Worldwide Market Fuels Illegal Traffic in Organs

Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, in shirt sleeves, was arrested last week on charges of trying to broker the sale of a kidney.

NY Times | July 29, 2009

By DOMINICK TAO

They won’t look the doctor in the eye, and their stories have holes — after all, how often does someone offer a spare kidney to a third cousin he just met?

Eventually, many would-be live-organ donors simply disappear; at one hospital, Hackensack University Medical Center, more than half drop out of the transplant process after initial meetings with doctors.

Dr. Michael Shapiro, the chief surgeon of the hospital’s transplant unit, said he suspects that many of those people are looking to be paid for their body parts, but fear getting caught.

“Sometimes, you have to sit down with the donor and say: ‘It’s illegal to buy or sell organs. You know that, right?’ ” Dr. Shapiro said.

Among the 44 people arrested last week in one of the most sweeping bribery and money-laundering investigations in New Jersey history, one stood out: Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, a Brooklyn businessman who was accused of trying to broker the purchase of a kidney for $160,000.

Though most developed countries, including the United States, ban organ sales, there is an international market for transplantable organs: a shady world of unscrupulous doctors, concocted relationships and hotels used as recovery rooms.

The World Health Organization estimates that about 10 percent of the 63,000 kidneys transplanted worldwide each year from living donors have been bought illegally. Lungs, pieces of livers and corneas also command a price.

Last year, the authorities in India said they had broken up a ring involving doctors, nurses, paramedics and hospitals that had performed 500 illegal transplants of organs to rich Indians and foreigners. Most of the donors were poor laborers who were paid up to $2,500 for a kidney. Some were forced to give up organs at gunpoint.

Federal authorities say Mr. Rosenbaum told an undercover investigator that he had been brokering the sale of organs for 10 years and had been involved with “quite a lot” of transplants. According to the criminal complaint, Mr. Rosenbaum was approached by the same government witness who persuaded a number of New Jersey officials, including the mayor of Hoboken, to accept bribes, and who snared several rabbis in a money-laundering operation.

In Mr. Rosenbaum’s case, the witness, believed to be Solomon Dwek, a New Jersey developer arrested on bank fraud charges in 2006, pretended to a businessman whose secretary was looking for a kidney for her uncle. An undercover agent posed as the secretary.

“Let me explain to you one thing,” Mr. Rosenbaum told her, according to the complaint. “It’s illegal to buy or sell organs.”

Mr. Rosenbaum later received $10,000 as a down payment for delivery of a willing organ donor, the authorities said. The total cost, as agreed upon, would eventually have been $160,000.

Mr. Rosenbaum spoke of the strengths and weaknesses of hospitals’ screening procedures. He told the agent that the donor would come from Israel, that he would be young and healthy, and that once he was in the United States, the donor and the recipient would need to make up a story to tell hospital officials.

The donor could not pretend to be a relative, not even a third cousin — the relationship Dr. Shapiro said he sometimes hears — as that would be too easily disproved, Mr. Rosenbaum said. Instead, he said, they should choose a different story, saying, perhaps, that they were neighbors, friends from synagogue or business acquaintances. “Could be friends from the community, could be friends of, of, of his children,” Mr. Rosenbaum said, according to the complaint.

Ronald Kleinberg, Mr. Rosenbaum’s lawyer, said he would not comment because he had not yet obtained all the facts in the case.

Doctors have become more aware of organ-selling schemes, but many still feel powerless.

“When you have the suspicion the donor is doing this for the wrong reasons, the question is — what do we do?” Dr. Shapiro said. “I don’t have a detective on retainer. I don’t have a polygraph. We’re pretty good at surgery, but part of the medical school curriculum is not interrogation techniques.”

Some doctors may feel that the Hippocratic oath prevents them from turning away a sick patient with an organ ready to be transplanted. Others may simply be tempted by the money involved.

Full Story

Two city mayors and several rabbis held in New Jersey organized crime investigation

London Times | Jul 23, 2009

Three city mayors, two state politicians and five rabbis were among 44 people arrested across New Jersey today when federal agents cracked an alleged Sopranos-style crime ring accused of bribery, money laundering and trafficking body parts and counterfeit handbags.

In a sweep that shocked even residents hardened to the state’s endemic corruption, officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) raided synagogues, government offices and a Jewish school early today before busing suspects to the FBI headquarters in Newark.

Outside cars were backed up four deep as agents processed those arrested, including Peter Cammarano, the Mayor of Hoboken, Anthony Suarez, the Mayor of Ridgefield, and Daniel Van Pelt, a member of New Jersey’s lower house, the assembly.

Ralph Marra, Acting US Attorney for the District of New Jersey, said that the sweep demonstrated “the pervasive nature of public corruption in this state”.

“The politicians willingly put themselves up for sale,” he said, while “clergymen cloak their extensive criminal activity behind a façade of rectitude”.

He spoke of “a corrupt network of public officials who were all too willing to take cash in exchange for promised official action. It seemed that everyone wanted a piece of the action.” He added: “The corruption was widespread and pervasive.”

Federal agents used an informant, a member of the close-knit Syrian Jewish community from the seaside town of Deal, to infiltrate political and religious circles.

The informant, who had previously been charged with bank fraud, posed as a property developer to conduct a sting, allegedly agreeing bribes with the politicians in return for public building contracts and other favours.

Mr Marra’s office charged Mr Cammarano, who took office at the beginning of the month after working as a councillor since 2003, with taking $25,000 (£15,000) in bribes, including $10,000 as recently as a week ago.

Mr Cammarano, who at 32 is Hoboken’s youngest-ever mayor, allegedly met the FBI informer at a diner where he agreed to help the mole with building projects, telling him: “You’re gonna be treated like a friend.”

In payment he allegedly received bundles of cash that were stashed in the boot of the informant’s car.

Joseph Hayden, Mr Cammarano’s attorney, said that his client was innocent. “He intends to fight them with all his strength,” Mr Hayden said.

Mexican police arrested over torture and murder of federal agents investigating drug cartel

Mexican police officers arrested over murder of federal agents

Ten Mexican police officers have been arrested over the torture and murder of 12 federal agents who were investigating a drugs cartel.

Telegraph | Jul 19, 2009

By Tom Leonard

Prosecutors in the western state of Michoacán said the municipal policemen had been detained to “determine their responsibility” for the murders and for allegedly carried out “criminal acts” on behalf of a ruthless drug gang called La Familia Michoacana.

Corruption is rife among Mexico’s local police forces and officers have not only protected cartels, but also murdered their rivals.

But the killing of the 12 agents, whose bodies were found piled beside a road long with warning notes, showed the cartels were becoming more willing to attack the federal government.

La Familia, a particularly violent group whose members study a special Bible and claim to be evangelical Christians, had the agents killed apparently in revenge for the arrest of Arnoldo Rueda Medina, one of their leaders.

Around 5,500 troops, federal police and navy personnel are being sent into Michoacán, the home state of President Felipe Calderón.

La Familia is a relatively new cartel which announced itself in 2006 by rolling five severed heads on to a bar’s dance floor.

A man claiming to be Servando Gomez, its leader, called a local television station last week and said he was attacking government forces simply to defend his members’ families and friends.

Mr Calderón believes that the cartel’s recent violence shows it has been damaged by the government’s campaign.

Cocaine Highways: Post-NAFTA, Most Drugs Cross U.S. Borders in Trucks

Trucks waiting to cross the US border at Nogales. Photo: David Sanders Arizona Daily Star

Mexican Cartels Using Huge Fleet of 18-Wheelers, Only 5% Inspected at Border Crossing

ABC | Apr 16, 2009

By RICHARD ESPOSITO, ASA ESLOCKER, and BRIAN ROSS

Most of the drug shipments smuggled into the United States by the Mexican cartels are hidden in trucks that drive across U.S. border checkpoints in plain sight, with little fear of inspection, U.S. law enforcement officials tell ABC News.

Only about 5 percent of trucks coming into the country from Mexico are inspected, according to U.S. officials.

“It is just too costly and too slow given the volume of trucks to actually try to stop and inspect each and every truck,” said Juan Zarate who dealt with the issue in the Geroge W. Bush White House as Deputy National Security Director.

The number of trucks coming into the U.S. has steadily increased since the passage of NAFTA in 1993. Almost 3,000,000 loaded container trailers crossed at border checkpoints last year.

“It does open up the potential for drug networks to take advantage, but I think it is something we have to find alternative ways of addressing,” said Zarate.

Any attempt to inspect all trucks crossing the border, “would have a hugely negative impact in terms of commercial traffic and trade between the United States and Mexico,” said Zarate, who also held the position of Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism.

“You would see lines like you wouldn’t believe,” he said.

The Mexican cartels’ fleet of 18-wheelers has long since replaced the Caribbean air drops and speed boats used by the Colombian cartels in the 1980’s and 1990’s, the era of “Miami Vice”.

And major cities at interstate highway junctions, like Atlanta, have become important hubs for the Mexican cartels.

“Atlanta is a central trans-shipment point for pushing narcotics to some of the largest distribution cells in the United States,” said Rodney Benson, the Special Agent in Charge of the DEA office in Atlanta.

Drug Agents Stakeout Truck Stops and Trail 18 Wheelers

Instead of tracking fancy sports cars at glitzy night clubs in Miami, federal drug agents now spend a lot of their time trailing behind huge 18-wheel trucks and conducting surveillance at interstate truck stops.

Flying over Atlanta’s “Spaghetti Junction,” the intersection of interstates I-85 and I-285, Benson pointed out the truck stops and warehouses where his agents have made major arrests and drugs seizures.

“It’s also a major money collection point,” said Benson. “They do operate with a business-like efficiency,” he said.

Federal agents and local police say the Mexican cartels often rent homes in quiet, upscale suburban neighborhoods for their operatives.

“You couldn’t build a better environment to camouflage this activity,” said Gwinnett County district attorney Danny Porter.

In a major raid last week, aimed at the Atlanta operations of Mexico’s Gulf Cartel, police and federal agents raided 16 locations and arrested 21 people.

Nearby residents were shocked to learn their neighbors might be connected to the Mexican cartels.

“Their daughter goes to school with my daughter,” said Amber Youngblood of Duluth, Georgia. “It makes you think twice about who your neighbors are,” she said.

As Mexico battles cartels, military becomes the law

Retired soldiers tapped to run police forces

MSNBC | Apr 1, 2009

By Steve Fainaru and William Booth

ETATLAN, Mexico – President Felipe Calderón is rapidly escalating the Mexican army’s role in the war against drug traffickers, deploying nearly 50 percent of its combat-ready troops along the U.S-Mexico border and throughout the country, while retired army officers take command of local police and the military supplies civilian authorities with automatic weapons and grenades.

U.S. and Mexican officials describe the drug cartels as a widening narco-insurgency. The four major drug states average a total of 12 murders a day, characterized by ambushes, gun battles, executions and decapitated bodies left by the side of the road. In the villages and cities where the traffickers hold sway, daily life now takes place against a martial backdrop of round-the-clock patrols, pre-dawn raids and roadblocks manned by masked young soldiers.

Calderón’s deployment of about 45,000 troops to fight the cartels represents a historic change. Previous administrations relied on Mexico’s traditionally weak police agencies to combat the traffickers who funnel 90 percent of the cocaine that enters the United States. The cartels corrupted local authorities and reached tacit agreements with the national government, limiting the violence while the drugs continued to flow.

After Calderón became president in December 2006, he told Mexicans that the use of the military against the cartels would be limited and brief. But it is now the centerpiece of his anti-narcotics strategy, according to interviews with senior U.S. and Mexican officials and dozens of people on the front lines of the war.

“It can be traumatic to have the army in control of public security, but I am convinced that we don’t have a better alternative, even with all the risks that it implies,” said Monte Alejandro Rubido, a senior public security official who is overseeing the overhaul of Mexico’s police forces.

The military’s withdrawal is dependent on the success of the police reforms, according to the government. U.S. and Mexican officials predict that troops will be patrolling the streets for years. In many regions, the army has become the law. But rather than quelling the violence, it increasingly appears to have been drawn into a deepening morass of cartel rivalries, local political disputes and blood feuds.

In the southern state of Guerrero, the army ratcheted up security last year, killing several alleged drug traffickers and making dozens of arrests. That was followed by a two-month stretch in which nine soldiers were abducted and decapitated in the state capital, four policemen were incinerated in a daylight grenade attack near a beach resort and a former mayor was shot 24 times before 1,000 people packed into a plaza for the coronation of a town beauty queen.

Mexicans have greeted the unprecedented deployment of federal troops in their communities with a mix of gratitude and dismay.

“There are a lot of opinions. I personally feel more secure to see the army out in the streets,” said Denis González Sánchez, a 29-year-old city administrator in Petatlan, a Guerrero beach town of 30,000 where the army began patrols last year after three dozen gunmen massacred the family of a former mayor accused of links to traffickers. “A lot of people feel exactly the opposite: They say that the army is making us less secure. But I always think it’s better knowing that they are out there protecting us, that they are watching over us, when there is nobody else to do it.”

Mexican officials say the cartels operate on a $10 billion annual budget earned from drug sales in the United States; according to U.S. government estimates, they employ 150,000 people. This year, the Mexican government will spend $9.3 billion on national security, a 99 percent increase since Calderón took office.

Since December 2006, more than 10,100 people have been killed in the strife, including 917 police officers, soldiers, prosecutors and political leaders, according to Milenio, a Mexican media organization. At the same time, human rights complaints against the army have surged 576 percent, according to Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission, including allegations of unlawful detentions, forced disappearances, rape and torture.

A ‘courageous step’

Calderón and his advisers have described the military’s deployment as an emergency measure while he seeks to reform Mexico’s local, state and federal police. He has promised that when the new police forces are ready, the troops will return to their barracks. That process may take until the end of his six-year term in 2012, he said recently.

The government is attempting to vet and retrain 450,000 officers, most at the state and municipal levels, employing lie detectors, drug tests, psychological profiling and financial reviews to weed out corruption and incompetence. Nearly half of the 56,000 officers vetted so far have failed.

Soldier Recruitment Inside Jails Exposed

I-Team Exposes Soldier Recruitment Inside Jails

10News | Mar 26, 2009

By Lauren Reynolds

SAN DIEGO — Andre Rayas committed murder with military precision, and it was caught on camera.

Using a high-powered rifle, Rayas gunned down police Sgt. Howard Stevenson, a married father and police veteran.

Rayas, who died in the shootout in Northern California, learned his tactics as a Marine at Camp Pendleton, an example of the dangers of gangs in the U.S. military.

Hunter Glass is an Army veteran, former detective and gang expert. He said a military gang member is a threat because, “He understands fire power, technology, he understands how to shoot.”

The 10News I-Team spent two years investigating military gang members, revealing their growing numbers among sailors, Marines and soldiers.

The I-Team captured illustrations of gang activity, including Bloods and Crips on the dance floor at Fort Bragg, who first flashed gang signs and then turned on each other.

The I-Team’s investigation showed the brutality of gang initiation with dramatic video of a young man being beaten harshly by six or seven gangsters.

There are actually 19 separate gangs with members in the military, according to the National Gang Intelligence Center. They include gangs from all races such as Mongols, MS 13, Vice Lords, Asian Boyz and the Mexican Mafia.

The Center’s threat assessment for 2009 said military gang members pose a “unique threat” because of their “distinctive military skills” and “willingness to teach … fellow gang members.”

Peggy Daly-Masternak of Ohio is a longtime educator who is also part of a group that monitors military recruitment.

“When you take a convicted felon, a street criminal, and train them to be a marksman, I think they’re a deadly danger once they get back,” she said.

She saw the I-Team’s first investigation of military gangs last October, which received national attention. Her group’s research echoes what others have told the I-Team — that the war in Iraq put a strain on military recruitment.

TJ Leydon, a reformed white supremacist who served as a Marine for 3 years, said, “After the war in Iraq was going on for two-and-a-half years, all of a sudden the cream of the crop wasn’t coming in anymore.”

Daly-Masternak said some recruiters took drastic steps to fill their quotas.

The I-Team leaned of one who went behind bars, literally walking into a jail to see if any of those locked up would consider joining the ranks. It seemed outrageous, but the I-Team found proof.

It’s a press release dated July 14, 2008. It announced, “A New Program at Your Lincoln County Jail.”

The jail is in Oregon, and the new program involves an Army recruiter visiting the jail “to convey information to incarcerated individuals about serving in our armed forces.”

I-Team reporter Lauren Reynolds posed the question to Lt. Colonel Miguel Howe.

“Do you go into jails to recruit?” Reynolds asked.

His response was, “Absolutely not, absolutely not.”

In fact, it is misconduct, said Lt. Col. Howe, commander of the Army Southern California Recruiting Battalion. He spoke to the I-Team on behalf of the Department of Defense.

“It is a direct violation of Army and Department of Defense policy and regulations to recruit out of prisons, out of jails, anyone on probation or on parole,” said Howe.

He described the Lincoln County program as a mistake and said it was shut down.

Last October, the Department of Defense told the I-Team it does not have a problem with criminal gangs among its ranks, despite the estimate of 14,000 military gang members. That same month, the Department standardized for all services the way they grant conduct waivers. Those waivers allow some applicants with criminal histories to enlist.

“There are actually 11 people who review that application,” said Howe.

He said to keep unsavory characters out of the armed forces, the vetting process has been strengthened.

“There are over 140 questions that we ask that young person,” said Howe.

The U.S. military grants roughly 30,000 conduct waivers each year. Gang members were never supposed to be eligible.

The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Deputy who invited the recruiter to jail defended the program last summer.

He is a veteran himself, and said it’s better to have petty criminals and first-time non-violent offenders in the military than locked up at a cost of $100 each per day.

Secret Societies and The Military

“[Their god is] the Brotherhood. It’s very German, it has Masonic leanings. They’re all Masons. This Brotherhood — Opus Dei — they’re the Mob. The Marine Corps are the hit men. They’re mercenaries. They’ll work for anybody. They’ll switch hats. My husband said it’s no big deal. I’ll go work for the State Department.”

- Kay Griggs

The Kay Griggs Interviews

By Pastor Rick Strawcutter

Kay Griggs was a Southern divorcee who rented a room to Marine Corps colonel George Griggs in the late 1980s. She was impressed by his clipped manner, his education, his good looks. Two months later she married him. What she found out about world affairs as George Griggs’ wife was astounding.

Colonel Griggs was a Marine Corps Chief of Staff, as well as head of NATO’s Psychological Operations. He was also, his wife realized, entirely mind-controlled. Kay, a self-declared Christian, became privy to the real workings of the United States military, leadership training, drug-running and weapons sales, and the secret worldwide camps that train professional assassins.

These interviews with Pastor Rick Strawcutter of Adrian, Michigan were conducted in 1998, before September 11th and the installation of U.S. President George W. Bush. Kay Griggs’ report of world events and the power elite paints a picture that begins to explain the hows and whys of our current global scenario.

Quotes from Kay Griggs:

“They took with them the most perverted aspects of Nazi Germany and brought them over to the United States.”

“They get rid of the good guys. The Marine Corps are the assassins for the Mob. The military is run by the Mob. The military IS the Mob.”

“He told me what they did. They nurture–they cultivate–the sons of prominent families. They’re called “rising stars.” They rope them in. Then they “turn” them.”

ON ASSASSINS: “What my husband does for a living is train mercenaries — young boys from countries like Romania, Dominican Republic, Haiti. They’re training them to be murderers, and the taxpayers’ dollars are paying for this. They psychologically profile them. The profile is similar to my husband’s and Lee Harvey Oswald’s and [Timothy] McVeigh’s, and others who were all part of this program. Jeffrey Dahmer was part of this program. They’re all Army. They were all picked out because they were perverted or twisted. [The military profiles for] strong mother, weak father, no father, poor. Because these guys are looking for security, so they will stay in the military and do anything for that security.” (Interviews, Disk 1)

“When you work in the White House, you work under the Army. The Marines have no overlord, as such. They can float. They’re run out of New Orleans, just like Oswald was. Oswald was homosexually recruited by Jack Rubinstein, who was Jack Ruby. All of the funding for these operations goes through the “joint” — the Mob. Oswald was a loner, brilliant — and a perfect candidate. His [profile] and my husband’s profile almost look alike.” (Interviews, Disk 2)

ON TRUTH TELLERS: “St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, like the Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg, has Army intelligence people in there. They’re targets — people who have decided to tell the truth. People who believe in the American dream, who are Christians, who are trying to get things straightened out. If they transgress that line where they upset somebody in high command — just like in Germany — they all of a sudden move from being a person to being a target. Therefore, the enemy. Why are good people silenced, why are their papers gone through?” (Interviews, Disk 3)

ON THE CIA: “This CIA thing, from my experience, is bogus. Every person I’ve known who was in the CIA was in military intelligence first. For example, my husband. He works under the Army. He’s a Marine Corps high-level intelligence officer, but he’s under all these Army people.” (Interviews, Disk 3)

ON LOYALTY: “Now these generals in the Marine Corps and Army, according to my husband, they are ordered. My husband, being Chief of Staff, told his men it was like this: It’s the Marine Corps first — the Brotherhood, the Cherry Marines, the bonding that goes on. The Marine Corps comes before God, before Jesus Christ, before the country. My husband is not a Christian, he’s an existentialist, and most of these guys are. [Their god is] the Brotherhood. It’s very German, it has Masonic leanings. They’re all Masons. This Brotherhood — Opus Dei — they’re the Mob. The Marine Corps are the hit men. They’re mercenaries. They’ll work for anybody. They’ll switch hats. My husband said it’s no big deal. I’ll go work for the State Department.

“The Marine Corps is just a smoke-and-mirrors thing. On [my husband's] level, he said we’ve never been an enemy to the Soviet Union. They work with these Communists. The man who started this whole intelligence operation — OSS [Office of Strategic Services] — he was recruiting known Communists who were involved in subverting Spain. They’re not Americans. They’re not Christians. They’re German existentialists. Now what are they doing running our nation? They have more affinity for the State of Israel than they do our nation. They don’t care about American citizens. The judges now in the courts are all military officers following chain-of-command orders. They’re not independent judges.” (Interviews, Disk 4)

______

Related

Kay Griggs Homepage

‘Mafia Cops’ Get Life, and Their Pensions

Stephen Caracappa, left, and Louis J. Eppolito received life sentences for a second time after a federal appellate court reinstated their 2006 conspiracy convictions.

NY Times | Mar 6, 2009

By JIM DWYER

A side door swung open, and the two retired police detectives, dressed in shapeless prison scrubs, walked into the courtroom. They looked as if they had been shipwrecked.

Nearly three years ago, the two men, Stephen Caracappa and Louis J. Eppolito, were convicted of serving as assassins and spies for the Mafia while they were employed as detectives for the Police Department.

A case of outsize horrors and drastic turns — plus celebrity lawyers, three books, and a conviction reversed, then restored — came to its reckoning Friday afternoon on the 10th floor of the federal courthouse in Brooklyn. By day’s end, it would provide one more twist from its store of the absurd.

“These two defendants have committed what amounts to treason against the people of the City of New York and their fellow police officers,” said Judge Jack B. Weinstein of United States District Court.

He sentenced Mr. Eppolito to life plus 100 years, and fined him $4.75 million; Mr. Caracappa got life plus 80 years, and a fine of $4.25 million. The judge said both men were likely to have “hidden assets” from their crimes.

Yet one asset — in plain sight — might not be seized to pay their debts.

Both men have been drawing tax-free disability pensions from the city since they left the Police Department, according to city records. Mr. Caracappa, who retired in 1992 as a first-grade detective, receives $5,313 a month. Mr. Eppolito, who retired in 1990 as a second-grade detective, is paid $3,896 a month. Because they retired before they were accused of crimes, their pensions will continue.

Moreover, the pensions are not subject to seizure for payment of the fines, said Joseph A. Bondy, the lawyer for Mr. Caracappa. “I fought the government for Peter Gotti when they tried to garnish a disability pension, and we won,” said Mr. Bondy, who defended Mr. Gotti on murder and racketeering charges in 2004.

Under state law, public pensions are treated as property held in trust for the employees, and periodic efforts to make their forfeiture a penalty for corrupt public employees have failed. The Daily News reported last year that 450 corrupt former officials, judges and police officers were receiving pensions.

While both men have families, the two are likely to have little use in prison for the tax-free bounty that, in theory, they earned during the years that, a jury found, they were also killing for the Mafia, setting up informants for death or exposure, and poring through confidential police computers in service of the organized crime figures who were providing them with regular payoffs.

At 67, Mr. Caracappa has grown gaunt, the color so vanished from his face that it was hard to say where a scraggly gray beard met his pallid skin; Mr. Eppolito, 60, appeared to have lost weight behind bars, but remained a round, burly figure whose face reddened as a son and a daughter of two victims stood to describe their losses.

Their trial in 2006 lasted three weeks, and was built on testimony from Burton Kaplan, a wholesale garment dealer who had gone into multiple schemes with organized crime figures. He was the subject of “The Good Rat” (Ecco, 2008), a pitch-perfect account by Jimmy Breslin, who described how Mr. Caracappa helped a Mafia patron hunt for a Nicholas Guido by using a police computer. But the detective provided the address of a different man, a young telephone installer with the same name as the hitmen’s prey. He was killed in front of his home in Park Slope.

The first reports of the detectives’ corruption were made in 1979, and they were implicated a number of times through the 1980s but were never charged, and managed to continue their rise within the police ranks, according to Greg B. Smith’s “Mob Cops” (Berkley, 2006).

In the courtroom on Friday afternoon, a son from one family, then a daughter from another stood to speak for murdered fathers. A man framed by the ex-detectives told them he hoped that they would suffer in prison for the rest of their lives, as he had for 19 years.

Both Mr. Caracappa and Mr. Eppolito protested their innocence on Friday. “You will never take my will to prove how innocent I am,” Mr. Caracappa said.

One of those who spoke was Yael Perlman, the daughter of a gem dealer, Israel Greenwald, whose business dealings with Mr. Kaplan went sour. He was pulled off a highway by the two detectives in 1986, killed and buried under an auto repair shop. She was 7 years old then, and it was not until 2005 that his remains were found. The lack of a body “prevented us from receiving the small material respite of life insurance,” Ms. Perlman said.

Told later that both men would continue to receive their police pensions, she said, “That’s sick.”

Pa. judges accused of jailing kids for cash

Hillary Transue, who was sentenced to a wilderness camp for building a spoof MySpace page that lampooned her assistant principal in White Haven, Pa., on Friday. Transue says she did not have an attorney, nor was she informed of her right to one, when she was sentenced by Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella.

Judges allegedly took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juveniles in lockups

MSNBC | Feb 11, 2009

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. – For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses.

The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench.

In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.

Michael Conahan, center, leaves the federal courthouse in Scranton, Pa., on Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009. AP Photo by David Kidwell

“I’ve never encountered, and I don’t think that we will in our lifetimes, a case where literally thousands of kids’ lives were just tossed aside in order for a couple of judges to make some money,” said Marsha Levick, an attorney with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, which is representing hundreds of youths sentenced in Wilkes-Barre.

Prosecutors say Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, Western PA Child Care LLC. The judges were charged on Jan. 26 and removed from the bench by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shortly afterward.

No company officials have been charged, but the investigation is still going on.

The high court, meanwhile, is looking into whether hundreds or even thousands of sentences should be overturned and the juveniles’ records expunged.

Among the offenders were teenagers who were locked up for months for stealing loose change from cars, writing a prank note and possessing drug paraphernalia. Many had never been in trouble before. Some were imprisoned even after probation officers recommended against it.

Many appeared without lawyers, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1967 ruling that children have a constitutional right to counsel.

‘I have disgraced my judgeship’

The judges are scheduled to plead guilty to fraud Thursday in federal court. Their plea agreements call for sentences of more than seven years behind bars.

Mark Ciavarella, in foreground, leaves the federal courthouse in Scranton, Pa., on Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009. AP Photo by David Kidwell

Ciavarella, 58, who presided over Luzerne County’s juvenile court for 12 years, acknowledged last week in a letter to his former colleagues, “I have disgraced my judgeship. My actions have destroyed everything I worked to accomplish and I have only myself to blame.” Ciavarella, though, has denied he got kickbacks for sending youths to prison.

Conahan, 56, has remained silent about the case.

Many Pennsylvania counties contract with privately run juvenile detention centers, paying them either a fixed overall fee or a certain amount per youth, per day.

In Luzerne County, prosecutors say, Conahan shut down the county-run juvenile prison in 2002 and helped the two companies secure rich contracts worth tens of millions of dollars, at least some of that dependent on how many juveniles were locked up.

One of the contracts — a 20-year agreement with PA Child Care worth an estimated $58 million — was later canceled by the county as exorbitant.

The judges are accused of taking payoffs between 2003 and 2006.

Allegations of extortion

Robert J. Powell co-owned PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care until June. His attorney, Mark Sheppard, said his client was the victim of an extortion scheme.

“Bob Powell never solicited a nickel from these judges and really was a victim of their demands,” he said. “These judges made it very plain to Mr. Powell that he was going to be required to pay certain monies.”

For years, youth advocacy groups complained that Ciavarella was ridiculously harsh and ran roughshod over youngsters’ constitutional rights. Ciavarella sent a quarter of his juvenile defendants to detention centers from 2002 to 2006, compared with a statewide rate of one in 10.

The criminal charges confirmed the advocacy groups’ worst suspicions and have called into question all the sentences he pronounced.

Hillary Transue did not have an attorney, nor was she told of her right to one, when she appeared in Ciavarella’s courtroom in 2007 for building a MySpace page that lampooned her assistant principal.

Her mother, Laurene Transue, worked for 16 years in the child services department of another county and said she was certain Hillary would get a slap on the wrist. Instead, Ciavarella sentenced her to three months; she got out after a month, with help from a lawyer.

“I felt so disgraced for a while, like, what do people think of me now?” said Hillary, now 17 and a high school senior who plans to become an English teacher.

‘I was completely destroyed’

Laurene Transue said Ciavarella “was playing God. And not only was he doing that, he was getting money for it. He was betraying the trust put in him to do what is best for children.”

Kurt Kruger, now 22, had never been in trouble with the law until the day police accused him of acting as a lookout while his friend shoplifted less than $200 worth of DVDs from Wal-Mart. He said he didn’t know his friend was going to steal anything.

Kruger pleaded guilty before Ciavarella and spent three days in a company-run juvenile detention center, plus four months at a youth wilderness camp run by a different operator.

“Never in a million years did I think that I would actually get sent away. I was completely destroyed,” said Kruger, who later dropped out of school. He said he wants to get his record expunged, earn his high school equivalency diploma and go to college.

“I got a raw deal, and yeah, it’s not fair,” he said, “but now it’s 100 times bigger than me.”

Obama’s surge and the Afghan heroin trade

Bharath is Truth | Feb 9, 2009

By Johann Samuhanand

Bangalore, India, February 09 — As America surges in Afghanistan, it has created its own stirring in the heroin trade, which has come back to life after NATO forces took over the country from the Taliban. The Taliban, who enforced not only Sharia law but other stringent Islamic conditions on the people as well, ensured that poppy was not cultivated at all. Though this infuriated ordinary Afghans, the Taliban enforced it ruthlessly. This also ensured the vanquishing of the drug mafia run by drug lords like General Dostum, Ishmeil Khan, etc.

When the International Security Assistance Force took over, it opened the floodgates of freedom of the media and personal liberty, and also the freedom to grow poppy. Initially, it ensured that ordinary Afghans were happy with the money that came from this trade. This time, the Taliban did not abolish this trade, but cleverly used it to subvert the central rule of Karzai as desired by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The United States winked at this as long it was supporting the Pakistani army and ISI and didn’t affect its global interest in the painkiller market in Europe. ISI thinks that subverting the Indian economy through heroin and other poppy-derived drugs is as effective as a terrorist attack against India. As the global prices for heroin crash in the European market, the CIA is waking up to face the challenge of protecting its market in Europe and the United States.

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• US to increase troops in Afghanistan by 30,000

The connection between ISI and the CIA through drug money is not much known, since ISI is intricately linked to jihadi terrorism, which gets more media space. ISI cannot survive as an institution with this “oxygen” from the drug trade.

Again, the hawala system in Afghanistan is controlled by poppy-generated illegal money. One finds that the hawala centers and drug routes are the same. Ninety-three percent of the world’s illegal opium is grown in Afghanistan. The world’s intelligence agencies and drug lords have their meeting point in the small but prosperous town of Baramcha in Helmand, which grows 70% of Afghanistan’s poppy. The GDP of Afghanistan is US$7.8 billion, while the illegal opium trade is worth more than US$5 billion!!! Now one can understand how important drug trade is to Afghanistan, to the jihadis, to ISI and to the United States, where the illegal street trade is worth US$200 billion! The Taliban are able to completely ignore or reduce taxes on non-opium trade in the areas they control, as long as one pays 10% tax on the opium produced, thereby winning the hearts and minds of ordinary Afghan farmers.

Then what is the game plan of the Obama administration in inviting the following people for his inauguration: Gul Agha Sherzai, Dr. Ashraff Ghani Ahmedzai, Ali Ahmed Jalali, and Abudullah Abdullah? Why is he trying to replace Karzai with one of these warlords? These guys are not angels. The reason is drug money, which made even Zilmay Khalizad salivate for the job.

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