September 21, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Counter-Terrorism, Pakistan-Afghanistan Borderlands, Security
Najibullah Zazi and his father, Mohammed, held in the investigation, are expected in court today.
FBI agents investigating what they describe as a plot to detonate homemade bombs in the United States released documents Sunday asserting that a Colorado airport-shuttle driver admitted to al-Qaeda training and had bomb-making notes in his laptop.Today, 24-year-old Najibullah Zazi and his father, Mohammed, 53, are scheduled to make initial appearances in federal court. They’ve been held in Denver County Jail since late Saturday, when FBI agents raided their apartment and arrested them on nonterrorism charges of making false statements.
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September 13, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Dispatches with U.S. soldiers in Iraq, Iraq-related
This Denver Post article was written by Kevin Simpson with Michael Riley, Bruce Finley and Craig F. Walker.
A Denver Post team follows a local teenager through his military training to a volatile industrial and agricultural hub in south-central Iraq.
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September 11, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Counter-Terrorism
Eight years of fighting terrorism has led to recalibration from Washington to Denver, where Pakistan’s ambassador Thursday delivered a pointed critique of U.S. tactics.
A lack of focus on the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, failure to win popular support, impatience, and relying too much on military force such as the unmanned Predator drones have limited U.S. effectiveness, Pakistan Ambassador Husain Haqqani said in an interview here.
“If the United States cannot get the people on its side, then any number of bombings from high altitude are not going to change the ground reality,” Haqqani said.
“This is an ideological war, and it is an economic war. You have to create economic opportunities, because somebody who does not have a future is more likely to become a suicide terrorist than somebody who has a chance to earn a college degree.”
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August 25, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Pollution
Sens. Mark Udall and John McCain strolled somberly through a meadow in Rocky Mountain National Park Monday inspecting beetle-killed pines, lamenting the damage of global warming and pledging their bipartisan support for nuclear power as part of the solution.
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August 24, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Wildlife
Colorado wildlife overseers flummoxed by a rash of bear-human conflicts are searching for options, from “adverse conditioning” to haze nuisance bears that have been trapped to raising the number of hunting permits to thin the population.
Wildlife officials say hundreds of clashes this summer in mountain towns — including a fatal attack, a mauling and myriad break-ins — require an aggressive response.
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August 16, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water
A project once considered far-fetched — piping water from western Wyoming across the Continental Divide to Colorado’s booming Front Range cities — is getting a renewed look.
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August 10, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water
Colorado agriculture officials are widening their battle against the West’s most voracious invasive weed, tamarisk, by deploying a controversial leaf-eating Chinese beetle east of the Continental Divide. As national expenditures in a decade-old campaign to combat invasive species top $1.3 billion a year, proponents see these beetles as cost-saving gems.
But there are concerns. The Diorhabdas may threaten an endangered bird, the southwestern willow flycatcher, which uses tamarisk in New Mexico and Arizona for nesting. The federal government recently was forced by a lawsuit to suspend its releases of Diorhabda beetles in eight Western states — where tamarisk has gobbled more than 1.5 million riparian acres.
Yet Colorado biologists contend the beetle is relatively benign and are pressing ahead — determined to suppress tamarisk with fight-the-enemy-with-its-enemy tactics that so far have proved successful.
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June 29, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Refugees
Somali refugees who flocked to jobs in U.S. slaughterhouses — including plants in Greeley and Fort Morgan — are moving beyond cutting floors to Main Street. They’ve established shops offering imported items. An unmarked mosque in central Greeley offers a place for Muslim worship. Informal “hawala” money-transfer services help reach relatives stranded in war-torn Somalia and refugee camps in neighboring Kenya. A former burrito restaurant now sells plates of rice, lamb and goat.
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June 1, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants
More Colorado employers use national system to verify status of new hires
Colorado employers are increasingly trying to weed out illegal workers. The latest data show the number voluntarily using the national electronic system for verifying immigration status has more than doubled in two years — from 2,065 in May 2007 to 4,690 today. Yet there are 155,000 employers in Colorado, and most get by simply by asking new hires for an ID, keeping a copy and signing a statement saying they checked. As Congress and President Barack Obama move toward immigration reform, the gap in Colorado between employers that use e-verify and those that don’t is replicated nationwide. About 125,700 out of 7 million U.S. employers are signed up. They check about 6 million, or one-tenth, of the nation’s new hires a year. Immigration experts have long argued that a consistent system for checking worker status is essential to prevent illegal immigration. Congress has appropriated $274 million and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has spent $183 million developing e-verify, which lets employers type in a name and Social Security number to find out whether a new hire is eligible for work. No federal law mandates use of the system, and only Arizona has a law requiring its use. The acting head of USCIS, which manages e-verify, touts the system as nearly capable of handling checks by all 7 million employers nationwide to verify the status of 60 million new hires a year.
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May 22, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Inside the "War" on Terrorism, Security
Moving any large number of terror detainees from Guantanamo Bay to Colorado’s Supermax would require either shuffling current residents out of the Florence prison or expanding its capacity and resolving a long-running battle over adequate prison staffing.
As President Barack Obama and congressional leaders point toward the Colorado federal prison as a possible new home for some of the detainees, one big problem is the bed-space crunch. Supermax’s approximately 480 concrete cells already are jammed with the likes of Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols, Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph and other notorious domestic criminals. There also are 33 international terrorists, including Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef and failed airline shoe bomber Richard Reid. Only one bed was not filled Thursday at Supermax, U.S. Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Tracy Billingsley said. Yet locals in the adjacent town of Florence say they’d probably would be supportive, Town Manager Tom Piltingsrud said. They took the initiative on establishing Supermax in the first place, scraping together money to buy land and then donating it to the government for the complex. They remain glad for the jobs it provides, Piltingsrud said. “It’s a recession-proof industry.”
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A journalist and lawyer, Bruce Finley has investigated local, national and international issues with on-site reporting in more than 40 countries. In his position as a staff writer for the Denver Post, he is focusing on environment-related news including water challenges, the oil and gas boom and wildfire.
