Solicitor General to defend Cheney in energy task force lawsuit

US Solicitor General Theodore Olson

Washington, DC, Sept. 16— The Bush administration is stepping up its fight to block the release of information about its energy policy by bringing the solicitor general into the case. On Wednesday, Solicitor General Theodore Olson is expected to appear in federal district court to defend Vice President Cheney’s continued efforts to keep secret the meetings of his so-called energy task force in a lawsuit brought by the General Accounting Office (GAO). Olson, who represented George W. Bush in his case against Al Gore before the US Supreme Court to resolve the 2000 presidential election, is the number three official at the Justice Department. The solicitor general traditionally represents the government before the Supreme Court.

“Having the Solicitor General appear in district court is unprecedented,” said Sharon Buccino, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). NRDC brought one of the first cases against the Bush administration for failure to disclose information related to the energy task force. “The Bush administration is pulling out all the stops to keep the public in the dark about its dubious energy dealings. But Olson’s involvement only increases speculation about what the White House has to hide.”

The administration is fighting three lawsuits in federal court over the energy task force records. While federal agencies have been forced to release some documents, the White House continues to withhold critical information. Court action ordering the release of the records could occur within the next month in two of the three cases. A summary of all of the legal proceedings against the administration is provided below.

Walker v. Cheney, D.D.C. 02-0340 (JDB) For the first time in history, GAO sued the White House, asserting that it has the right under the statute providing for its existence and authority (Title 31 of the US Code) to investigate the activities of the energy task force because the group received federal funds. Even though GAO believes that it has the right to deliberative documents, it agreed not to seek minutes of the task force meetings. The White House, however, still steadfastly refuses to provide even the most basic information about who the task force met with and when. The case is being heard by Judge John Bates, a new Bush appointee who was previously involved in the Whitewater investigation of former President Bill Clinton.

NRDC v. Department of Energy, D.D.C. 01-2545 (PLF) NRDC sued the Energy Department under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for records relating to the energy task force, including minutes of meetings that occurred. Although the Energy Department and other federal agencies have released some information about whom cabinet officials met with regarding energy policy, the White House has refused to provide similar information. NRDC has argued that the records of Andrew Lundquist, the task force executive director, and other key task force staff — all of whom were Energy Department employees — must be disclosed under FOIA. Briefing is complete and Judge Paul Friedman could issue a ruling any day.

Judicial Watch v. National Energy Policy Development Group, D.D.C. 01-1530 (EGS) Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club sued the Bush administration for violating the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which promotes open and balanced government decision-making. The administration tried to dismiss the case arguing that FACA did not apply to the energy task force. Judge Emmett Sullivan rejected this argument and held that discovery should proceed to establish the facts regarding who met with the task force and when. If outside parties (i.e., industry lobbyists) were regular participants in the task force, the administration may have run afoul of FACA’s requirements for public access to the task force meetings and records. While federal agencies have released some information, the White House once again has refused to provide any of its records. A hearing on the administration’s motion for protective order is scheduled for September 30.

The Natural Resources Defense Council is a national, non-profit organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists dedicated to protecting public health and the environment. Founded in 1970, NRDC has more than 500,000 members nationwide, served from offices in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Source: Natural Resources Defense Council

Rights groups urge court to reject Ashcroft bid for broadly expanded powers to spy on US citizens

Washington, DC, Sept. 20— In the first case of its kind, a coalition of civil liberties groups today urged a secret appeals court to reject the Justice Department’s radical bid for broadly expanded powers to spy on US citizens.

At issue in the case — which has focused a spotlight on the ultra-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — is whether the Constitution and the USA PATRIOT Act adopted by Congress after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks permit the government to use looser foreign intelligence standards to conduct criminal investigations in the United States.

“Both the lower court and Congress have now said that Attorney General Ashcroft has gone too far in his interpretation of what the law allows,” said Ann Beeson, Litigation Director of the Technology and Liberty Program of the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the brief together with the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Center for National Security Studies, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Open Society Institute.

“No one is questioning the government’s authority to prosecute spies and terrorists,” Beeson added, “but we do not need to waive the Constitution to do so.”

In legal papers filed today, the groups said that expanding government surveillance powers “would also jeopardize other constitutional interests, including the First Amendment right to engage in lawful public dissent, and the warrant, notice, and judicial review rights guaranteed by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.”

Under the proposed guidelines, “the Attorney General could suspend the ordinary requirements of the Fourth Amendment in order to listen in on phone calls, read e-mails, and conduct secret searches of Americans’ homes and offices,” said James X. Dempsey, Deputy Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

As the Supreme Court said when it last considered wiretap limits, the brief noted, “The price of lawful public dissent must not be a dread of subjection to an unchecked surveillance power.”

The groups urged the FISC Review Court to uphold the seven-judge panel of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which in May unanimously rejected the government’s bid for expanded powers. In its decision, the intelligence court documented abuses of such warrants by both the Bush and Clinton Administrations, including serious errors in approximately 75 applications for foreign surveillance.

In another unprecedented move, in August the court released an unclassified version of the ruling in which it explicitly rejected efforts by Attorney General Ashcroft to eliminate federal “bright line” protections against having prosecutors direct intelligence investigations to use them for criminal prosecutions.

At a hearing last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has oversight of the Justice Department, also condemned the government’s latest power grab. “We need to do our work well and ensure that domestic surveillance is aimed at true national security targets and does not simply serve as an excuse to violate the Constitutional rights of our own citizens,” said Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT). “The abuses of the past are far too fresh simply to surrender to the executive branch unfettered discretion to determine the scope of these changes.”

The FISA court and the Court of Review were created under a law passed by Congress in 1978 which authorizes government wiretap requests in foreign intelligence investigations. Under these procedures, all hearings and decisions are conducted in secret.

After the surveillance court’s decision was made public in late August, the ACLU and others notified the review court that they planned to file a brief; the court has for the first time set up procedures for such filings. They had hoped to file the brief before the appeals court met to review the case, but on Sept. 9 they learned that the appeals court was meeting that day and that only the government was allowed to present arguments.

The review court’s acceptance of the brief is not automatic, but the groups said they hoped that the court would take their arguments into account before issuing a ruling in the matter. In their request to file the brief, the groups said, “It is critical that the Court hear not only from the government but from those who would protect constitutional rights against Government encroachment.”

The FISC Review Court is a special three-judge panel appointed by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist in accordance with provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The judges are: Hon. Laurence H. Silberman of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; Hon. Edward Leavy, US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and Hon. Ralph B. Guy, Jr., US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

Colorado lawmaker calls for troops on border, mass deportations

US Rep. Tom Tancredo

Denver, Colorado, Sept. 20— US Rep. Tom Tancredo, the Republican lawmaker from Colorado who recently phoned the INS to demand the deportation of a local honor student and his family, is now calling for mass deportations and troops to be stationed along the border.

In a telephone call from Washington, Tancredo said Mexican officials, including Leticia Calzada Gomez, the country’s consul general in Denver, are directly responsible for inciting thousands of Mexicans to cross the border illegally as part of Mexico’s plan to regain the territories lost to the United States in 1848.

The Mexican Consulate, in defending the rights of undocumented immigrants, is telling documented ones that they are “suckers” for following the law, Tancredo said.

The dispute between Tancredo and the Mexican consulate erupted last week, when the Denver Post published an editorial blasting the Republican lawmaker for contacting Michael Comfort, regional head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), to demand the deportation of a local student the daily featured in an article.

The case of Jesus Apodaca, a Mexican honor student who recently graduated from a suburban Denver high school, was featured in a Post article in early August about the prohibitive costs of college for undocumented immigrants, who -- although they are allowed to attend most state universities -- must pay expensive out-of-state tuitions.

Mario Hernandez, spokesman for the Mexican Consulate in Denver, said last Friday it was unfortunate that Tancredo did not realize “the consequences of what he is doing to a vulnerable family.”

Tancredo, however, qualified the Post article about Apodaca as “a mockery of justice.”

“The message this sends is that you can be so brazen as to not have the slightest concern about appearing on the front page of The Denver Post and telling everybody that you are here illegally,” he said. In a letter to the editor published by the Post on Wednesday, Tancredo blasts the daily for criticizing what some have labeled his personal crusade against undocumented immigrants.

“Why should anyone go through the brain damage and expense of obeying our laws when all they have to do is sneak into the country? Not only will they get a free K-12 education for their kids, someone will probably pick up the tab for college expenses,” Tancredo wrote.

On Wednesday, Tancredo charged that the media attention on Apodaca was part of political maneuvers to present a “human interest story” to generate support for the Mexican Consulate’s agenda, which includes having Colorado tax payers pay for undocumented immigrants’ college education. Tancredo said he suspects President Vicente Fox is fully aware of the consulate’s doings.

“We can’t pretend we have a border with Mexico when we can’t control that border. Either we militarize it and use high technology to monitor it, or we declare it an open border, as Fox and President George W. Bush seem to want,” he asserted.

Once the border has been militarized, Tancredo said, the next step would be sending letters to undocumented immigrants with deadlines for a voluntary departure, after which the government would organize “mass deportations.”

Source: Agencia EFE

Librarians criticize FBI snooping

By Bob Egelko Sept. 16— When Oakland resident Zoia Horn, an 84-year-old retired librarian, learned that the FBI was monitoring America’s libraries, her first thought was: Here we go again.

Thirty years ago, after an encounter with an FBI informant in a Pennsylvania college library, Horn spent nearly three weeks in jail for refusing to testify for the prosecution in the sensational trial of anti-war activists accused of a terrorist plot.

Horn was “the first librarian who spent time in jail for a value of our profession,” said Judith Krug, longtime director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.

The FBI, under pressure from Congress, eventually abandoned a Cold War program of library surveillance in the mid-1980s. But a post-Sept. 11 law has brought federal agents back into the stacks, and Horn thinks it’s time for some librarians to take the same step she did and say no, even if it means jail.

“I would tell them there are consequences, it shouldn’t be done lightly,” said Horn, who believes her notoriety cost her some library jobs. “But there is a sense of freeing yourself. If you can do it, you are doing it for others.”

The new surveillance was authorized by last October’s USA PATRIOT Act. A provision of the law allows FBI agents to obtain a warrant from a secret court for library or bookstore records of anyone connected to an investigation of terrorism or spying.

Unlike other search warrants, these warrants do not require the officer to show that evidence of wrongdoing is likely to be found or that the target of its investigation is involved in a crime.

A librarian who is served with a warrant must surrender records of the patron’s book borrowing or Internet use and is prohibited from revealing the search to anyone, including the patron. The Justice Department has refused to tell Congress how the law is being used, saying the information is classified.

The American Library Association (ALA) is critical of the new law and advises librarians not to keep any records they don’t need. But its official position is that a librarian who receives a proper warrant has no choice but to comply.

Horn disagrees.

“They have [another] option, the option I took, to say this is not appropriate, this is not ethical in the library profession,” she said. “It undermines the very essence of what a publicly supported library is.”

Horn is not alone. An editorial in the August issue of the ALA magazine, American Libraries, says that if the FBI abuses its new powers, “we will need librarians brave enough to speak out, even if it means going to jail.”

Krug, who held her current library association position when Horn was jailed, said she couldn’t ethically recommend that a librarian defy the FBI “because I wouldn’t be going to jail. They might.”

However, she said, “I suspect that one of these days we’ll have someone else in jail.”

Horn left Russia with her family when she was 8 -- “maybe because I immigrated, I took very seriously what the Constitution said,” she muses -- and started working at libraries in 1942. In January 1971, she was the chief reference librarian at Bucknell University in sleepy Lewisburg, PA., when two FBI agents showed up unexpectedly at her home.

They asked her to answer some questions and look at photos. When she refused, she was handed a grand jury subpoena.

She quickly learned that another librarian and two aides had gotten similar visits from agents seeking evidence of a bizarre plot allegedly masterminded by the Rev. Philip Berrigan, a priest then held at the Lewisburg federal prison for destroying draft records.

Prosecutors said Berrigan and six others, five of them current or former priests or nuns, were planning to blow up tunnels beneath Washington, DC, and kidnap Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser, and hold him until US bombing of Southeast Asia was halted.

The main evidence came from a man named Boyd Douglas, Berrigan’s fellow inmate, who had gotten a job pasting labels at the Bucknell library on a work- release program. During that stint, he befriended Horn.

Horn, who opposed the war to the extent of refusing to pay a federal telephone tax that activists considered a war tax, recalled that Douglas had approached her and others with a phony story that he was in prison for anti-war activities. (He had actually been sentenced for forging checks.)

Using his genuine contact with Berrigan to pose as a movement sympathizer, Douglas got Horn to host a meeting that included some of Berrigan’s friends and offered to carry letters to the jailed priest, Horn said.

Horn said she had never seen evidence that Douglas was keeping track of library users. However, she said, it comes down to the same thing: Government spies don’t belong in libraries.

“The very presence of an FBI informant sends chills down people’s backs,” she said. “It means Big Brother is watching you.”

Prosecutors pressed Horn for information about meetings and relationships that would support Douglas’ allegations of a plot.

She testified to a grand jury in 1971 and said in her 1995 memoirs that she felt “nasty, ugly and alone, watching myself being turned into an informer on neighbors and friends.”

When the defendants, who became known as the Harrisburg Seven, went to trial in 1972, Horn decided she couldn’t be a part of it. She refused to testify, was found in contempt and was led away in handcuffs as she started to read a statement about freedom of thought.

“I was a bit scared . . . but I felt content,” Horn said.

Describing her previous anti-war activity as largely passive, she said, “Here I had been offered on a silver platter this opportunity to not say anything, and maybe it would make a difference. . . . I was acting as a citizen and as a librarian.”

She was sentenced for the duration of the trial, which was expected to last three months. But testimony ended abruptly in 20 days when the defense, after a cross-examination that brought out Douglas’ criminal record and many contradictory statements, rested its case without calling any witnesses. The jury deadlocked on the conspiracy charges, which were then dropped.

Before being freed, however, Horn, who turned 54 in the Dauphin County Jail, learned that the ALA had declared it would not support her defiance, even though the previous year it had passed a resolution she had sponsored saying librarians should not act as informants.

After her release, the association changed course again and commended her. She was later elected to a four-year term on its governing council.

Horn says she has no regrets. Honored for her contributions to freedom of information by the Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists as well as the ALA, she hasn’t stopped lobbying her colleagues and their association to take bolder stands.

Today’s librarians need the assurance that their peers are behind them, Horn said, legally and financially as well as morally.

“They should say, ‘We stand by our librarians if they wish not to respond [to the FBI] because it is against our religion,’” she said. “All kinds of options are there for a librarian with a conscience.”

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

CAT executives in DC ‘arrested’ for war crimes

Sept. 18— At 9am on Tuesday morning, Sept. 17, a media advisory went out stating that executives from the Caterpillar corporation would be arrested at their office in Washington, DC, and at other locations around the country. The media responded immediately, assuming it was another case of corporate corruption, but, when Fox News arrived, they quickly realized it was not an issue of corruption but of war crimes.

Activists from SUSTAIN (Stop US tax-funded Aid to Israel Now!) marched into the building in downtown DC that houses the Caterpillar (CAT) office to make a citizen’s arrest under the provisions of the 4th Geneva convention, and to demand that the CAT executives come to the UN building in DC immediately to turn themselves in for war crimes. The arrest warrant served to CAT read:

“The Israeli Defense Forces have committed numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity — as defined by the Fourth Geneva Convention—against the Palestinian people using Caterpillar equipment. The Caterpillar corporation, by knowingly selling equipment to be used for such purposes, and by refusing to cease such sales when illegal uses were documented, is complicit in these crimes. It is thereby violating its duty under international law, and violating its own code of moral conduct.”

Based on this complicity, and in the spirit of Israeli justice, which CAT supports, the warrant called for: “the immediate arrest of all senior executives of the Caterpillar Corporation. Further, all Caterpillar executives living in the District of Columbia, are to be exiled to Anacostia [ghettoized area in southeast DC]. They will be furnished with UN refugee tents erected in abandoned alleys, though these will later be bulldozed with Caterpillar equipment. While some of these executives may not be directly associated with Caterpillar complicity in war crimes, we suspect they are related to people who are, and that’s good enough for us.”

Upon delivery of the warrant, the CAT executives tried to slam the door, but the SUSTAIN activists blocked it with their bodies and held it open.

The CAT executives first threatened to call the police, and then threatened physical assault. The activists replied calmly that they would remain there until they were finished articulating all of the war crimes for which CAT was responsible. They presented color photographs of CAT bulldozers demolishing civilian homes, and explained that at Nuremberg, corporate executives who knowingly supplied equipment for war crimes were tried and held accountable under international law.

Meanwhile, downstairs in front of the building more activists from SUSTAIN, dressed as Israeli soldiers, were condemning the CAT building for demolition. They were demanding, over a bullhorn, that everyone evacuate the building because people complicit in terrorist acts and war crimes were being arrested inside. “This is a closed Israeli military zone” they yelled as “construction workers” put orange cones in front of the entrance and wrapped the building in yellow “Caution” tape. They then posted “Condemnation Orders” on the front doors of the office building which read:

“This Office of the Caterpillar Corporation (and the activities carried out herein) Are Condemned. All personnel are instructed to vacate the premises and to turn over this office to homeless Palestinian families.”

The CAT executives were visibly shaken, and were publicly indicted in front of the media. The executives and the media were made aware of the fact that similar actions happened today at other CAT offices around the country, and that if CAT continues to supply bulldozers for Israeli war crimes, the actions will continue to escalate nationally and internationally.

Source: DC Indymedia

Arizona censors communications by death row inmates

By Bill Berkowitz Sept. 16— “They are sentenced to death, not to silence,” Tracy Lamourie, one of the founders of the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty, recently told the Advocate News of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Officials in the state of Arizona have a different point of view: In mid-July, the state began enforcing a two-year-old law banning prisoners from contributing information about their cases to websites run by outside organizations.

Toronto NOW, the city’s local independent weekly newspaper, reported that the Arizona bill would “control and censor web pages for death row inmates” provided by the Toronto-based Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty (CCADP). “The Coalition has teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union to challenge the state regulation [HB 2376] in court,” the paper added. “But we don’t know what’s sadder. Arizona’s need to further dehumanize prisoners about to be murdered by the state or the fact that the coalition maintains over [450] webpages for death-row prisoners across the US.”

Tracy Lamourie and Dave Parkinson run the CCADP. Via several e-mail exchanges they told me that of the 450 webpages of death row prisoners that they maintain, 370 are for prisoners living on death row, 4 are for prisoners who have been released, and 8 are for prisoners who had been re-sentenced. Parkinson wrote that “10 percent of American death row prisoners have a page on our site. We also have pen pal requests for hundreds more.”

“The idea” for the webpages, Lamourie said, “is to give a voice to a segment of society that is often written off by the public and to remember those who were executed.

“It isn’t glorifying anyone to allow them a voice before they are executed — to allow them to send us reports of abuses going on in the prison, legal issues in their cases, even writings and poetry detailing life in a cage waiting to be killed.”

Lamourie said that she and Parkinson founded CCADP after they heard about the case of Jimmy Dennis. “This,” said Lamourie, is “a Pennsylvania case of actual innocence that was garnering little or no attention or support. After reviewing the legal materials and realizing the credibility of his claims of innocence, we set up the first CCADP webpage—devoted to the Jimmy Dennis case—and included information about the behavior of the police as well as witness statements, photos, and contact information. Dennis has since gained the support of people around the world, and webpages for him have sprung up in the UK, Germany, Singapore, and elsewhere. Dennis is now being represented by a large law firm in Washington who were specifically seeking a case of actual innocence. We hope and expect to hear that Jimmy Dennis will be exonerated in the not-too-distant future.”

For many of the isolated, depressed, and desperate prisoners on the nation’s death rows, the CCADP’s web pages serve as their only lifeline. One inmate on Texas’ death row wrote: “I want to thank you. I do not dramatize or exaggerate when I tell you I believe you have served as a conduit that saved my life. In the despair that can overwhelm us here, I was very seriously considering suicide or waiving my appeals. Because of you I have found reason for fighting, reason for living, and happiness beyond measure.”

Not everyone believes prison inmates should have access to the Internet, let alone have their cases publicized through special web pages. “I think [the CCADP] are just misguided individuals,” Assistant District Attorney John Sinquefield told the Advocate News. Sinquefield, who has prosecuted death penalty cases, said the people running the website aren’t related to the victims of “the people slaughtered by some of the worst, most heinous criminals around.”

Several members of victim’s rights groups have also found the webpages for prisoners unsettling. “These people are bad dudes,” Frank Parish, a board member of the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children, whose stepdaughter was abducted from the parking lot of a Houston grocery store and murdered, told Wired News. “It doesn’t bother me at all that they don’t have their Bill of Rights. They forfeited those when they made the deliberate choice to violate the law.”

Arizona silences inmates

On July 18, 2002, according to the Canadian Coalition’s website, the organization filed suit in the Arizona courts “to have the law that attempts to cut off communication between advocacy groups and prisoners declared unconstitutional.” The ACLU is representing the CCADP, Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and Stop Prisoner Rape in this action.

Because of HB 2376 and the “actions now being taken against prisoners by ADOC” [Arizona Department of Corrections], CCADP has decided to place all Arizona death row prisoners online, to “ensure they are not effectively silenced by this law.”

In actuality, prisoners do not have direct access to the Internet. What the prisoners have had access to is the ability to communicate with outside organizations that have set up webpages on their behalf in the form of written letters, poetry and art. These days, with so many legitimate questions raised about falsely convicted and incarcerated prisoners on death row, it’s common sense to allow prisoners an outlet to talk about their lives and cases. Especially so, given the recent number of cases involving prisoners—now numbering more than 100, including six from Arizona— removed from death row after information proving they had not committed the crimes they were convicted and sentenced for was discovered.

According to CCADP, the statute that went into effect July 18 reads:

“Except as authorized by the department of corrections, an inmate... shall not have access to the Internet through the use of a computer, computer system, network, communication service provider, or remote computing system.”

Inmates are prohibited from sending or receiving mail from an Internet service provider or “remote” computing company. Any inmate found in violation of this statute “is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor,” and could be denied “earned release credits.” In addition, the statute applies if “any person accesses the provider’s or service Internet website at the inmate’s request.”

In a letter from the Arizona Department of Corrections, prisoners have been advised that to “avoid possible criminal charges and/or disciplinary sanctions,” they need to have their names “removed” from the CCADP websites “within three (3) weeks.” Officials will be monitoring the website and if “your name/information etc. has not been removed... or is located on any other website on the Internet system, disciplinary actions WILL BE administered and possible criminal charges may result.”

CCADP stands firm

In response to the ADOC, CCADP’s Directors Dave Parkinson and Tracy Lamourie advised Arizona authorities that although they’ve received the inmate’s request for removal, they will not comply. “We believe that ANY and ALL requests received by the CCADP from the State of Arizona, regarding removal of information from the Internet,” Parkinson and Lamourie wrote, “have been made under duress and as a direct result of Prison Administration trying to coerce and intimidate prisoners through threats of retaliation, punishment, and/or criminal charges.”

The CCADP insists that it holds the rights to all the materials received from inmates before the statute went into effect and it will continue to post these materials “with or without the permission of the prisoner in question. Prisoners are not aware when they contact us that we may or may not comply with the prisoners request for removal at a later date.”

Source: TomPaine.com

NATION BRIEFS

Some experts fear political influence on crime data agencies

Criminal justice experts say they have become increasingly concerned that the Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft is moving to exert political control over previously independent agencies within the department that collect crime statistics and grant crime research awards.

At stake, they say, is the integrity of statistics about whether crime is increasing or decreasing and the findings of scholars about what causes crime and how to reduce it.

The experts’ worries center on several little-publicized developments involving the Bureau of Justice Statistics — the statistical arm of the Justice Department — and the National Institute of Justice, its research arm. The agencies, created by Congress, have long been independent of the attorney general, and had been allowed to release reports and make research grants without clearance by the Attorney General’s office, according to former directors of these offices. But a number of employees on those agencies as well as former officials and leading scholars said in interviews that over the last year — and recently with increasing speed — political appointees under Ashcroft have worked to undermine that independence. The critics trace the shift to the passage in October of the USA PATRIOT Act.

As a result, statistical reports and decisions about research grants are now being sent to Ashcroft appointees for clearance before being publicly released. Some reports and grants are being delayed for two to three months awaiting clearance. These delays hurt the integrity of the statistics gained, not only because of time considerations, but because of the possible political influence and motivation which could be perceived by many to cause the delays. (NYT)

Phelps: Godlovesbigots.com?

Fred Phelps, the anti-gay pastor responsible for the website Godhatesfags.com, has made headlines recently in two states for homophobic threats and planned anti-gay demonstrations.

In Casper, WY, a group of Christian leaders has asked Phelps and his followers to stay away from Wyoming as the forth anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepard approaches. Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming freshman, died Oct. 12, 1998, five days after he was lured from a bar, kidnapped, tied to a fence and beaten into a coma by two Laramie, Wyoming men, who committed the crime partly because of Shepard’s homosexuality.

The Central Wyoming Evangelical Fellowship wrote to the Rev. Fred Phelps of Topeka and his Westboro Baptist Church, saying the organization does not believe that the Westboro Church’s planned protests of the anniversary next month will “glorify God.”

Also, officials at two Oakland, CA schools have called in police after receiving threats from followers of Phelps. The schools are planning productions of The Laramie Project, a play about the murder of Shepard.

Bishop O’Dowd High School received a fax last week from Phelp’s Westboro Baptist Church that threatened to “bring the wrath of God” to the school. It referred to school priests and nuns as “faggots” and “dykes” and accused the priests of molesting students.

Similar threats of protests and disturbances were also made in a flier sent to Newark Memorial High School. Neither school has intentions of canceling the productions, and will have police on hand during showtimes. (AP, 365Gay.com)

ATF chief returns to work after drunken rampage

The head of the Iowa office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) was charged with public intoxication Sept. 16 and was being investigated on allegations that he threatened some teenagers with a loaded gun. John Carl Petersen, 41, was arrested and taken to the Warren county jail. He was released Tuesday on his promise to appear in court.

Petersen’s supervisor, Paul Vido, in Kansas City, MO, said Petersen will be allowed to carry a weapon and resume his duties while local and federal authorities investigate the allegations.

Police said the incident began when teenagers drove by Petersen’s house, throwing toilet paper onto area trees and homes as part of a homecoming-week prank.

Petersen chased them in his government-owned Jeep, sirens blaring. Both cars stopped near an elementary school, and Petersen apparently pulled out a loaded revolver, brandishing it at the teenagers. Police arrived after responding from several calls from neighbors, and found that Petersen had a blood alcohol level of nearly twice the legal limit for driving.

His trial is set for November 1. (AP)