, we rely on computers for play as well as work. Once in a great while, there's a new interface that changes how we interact with these machines—the touch screen on Apple's (AAPL) iPhone or the motion-sensing controller on the Nintendo Wii. But for the most part, we still rely on keyboards, mice, and joysticks.
What if you could simply think about an action, and the computer would respond? I recently sat down with executives at a San Francisco startup called Emotiv Systems, which has spent the last half-decade researching so-called brain-computer interfaces. Emotiv is currently fine-tuning a mind-reading headset called the Epoc, which should ship late this year. The $299 device purports to eavesdrop on your thoughts and translate them into computer instructions, so you can play a game or arrange photos without using your hands or speaking words.
To pull this off, Emotiv uses electroencephalography, or EEG. The technology is just like what you find in any hospital, but while doctors typically apply gel to a patient's scalp and then attach the sensors that read the brain's faint electrical signals, the Epoc "neuroheadset" has 16 sensors embedded in its crossbars that communicate wirelessly with your PC. There are no messy smears or tangles of wires. But in order to get correct readings, the sensors must make just the right contact with your scalp, which can take a fair amount of fiddling. And once the headset is in place, you have to be careful not to move around too much or the sensors will slip, preventing the computer from getting a clear signal.
Perfect Test Run
Here's how it works: If you think about lifting a heavy object, neurons in your brain fire in a particular pattern. Push a door, and it's a different pattern—and the headset can tell the difference. Since no two individuals generate exactly the same patterns, Emotiv bundles the headset with a fantasy game that includes practice exercises to tune the device to each user's unique thought processes. After that, you can raise a boulder by thinking "lift," or bend a tree by thinking "pull." Some neurologists question whether most users have the mental agility to complete the training; Emotiv says anyone can master it.
When I tried it out, the headset performed perfectly. In one of the training sequences, I had to imagine a cube and then will it to disappear. After a little practice, I was able to cause a cube on the computer screen to wink in and out of existence just by thinking of it. (During training, Emotiv suggests you supplement the thought exercises with hand movements that help the software figure out what you're trying to do.)
The sensors in the headset also respond to certain facial expressions, such as anger or delight, which can be transferred to characters displayed on the screen. What's more, certain emotions produce characteristic electrical patterns—or so Emotiv tells us. If you can summon up aggressive thoughts, the software will respond with certain actions in the game. Here, too, I seem to have a knack—maybe it's years of dealing with editors. I was able to chase away some flying wraithlike creatures just by thinking agitated, evil thoughts.
Other features of the software reminded me of those old mood rings that supposedly show whether you are happy or sad. Once your "mapping profile" is done, Emotiv says, a feature called EmoKey will be able to conjure up music or pictures that correspond to your moods. I never quite made it to that stage.
Emotiv and a rival Silicon Valley company, NeuroSky, initially are targeting the entertainment market. But both startups say they're in touch with companies in other industries, including manufacturers of TVs, medical devices, and automobiles. I'm not ready to drive a car using one of these gizmos. But if one of them can make my interactions with my PC more amicable, I'm all for it.
Edwards is a correspondent in BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau.
Pentagon to test unclassified alternative Talon By David Morgan
Pentagon to test unclassified alternative to Talon By David Morgan
Tue Aug 5, 7:21 PM ET
The Pentagon, which closed its Talon intelligence database nearly a year ago amid concerns about domestic spying, will soon begin testing an unclassified alternative for tracking possible threats to U.S. military bases, officials said on Tuesday.
The system, an FBI-operated program called eGuardian, would for the first time sever the Defense Department's collection of data on suspicious activity from U.S. intelligence operations by placing the information in an unclassified database for law enforcement agencies, officials said.
Pentagon officials hope an unclassified system run by the FBI would help insulate the job of gathering information about potential threats from public concerns about domestic espionage that surrounded Talon for years.
Air Force Lt. Col. Almarah Belk, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said a Pentagon panel of experts that spent a year examining 62 different systems formally recommended eGuardian to senior defense officials on July 29.
The Defense Department will begin testing eGuardian as early as this month at sites in Florida and Virginia and the system could be formally adopted in December if the tests go well, she said.
"This is the most promising solution at this point," Belk told Reuters.
Talon, a classified database maintained by a defense counterintelligence office that the Pentagon disbanded on Tuesday, was designed to gather pieces of information about suspicious activity near U.S. defense facilities. Analysts could then examine the data for evidence of potential threats.
OUTCRY IN CONGRESS
But in 2005, the database was found to have inappropriately retained information on U.S. antiwar protesters even after they were ruled out as threats. That caused an outcry in Congress and among civil liberties advocates about the dangers of military spying on U.S. citizens.
"The concept is still good. Connecting the dots of the bits and pieces of possible information is a good thing. It just shouldn't be in a counterintelligence database," said senior Pentagon counterintelligence official Toby Sullivan.
When the Pentagon shut the Talon database in September 2007, it transferred data collection responsibilities to a classified FBI system called Guardian, which continues to collect threat information about Pentagon facilities today.
eGuardian's name is derived from the Guardian system. But unlike its classified sibling, eGuardian does not provide information directly to U.S. intelligence agencies, according to the Pentagon.
FBI officials were not available to comment on eGuardian, but the FBI's Web site described it as an automated method for sharing unclassified threat data with state and local law enforcement.
Pentagon officials said information about military installations collected by eGuardian would be available to law enforcement agencies but not the public, despite the system's unclassified nature. Data found to pose an actual potential threat would be transferred to the classified Guardian system for analysis.
This week's shutdown of the office responsible for Talon, the Counterintelligence Field Activity office, was the final chapter in the controversy.
Its former responsibilities for managing defense and armed services efforts against intelligence threats from foreign powers and militant groups now belong to the new Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center, overseen by the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency.
Tue Aug 5, 7:21 PM ET
The Pentagon, which closed its Talon intelligence database nearly a year ago amid concerns about domestic spying, will soon begin testing an unclassified alternative for tracking possible threats to U.S. military bases, officials said on Tuesday.
The system, an FBI-operated program called eGuardian, would for the first time sever the Defense Department's collection of data on suspicious activity from U.S. intelligence operations by placing the information in an unclassified database for law enforcement agencies, officials said.
Pentagon officials hope an unclassified system run by the FBI would help insulate the job of gathering information about potential threats from public concerns about domestic espionage that surrounded Talon for years.
Air Force Lt. Col. Almarah Belk, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said a Pentagon panel of experts that spent a year examining 62 different systems formally recommended eGuardian to senior defense officials on July 29.
The Defense Department will begin testing eGuardian as early as this month at sites in Florida and Virginia and the system could be formally adopted in December if the tests go well, she said.
"This is the most promising solution at this point," Belk told Reuters.
Talon, a classified database maintained by a defense counterintelligence office that the Pentagon disbanded on Tuesday, was designed to gather pieces of information about suspicious activity near U.S. defense facilities. Analysts could then examine the data for evidence of potential threats.
OUTCRY IN CONGRESS
But in 2005, the database was found to have inappropriately retained information on U.S. antiwar protesters even after they were ruled out as threats. That caused an outcry in Congress and among civil liberties advocates about the dangers of military spying on U.S. citizens.
"The concept is still good. Connecting the dots of the bits and pieces of possible information is a good thing. It just shouldn't be in a counterintelligence database," said senior Pentagon counterintelligence official Toby Sullivan.
When the Pentagon shut the Talon database in September 2007, it transferred data collection responsibilities to a classified FBI system called Guardian, which continues to collect threat information about Pentagon facilities today.
eGuardian's name is derived from the Guardian system. But unlike its classified sibling, eGuardian does not provide information directly to U.S. intelligence agencies, according to the Pentagon.
FBI officials were not available to comment on eGuardian, but the FBI's Web site described it as an automated method for sharing unclassified threat data with state and local law enforcement.
Pentagon officials said information about military installations collected by eGuardian would be available to law enforcement agencies but not the public, despite the system's unclassified nature. Data found to pose an actual potential threat would be transferred to the classified Guardian system for analysis.
This week's shutdown of the office responsible for Talon, the Counterintelligence Field Activity office, was the final chapter in the controversy.
Its former responsibilities for managing defense and armed services efforts against intelligence threats from foreign powers and militant groups now belong to the new Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center, overseen by the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Anthrax Suspect Kills Himself
Suspect in anthrax-letter deaths kills himself
By MATT APUZZO and LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writers
34 minutes ago
Anthrax-laced letters that killed five people and severely rattled the post-9/11 nation may have been part of an Army scientist's warped plan to test his cure for the deadly toxin, officials said Friday. The brilliant but troubled scientist committed suicide this week, knowing prosecutors were closing in.
The sudden naming of scientist Bruce E. Ivins as the top — and perhaps only — suspect in the anthrax attacks marks the latest bizarre twist in a case that has confounded the FBI for nearly seven years. Last month, the Justice Department cleared Ivins' colleague, Steven Hatfill, who had been wrongly suspected in the case, and paid him $5.8 million.
Ivins worked at the Army's biological warfare labs at Fort Detrick, Md., for 18 years until his death on Tuesday. He was one of the government's leading scientists researching vaccines and cures for anthrax exposure. But he also had a long history of homicidal threats, according to papers filed last week in local court by a social worker.
The letters containing anthrax powder were sent on the heels of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and turned up at congressional offices, newsrooms and elsewhere, leaving a deadly trail through post offices on the way. The powder killed five, sent numerous victims to hospitals and caused near panic in many locations.
Workers in protective garb that made them look like space men decontaminated U.S. Capitol buildings after anthrax letters were discovered there. Major postal substations were closed for years. Newsrooms were checked all over after anthrax letters were mailed to offices in Florida and New York.
The Justice Department said Friday only that "substantial progress has been made in the investigation." The statement did not identify Ivins.
However, several U.S. officials said prosecutors were focusing on the 62-year-old Ivins and planned to seek a murder indictment and the death penalty. Authorities were investigating whether Ivins, who had complained about the limits of testing anthrax drugs on animals, had released the toxin to test the treatment on humans.
The officials all discussed the continuing investigation on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The Justice Department is expected to decide within days whether to close the "Amerithrax" investigation now that its main target is dead. If the case remains open, that could indicate there still are other suspects.
Ivins' attorney asserted the scientist's innocence and said he had cooperated with investigators for more than a year.
"We are saddened by his death, and disappointed that we will not have the opportunity to defend his good name and reputation in a court of law," said Paul F. Kemp.
Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital in Maryland. Relatives told The Associated Press that he killed himself. Kemp said his client's death was the result of the government's "relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo."
For more than a decade, Ivins had worked to develop an anthrax vaccine that was effective even in cases where different strains of anthrax were mixed — a situation that made vaccines ineffective — according to federal documents reviewed by the AP. In 2003, he shared the Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service for his work on the anthrax vaccine. The award is the highest honor given to Defense Department civilian employees.
Ivins conducted numerous anthrax studies, including one that complained about the limited supply of monkeys available for testing. The study also said animal testing couldn't accurately show how humans would respond to anthrax treatment.
The Fort Detrick laboratory and its specialized scientists for years have been at the center of the FBI's investigation of the anthrax mailings. In late June, the government exonerated Hatfill, whose name has for years had been associated with the attacks. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft called him a "person of interest" in 2002.
Investigators also had noticed Ivins' unusual behavior at Fort Detrick in the six months following the anthrax mailings. He conducted unauthorized testing for anthrax spores outside containment areas at the infectious disease research unit where he worked, according to an internal report. But the focus stayed on Hatfill.
Ivins' friends, colleagues and court documents paint a picture of a flourishing scientist with an emotionally unstable side. Maryland court documents show he recently received psychiatric treatment and was ordered to stay away from a woman he was accused of stalking and threatening to kill.
Social worker Jean C. Duley filed handwritten court documents last week saying she was preparing to testify before a grand jury. She said Ivins would be charged with five capital murders.
"Client has a history dating to his graduate days of homicidal threats, plans and actions towards therapist," Duley said, adding that his psychiatrist had described him as homicidal and sociopathic.
Authorities have been watching Ivins for some time. His brother, Tom Ivins, said federal agents questioned the scientist about a year and a half ago. Neighbors said FBI agents in cars with tinted windows conducted surveillance on his home. A colleague, Henry S. Heine, said that over the past year, he and others on their team had testified before a federal grand jury in Washington that has been investigating the anthrax mailings.
On July 10, police responded to Fort Detrick to speak with Ivins. He was ultimately removed from his job and taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation because of concern he had become a danger to himself or others.
The victims of the attacks had little in common.
Robert Stevens, 63, a photo editor at the Sun, a supermarket tabloid published in Boca Raton, Fla., was the first to die.
Thomas Morris Jr. 55, and Joseph Curseen, 47, worked at a Washington-area postal facility that was a hub for sorting the capital's mail.
Kathy Nguyen, 61, who had emigrated from Vietnam and lived in the Bronx, worked in a stock room at Manhattan Eye Ear & Throat Hospital. Ottilie Lundgren, 94, who lived in Oxford, Conn., was the last to die.
___
Associated Press writers David Dishneau and Chrissie Thompson from Frederick, Md., and AP researchers Susan James and Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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By MATT APUZZO and LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writers
34 minutes ago
Anthrax-laced letters that killed five people and severely rattled the post-9/11 nation may have been part of an Army scientist's warped plan to test his cure for the deadly toxin, officials said Friday. The brilliant but troubled scientist committed suicide this week, knowing prosecutors were closing in.
The sudden naming of scientist Bruce E. Ivins as the top — and perhaps only — suspect in the anthrax attacks marks the latest bizarre twist in a case that has confounded the FBI for nearly seven years. Last month, the Justice Department cleared Ivins' colleague, Steven Hatfill, who had been wrongly suspected in the case, and paid him $5.8 million.
Ivins worked at the Army's biological warfare labs at Fort Detrick, Md., for 18 years until his death on Tuesday. He was one of the government's leading scientists researching vaccines and cures for anthrax exposure. But he also had a long history of homicidal threats, according to papers filed last week in local court by a social worker.
The letters containing anthrax powder were sent on the heels of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and turned up at congressional offices, newsrooms and elsewhere, leaving a deadly trail through post offices on the way. The powder killed five, sent numerous victims to hospitals and caused near panic in many locations.
Workers in protective garb that made them look like space men decontaminated U.S. Capitol buildings after anthrax letters were discovered there. Major postal substations were closed for years. Newsrooms were checked all over after anthrax letters were mailed to offices in Florida and New York.
The Justice Department said Friday only that "substantial progress has been made in the investigation." The statement did not identify Ivins.
However, several U.S. officials said prosecutors were focusing on the 62-year-old Ivins and planned to seek a murder indictment and the death penalty. Authorities were investigating whether Ivins, who had complained about the limits of testing anthrax drugs on animals, had released the toxin to test the treatment on humans.
The officials all discussed the continuing investigation on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The Justice Department is expected to decide within days whether to close the "Amerithrax" investigation now that its main target is dead. If the case remains open, that could indicate there still are other suspects.
Ivins' attorney asserted the scientist's innocence and said he had cooperated with investigators for more than a year.
"We are saddened by his death, and disappointed that we will not have the opportunity to defend his good name and reputation in a court of law," said Paul F. Kemp.
Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital in Maryland. Relatives told The Associated Press that he killed himself. Kemp said his client's death was the result of the government's "relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo."
For more than a decade, Ivins had worked to develop an anthrax vaccine that was effective even in cases where different strains of anthrax were mixed — a situation that made vaccines ineffective — according to federal documents reviewed by the AP. In 2003, he shared the Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service for his work on the anthrax vaccine. The award is the highest honor given to Defense Department civilian employees.
Ivins conducted numerous anthrax studies, including one that complained about the limited supply of monkeys available for testing. The study also said animal testing couldn't accurately show how humans would respond to anthrax treatment.
The Fort Detrick laboratory and its specialized scientists for years have been at the center of the FBI's investigation of the anthrax mailings. In late June, the government exonerated Hatfill, whose name has for years had been associated with the attacks. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft called him a "person of interest" in 2002.
Investigators also had noticed Ivins' unusual behavior at Fort Detrick in the six months following the anthrax mailings. He conducted unauthorized testing for anthrax spores outside containment areas at the infectious disease research unit where he worked, according to an internal report. But the focus stayed on Hatfill.
Ivins' friends, colleagues and court documents paint a picture of a flourishing scientist with an emotionally unstable side. Maryland court documents show he recently received psychiatric treatment and was ordered to stay away from a woman he was accused of stalking and threatening to kill.
Social worker Jean C. Duley filed handwritten court documents last week saying she was preparing to testify before a grand jury. She said Ivins would be charged with five capital murders.
"Client has a history dating to his graduate days of homicidal threats, plans and actions towards therapist," Duley said, adding that his psychiatrist had described him as homicidal and sociopathic.
Authorities have been watching Ivins for some time. His brother, Tom Ivins, said federal agents questioned the scientist about a year and a half ago. Neighbors said FBI agents in cars with tinted windows conducted surveillance on his home. A colleague, Henry S. Heine, said that over the past year, he and others on their team had testified before a federal grand jury in Washington that has been investigating the anthrax mailings.
On July 10, police responded to Fort Detrick to speak with Ivins. He was ultimately removed from his job and taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation because of concern he had become a danger to himself or others.
The victims of the attacks had little in common.
Robert Stevens, 63, a photo editor at the Sun, a supermarket tabloid published in Boca Raton, Fla., was the first to die.
Thomas Morris Jr. 55, and Joseph Curseen, 47, worked at a Washington-area postal facility that was a hub for sorting the capital's mail.
Kathy Nguyen, 61, who had emigrated from Vietnam and lived in the Bronx, worked in a stock room at Manhattan Eye Ear & Throat Hospital. Ottilie Lundgren, 94, who lived in Oxford, Conn., was the last to die.
___
Associated Press writers David Dishneau and Chrissie Thompson from Frederick, Md., and AP researchers Susan James and Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed to this report.
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Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Senate Bows To Bush, Approves Surveillance Bill!
July 09, 2008
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Senate bows to Bush, approves surveillance bill By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer
42 minutes ago
Bowing to President Bush's demands, the Senate approved and sent the White House a bill Wednesday to overhaul bitterly disputed rules on secret government eavesdropping and shield telecommunications companies from lawsuits complaining they helped the U.S. spy on Americans.
The relatively one-sided vote, 69-28, came only after a lengthy and heated debate that pitted privacy and civil liberties concerns against the desire to prevent terrorist attacks. It ended almost a year of wrangling over surveillance rules and the president's warrantless wiretapping program that was initiated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The House passed the same bill last month, and Bush said he would sign it soon.
Opponents assailed the eavesdropping program, asserting that it imperiled citizens' rights of privacy from government intrusion. But Bush said the legislation protects those rights as well as Americans' security.
"This bill will help our intelligence professionals learn who the terrorists are talking to, what they're saying and what they're planning," he said in a brief White House appearance after the Senate vote.
The bill is very much a political compromise, brought about by a deadline: Wiretapping orders authorized last year will begin to expire in August. Without a new bill, the government would go back to old FISA rules, requiring multiple new orders and potential delays to continue those intercepts. That is something most of Congress did not want to see happen, particularly in an election year.
The long fight on Capitol Hill centered on one main question: whether to protect from civil lawsuits any telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on American phone and computer lines without the permission or knowledge of a secret court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The White House had threatened to veto the bill unless it immunized companies such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. against wiretapping lawsuits.
Forty-six lawsuits now stand to be dismissed because of the new law, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. All are pending before a single U.S. District Court in California. But the fight has not ended. Civil rights groups are already preparing lawsuits challenging the bill's constitutionality, and four suits, filed against government officials, will not be dismissed.
Numerous lawmakers had spoken out strongly against the no-warrants eavesdropping on Americans, but the Senate voted its approval after rejecting amendments that would have watered down, delayed or stripped away the immunity provision.
The lawsuits center on allegations that the White House circumvented U.S. law by going around the FISA court, which was created 30 years ago to prevent the government from abusing its surveillance powers for political purposes, as was done in the Vietnam War and Watergate eras. The court is meant to approve all wiretaps placed inside the U.S. for intelligence-gathering purposes. The law has been interpreted to include international e-mail records stored on servers inside the U.S.
"This president broke the law," declared Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis.
The Bush administration brought the wiretapping back under the FISA court's authority only after The New York Times revealed the existence of the secret program. A handful of members of Congress knew about the program from top secret briefings. Most members are still forbidden to know the details of the classified effort, and some objected that they were being asked to grant immunity to the telecoms without first knowing what they did.
Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter compared the Senate vote to buying a "pig in a poke."
But Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., one of the bill's most vocal champions, said, "This is the balance we need to protect our civil liberties without handcuffing our terror-fighters."
Just under a third of the Senate, including Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, supported an amendment that would have stripped immunity from the bill. They were defeated on a 66-32 vote. Republican rival John McCain did not attend the vote.
Obama ended up voting for the final bill, as did Specter. Feingold voted no.
The bill tries to address concerns about the legality of warrantless wiretapping by requiring inspectors general inside the government to conduct a yearlong investigation into the program.
Beyond immunity, the new surveillance bill also sets new rules for government eavesdropping. Some of them would tighten the reins on current government surveillance activities, but others would loosen them compared with a law passed 30 years ago.
For example, it would require the government to get FISA court approval before it eavesdrops on an American overseas. Currently, the attorney general approves that electronic surveillance on his own.
The bill also would allow the government to obtain broad, yearlong intercept orders from the FISA court that target foreign groups and people, raising the prospect that communications with innocent Americans would be swept in. The court would approve how the government chooses the targets and how the intercepted American communications would be protected.
The original FISA law required the government to get wiretapping warrants for each individual targeted from inside the United States, on the rationale that most communications inside the U.S. would involve Americans whose civil liberties must be protected. But technology has changed. Purely foreign communications increasingly pass through U.S. wires and sit on American computer servers, and the law has required court orders to be obtained to access those as well.
The bill would give the government a week to conduct a wiretap in an emergency before it must apply for a court order. The original law said three days.
The bill restates that the FISA law is the only means by which wiretapping for intelligence purposes can be conducted inside the United States. This is meant to prevent a repeat of warrantless wiretapping by future administrations.
The ACLU, which is party to some of the lawsuits that will now be dismissed, said the bill was "a blatant assault upon civil liberties and the right to privacy."
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Questions or Comments
Privacy Policy -Terms of Service - Copyright/IP Policy
Back to Story - Help
Senate bows to Bush, approves surveillance bill By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer
42 minutes ago
Bowing to President Bush's demands, the Senate approved and sent the White House a bill Wednesday to overhaul bitterly disputed rules on secret government eavesdropping and shield telecommunications companies from lawsuits complaining they helped the U.S. spy on Americans.
The relatively one-sided vote, 69-28, came only after a lengthy and heated debate that pitted privacy and civil liberties concerns against the desire to prevent terrorist attacks. It ended almost a year of wrangling over surveillance rules and the president's warrantless wiretapping program that was initiated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The House passed the same bill last month, and Bush said he would sign it soon.
Opponents assailed the eavesdropping program, asserting that it imperiled citizens' rights of privacy from government intrusion. But Bush said the legislation protects those rights as well as Americans' security.
"This bill will help our intelligence professionals learn who the terrorists are talking to, what they're saying and what they're planning," he said in a brief White House appearance after the Senate vote.
The bill is very much a political compromise, brought about by a deadline: Wiretapping orders authorized last year will begin to expire in August. Without a new bill, the government would go back to old FISA rules, requiring multiple new orders and potential delays to continue those intercepts. That is something most of Congress did not want to see happen, particularly in an election year.
The long fight on Capitol Hill centered on one main question: whether to protect from civil lawsuits any telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on American phone and computer lines without the permission or knowledge of a secret court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The White House had threatened to veto the bill unless it immunized companies such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. against wiretapping lawsuits.
Forty-six lawsuits now stand to be dismissed because of the new law, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. All are pending before a single U.S. District Court in California. But the fight has not ended. Civil rights groups are already preparing lawsuits challenging the bill's constitutionality, and four suits, filed against government officials, will not be dismissed.
Numerous lawmakers had spoken out strongly against the no-warrants eavesdropping on Americans, but the Senate voted its approval after rejecting amendments that would have watered down, delayed or stripped away the immunity provision.
The lawsuits center on allegations that the White House circumvented U.S. law by going around the FISA court, which was created 30 years ago to prevent the government from abusing its surveillance powers for political purposes, as was done in the Vietnam War and Watergate eras. The court is meant to approve all wiretaps placed inside the U.S. for intelligence-gathering purposes. The law has been interpreted to include international e-mail records stored on servers inside the U.S.
"This president broke the law," declared Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis.
The Bush administration brought the wiretapping back under the FISA court's authority only after The New York Times revealed the existence of the secret program. A handful of members of Congress knew about the program from top secret briefings. Most members are still forbidden to know the details of the classified effort, and some objected that they were being asked to grant immunity to the telecoms without first knowing what they did.
Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter compared the Senate vote to buying a "pig in a poke."
But Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., one of the bill's most vocal champions, said, "This is the balance we need to protect our civil liberties without handcuffing our terror-fighters."
Just under a third of the Senate, including Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, supported an amendment that would have stripped immunity from the bill. They were defeated on a 66-32 vote. Republican rival John McCain did not attend the vote.
Obama ended up voting for the final bill, as did Specter. Feingold voted no.
The bill tries to address concerns about the legality of warrantless wiretapping by requiring inspectors general inside the government to conduct a yearlong investigation into the program.
Beyond immunity, the new surveillance bill also sets new rules for government eavesdropping. Some of them would tighten the reins on current government surveillance activities, but others would loosen them compared with a law passed 30 years ago.
For example, it would require the government to get FISA court approval before it eavesdrops on an American overseas. Currently, the attorney general approves that electronic surveillance on his own.
The bill also would allow the government to obtain broad, yearlong intercept orders from the FISA court that target foreign groups and people, raising the prospect that communications with innocent Americans would be swept in. The court would approve how the government chooses the targets and how the intercepted American communications would be protected.
The original FISA law required the government to get wiretapping warrants for each individual targeted from inside the United States, on the rationale that most communications inside the U.S. would involve Americans whose civil liberties must be protected. But technology has changed. Purely foreign communications increasingly pass through U.S. wires and sit on American computer servers, and the law has required court orders to be obtained to access those as well.
The bill would give the government a week to conduct a wiretap in an emergency before it must apply for a court order. The original law said three days.
The bill restates that the FISA law is the only means by which wiretapping for intelligence purposes can be conducted inside the United States. This is meant to prevent a repeat of warrantless wiretapping by future administrations.
The ACLU, which is party to some of the lawsuits that will now be dismissed, said the bill was "a blatant assault upon civil liberties and the right to privacy."
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
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