Tag: misconduct
Oregon Police Accused Of Misconduct In White Supremacist Investigation

Oregon Police Accused Of Misconduct In White Supremacist Investigation

By Matt Pearce, Los Angeles Times

David Joseph Pedersen wanted to start a white supremacist revolution, so he came up with a plan to massacre Jews in the Pacific Northwest in hopes of inspiring copycats.

Pedersen got caught before he could carry out such an attack — but not before he and an accomplice killed four people in fall 2011 during a 10-day crime rampage across Washington, Oregon, and Northern California.

On Monday, a Portland federal judge sentenced Pedersen, 34, to two life terms without parole.

Then, in a thundering written opinion, Senior District Judge Ancer L. Haggerty criticized prosecutors for a “disturbing” series of oversights and ethical missteps. The errors were especially disturbing, he said, because officials had considered seeking the death penalty.

Investigators failed to turn over huge swaths of evidence to the defense, and collected and listened to Pedersen’s confidential jailhouse phone calls with his attorneys, Haggerty said.

The judge accused the lead investigator, Oregon State Police Detective Dave Steele, of “backdating” evidence reports, reviewing Pedersen’s confidential attorney calls and letters, destroying evidence, lying to the U.S. attorney’s office, and filing a false declaration with the court — a potentially criminal pattern of conduct.

“Given the breadth of his misconduct in this case, it is not difficult to imagine that he has committed similar misconduct in other cases,” the judge wrote, suggesting Steele might be prosecuted.

Pedersen’s crime spree began Sept. 26, 2011, with the slayings of his father, David Jones “Red” Pedersen, and stepmother, Leslie Mae “Dee Dee” Pedersen, in Snohomish County, Wash., according to court records.

Officials say that Pedersen shot his father, calling him a child molester, and that his partner in the spree, Holly Ann Grigsby, cut Dee Dee Pedersen’s throat.

The pair then traveled to Oregon, where, on Oct. 1, Pedersen shot and killed 19-year-old Cody Myers, stole his car, and dumped his body in the woods, according to court records.

Next, they drove to Eureka, Calif., where Pedersen killed Reginald Alan Clark, 53, on Oct. 4.

The California Highway Patrol arrested them the next day. Pedersen had his father’s wallet, as well as phone numbers and addresses of Jewish organizations in Portland, officials said.

After his arrest, Pedersen wrote a letter to the Oregonian newspaper, saying he hoped his actions “would serve as an example for others to follow.”

In March 2012, he pleaded guilty in Snohomish County to Washington state charges of killing his parents. He received life without parole.

In August 2012, he was indicted in Oregon federal court for the entire crime spree. That’s when the trouble began.

Haggerty described a federal-state criminal investigation team spearheaded by the Oregon State Police as overwhelmed by the amount of evidence, to the point that prosecutors didn’t know what investigators had collected.

Spokesmen for the U.S. attorney’s office in Oregon and the Oregon State Police declined to comment.

The judge believed that prosecutors did not intentionally collect Pedersen’s calls with his attorneys, but said the chief investigator, Steele, apparently listened to the recordings.

Steele was suspended in December pending a criminal investigation. At one point, Steele’s attorney told the judge the detective would invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself if he was asked to testify about the Pedersen investigation.

The status of the Steele investigation could not be determined. A spokesman for the Oregon State Police said he was still on leave “pending this matter.” Neither Steele nor his attorney could be reached for comment.

AFP Photo/Mat Hayward

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Congress Boosts Funding As Investigation Of VA Widens

Congress Boosts Funding As Investigation Of VA Widens

By Richard Simon, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — Stepping up Congress’ efforts to root out misconduct at the Department of Veterans Affairs, lawmakers Thursday moved to boost funding for a nationwide investigation into whether VA employees covered up long waits for medical care and authorize subpoenas of VA officials to produce records and appear at a Capitol Hill hearing next week.

Even as a growing number of Republicans and some Democrats have called for his resignation, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki was on Capitol Hill on Thursday meeting with the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois.

A resolution also has been introduced seeking a House vote calling for Shinseki’s resignation.

The Senate Appropriations Committee, meanwhile, approved a VA spending bill that would provide an additional $5 million for a VA inspector general’s investigation, give the VA secretary give new authority to fire or demote employees, and freezes bonuses to senior VA employees until the review is complete and reforms have been implemented.

“We really have come to a point where we need to have more than just good intentions,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. “What we need from the VA right now is decisive action.”

“This kind of reported misconduct at the VA is unforgivable. It is unacceptable. And, it is just plain wrong,” added Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the appropriations committee’s top Republican.

The House Veterans’ Affairs Committee scheduled a hearing for Wednesday on the reports of excessive wait times and falsification of records at VA health facilities and voted to authorize subpoenas to VA officials, “given the VA’s continued pattern of stonewalling,” as chairman Jeff Miller, R-Fla., put it.

A VA spokesman said the department is “committed” to working with the committee, noting that it had provided more than 3,000 pages of documents.

The VA did not send anyone to Thursday’s House Veterans Committee’s 9 a.m. meeting because it only received the request at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.

VA officials summoned to appear before the committee are Joan Mooney, assistant secretary for congressional and legislative affairs; Dr. Thomas Lynch, assistant deputy undersecretary for health for clinical operations and management; and Michael Huff, congressional relations officer.

If they fail to voluntarily appear, the subpoena will require them to show up May 30.

Photo: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs via Flickr

Guantanamo Judge Investigates Claims Of FBI Misconduct In 9/11 Case

Guantanamo Judge Investigates Claims Of FBI Misconduct In 9/11 Case

By Richard A. Serrano, Tribune Washington Bureau

FORT MEADE, Md. — The military judge in the Sept. 11 conspiracy case signaled Tuesday he may order FBI agents to describe their secret investigation into whether members of the defense teams for al-Qaida leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and others illegally leaked a “manifesto” written by the alleged 9/11 mastermind about his time at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

The judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, asked defense lawyers for Mohammed and four other alleged conspirators to notify him by 5 p.m. Wednesday which FBI agents and other government officials they want him to question as part of the probe. Pohl is responding to complaints from defense lawyers that FBI agents improperly visited a court-appointed member of the defense team at his home and asked him to sign an agreement to cooperate with FBI’s leak investigation.

The agents visited the man, who is acting as a defense security officer, after he returned home from church on April 6. He reported the meeting to his employer, the private contractor SRA International Inc. in Fairfax, Va., and the meeting was then reported to defense lawyers for alleged conspirator Ramzi Binalshibh.

The security officer is assigned to work on the Binalshibh defense team. He carries a top-secret security clearance and vets information in the case to help decide what should be classified or made public.

James Harrington, the lead attorney for Binalshibh, said the unnamed security officer has “unlimited access to our files,” suggesting that the government was trying to spy on the defense teams.

At Tuesday’s pre-trial session, the judge asked Ed Ryan, a Justice Department attorney, whether the FBI would resist being questioned about the matter.

Ryan was unsure but added that he thought “it would be gravely mistaken to go down the road of trying to look into an investigation being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

The FBI leak investigation was prompted after several media outlets received a “manifesto” written by Mohammed about his years at the Guantanamo prison.

The hearings are being held at Guantanamo Bay and screened at Fort Meade. All of the defendants have pleaded not guilty.

AFP Photo/Chantal Valery

Franken Calls For Oversight Of Ratings Agencies

With world markets suddenly sagging under the weight of the Standard & Poors downgrade of Treasury bonds last Friday, Senator Al Franken (D-MN) is disturbed by the monopolistic power of the ratings agencies – and still determined to curb their abuses, as he tried to do last year with an amendment to the Dodd-Frank banking reform bill.

In an exclusive Monday interview, the Minnesota Democrat said that the misconduct of the ratings agencies led directly to the economic catastrophe that S&P’s rating decision has now made even worse. Franken wondered aloud why his proposed reforms of the ratings industry should still be subject to “study” rather than action by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

By setting up an independent federal board to assign ratings jobs to the agencies — rather than letting them be paid by those who issue the securities they grade — his proposal would have severed the industry’s gross conflicts of interest. Known as the “issuer pays” model, that traditional relationship let the banks reward S&P and Moody’s for awarding rubber-stamp AAA ratings to worthless mortgage-backed securities (as they did for years before the housing bubble burst).

It was those abuses, he said, that left taxpayers, workers and government “holding the bag” while the bankers and ratings firms walked away with huge profits. “What I was trying to do was open this business to more competition,” said Franken. “And then ultimately as time went on, the track record of accuracy would be the thing that determined who got what [contract], and who got to grade [which securities]. You’d be rewarded for accuracy, instead of bribery. Put those alongside each other: Bribery; accuracy. Accuracy; bribery. Hmmm…” He laughed. “Which method do you think will probably yield a better product, a more transparent product?”

He recalled, “The problem wasn’t just that [the ratings agencies] gave these AAA ratings to sub-prime mortgage securities. It’s that after the banks ran out of sub-prime mortgages to securitize, they then gave AAA ratings to bets on sub-prime. They created an entire other market” based on so-called derivatives that allowed the banks to bet on (or against) the future value of those assets.

“Basically the banks were going like, ‘Oh man we’ve run out of these sub-prime mortgage-backed securities, we can’t make any more money with these things. Wait a minute, why don’t we do derivatives of them — great idea! You know what, we need AAA ratings though…No problem! We’ll just go to our pals, the guys we’ve been paying for these other AAA ratings and ask them to rate these! Wink wink…” He laughed again. “And then they did those!”

The result, said Franken, was the construction of a “house of cards” that became “bets on bets.” To award AAA ratings to those securities was “unconscionable and unbelievable,” he added, but it created the market that led to this collapse.”

In his view, the way to prevent similar abuses in the future is “to open this business to more competition,” with reforms overseen by a board comprised mainly of institutional investors as well as members from the ratings agencies and the investment banking community. Rating firms that are smaller than S&P or Moody’s would have a better chance to compete under such a system, he said, “because they would develop expertise” in certain areas of finance. Big and small firms alike “might be rewarded for their diligence, intelligence and ingenuity” rather than their prejudicial treatment of dubious investment vehicles. “They’d get more business if they’re more accurate and less business if they’re less accurate.” The old-fashioned American way of doing business? “Yeah, I think there was a time when that was rewarded,” he said sardonically.

Franken’s own reward, most recently, was a strange editorial in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, which accused him of protecting the oligopoly enjoyed by the three major ratings agencies. “You know how usually they bend the truth?” he said of the notoriously conservative, Murdoch-owned daily’s editorial page. “Well this is the opposite of the truth. I was the nemesis of the rating agencies. When my amendment passed, the rating agencies’ stocks went down the next day.”

Although the Franken amendment passed the Senate by a substantial margin, with many Republican votes, his proposed reforms were delayed by a two-year study of the problem now under way at the SEC. “I don’t know why you need to do much of a study on this thing,” he said. “We know what happened. This is like doing a study on whether using steroids is a good idea for ballplayers.” There was Republican opposition to his reforms, especially in the Tea Party-dominated House. But according to Franken, it was Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), then the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, who told him that the ratings agencies needed to be studied further because “unintended consequences” might result if his reforms were implemented immediately.

“I said, ‘What in this bill couldn’t conceivably have unintended consequences?’” he said. “Everything could possibly have unintended consequences.” He laughed again. “We’d never pass anything if it had to be held up to that standard.”

And of course there could be unintended consequences from doing nothing as well – as we are now learning. Franken said that he didn’t know how much money the ratings agencies had earned from past abuses. “The banks made their money, the ratings agencies made their money, and all of us are left holding the bag, with this high rate of unemployment and the inability of small businesses to get capital, which makes unemployment worse. And they’re still making fortunes now.”