Dirty Bombs, Dirty Minds, Dirty Hands

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DIRTY BOMBS AND DIRTY HANDS: 

The US Looks More Like Nazi Germany Every Day

[Brooklyn-born Jose Padilla, US citizen of Puerto Rican descent, was
quite likely never named by the prisoner the US has under (no doubt
totally legitimate and humane) interrogation.  Padilla was arrested
more than a month ago, on May 8th; yesterday's announcment was a
political decision, convenient to Bush's proclamation of the Homeland
Gestapo and made to remove the fellow from the reach of the US
political systems outlined in that shred of paper called the
Constitution.  Ari Fleischer, Chief Liar at the White House, has
assured reporters there were absolutely no political motives behind
the timing of this announcement.

It appears they actually don't have any useful evidence against
Padilla at all; he's been secretly held for a month on a material
witness warrant and they thought they could trot him in front of a
grand jury, but he refused and he has a lawyer. And so does his
mother.

The clock was running out on their ability to keep a lid on him, so
he had to be transferred to military jurisdiction to whisk him away
from the things mentioned in the Bill of Rights and elsewhere in our
legal system: due process, speedy trial, confrontation of witnesses,
habeas corpus and all the rest of it.

So, now we know how the Homeland Gestapo will get around their
earlier lie that there would be no "military tribunals" for US
citizens. They'll just declare anyone they want to an "enemy
combatant" and -- poof! -- no more rights!  Not even a military
tribunal!

Note the accusation (to the press, not under oath in a court of law)
by none other than Undersecretary of State John Bolton that Padilla
was "carrying plans for the attack" when he was arrested. We all know
how truthful and upstanding John Bolton is. This claim may have no
more validity than Bolton's wild allegations about a Cuban biological
weapons research program. If they get desperate enough for damage
control, they can pick up someone who ISN'T a small-time thug,
disappear them, and accuse them of anything they like. It wouldn't be
the first, or the hundredth, time that the FBI has fabricated (or
destroyed) evidence. 

James R. Schlesinger, former Secretary of War and CIA Director under
Tricky Dick Nixon, says this war of terror will be around for a long
time. "It's not like Grenada," sez he. No, indeed -- it's more like
Dallas, circa November, 1963.]

                            *

AP via Yahoo - June 11, 2002

Lawyer: Padilla's Rights Violated

by Tom Hays

NEW YORK (AP) - A lawyer for the U.S. citizen accused of plotting to
attack the United States with a "dirty bomb" told a judge Tuesday her
client was being detained unconstitutionally.

"My client is a citizen," attorney Donna R. Newman said outside
court. "He still has constitutional rights - the right to counsel,
the right to be charged by a grand jury. ... And they have not
charged him."

After Jose Padilla's arrest in Chicago on May 8, authorities secretly
held him in New York City. He was flown Monday aboard a military
plane to a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C.

A closed hearing had been scheduled as part of the sealed material
witness case. U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey held the hearing
anyway on Tuesday, and opened it to the public.

The judge said Newman's motion to dismiss the material witness
warrant was moot because the government had withdrawn it.

Newman claimed the government has denied her access to Padilla since
he was turned over to the Defense department, apparently on Sunday
night. She said he had been held as a material witness in a
high-security cell block in Manhattan.

Newman said she had filed court papers appealing the decision to
place her client in military custody. The papers were not immediately
made public.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Karas declined comment.

Newman declined to describe her 31-year-old client other than to say
he had been under extremely high security at the Manhattan
Correctional Center and that he denied the government's allegations.

"His response is the allegations are not true because there are no
allegations. He's not been charged, but he's being detained," Newman
said.

Padilla's arrest was revealed Monday by Attorney General John
Ashcroft, who described Padilla as an enemy combatant. He said the
government has "very significant information" about Padilla's
involvement "with al-Qaida in very serious terrorist plots."

The government described the arrest as a significant blow against an
al-Qaida plot to detonate a radioactive weapon -- known as a "dirty
bomb" -- inside the United States, possibly targeting Washington.

Officials said the plot got only as far as the planning stage and
they said there was no indication Padilla had access to nuclear
materials. Undersecretary of State John Bolton indicated Padilla was
carrying plans for the attack when he was picked up in Chicago.

Authorities described Padilla as a former gang member from Chicago
who was raised Catholic but converted to Islam and changed his name
to Abdullah al Muhajir.


                             *

The New York Times via Yahoo - June 11, 2002

A MESSAGE IN AN ARREST

by Patrick E. Tyler

WASHINGTON, June 10--The Bush administration's announcement today
that a man had been arrested in an alleged plot to build a "dirty"
radioactive bomb seemed to reinforce its repeated warnings that the
brain of Al Qaeda, and thus the threat, were still alive.

The arrest of the man, Jose Padilla, raised the possibility that some
dispersed and hidden terrorist command is still actively trying to
strike the United States, and that it was focused as recently as last
month on some of the most fear-inspiring weapons, like radiological
bombs literally, bundles of dynamite or other explosives strapped to
containers of radioactive material.

For the president, the drama of the dirty-bomb threat and its
successful interdiction also sent a clear warning to those
Congressional leaders who are preparing to focus a long political
season on how the nation's intelligence-gathering system broke down
during Mr. Bush's watch.

Today's disclosure may well galvanize Americans once again behind the
president and the notion that the country remains at war, even as
Congress moves ahead with its review of American intelligence
failures that allowed Osama bin Laden and members of his Qaeda
terrorist network to attack the country on Sept. 11.

It seems all but certain that the inevitable collision of war and
politics will be at the forefront in Washington for some time. Since
Congress began its inquiry into intelligence lapses, the White House
has pursued a more muscular strategy to demonstrate it is moving
aggressively to deal with the continuing threats.

There was Mr. Bush's abrupt decision last week to create a
cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security, an idea he had
previously resisted. And there were White House leaks showcasing new
investigative leads and new connections between the terrorists who
plotted the unsuccessful 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and
those who finished the job so ruthlessly last September.

The president's spokesman, Ari Fleischer said no political
considerations were involved in timing today's announcement of the
dirty bomb plot. But to underscore its importance, the disclosure by
Attorney General John Ashcroft was broadcast from Moscow, where he
was visiting on unrelated business.

Politics aside, today marked the latest and perhaps most frightening
episode in a sequence of terrorist acts or threats.

First, there was the alleged Dec. 22 attempt by a suspect, Richard C.
Reid, to detonate explosives loaded into the soles of his shoes while
flying on a commercial flight from Paris to Miami. On April 11, a
truck bomb in Tunisia killed 19 people 14 of them German tourists in
an attack that French and German intelligence officials believe was
directed by Al Qaeda. Then, on May 8, a bomb in Karachi, Pakistan,
killed 11 French naval engineers, a blast also believed to be the
work of Al Qaeda.

Senior administration officials never tire of saying they remain
deeply troubled that another major attack on the United States is
inevitable, raising concern enough. But just suggest "nuclear," and
the alarm needle lurches across the meter.

Indeed, the whole affair what little could be learned about how the
C.I.A. and F.B.I. detected it in Pakistan and shadowed Mr. Padilla,
who took the name Abdullah al-Muhajir, all the way to O'Hare
International Airport in Chicago appeared to take the nation's breath
away. The details of the alleged plot were especially sparse on
whether the suspect had any prospect of carrying out a mission that
depended on something he conspicuously did not have: access to
radioactive material.

Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, did not overstate
the threat from Mr. Padilla.

"This was still in the initial planning stages. It certainly wasn't
at the point of having a specific target," Mr. Wolfowitz said, adding
that it was the job of Mr. Padilla, an American citizen, to return to
the United States to conduct reconnaissance for Al Qaeda.

"But it does underscore, I think, the continuing importance of
focusing particularly on those people who may be pursuing chemical or
biological or nuclear weapons," Mr. Wolfowitz said. "This is but one
such individual."

James R. Schlesinger, the former secretary of defense who also served
as director of central intelligence during the Nixon administration,
said the prospect that Mr. Padilla was likely to build a dirty bomb
was "not realistic."

"He would have to be a lot smarter than the average Al Qaeda member
to build a radiological weapon," Mr. Schlesinger said.

Even so, Mr. Schlesinger considered the administration's effort to
billboard its success to be proper. Not only would it disarm critics,
he noted, but, more important, it could deter future bombers.

"The intent was there, the threat was there," Mr. Schlesinger said,
Thus, "it was a criminal act."

"If we feel we can constrain stalkers," he added, "then I think we
can also constrain people who want to build radiological bombs."

Such weapons have long been derided as having no military utility.
But in the new age of terror, the notion is back of a non-nuclear
atomic weapon, one that uses the poisonous effects of radiation to
spread panic and disrupt the economy.

Such a bomb could contaminate a wide area, and though it would
probably not cause many deaths, the cleanup costs and the fear of
exposure would result in a devastating psychological and
physiological impact on the affected population as happened after the
Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986.

In a season of security jitters, where the failure to apprehend Osama
bin Laden now competes with new concerns about nuclear war between
India and Pakistan, Mr. Schlesinger said the administration was
"quite right" to sound the alarm.

Yet there was little escape from the sense that a daunting array of
threats remain.

"This is going to be around for a long time," Mr. Schlesinger said.
"It is not like Grenada."

                              *

The Washington Post - June 11, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com

An Unusual Odyssey

US-BORN LATINO TURNS ISLAMIC TERROR SUSPECT

By Michael Grunwald and Amy Goldstein

He was born in Brooklyn. He joined a Latino gang in Chicago, where he
was involved in a killing as a teenager. He worked at a hotel in
Florida, where he was sent to prison after a road-rage shooting
incident. And now the menacing 31-year-old man who calls himself
Abdullah al Muhajir is the first accused al Qaeda operative with
"Jose" tattooed to his right arm.

The transformation of a chubby Catholic boy named Jose Padilla into
an Islamic terrorist suspected of plotting to unleash a "dirty bomb"
on an American city is the mystery of the moment. There were bits and
pieces of information yesterday -- the instantly notorious mug shot,
police records, vague memories from neighbors -- but not much more.
No one could explain why a Puerto Rican kid who spent much of his
adolescence in juvenile hall ended up researching radiological
dispersion devices and learning how to wire explosives in Afghanistan
and Pakistan.

He apparently converted to Islam in or after prison. He apparently
completed a substance abuse course. He apparently married an Egyptian
woman and left the country. But this much is definite: He was
arrested May 8 after getting off a flight from Pakistan at O'Hare
International Airport in Chicago, and he is now in a Navy brig in
Charleston, S.C.

"Jose was a nice kid," said Nelly Ojeda, a neighbor in Chicago. "He
was always in the house."

At the Lake Park Gardens condominium complex in Plantation, Fla.,
there was a plaque quoting Scripture on his mother's door: "As for me
and my house, we will serve the Lord." There was also a statue of a
cherub reclining, two bows decorated with American flag patterns, and
a handwritten note: "Please leave this family in peace." Before the
news of America's newest "enemy combatant" broke yesterday morning,
Shari Santos saw the suspect's mother walking her pet Chihuahua. His
stepfather asked Alice Beckett if she wanted some soup.

"I said: 'not too spicy,' " recalled Beckett, 91, the treasurer of
the Lake Park Gardens condo association. "I'm flabbergasted."

When Jose was 4, his mother, Estela Ortega, moved him to West
Chicago, where they lived in a modest rowhouse they shared with two
other families; his father apparently died when he was young.
Neighbors recalled that Jose's nickname was "Pucho," or pudgy, and
that he played softball in the streets.

But law enforcement sources say he ended up pursuing less benign
activities. He joined the Latin Kings, a street gang that used to
promote itself as a nonviolent source of empowerment for young
Latinos before dozens of its leaders were sent to jail. The sources
also say he was involved in a gangland murder when he was only 13.

His juvenile record is under seal, but FBI officials said he was
arrested five times in Chicago for assault and other crimes from 1985
until 1991. He spent several years in juvenile jail; he last attended
a public school for troubled children when he was 15.

In 1991, he moved to Florida, where he was living with a girlfriend
and working at hotels for $200 a week -- according to a successful
worker's compensation claim that netted him an additional $5 a week
-- and driving a car with tinted windows.

On the afternoon of Oct. 8, 1991, he got in a traffic accident in
Sunrise, showed off a silver .38-caliber revolver, then drove away,
according to a police report. When the other driver followed to try
to take down his license, Padilla shot at his vehicle from about 25
feet away. The other driver gave his tag number to the police, who
surprised him that night when he returned to his girlfriend's
apartment in Lauderhill. "He went for his gun, but we convinced him
to comply," recalled Sunrise police Lt. Charles Vitale.

That's just about all Vitale remembers about him. The complaint says
he was 5-foot-10, 170 pounds. He requested an attorney. When he went
to prison, he listed his religion as Catholic. While in jail, he
assaulted a sheriff's deputy. After a year in prison, he was arrested
nearly a dozen times up to 1997 on traffic offenses, including
speeding and driving with a revoked license. Once, while driving his
girlfriend's Toyota Tercel, he gave his name as Jose Alicea, and
presented a driver's license in that name. But never Abdullah al
Muhajir.

"I'm shocked that the person I encountered 10 years ago was actually
the person that did this," Vitale said.

But Padilla's former landlady, Norma Leon, told the Chicago Sun-Times
that in recent years, his mother complained that he had left the
country to join a cult. "She was scared for him," Leon said.

Victor Olds, a former prosecutor who is representing Estela Ortega,
said she appeared before a grand jury two weeks ago to discuss her
son. He said she had been in contact with him before his arrest, but
not since.

[Staff writers Robert E. Pierre and Manuel Roig-Franzia, researcher
Margot Williams and correspondents Catherine Skipp and Christine
Haughney contributed to this report.]

(c) 2002 The Washington Post Company 
 
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