Miami Police Take New Tack Against Terror

[The analogy to Iraq should be the last thing the Miami Police Department would want anyone to think about, but here they stick it in our faces: “Deputy Police Chief Frank Fernandez said Monday. ‘We want that shock. We want that awe.’ ” The purported warrant for this “in your face” campaign is a war on terror, but the tactic is to scare the hell out of the public using random “shows of force.” You don’t have to be George Orwell to detect an ugly irony here. As for terrorism, the major (perhaps the only) examples of international terrorism in Florida are the activities of right-wing Cuban exiles, who are generally protected by the American authorities, and the Mohammed Atta / Rudy Dekkers affair, which was protected by the FBI. Now don’t you feel safer? –JAH]

At a press conference, Miami Police Chief John F. Timoney
discusses the new, "in-your-face" security measures for
high-profile public spaces.

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MIAMI (Nov. 29) - Police are planning "in-your-face" shows of force in public places, saying the random, high-profile security operations will keep terrorists guessing about where officers might be next.

As an example, uniformed and plainclothes officers might surround a bank building unannounced, contact the manager about ways to be vigilant against terrorists and hand out leaflets in three languages to customers and people passing by, said police spokesman Angel Calzadilla. He said there would be no random checks of identification.

"People are definitely going to notice it," Deputy Police Chief Frank Fernandez said Monday. "We want that shock. We want that awe. But at the same time, we don't want people to feel their rights are being threatened. We need them to be our eyes and ears."

Howard Simon, executive director of ACLU of Florida, said the Miami initiative appears aimed at ensuring that people's rights are not violated.

"What we're dealing with is officers on street patrol (making informed decisions on which individuals to stop), which is more effective and more consistent with the Constitution," Simon said. "We'll have to see how it is implemented." One example of a legitimate stop might be an officer questioning a person entering a crowd while wearing a heavy coat on a summer day.

The operations will keep terrorists off guard, Fernandez said. He said al-Qaida and other terrorist groups plot attacks by putting places under surveillance and watching for flaws and patterns in security.

Police Chief John Timoney said there was no specific, credible threat of an imminent terror attack in Miami. But he said the city has repeatedly been mentioned in intelligence reports as a potential target.

Timoney said 14 of the 19 hijackers who took part in the Sept. 11 attacks lived in South Florida at various times and that other alleged terror cells have operated in the area.

Under the program, both uniformed and plainclothes police will ride buses and trains, while others will conduct longer-term surveillance operations.

Mary Ann Viverette, president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, said the Miami program is similar to those used for years during the holiday season to deter criminals at busy places such as shopping malls.

"We want people to feel they can go about their normal course of business, but we want them to be aware," said Viverette, the police chief in Gaithersburg, Md.

At Monday's Heat game against the New York Knicks, season ticket holder Tony Gonzalez, 34, said he wasn't worried about any potential violation of civil liberties.

"When you enter an arena or stadium at full capacity you just don't know who is going through the turnstiles," said Gonzalez, an attorney. "Everything that helps our security, I'm for it."

John Timoney's new work in the War on Terrorism and the suppression of political protest

WASHINGTON , Dec. 3 - Officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation mishandled a Florida terror investigation, falsified documents in the case in an effort to cover repeated missteps and retaliated against an agent who first complained about the problems, Justice Department investigators have concluded.

In one instance, someone altered dates on three F.B.I. forms using correction fluid to conceal an apparent violation of federal wiretap law, according to a draft report of an investigation by the Justice Department inspector general's office obtained by The New York Times. But investigators were unable to determine who altered the documents.

The agent who first alerted the F.B.I. to problems in the case, a veteran undercover operative named Mike German, was "retaliated against" by his boss, who was angered by the agent's complaints and stopped using him for prestigious assignments in training new undercover agents, the draft report concluded.

Mr. German's case first became public last year, as he emerged as the latest in a string of whistle-blowers at the bureau who said they had been punished and effectively silenced for voicing concerns about the handling of terror investigations and other matters since Sept. 11, 2001.

The inspector general's draft report, dated Nov. 15 and awaiting final review, validated most of Mr. German's central accusations in the case. But the former agent, who left the bureau last year after he said his career had been derailed by the Florida episode, said he felt more disappointment than vindication.

"More than anything else, I'm saddened by all this," Mr. German said in an interview. "I still love the F.B.I., and I know that there are good, honest, hard-working agents out there trying to do the right thing, and this hurts all of them."

Robert S. Mueller III, director of the F.B.I., has emphasized repeatedly, both publicly and in private messages to his staff, that employees are encouraged to come forward with reports of wrongdoing and that he will not tolerate retaliation against whistle-blowers.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who has been a frequent critic of the bureau, said of Mr. German: "Unfortunately, this is just another case in a long line of F.B.I. whistle-blowers who have had their careers derailed because the F.B.I. couldn't tolerate criticism."

Michael Kortan, an F.B.I. spokesman, said the bureau had not been briefed on the findings. But Mr. Kortan said that when the F.B.I. received the report, "if either misconduct or other wrongdoing is found, we will take appropriate action."

Ann Beeson, associate legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, said that the inspector general's findings, coming just days after the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from an earlier F.B.I. whistle-blower, pointed to the need for tougher measures to protect those who report abuse. "With courts reluctant to protect whistle-blowers, it is crucial that Congress pass additional protections," Ms. Beeson said.

Mr. German's case dates to 2002, when the F.B.I. division in Tampa opened a terror investigation into a lead that laundered proceeds, possibly connected to a drug outfit, might be used to finance terrorists overseas. The F.B.I. was considering initiating an undercover operation to follow the lead, and Mr. German, who had extensive experience infiltrating militias, skinheads and other groups, was asked to take part.

But in the coming months, Mr. German would alert F.B.I. officials that the Orlando agent handling the case had "so seriously mishandled" the investigation that a prime opportunity to expose a terrorist financing plot had been wasted. He said agents had not adequately pursued leads, had failed to document important meetings with informants, and had tolerated violations of rules and federal law on the handling of wiretaps.

The report, in one of its few dissents from Mr. German's accusations, said it could not confirm that the F.B.I. had missed an important chance to expose terrorism. Rather, it cited two findings by the bureau that the prime informant had misled agents about the terrorism angle in the case and that "there was no viable terrorism case."

Nonetheless, the inspector general found that the F.B.I. had "mishandled and mismanaged" the investigation, partly through the failure to document important developments for months at a time. The report also found that supervisors were aware of problems in the case but did not take prompt action to correct them.

Moreover, after Mr. German raised concerns about the lack of documentation, an unnamed agent in Orlando "improperly added inaccurate dates to the investigative reports in order to make it appear as though the reports were prepared earlier," the inspector general found.

In addition, someone used correction fluid to backdate by two months a set of forms that the main informant had signed as part of a bugging operation, in which he agreed that he had to be present for all undercover taping.

The backdating was significant, the inspector general said, because the informant had taped a 2002 meeting with several suspects but had left the recording device unattended while he went to use the restroom - a violation of federal law.

Mr. German became increasingly vocal within the F.B.I. about what he saw as the bureau's failure to correct missteps, taking his concerns directly to Mr. Mueller in a 2003 e-mail message. His complaints, the inspector general found, led agents in Florida, Washington and Oregon to distance themselves from him.

In the most serious instance, the head of the F.B.I. undercover unit, Jorge Martinez, froze Mr. German out of teaching assignments in undercover training and told one agent that Mr. German would "never work another undercover case," the report said.

Mr. Martinez told investigators that he did not remember making the statements but that if he had, it was a "knee-jerk reaction but did not mean to indicate I was retaliating against him," the report said.

The inspector general disagreed. It said in the report that Mr. Martinez's treatment of Mr. German amounted to improper retaliation and "discrimination that could have a chilling effect on whistle-blowing."

Dec. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Let’s assume that the U.S. Congress cuts through a political briar patch and passes a law that forces full disclosure of pension debts.

Companies with poorly funded pension plans might have to contribute billions of dollars more to their retirement plans and touch off worker demands that employers pony up even more money for their retirement security.

Just as surely, investors would punish companies with the highest retirement debt, according to a study by David Zion and Bill Carcache, analysts for New York-based investment bank Credit Suisse First Boston. They examined the effect of fully disclosing and accounting for the pension liabilities of the 374 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index with defined- benefit plans.

“We estimate that would cause the total shareholder’s equity for the companies in the S&P 500 to drop by $255 billion, or 7 percent,” they wrote in their Nov. 10 report. The 18 most underfunded companies would fare worse, suffering a 25 percent reduction in shareholder’s equity.

Zion and Carcache figure that shareholder equity -- a company’s total assets minus total liabilities (which should include what it owes its pension program) -- would be wiped out at the seven S&P 500 companies with the biggest funding gaps in their pension plans.

This accounting muddle is huge. The Credit Suisse analysts said that pension assets and liabilities are treated as “off- balance sheet” items, which distort how much a company really earns and holds in corporate assets. They estimate that only 21 percent of the $1.3 trillion in S&P 500 pension fund assets are currently reported on balance sheets.

There is no way that employees or investors now can discern total pension debts since companies don’t have to report their so-called 4010 liabilities to the public. That’s the amount owed if a company terminates its defined-benefit plan and has to buy annuities for workers.

Only Congress, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) -- the quasi-government pension insurer -- and employers know the 4010 numbers. They are prohibited by current law from releasing them, although several proposed laws call for making this information public.

“If you’re a real weak company, the market would be very interested in that (termination liability number),” said Ron Gebhardtsbauer, senior fellow at the American Academy of Actuaries, a professional association in Washington.

Employers have opposed disclosure of their funds’ termination liabilities, arguing that it’s not an accurate picture of their pension debts.

What is indisputable is that struggling companies have often grossly underreported their pension liabilities and shirked their pension funding obligations.

Earlier this year, when the pension agency took over the plan for 36,000 ground employees of United Airlines parent UAL Corp., it was discovered that only $1.2 billion in assets were set aside to cover $4.1 billion in pension promises. A separate UAL plan for the pilots had $2.8 billion to cover $5.7 billion in obligations.

Employees often have no idea how much their pension funds are owed. Because of inadequate laws covering disclosure, what information they do get is sketchy and based on information that is two years old.

Companies with more than $50 million in pension funding gaps are required to file 4010 reports with the PBGC, warning the pension insurer of shortfalls.

In 2002, 270 U.S. companies alerted the PBGC to underfunding problems. Those filings, which included all of the companies covered by PBGC insurance, jumped to 404 in 2003 and 430 in 2004. Bloomberg News has made several requests to obtain information on specific companies mentioned in 4010 filings and has been denied access.

A rule change being considered by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the governing body of corporate accounting, would force companies to be more forthcoming about their retirement debts. The Bush Administration and the pension agency support the revision.

“The current restriction of 4010 (true pension liability) data does not serve the interests of employees, retirees or investors,” Bradley Belt, executive director of the pension corporation said in an interview.

Belt’s agency had a $23 billion deficit in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, as failing corporations dumped their pension plans in the PBGC’s lap. The agency said its potential losses from pension plans sponsored by financially weak employers rose to $108 billion from $96 billion the year before.

Full disclosure usually illuminates boardroom secrets and in this case might lead to changes.

Companies that conclude that their defined-benefit plans are too expensive might trigger freezes or shutdowns of old- style pensions. Pension-fund managers may even sell stocks to reduce the overall risk profile of their portfolios and buy bonds or other securities.

Once the market gyrations subside, I think the outcome for future retirees will be even more challenging.

Ultimately, knowing how pensions are funded will force investors large and small to educate themselves. They will also need to focus more on lowering risk and expenses to better achieve their retirement goals. No matter what the political or economic climate, that’s a sound practice.

[The U.S. Government now has enough smallpox vaccine stockpiled to inoculate every man, woman and child in America . The stockpiled vaccine is dangerous, having caused “catastrophic brain infections,” heart inflammation, and infant mortality in some cases. According to The Washington Post, groups at risk of vaccine complications include infants, pregnant women, cancer survivors, AIDS patients, organ-transplant recipients, anyone who has ever had the skin disease eczema, and some others.

Dick Cheney and his staff were pushing to inoculate the entire American populace for smallpox with the dangerous vaccine, but failed in that attempt. New vaccines are in the works, and VaxGen - who now hold an $877.5 million contract to supply their “next generation” anthrax vaccine to the U.S. Government - has a “safer” smallpox vaccine lined up as well.

In an eyebrow-raising statement, Michael T. Osterholm, head of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, opines: “I think the medical community has to take a serious look at this . Anybody who thinks smallpox is off the table also doesn't think a single jet can bring down a skyscraper.” – MK]

Safer Smallpox Vaccines In Works

U.S. Preparing For Potential Bioterror Attack

New vaccine technologies are emerging that offer a fresh chance to devise a strategy against smallpox, the most fearsome potential weapon in the bioterror arsenal.

Two companies are reporting rapid progress in developing a new vaccine designed to be safer than the standard one, and a third company, with no government support, is developing yet another new vaccine. That vaccine could offer significant advantages if terrorists were to unleash the smallpox germ in several cities at once, requiring the vaccination of huge numbers of people.

The government stumbled badly in its campaign after Sept. 11, 2001, to vaccinate health care workers who would respond to a smallpox attack. It has since spent millions to fund development of a new, safer vaccine and has already decided to order enough to protect at least 10 million people. It could buy far more if money becomes available.

Progress on safer vaccines is a success for U.S. policymakers, but it also confronts them with vexing new questions about which vaccines to buy, how many doses to buy, whether to resume a failed program to inoculate some people in advance of an attack and how to deploy the vaccines rapidly if smallpox is unleashed by terrorists.

The government is preparing to tackle the strategic questions over the next few months. "Right at the present moment, we're setting up a committee to really look at this with a very hard eye," said D.A. Henderson, a Baltimore doctor who advises the government and who is often called the world's premier expert on smallpox. "There are major changes that have occurred that force us to reexamine what we're going to do."

After the terrorist and anthrax attacks of late 2001, concern about the unrelated smallpox virus reached a fever pitch. Anthrax is deadly, but it does not spread from person to person; smallpox does, and an attack could theoretically kill millions. For a population of nearly 300 million, the country had only 15 million doses of vaccine.

Since then, the government has pulled off a huge feat by stockpiling enough vaccine for every American, but the campaign stalled after President Bush announced a plan to inoculate as many 10.5 million doctors, nurses, police, firefighters and other workers ahead of time so they could respond to an attack.

Many health workers, not fully convinced of the threat and worried about the safety of the standard vaccine, refused inoculation. In the end, only 40,000 health workers were vaccinated. After unexpected heart problems emerged in some vaccine recipients, plans to offer shots to the public were shelved. Early this year, an expert panel excoriated the administration for what it described as poor strategy and communication in devising the smallpox plan.

Now, experts contend, the development of safer vaccines offers a chance to start over, though in some ways the issue of what to do has only grown more complicated. The Department of Health and Human Services acknowledged, for instance, that with no smallpox cases in the world, it can never be certain how the new vaccines would perform in an epidemic. It will have to base its plans on rough information, including animal tests.

"You cannot answer all the questions -- it's not possible," said Noreen A. Hynes, head of an office that helps coordinate development of bioterror countermeasures at HHS.

Smallpox killed hundreds of millions of people in recorded history, more than any other infectious disease. It was eradicated in 1977 after a worldwide campaign that Henderson led. Routine vaccination stopped. But by the late 1990s, doctors realized that their very success against the disease had turned it into a potentially potent weapon.

Studies have suggested that a quarter of the U.S. population has some lingering immunity from childhood smallpox vaccination, but the rest -- 223 million people -- are believed vulnerable. Virtually no one younger than 37 has been vaccinated.

The smallpox virus resides in only two official repositories, in the United States and Russia, but there are fears that some countries kept hidden stocks and that terrorists or rogue states could get their hands on the germ.

The standard vaccine is relatively dangerous compared with most modern vaccines and was killing several babies a year in the United States when vaccination stopped in 1972. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in Bethesda, called the vaccine "the gold standard" given its track record of eradicating smallpox. "Unfortunately, it's a gold standard that has some significant side effects -- rare but significant," he said.

Some groups are at particular risk of vaccine complications: infants, pregnant women, cancer survivors, AIDS patients, organ-transplant recipients, anyone who has ever had the skin disease eczema and some others. These people would be discouraged from receiving the standard vaccine under most circumstances, and so would anyone living in a household with them -- a large swath of the population. It was this concern that prompted the push for safer vaccines.

All smallpox vaccines contain a weakened virus, called vaccinia virus, that is closely related to smallpox but much less likely to cause illness. The virus in the standard vaccine reproduces in the body, which elicits a powerful immune response that can ward off later smallpox infection, but it does sicken some people, causing a catastrophic brain infection in a few cases. Another, unexpected side effect turned up when the government sought to vaccinate medical personnel in 2003: heart inflammation in adults who had not previously been vaccinated. It is unclear how serious a problem that would be if the vaccine were used widely.

One newer type of vaccine, the one that has been the focus of most publicly funded research, essentially trades potency for safety. This vaccine is known as modified vaccinia Ankara, or MVA. A version was first developed in Germany in the 1970s; it does not reproduce in the body and appears less likely to cause illness in vulnerable people.

But because it is weaker, people need a higher dose and may need two shots several weeks apart for full protection. That could limit the usefulness of the vaccine in an emergency and may constitute an argument for using it ahead of time in some people.

There is also evidence that the side effects of the standard vaccine in healthy people could be ameliorated if they got a shot of MVA a few weeks before a regular inoculation. Potentially, such a strategy could alleviate some safety concerns that prompted many doctors and nurses to refuse smallpox vaccination.

Two companies -- Acambis PLC, with joint headquarters in Cambridge, England, and Cambridge, Mass., and Bavarian Nordic A/S, with headquarters in Kvistgard, Denmark -- have received federal grants to develop MVA, and they are battling each other to supply it to the government. Their vaccines have undergone extensive tests, though full side effects are not known yet.

Health and Human Services has issued bidding documents asking for at least 20 million doses of MVA -- enough for a minimum of 10 million people -- and has said it may eventually buy an additional 60 million doses. The final decision may depend in part on price. The Acambis and Bavarian Nordic proposals are not yet public, but most experts think MVA will cost 10 to 20 times as much as the standard vaccine, which runs about $3 per dose.

Bavarian Nordic, seeking an expanded market, has argued that the government should consider replacing its entire vaccine stockpile with the newer product, a decision that could cost billions of dollars.

"What would the public say if smallpox is released, 20 million people get the safe vaccine, and everyone else gets the unsafe vaccine?" said Paul Chaplin, executive vice president for research at Bavarian Nordic. "Which line would you and your family like to be in?"

The government must consider yet another factor. With no public funds, VaxGen Inc. of Brisbane, Calif., is developing a Japanese vaccine that reproduces in the body, and thus elicits strong immunity with one dose, but appears less likely to cause life-threatening brain infections in children than the standard vaccine.

The company has already completed some human research. "We are generating the data to show the product is intrinsically safe," said Lance K. Gordon, president and chief executive of VaxGen.

VaxGen's product is expected to be far cheaper than MVA and, as a one-dose vaccine, potentially more useful in an emergency. But buying a significant amount would further complicate the strategic issues about how to use the various vaccines.

It is expected to be at least a year or two before significant quantities of new vaccine arrive in federal stockpiles. Experts said that gives the government time to devise a new strategy and to consult with the state health departments and medical personnel that resisted the government's original vaccination plan.

"I think the medical community has to take a serious look at this," said Michael T. Osterholm, head of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. "Anybody who thinks smallpox is off the table also doesn't think a single jet can bring down a skyscraper."