Denver Water gives few details on Dillon Dam decision
Denver water authorities citing unspecified security concerns suddenly close a crucial dam road in booming Summit County. Residents erupt in protest. The Denver water authorities concede there’s no immediate threat, saying they based their move on a new vulnerability analysis by a federal security agency they could not name. Are jihadists able and likely to target a relatively unknown mountain dam?
Privacy advocates worry that officers’ snooping will entangle innocent people.
Hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and even utility workers have been trained and recently dispatched as “Terrorism Liaison Officers in Colorado and a handful of other statres to hunt for “suspicious activity” - and are reporting their findings into secret government databases. U.S. intelligence and homeland security officials say they support the widening use of TLOs - state-run under federal agreements - as part of a necessary integrated network for preventing attacks. But the vague nature of TLOs’ mission and their focus on reporting both legal and illegal activity has generated objections from privacy advocates and civil libertarians.
Tough rules delay cases Anti-terrorism efforts require stricter proof of persecution, including documents that can “reasonably” be obtained.
Jailed and tortured in Ethiopia, Samuel Tafesa made it to Mexico,
then waded across the Rio Grande into the United States.
Now in Denver, he’s begging for asylum protection, claiming that
Ethiopian police beat him with sticks on the bottoms of his feet
and held his head under water, trying to coerce information about
fellow members of an opposition political party.
“I’m afraid to go back to Ethiopia,” he said. “If I go back,
I’ll be killed.”
For Tafesa and tens of thousands of other asylum-seekers, sanctuary
in America has become harder to attain. U.S. officials are
subjecting them to increasingly rigorous scrutiny, government
officials and legal experts say.
New anti-terrorism measures require stricter proof of persecution,
including documents that can “reasonably” be obtained.
Tafesa, 22, called back to Ethiopia repeatedly, asking his mother
to get what she can for his lawyer, Michael Litman.
Today’s higher standard of proof makes cases more complex and
prolongs them, with government attorneys sending documents to a
Homeland Security forensics lab for testing.
“We have a tradition, but we want to make sure people seeking
(asylum) have a rightful entitlement,” said Mike Everitt, a unit
chief in the lab near Washington, D.C.
The new measures are contributing to a record immigration-court
backlog - 3,370 cases pending in Denver, a third involving asylum,
federal statistics show. That’s double Denver’s pending caseload
six years ago.
Department of Justice officials said 166,200 cases are pending in
immigration courts nationwide, including 33,194 in Los Angeles,
8,546 in Chicago and 9,455 in Orlando, Fla. In 2000, 125,764 cases
were pending.
“Overburdened” system
Dana Marks, a sitting judge in California and president of the
National Association of Immigration Judges, said dozens more judges
are needed.
The system is “unbelievably overburdened,” squeezing judges’
ability to make life-or-death decisions, Marks said.
“Why are we treating the asylum system this way? If we pride
ourselves in America for treating refugees right, why aren’t we
providing resources to ensure they get prompt and fair treatment?”
Marks said.
Now, fewer people are applying for asylum, though the reasons for
the drop aren’t clear.
Some 54,452 applications were received last year in immigration
courts, down from 74,627 in 2002 and 84,904 in 1997, records show.
Adjudicators for the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration
Services, who often see asylum-seekers first, received 36,502
applications last year, down from 65,201 in 2002 and 149,000 in
1995, according to a senior USCIS official who spoke on condition
of anonymity, in accordance with agency policy.
In Denver, about one in three cases handled is approved. Asylum
experts say it’s too early to gauge whether the new standards for
proof will change that percentage.
USCIS adjudicators approved 27 percent of cases they handled this
year, down from 43 percent in 2001, according to the senior
official. In immigration courts, stats show 23 percent of
applications processed last year were approved, up from 20 percent
in 2002.
Previously, asylum-seekers often were accepted solely on the basis
of government “country condition” reports and testimony that
judges found to be credible and persuasive.
Today’s higher standards requiring documentation that could
“reasonably” be obtained “change the burden of proof,” the
official said. But “there’s still the allowance” that an
applicant who can’t obtain documents can win asylum if deemed
credible, he said.
“Out of reach for many”
One problem caused by the more frequent demand for documents is
that hiring document and medical experts raises legal costs, said
Regina Germain, legal director at the Rocky Mountain Survivors
Center and author of a legal text on asylum law.
“I fear recent changes … could put asylum out of reach for many
people who flee with little more than the clothes on their backs,”
Germain said.
In Tafesa’s case, an Addis Ababa police document his mother sent
says he was imprisoned for 17 days in 2005 for being a member of
the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party. The document accuses
him of involvement in “illegal demonstrations” and “promoting
unhealthy propaganda and causing conflict of people against
people.”
It says he was released from prison on the condition he cease all
political activity and check in weekly, which he failed to do. It
warns: “The police department will track you and your family
down.”
The government is vetting those documents. His case is scheduled
for a hearing in May.
Meantime, he works under a temporary permit, washing rental cars at
Denver International Airport for $8.85 an hour that he uses mostly
for legal fees.
His father and brother in Ethiopia have gone missing, and his
6-year-old son, Mathais, is bewildered, Tafesa said before work
Friday.
“He asks me: ‘Where are you?’ I tell him I’ll be there one day,”
Tafesa said. “What can I do?”
Over the next three weeks, the government plans to bring more than
1,400 refugees from Iraq to Denver and other U.S. cities - opening
doors that have been closed since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
By next year, the number of Iraqi refugees may swell to 12,000,
according to officials at the U.S. Departments of State and
Homeland Security.
Between 1992 and 2002, the U.S. accepted an average of 2,800 Iraqi
refugees a year. Since then, the annual average has dropped to
191.
The accelerated flow is in response to pressure to ease a worsening
humanitarian crisis, State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper
said.
“We want to take care of the people who have helped us, especially
those who might feel under threat,” Cooper said.
United Nations officials last week estimated one in seven Iraqis
have left their homes.
More than 2 million have made it to neighboring countries - the
largest Middle East displacement since the 1948 creation of
Israel.
The first refugees set to arrive in Denver are Nazar Al Taei, his
wife and their three children. They are scheduled to fly from
Jordan today.
Al Taei worked as a translator for the American military. His legs
were injured, leaving him with nerve problems, resettlement-agency
documents show. Fearing for their lives, the family fled to
Jordan.
Before the war in Iraq, Al Taei and his wife worked as
Russian-language teachers.
Others slated for resettlement in Denver include a woman with
breast cancer who hasn’t seen her husband since last year and
another who worked as an interpreter and secretary and is suffering
from serious depression and anxiety, the documents show.
An apartment off Colorado Boulevard has been furnished and stocked
for the Al Taei family. Local school officials await their
children, said Ferdi Mevlani, director of Ecumenical Refugee and
Immigration Services.
This Denver group is working on contract to guide about a dozen
Iraqi newcomers this month.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands more Iraqis clamor to get out,
according to U.N. and government officials.
“My family now, they are on the target,” said Omar Al Rahmani,
47, a Baghdad city councilman who translated for U.S. forces and
visited Denver twice on intergovernmental exchanges.
“My daughter’s school is 150 meters from my home. Even that is too
far,” Al Rahmani said in a telephone interview Friday.
“I don’t feel she’s safe, even though the school has four
guards,” Al Rahmani said. “I just want my family to be out in a
secure place. That’s all I want.”
For the U.S., accepting Iraqi refugees presents the major challenge
of screening out possible terrorists, said Paul Rosenzweig, deputy
assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security.
The Bush administration’s plan is to admit 10,000 to 12,000 Iraqis
a year, starting next year, Rosenzweig said.
“We’re doing enhanced background and biometric checks on people
coming out of Iraq to do the best we can to be sure those who are
admitted are deserving refugees, while at the same time screening
out those who might pose problems to us because of connections to
al- Qaeda in Iraq or other terrorist organizations,” he said.
By the end of this month, total Iraqi arrivals for 2007 should
reach 2,000, said Todd Pierce, spokesman for the State Department’s
migration bureau.
In the first seven months of 2007, some 190 Iraqi refugees were
admitted.
United Nations High Commission for Refugees officials are
negotiating with the U.S. to accept as many of the 2 million Iraqi
refugees as possible, U.N. spokeswoman Wendy Young said.
The commission asked U.S. officials to admit 10,110 U.N.- screened
Iraqis this year - nearly three times the 3,586 Iraqis referred to
all other countries.
The fleeing Iraqis all managed to escape to neighboring countries
such as Jordan, where authorities last week closed their borders
because they are swamped with refugees.
“We rely on the United States as a key partner in refugee
resettlement,” Young said.
Inside Iraq, an estimated 2.2 million more uprooted Iraqis face
dwindling options for escape. U.N. officials say 50,000 a month are
fleeing their homes.
Some in Congress still oppose accepting any Iraqi refugees.
“I don’t trust the (government) to vet them correctly,” said U.S.
Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo.
Others, like U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo., are pushing to help
more Iraqis out of a volatile situation.
“We’ve created it,” Perlmutter said. ” It’s a tragic situation.
And I don’t think we’ve come to grips with it.”
Perlmutter said he plans to introduce a bill that would admit up to
2,000 Iraqis who worked for U.S. diplomats and contractors in
Iraq.
“People who have assisted the United States should be welcome here
and be able to avoid persecution in Iraq, if that’s what they
choose,” he said.
Denver is seen as an ideal resettlement site because it has robust
agencies to help refugees from around the world, a healthy economy
and the capacity to treat torture victims, said Paul Stein,
coordinator of Colorado’s state refugee program and chairman of a
national advisory panel.
“By not making an effort to resettle more Iraqis, you’d definitely
feed into that notion of hypocrisy and double standards,” Stein
said.
About 41,000 refugees were admitted to the U.S. last year among an
estimated 1.8 million legal and illegal immigrants.
Refugees, who are deemed unable to return safely to their home
countries, receive government assistance for 90 days.
Some Colorado leaders advocate resettling many more from Iraq.
“We’re directly affected by what’s happening in Iraq and the rest
of the world. … I’d like to see what tangible we can do to help
fulfill our moral obligations,” said state Rep. Joe Rice, who
served as a civil-affairs soldier in Iraq and hears regularly from
Iraqis wanting out.
But Rice said he’s also deeply conflicted. Many of those fleeing
Iraq “are the very people who are needed to try to stabilize
things, to build a new society there,” he said.
“If all the good people leave, who’s left to build a new
society?”
A federal judge Wednesday declared the end of the government’s
four-year case against a Denver
Pakistani-American family once targeted by the FBI as terrorists.
Family members whose lives were turned upside down simply wept.
“We’ve lost everything,” longtime Colorado restaurateur Abdul
Qayyum said.
Chief U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock accepted plea deals with
federal prosecutors who dropped and reduced immigration charges
they pursued after their terrorism case fizzled against Qayyum, his
daughter Saima Saima, wife Chris Warren and nephew Irfan Kamran.
Now only Haroon Rashid, Saima’s husband, is jailed. Federal
prosecutors dropped all charges against him too. But Rashid, jailed
for more than two years, faces deportation after a misdemeanor
assault on a gang member who hassled his family.
A federal appeals court on Nov. 20 temporarily blocked Rashid’s
deportation pending an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
FBI agents targeted this family of naturalized U.S. citizens from
the
Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands based on secret evidence after
the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Then-U.S. Attorney General
John Ashcroft trumpeted the case as aggressive action against
terrorists.
“When the attorney general of the United States declares your
family terrorists,” the result is damage “far beyond anything
this court can do,” defense attorney Ray Moore told Babcock during
one of two emotional hearings Wednesday.
The family suffered financially as their restaurant in Castle Rock
closed. Children faced teasing; mothers grew depressed.
Babcock acknowledged that the long, hard case was trying on
everyone involved. “Sometimes these things take too long. … This
is one of those cases where it just took time to get it right.”
The immigration charges FBI agents pursued, after allegations of
links to al-Qaeda evaporated in 2004, involved statements family
members made about a relative to get him a visa to enter the U.S.
In multiple plea deals made final Wednesday, Qayyum pleaded guilty
to one charge of making a false statement to a federal agent. He
received a sentence of one year’s probation.
Kamran, a father of four, pleaded guilty to a petty offense after
prosecutors dropped two felony charges. All charges against Warren
and Saima were dropped.
“The most important thing that hurt me emotionally was when they
pointed guns at my kid and he was shivering” during a raid, Kamran
said. “(Yet) I still haven’t changed my mind about this country,”
he said. “I’m still positive. There are still a lot of people with
good values.”
Federal prosecutors defended their actions.
“I don’t know if there was any excess in this case. It was done
just like any other case would be,” Assistant U.S. Attorney David
Gaouette said.
Now defense attorneys say they’re trying to make sure family
members’ names aren’t on federal terrorist watch lists.
A counterterror medical team based in Denver is supposed to be able to launch in hours after an attack. But FEMA cuts may curb that capability.
A Denver-based federal counterterrorism team charged with saving
lives after nerve gas, nuclear or dirty-bomb attacks is facing its
own challenges that threaten its ability to quickly respond.
“If getting there early is going to save lives, we are not going
to save as many lives,” said Dr. Charles Goldstein, commander of
the 90-member unit.
The team of doctors, nurses and paramedics - a unique unit in the
107-team National Disaster Medical System - is supposed to be able
to mobilize within hours, then fly into chaos and work through the
crucial first few days after an attack to contain casualties.
But overspending has mired the system in debt, forcing the
suspension of funding for such teams while Federal Emergency
Management Agency supervisors scramble to sort out irregularities.
Team members say the problems threaten to compromise their work in
a disaster by impeding maintenance of equipment, limiting paid
training and increasing the time it takes to prepare to go.
The Denver team now requires eight hours to mobilize, two hours
more than the FEMA standard, for lack of a functioning centralized
pager-notification system, Goldstein said. He blames poor FEMA
oversight.
More than a year after Hurricane Katrina called FEMA’s management
into question, the agency’s stewardship of the disaster medical
system “is dysfunctional and complex,” Goldstein said.
The problems have shaken the entire National Disaster Medical
System, which was formed during the Cold War as a prized asset of
the Public Health Service.
FEMA took over the system after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks amid
concerns that terrorists would launch more attacks inside the
United States. Congress gave it $34 million a year. It includes
teams with specialized capabilities ranging from handling heaps of
dead bodies to helping distressed animals.
Now - on orders from the White House - the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services is poised to take back the system as part
of a post-Katrina reorganization.
Three teams in nation
Goldstein’s team operates out of a beige warehouse in north Denver
holding millions of dollars’ worth of equipment and vehicles. It is
one of three elite medical teams in the system. Others are
positioned in Los Angeles and Raleigh-Durham, N.C.
It is the nation’s only team configured to travel on short notice
by air using collapsible gear that fits into easily transportable
containers.
Its mission is responding to terrorist attacks involving weapons of
mass destruction, though all teams in the system can work after
natural disasters and other crises as well. The Denver team worked
in Houston for two weeks after Katrina.
But team spending on training and maintenance so exceeded the
system’s budget that FEMA supervisors shut down funding in
September. The deficit amount “is still being reviewed,” said
Jack Beall, chief of the system at FEMA, in response to written
questions from The Denver Post.
Goldstein said that he couldn’t say how much he spent this year but
that the total doesn’t exceed his roughly $800,000 annual budget
from 2005.
“They’ve never told me how much money I’m allowed to spend” in
2006, he said.
Team members are classified as “intermittent federal employees”
and until recently received from $13 to $50 an hour, depending on
their skill level, for work devoted to the team. As a doctor,
Goldstein, 59, said he has collected $50 an hour for 24 hours a
week of work outside his private medical practice to run the team -
about $57,600 a year.
If FEMA officials “tell me what the rules are, I’m going to play
by them,” he said. “But they are not telling us what the rules
are. And then they keep changing them midstream.
“We are doing things, utilizing our best judgment, to accomplish
the mission and keep our teams in a state of appropriate readiness
and alertness.”
Outside work questioned
Some units of the National Disaster Medical System, including the
Denver-based team, solicit additional outside funding. Goldstein
arranged a $75,000-a-year sponsorship from the Hospital Corporation of America. At FEMA headquarters, Beall said the sponsorship is illegal under federal rules to guard against conflicts of interest.
Said Goldstein: “We weren’t told we can’t do that. We were told
there were potential conflicts of interest. They said they were
going to investigate teams individually. That never went
anyplace.”
The Denver team formed a nonprofit foundation after the Sept. 11
attacks to raise money and do outside work. This nonprofit sought
and won a $600,000 state government contract to run a database and
train local medical volunteers.
FEMA officials said teams can do outside work like this and accept
payment as long as they are not acting in their federal capacity.
It’s unclear whether that means team members can work together and
use federally funded equipment.
Now the interruption of funding threatens response capabilities.
For example, Goldstein said, his 13 vehicles no longer are fully
maintained, and crews are hard-pressed to handle tedious but
crucial tasks such as charging more than 425 batteries that run
respirators, air-monitoring devices and other tools.
Limited funding resumed this month, but the Denver team now
operates at “a sub-optimal level,” Goldstein announced in a
recent memo to team members.
At FEMA headquarters in Washington, new managers hired after the
Hurricane Katrina debacle acknowledged problems with the disaster
medical teams. They say they’re investigating and scrambling to put
in order a system the nation could need any day.
Supervisors cut off funds in September because “a number of teams
had overspent their budgets,” said Glenn Cannon, director of
FEMA’s response division.
Team leaders “got in trouble because they tried to make it like
there were full-time positions when in fact there weren’t,” Cannon
said, declining to single out specific teams.
“Now,” Cannon said, “we will watch, much more closely, the
spending rates of the teams.”
U.S. Health and Human Services officials who will take over the
disaster-response system in January said they’ll have lawyers
review all FEMA decisions.
The system “needs strengthening,” said Public Health Service Rear
Adm. Dr. Craig VanDerwagen, an assistant secretary for public
health emergency preparedness.
Maintaining an elite team that can fly into a crisis within four
hours is essential, VanDerwagen said.
Team members around the country “are appropriately anxious,
perhaps frustrated, and somewhat angry because of the movement back
and forth (between agencies) over the past two years,” he said.
Where the cuts will hurt
Now, after the sudden suspension of funding, Denver team members
train on a volunteer basis. This month, managers were allotted a
combined total of 48 paid hours a week to coordinate training and
keep equipment ready, Goldstein said.
“There are things that are going to suffer,” he said. “I have 13
vehicles that are supposed to be driven 50 miles a month. I can’t
pay people to do that anymore. … Is fuel going to start leaking
from one of my trucks because it hasn’t been lubricated?”
Last Sunday, a dozen or so nurses, doctors and paramedics gathered
for training in their rented 16,600-square-foot warehouse, east of
Interstate 25, amid millions of dollars’ worth of gear, from drug
supplies to nerve gas detectors.
Clad in chocolate-colored protective overalls, lime-green rubber
boots and double gloves, they practiced inserting breathing tubes
into a mannequin while wearing gas masks that made their voices
sound pinched and faraway.
“Like working underwater,” said team member Dr. David Levine, 57.
“Cumbersome.”
Team members set up collapsible stretchers. They set up a
collapsible decontamination tent and an accordion-like apparatus
for moving unconscious victims on backboards through a scrubbing
zone. They reviewed procedures for jamming injectors filled with
atropine, a nerve gas antidote, into their thighs.
Now, with federal funding reduced and seemingly uncertain, some
team leaders seek new jobs to make up lost income.
“I can do this for a couple months, but then it will start getting
tight,” said team administrator Wendy Colon, whose paid hours were
cut from 40 a week to 24. “And there are some things that aren’t
being done.”
Yet despite uncertainties, every terrorism-related news bulletin,
such as the recent one about possible radiological bombs in
football stadiums, sends team member Edie Lindeburg, 40, bolting to
a spare room in her house, where her black duffel bag sits ready to
go.
“I run and check my equipment. I think: ‘Did I do the battery
check? Who do I have to notify if I go?”‘ said Lindeburg, an
18-year-veteran hospital and emergency room nurse.
“I’d be scared to death” to walk into the scene of a nuclear or
chemical attack, she said. “But I still am ready to do that.”
Detainee tries to force feds’ hand
A man from the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands jailed for more
than two years after the FBI targeted him as a possible
Denver-based terrorist - but never charged him - has begun a
last-ditch legal gambit to resume his life with his U.S.-citizen wife and four kids.
Still in prison in Colorado, Haroon Rashid has filed a motion in
federal court to force the government to prosecute him.
It’s an unusual effort to break out of the legal limbo that has
derailed his life and the lives of others jailed since Sept. 11,
2001, in the government’s war on terrorism.
After charging 441 detainees in terrorism and terrorism-related
cases, federal authorities have won 261 convictions, a new Justice
Department study found. Most of the convictions were for petty
offenses, not terrorism.
An undetermined number of suspects, including Rashid, still are
detained. About 150 cases are pending.
U.S. officials say secret evidence supports a hard-line approach.
Prosecutors are trying “to prevent terrorist acts before they can
occur,” Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said.
But civil-liberties leaders question basic fairness.
“Yes, we want to be safe, but do we want to sacrifice our
liberties in the process? … If you want to always be safe, you
could lock everybody up. But that’s not what our system is based
on,” said Judy Rabinovitz, senior attorney for the American Civil
Liberties Union.
Rashid made his move, through his attorney Jeff Pagliuca, after
U.S. Attorney Troy Eid filed a motion Oct. 2 to drop a lesser
immigration charge the government was pursuing as the FBI’s initial
terrorism case evaporated, court records show.
By dropping the immigration charge, Eid had planned to clear the
way for Rashid to be deported back to his native Pakistan for
misdemeanor assault. In 2003, a jury found Rashid guilty of
assaulting a street-gang member he said threatened his kids. He
received a 401-day sentence that was mostly suspended.
Now Rashid’s motion - to block federal prosecutors from dropping
their case - aims to delay his deportation and further clear his
record. He’s been held in federal custody at his lawyer’s request
to avoid deportation until the federal case is resolved.
Rashid comes from Quetta, along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, an
unsettled hotbed of anti-U.S. sentiment where Taliban forces are on
the rise. His wife and children say they dread moving there if he
is deported but would do so to be together.
“It doesn’t do anybody in our country any good to have this man
deported back to Pakistan on a misdemeanor,” Pagliuca said. “…
I’d rather have Mr. Rashid here taking care of his children.”
Chief U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock must decide how to handle
this jam - with feds asking to drop their charges and Rashid asking
for a trial to exonerate himself and let his family stay a bit
longer in the country.
Rashid already has served more time in prison than would be
possible if prosecutors won a conviction on the lesser immigration
charge they’re now trying to drop.
He immigrated to the United States legally in November 1997. His
wife, Saima Saima, and her father, Abdul Qayyum, are naturalized
U.S. citizens. Rashid worked driving an airport shuttle as they
raised their kids.
Federal agents began investigating him and his family in 2002 after
President Bush and then- Attorney General John Ashcroft vowed to
use every legal tool they could to detain and prosecute possible
terrorists. Rashid had visited Pakistan that year.
Denver-based FBI Special Agent Mike Castro testified at a 2003
detention hearing that there was evidence Rashid bragged he had
fought against U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and that he was in
Colorado awaiting orders to carry out violent acts.
Said Pagliuca: “I don’t believe it. Why didn’t they charge him as
a terrorist?”
Castro and Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Ross
Godwin, members of a joint terrorism task force, went to California
and questioned Imran Khan, son of Rashid’s father-in-law by a
previous marriage, who had entered the United States in August 1997
with Rashid’s wife.
The agents sought Kahn as a source on Rashid and others. Though
they lacked a warrant, they arrested Khan and hauled him back to
Colorado in shackles, court records show.
In a 2004 court order, Judge Babcock stated that “the terrorism
implications of this case have since evaporated” and that “there
was confusion about how and under what authority an FBI and
(immigration) agent working in concert in a mixed civil and
criminal investigation should conduct their investigation.”
Federal officials recently have rebuffed repeated efforts to
interview Rashid at the Englewood federal prison. He was held
previously at a federal immigration prison in Aurora.
Family members can visit, including a toddler born during Rashid’s
confinement.
The older children regularly ask about their father and beg to stay
in their schools.
U.S. authorities “are breaking this family. We’ve been patient. …
This is very unfair,” Rashid’s wife said in a Denver mosque.
“They still think he’s a terrorist.”
AID FROM CITIZENS
The ACLU denounces the use of a website to report “suspicious” activity as an encouragement to spy.
Colorado counterterrorism officials used the 9/11 anniversary to
launch an Internet system that lets ordinary people electronically
report “suspicious activity” - ferreting out possible terrorist
bombers or plotters in their midst.
“One person can make a difference in thwarting terrorism,” State
Patrol Chief Mark Tostel said Monday in unveiling the system.
Civil-liberties leaders immediately denounced the move as deeply
destructive.
The system lets anybody with Internet access send a report and
photos (via www.ciac.co.gov) documenting anything that strikes them
as suspicious.
Officials said suspicious activity may include “unusual requests
for information,” “unusual interest in high-risk or symbolic
targets,” “unusual purchases or thefts,” “suspicious or
unattended packages,” “suspicious persons who appear out of
place” or people acquiring weapons, uniforms or fraudulent
identification.
A report sent through the system would ping the e-mail of a law
enforcement staffer at an intelligence relay station, the Colorado
Information Analysis Center, located in Centennial in a secure
building looped into federal computer networks.
Multi-agency teams in this “fusion” center, with access to
classified data, then would review the report, perhaps running
license-plate or other personal- data checks, and could notify the
FBI.
About 300 tips about possible terrorism-related activity in
Colorado, fielded at the center over the past 18 months, were
deemed significant enough to forward to the FBI, state officials
said. The new electronic system is designed to increase the flow of
information that could be used to stop terrorism.
It’s unclear what happens to names, locations and other information
sent to the FBI. Everybody who sends in a tip will get a response,
officials said.
Coloradans could abuse the system “to undermine their neighbors or
their enemies,” said State Patrol Sgt. Jack Cowart, a former Air
Force intelligence officer who manages the center. But that risk
already exists with the rise of phone-oriented systems that let
Coloradans report “road rage” and crime, Cowart said.
“This is just one more. … We need information from the public to
keep the public safe,” Cowart said.
A counterterrorism telephone hotline (720-852-6705) already draws
up to 20 tips a week to the fusion center. Surveillance crews
sometimes contact police dispatchers, who can send officers to
check out people or places, said State Patrol Capt. Brenda Leffler,
commander at the center.
“I hate it,” said Cathryn Hazouri, executive director of the
American Civil Liberties Union in Colorado. “This is encouraging
people to spy on one another.”
It moves modern America in the direction of communist societies of
the Soviet Union and China, “where people were encouraged to turn
in their family members, or their neighbors, if they believed those
people were not toeing the government line,” Hazouri said.
“Be careful. Be aware that you could ruin people’s reputations,
ruin their ability to go on an airplane,” Hazouri said. “There
are so many things that grow out of this kind of program.
“It’s almost as though they are trying to tell people that they
need to be afraid. Very afraid. Afraid of people they know, and
especially of people they don’t know.”
Duties at the Colorado Springs-area military post, touted as America’s safest spot, are moving to Peterson.
Colorado Springs - The military is relegating its newly renovated
airspace and missile defense complex in Cheyenne Mountain to
standby status - clouding the future of a Cold War nerve center
touted as the most secure spot in America.
The green-jumpsuited sentries who electronically scan the skies
from deep inside this granite cocoon southwest of Colorado Springs
- built in the 1960s to withstand Soviet nuclear blasts - now are
to blend into broader homeland defense operations under prairie
skies at nearby Peterson Air Force Base.
“I can’t be in two places at one time,” said Adm. Tim Keating,
commander of both U.S. Northern Command, set up in 2002 to fight
terrorism, and North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD.
Both NORAD and Northcom have their headquarters at Peterson.
U.S. strategists created the mountain complex to prevent nuclear
missile and bomber attacks. But today the government’s best
intelligence “leads us to believe a missile attack from China or
Russia is very unlikely,” Keating said in an interview this week.
The emergence of varied terrorist threats such as suicide bombers
“is what recommends to us that we don’t need to maintain Cheyenne
Mountain in a 24/7 status. We can put it on ‘warm standby,”‘
Keating said.
Just how warm depends on money to maintain the complex, military
officials said. Keating said his goal is to be able to fire up the
complex in an hour.
Keating today is scheduled to announce the decision he made after
consulting with military chiefs in Washington. He’ll move 230
surveillance crewmembers and an undetermined number of about 700
support staffers - as quickly and inexpensively as possible. The
time frame: within two years.
About 1,100 people now work in the mountain. Military leaders
promised there’d be no net job loss from the move.
Whether money can be saved is uncertain, Keating said. Mountain
operations cost taxpayers $250 million a year.
Budgets at first may increase, officials said, depending on how
much money is available to maintain mountain facilities, but in the
future could decrease.
The move itself will cost “tens of millions of dollars,” said Air
Force Col. Lou Christensen, deputy director of operations.
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the government began
a $467 million modernization of the mountain facility. A recent
congressional probe found cost overruns - modernizers spent more
than $700 million, and the work isn’t done.
Moving surveillance crews out marks a twist in nearly 50 years of
secretive activity at the mountain. Blasting a 4 1/2-acre cavern
about 60 feet high was the first of many engineering feats that led
to construction of 15 free-standing buildings mounted on 1,319
springs, which allow a 12-inch sway. The total cost, $142 million,
raised eyebrows back then.
Since the mid-1960s, joint U.S.-Canadian crews in the mountain have
guarded North America, poised to send warnings that could initiate
nuclear missile launches. Strategists long were locked into notions
of superpower security through “mutually assured destruction.”
Now military analysts ponder strategic implications of a move that
reflects a growing concern with terrorism by small groups against a
military superpower.
While odds of a nuclear missile attack now seem slim, “take it 15
years down the road,” said John Pike, director of Global Security,
a Washington think tank. “Maybe the Chinese will try to take us
on. They might start blowing up military targets. And though
currently we’re not concerned about the Russians, that may change.
What would be required to get back into that mountain?”
The decision to move surveillance crews out followed an internal
study launched in February. The study explored consolidation of two
overlapping surveillance operations - the one in the mountain and
the new homeland defense center at Peterson, about 12 miles from
the mountain at the eastern edge of Colorado Springs.
There, homeland defense surveillance crews surrounded by wall-sized
video screens try to detect and track threats - with access to the
same data available inside the mountain.
These crews track threats as varied as U.S.-bound ships carrying
unidentified cargo and suspicious cars idling around power plants.
Today, protecting America is increasingly complicated, said Army
Col. Tom Muir, who directs the new center and helped run the
internal study. “Is Hezbollah going to attack the United States?”
he asked.
During the 9/11 attacks, the NORAD commander at the time, Air Force
Gen. Ralph Eberhart, was caught shuttling from headquarters at
Peterson to the mountain command post and couldn’t receive
telephone calls as senior officials weighed how to respond.
Consolidating surveillance operations is aimed at “strengthening
the command center here,” Muir said. “This is an efficiency
move.”
Canadian defense partners who helped run mountain operations also
sit at the new surveillance center. It has been renamed N2C2, short
for NORAD-Northcom Command Center.
“I have found, over the course of several pretty extensive,
rigorous exercises, that I’m able to get as good or better
situational awareness in the command center … at Peterson,”
Keating said.
Besides NORAD and Northcom, other military forces work in the
mountain today. An Air Force Space Command squadron of 100 people
tracks space debris and satellites. U.S. missile command crews and
intelligence teams from the National Reconnaissance Office and
other agencies also are there - all supported by 700 cooks, a
barber, medics, recreational center staff, engineers, guards and
others.
Air Force Space Command, too, is looking into moving its operations
out of the mountain to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California -
raising the prospect of a virtually empty mountain.
Keating said he and other commanders have talked about this. “I’m
aware of the plans” that would move a majority of remaining forces
out, he said. Yet “we appreciate the importance of Cheyenne
Mountain. That is exactly why we are going to maintain it … in the
event we would need it.
“This is not Step One that will lead, inevitably and inexorably,
to closing Cheyenne Mountain.”
One possibility: using the mountain as a second seat for the U.S.
government in a crisis. Keating said he knew of no discussions on
this, but he characterized that option as reasonable.
Timeline
Key events in Cheyenne Mountain’s history:
Early 1950s: The Cold War with the Soviet Union leads U.S.
authorities to find a place where military warning facilities could
survive a nuclear attack.
1958: The U.S. and Canada establish the North American Air Defense
Command, or NORAD, to monitor and defend North American airspace
from attack.
1959: Cheyenne Mountain is selected for the NORAD command site.
1961: Excavation and construction begin. More than 693,000 tons of
granite is removed from the mountain. Eventually, 15 buildings,
some mounted on springs, are constructed behind 25-ton blast doors,
1,400 feet inside the mountain.
1966: The NORAD Operations Center inside the mountain becomes fully
operational.
1979: A simulation of a large Soviet missile attack is mistakenly
interpreted as real by Cheyenne Mountain personnel and almost leads
to a massive launch of U.S. nuclear missiles before the error is
detected.
1981: NORAD changes its name to North American Aerospace Defense
Command. The Air Force starts computer-system upgrades at an
estimated cost of $968 million.
1983: The hit sci-fi movie “WarGames,” starring Matthew Broderick
and set at NORAD, is released. It is one of several Hollywood
productions that have used Cheyenne Mountain as a setting,
including the films “Sum of All Fears” and “Deep Impact” and
TV’s “Stargate SG-1.”
1989: NORAD begins military support of agencies fighting transport
of illegal drugs into the U.S.
1998: Computer upgrades started in 1981 are declared operational,
at a total cost of about $1.8 billion.
2000: The Air Force starts another program to modernize and
integrate Cheyenne Mountain systems.
Sept. 11, 2001: In the wake of the terrorist attacks that day, the
complex closes its blast doors for the first time in decades when
it’s suspected that a hijacked aircraft is headed for the mountain.
The doors reopen when it’s determined no such threat exists.
2001: NORAD’s mission expands to include monitoring air traffic
within North America in response to 9/11.
2002: U.S. Northern Command, or Northcom, is established to fight
terrorism at home and to lead the land, aerospace and sea defense
of the United States. It is based at nearby Peterson Air Force Base
in Colorado Springs. It carries out much of the same surveillance,
with access to all the same data, as the NORAD command post.
2004: Cheyenne Mountain is upgraded, doubling the command center’s
540 square feet. The overhaul is to accommodate the increased staff
from Northcom and the Federal Aviation Administration.
February 2006: U.S. Navy Adm. Timothy Keating, commander of
Northcom and NORAD, tells The Denver Post he has launched an
“internal study” of whether to keep the NORAD command post at
Cheyenne Mountain.
July 2006: A report by Congress’ Government Accountability Office
says poor management has delayed needed upgrades to early-warning
systems at Cheyenne Mountain and pushed the cost more than 50
percent over budget.
Sources: Denver Post archives, www.norad.mil, www.afspc.af.mil, GAO, The Associated Press, Answers.com.
Last of three parts New and invisible enemy on radar Homeland security is about more than terrorism these days. The threat of a bird-flu pandemic has defenders scrambling.
Peterson Air Force Base - Military commanders called together
government emergency-
response officials recently for a brainstorming session at this
Cold War base turned headquarters for homeland defense.
But rather than dirty bombs or suicide attacks, they wanted to talk
flu.
Convinced that pandemic influenza inevitably will strike inside the
United States, military leaders contend the failure of civilian
agencies, like after Hurricane Katrina, could happen again.
It’s an example of how U.S. Northern Command military forces
charged with homeland defense quietly are assuming broader,
nontraditional roles.
Those perched around conference-room tables here knew the latest
worst-case scenario assessments too well: pandemic flu could kill
as many as 2 million Americans.
The recent spread of the H5N1 bird-flu virus to birds in Africa and
southeastern Europe, just as birds begin seasonal migrations, has
piqued concerns the virus could mutate to spread from birds to
humans and among humans. Experts say that could touch off a global
pandemic.
At the meeting here, civilian officials could only dream of
acquiring the beds, vaccines, ventilators and worldwide outbreak-
detection data available in the military system. Department of
Health and Human Services officials say these military assets could
more than double the national capacity of 970,000 staffed beds and
100,000 ventilators.
But Northcom chiefs emphasized: The military system would treat
soldiers, veterans and their families first.
Lt. Cmdr. Sean Kelly, Northcom spokesman, said military capacity
figures “aren’t available yet, but we do not believe we’d be able
to double the national capacity.”
Yet, spurred by President Bush during his recent visit here,
Northcom officials are preparing to:
Share early-warning data on outbreaks with civilian health
authorities.
Inspect passengers at airports and seaports for signs of flu.
Slow travel and help police communities, short of attempting
full-blown quarantines.
Move medicines to hard-hit areas and victims to clinics for
treatment.
Back up civilian doctors by working shifts at overloaded
hospitals.
Possibly share vaccines, beds and ventilators.
“This thing could hit next week, for all we know,” said Col.
Joseph Bassani, Northcom’s chief of planning.
While defense once meant mobilizing armed forces to confront
foreign armies and control turf, homeland-defense forces over the
past year participated in such activities as border control and
firefighting. On Monday, Northcom convened military and National
Guard leaders to talk about how to handle hurricanes this year.
Bush has said the military would play an important role in
responding to pandemic flu. Bush also said that “the best way to
deal with a pandemic is to isolate it in the region in which it
begins,” and suggested Congress debate quarantines.
Civilian response leaders here - representing diplomatic,
environmental protection, emergency management and transportation
agencies - welcomed the prospect of military support.
Military forces “have assets we don’t have. They move tons of
equipment every day. They’re also the best at planning,” said
Capt. Lynn Slepski of the U.S. Public Health Service, now serving
as a senior health adviser in the Department of Homeland Security.
Compared with civilian hospitals that often are hard-pressed to
meet noncrisis needs, the military’s medical system can treat
thousands of soldiers in critical condition at once.
Fixed and mobile clinics give a “surge capacity” that civilian
health officials in cities such as Denver are struggling to
arrange.
After Hurricane Katrina, military doctors and nurses treated
hundreds of victims. Helicopters evacuated victims to the 500- bed
USS Bataan floating hospital.
Military medical teams track disease outbreaks by testing tissue
and blood samples at surveillance centers in Egypt, Kenya,
Indonesia, Thailand and Peru.
Meanwhile, civilian hospital emergency rooms turn away as many as
500,000 people a year, according to recent studies.
The new defense budget includes millions of dollars to prepare for
pandemic flu, including streamlined vaccine production.
If pandemic influenza strikes, the military is likely to be needed
to stabilize communities and enable an effective response, said
Colorado College professor Andrew Price-Smith, author of “The
Health of Nations” and an authority on pandemic threats to the
economy and security.
U.S. communities aren’t as cohesive as in the past, and “the
fragmentation in the government response evident in Katrina is,
unfortunately, likely to be replicated during a pandemic,”
Price-Smith said. “Do we rely on the military to make up for the
diminished capacity in various states? Unfortunately, we are going
to need their resources. The question is: How much can the military
assist?”
Government worst-case scenarios suggest pandemic flu could infect
90 million Americans, with half needing medical treatment. Up to 40
percent of workers would stay home, and the economic impact could
match that of a major recession, according to a new Congressional
Budget Office assessment.
The pandemic flu in 1918-19 killed more than 500,000 Americans and
50 million people worldwide.
The problem, military leaders told civilians here, is that military
facilities likely would be overwhelmed, too.
These exist primarily to serve soldiers and their families, and
they’d be treated first in a pandemic, said Navy Adm. Timothy
Keating, chief of Northern Command, in an interview.
“Our job in the Department of Defense is principally to fight and
win the nation’s wars,” Keating said. Tens of thousands of
soldiers deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan “need to know that their
families are being taken care of. That’s a significant effort.”
But “simultaneously, or as soon as we can,” military forces would
mobilize “to stabilize and ease human suffering,” Keating said.
Military planners said soldiers would not attempt large-scale
quarantines. Quarantine “really isn’t effective with influenza,
because influenza is so contagious,” said Dr. Tanis Batsel,
Northcom’s chief of preventive medicine.
Americans likely would stay home anyway, she said. “Most
convincing will be that people are going to be dying. Everybody
will know somebody.”
Soldiers instead would screen travelers at airports and perhaps
restrict movements of those who are infected.
Homeland defense officials also plan an aggressive public
information campaign: Vaccinate. Follow cough etiquette. Wash
hands. Avoid large groups. Reach out to the homeless and infirm.
By calling civilian emergency planners together, Northcom hoped to
encourage agencies “to come up with requests for assistance” as
soon as possible, Batsel said.
Then military chiefs can review them and “give a reality check.”
Editor’s note
This is the final article in a three- day series on U.S. Northern
Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, both
based at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, and their
efforts to prepare for 21st-century threats to the nation’s
security.
Sunday: Northcom expands its mission to monitor the high seas for
terrorist threats aboard ships worldwide.
Monday: The future of NORAD’s command post deep inside Cheyenne
Mountain is in question as the nation’s homeland defense priorities
evolve.
Today: Northcom quietly plans to respond to a disease pandemic that
could sicken or kill millions of Americans.
More online: Read previous installments in the series and find
links to the Northcom and NORAD websites. denverpost.com
Journalist Bruce Finley has 
investigated local, national and international issues around the world with on-site reporting in more than 40 countries. He works as a staff writer for The Denver Post.
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