No Terrorists in Old Town Alexandria, Please

NIMBY Alert! NIMBY Alert! The Washington Post reports that residents of downtown Alexandria, Virginia, are up in arms over the likely use of the Alexandria Federal Courthouse to try some or all of the detainees now held at Guantanamo Bay's Camp Delta.

An outcry is growing in Alexandria over a prospect no one seems to like: terrorist suspects in the suburbs.

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"We would be absolutely opposed to relocating Guantanamo prisoners to Alexandria," Mayor William D. Euille (D) said. "We would do everything in our power to lobby the president, the governor, the Congress and everyone else to stop it. We've had this experience, and it was unpleasant. Let someone else have it."

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"I've never agreed with people who say 'not in my back yard,' but there are just too many people around here," said Jim Boulton, president of the unit owners association at the Caryle Towers condominium complex [located in the immediate vicinity of the courthouse], which has been trying to get the government to remove security barriers left over from the Moussaoui trial. "They need to find someplace else."

Moussaoui, et al, have to go somewhere if Camp Delta is closed, don't they? Why shouldn't that be Alexandria, where 71% of the city residents voted for Obama last November? I take it for granted that Mayor Euille, Mr. Boulton, and everyone else quoted by the WaPo support the administration's announced intention of closing Gitmo. Mayor Euille ought to do everything in his power to lobby the White House for the privilege of hosting those prisoners in his city, not to pass the buck to some other jurisdiction. Where's the courage of his convictions?

It looks like the typical Alexandrian's support for closing Gitmo shrinks as the distance between them and the Gitmo detainees gets smaller.

FBI = Foot-dragging on Bureau Information

The FBI was tweaked last week for its notorious lack of responsiveness to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. A small part of the problem is the Bureau's Famous Backwardness at Information handling, but mostly it's a matter of contempt for the law.

From the National Security Archive's fifth annual Rosemary Award press release:

National Security Archive Cites FBI for Record-Setting "No Records" Responses, FBI Can't Find Records 66% of the Time (Rest of Government Averages 13%)

Washington, DC, March 13, 2009

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) today won the fifth annual Rosemary Award for the worst Freedom of Information Act performance by a federal agency. The FBI’s reports to Congress show that the Bureau is unable to find any records in response to two-thirds of its incoming FOIA requests on average over the past four ears, when the other major government agencies averaged only a 13% “no records” response to public requests.

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[U]nless a requester specifically asks for a broader search, the FBI will only look in a central database of electronic file names at FBI headquarters in Washington. This search will miss any internal or cross-references to people who are not the subject of an investigation, any records stored at other FBI offices around the country, and any records created before the 1970s, which are stored in paper form and only indexed using a manual card catalog. When requesters send their requests directly to relevant field offices for processing, the FBI’s policy is to automatically route all requests back to headquarters for the same inadequate search. Until the requester files suit in federal court, the FBI will not perform a broader search.

“Modern information processing uses search algorithms and full-text retrieval to find and rank search results,” said Blanton. “The FBI’s process in contrast is designed to send FOIA requesters away frustrated, and no doubt has the same effect on the FBI’s own agents.”

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According to the FBI’s own reporting, the Bureau has also deterred requesters by making them wait — an average of 374 days (about a year) for complex requests, compared with the 20 days mandated in the FOIA. The FBI also has a longstanding practice of refusing to process requests for documents about a living individual without a signed privacy waiver from the person permitting the release of his or her records. Last year, this policy stopped in its tracks a student journalism project to learn about the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan — the FBI would not process their requests because they did not submit privacy waivers signed by captured 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid, among others.

So what new? FOIA is merely a public law, but the FBI is a law unto itself.

U.S. Embassy in Mexico City Annexes a Street (For Mexico's Own Good)

Passport, the Foreign Policy magazine blog, has a story today on the ruckus the Major of Mexico City is kicking up over the U.S. embassy's practice of blocking access to a public street that adjoins the embassy property: Has the U.S. annexed a Mexico City street?

Mayor Marcelo Ebrard ... has taken up the cause of reopening Rio Danubio, a narrow one-way street off Paseo de la Reforma, the capital's main promenade modeled after the Champs-Elysees in Paris.

"The Embassy has not had, nor does it have, authorization to occupy public spaces," Ebrard told reporters. "They shouldn't be the ones who occupy the city with the aim of providing security."

Passport links to this story from the Miami Herald, which provided the above photo.

His Honor the Mayor may or may not know why the practice of blocking access to Rio Danubio started, since it goes way back to 1986, but it was, in fact, for the purpose of providing better security to the visa applicants who line up outside the embassy.

The section of Rio Danubio in question is a one-block stretch that runs between the embassy office building and the Marie Isabel Sheraton hotel. (In the photo, the embassy is just out of view on the right; the Sheraton is the building on the left.) In 1986, the embassy's consular section was located in a lower level of the embassy office building and visa applicants queued up along Rio Danubio to be admitted into the embassy, one small group at a time, via a side entrance that was roughly in the middle of the block. The street had a fair volume of vehicle traffic, some of it associated with a side entrance into the Sheraton, and it was not unusual for cars to be parked there.

In May 1986 a group calling itself the Commando Internacionalista Simon Bolivar parked a carbomb on Rio Danubio next to the hotel's side entrance. That put the bomb directly opposite the routine daily queue of visa applicants; clearly, it was an attempt to cause mass casualties. Fortunately, the bomb was discovered and rendered safe by the police (if I recall correctly, the bomb's crude homemade timer had failed), so no one was injured.

To protect against another such attack the U.S. Ambassador at the time, John Gavin, insisted that the local authorities allow the embassy to take control of Rio Danubio. They refused, until Ambassador Gavin applied pressure by shutting down all visa processing in Mexico City, after which they caved in pretty quickly.

Another Ambassador might not get away with shutting down visa processing - Gavin was an old Hollywood friend of President Reagan's, and he seemed serenely assured that he would remain Ambassador for so long as he wished no matter what kind of protests the government of Mexico and its allies in the U.S. made to the Secretary of State - but it's an option worth considering in case Mayor Marcelo Ebrard gets out of hand.

He's a Little Bit Henry Kissinger, a Little Bit Paul Cézanne, and Just un Soupçon of Julia Child

In case you were wondering how L. Paul Bremer, the former Proconsul of Iraq, is spending his spare time these days, here's a story from the Washington Times Arts section of a few days ago: Former Diplomat Turns to Oils (the kind of oils you paint on canvas, that is, not the kind that powers the world's economy).

Mr. Bremer says he decided to take up painting after finishing his 2006 book, "My Year in Iraq." These days, he serves on several corporate boards but devotes most of his spare time to painting and cooking. He has taken art classes taught by local painter Walter Bartman at the Yellow Barn Studio in Glen Echo and plans to sign up for another course this spring. "I am just a beginner," he says.

You can see his paintings at the website of Bremer Enterprises. They are impressionistic rural New England landscapes of the nostalgic sort, snow-covered barns and such, kind of 'P. Buckley Moss Goes to Vermont.'

Bremer does not paint desert scenes, but he does create great dessert scenes.

Time spent in Baghdad has had no influence on his painting, he says, but he uses Iraqi ingredients such as pomegranate molasses and dried limes in his gourmet cooking.

When Bremer isn't painting, he's using his training in classical French cooking to whip up things like Fontainebleau garnished with pomegranate molasses. Here's his recipe for Fontainebleau, but be warned that you'll need to prepare this one day in advance. It seems that Bremer used to make this dish with plain old raspberry coulis and whole raspberries as garnish, but his year in Iraq introduced him to exotic local fruits like pomegranate that add a nice Middle Eastern twist to the classic French dessert.

Wow! With Bremer doing so much painting and fancy cooking, I'm amazed that he still finds the time to sit on corporate boards.

Reservist Screwed by Employer, Awarded $1 Million

A Federal judge has issued the largest-ever award to a returning military reservist who successfully sued his former employer under the Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act (Former Reservist Wins $1 Million From Employer).

In a case centering on a little-frequented corner of the employment rights of troops returning to civilian life, a federal judge has ruled that Wells Fargo must reinstate a former reservist to his job as a financial adviser and pay him at least $1 million.

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A jury decided last June that Wachovia had violated his rights under the Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act, which requires employers to provide workers returning from service a salary, status and seniority similar to what they had before leaving. It was left to Judge Arterton to decide damages.

She did so on Thursday, affirming the jury’s verdict and awarding Mr. Serricchio about $400,000 in back pay and interest, $390,000 in punitive damages, and reimbursement for his legal fees, which are likely to top $500,000. His new salary will be $144,000 for one year, the court ordered, after which he will be back to working on commission.

Although this case dealt with the narrow matter of reinstatement of employees who were paid on commission, I can't help but expect it will strengthen the hand of returning reservists in general, who all too often haven't gotten their jobs back after a deployment, the law notwithstanding.

FBI = French (Comic) Book Implicated

It seems that almost anything can be blamed on the French. The FBI is now promoting a theory that the 1971 American skyjacker D.B. Copper was a fan of a French comic book series and took his nom de skyjack, "Dan Cooper," from the French-Canadian hero of that series. You have to read it to believe it.

Here's the gist of the FBI's theory:

In the fictional series, Royal Canadian Air Force test pilot Dan Cooper takes part in adventures in outer space and real events of that era. In one episode, published near the date of the hijacking, the cover illustration shows him parachuting.

Seattle Special Agent Larry Carr, who took over the Cooper case two years ago, believes it’s possible the hijacker took his name from the comic book (the enduring “D.B.” was actually the result of a media mistake). That’s important because the books were never translated into English, which means the hijacker likely spent time overseas. This fits with Carr’s theory that Cooper had been in the Air Force (see sidebar).

Special Agent Carr's theory, incidentally, is that maybe Cooper was one of the hundreds of thousands of U.S. military troops who spent time in Europe in the '60s and early '70s, and maybe he had some kind of duties that called for him to wear a parachute without being a trained parachutist - as the skyjacker D.B. Cooper evidently wasn't - and maybe he then got a job in the aviation industry in the Pacific Northwest, and then maybe he was laid off in 1971. That's a lot of maybes.

I can't help but speculate that Special Agent Larry Carr must not be a rising star in the FBI. How badly did he have to screw up to get assigned to the case of a 1971 skyjacking and robbery by an unknown suspect who almost certainly did not survive his skydive?

Comicanuck, an expert on French-Canadian comic books - yes, seriously - examines the comic book connection at length here: The Pursuit of Dan Cooper RCAF: FBI explores link between DB Cooper and comic book hero.

Comicanuck solves the case to my satisfaction by pointing out the uncanny physical resemblance between Special Agent Carr (below, on left) and Dan Cooper


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Obama Sends a Friendly Note to a French Guy

The French newspaper Le Figaro reported on Thursday, March 19, that the Obama administration sent a très sympathique yet somewhat puzzling note to the President of France.

The note was written in response to a message of congratulations on Obama's election. It was delivered via the U.S. embassy, so I assume the appropriate embassy officer looked it over before it was sent to its addressee. The key phrase in the note is a generic pleasantry that reads, in English:

"I am certain that we will be able to work together, in the coming four years, in a spirit of peace and friendship to build a safer world."

Everything seems to be in order. But the kicker is that the note was written to the former President of France, Jacques Chirac, not to the man who replaced him almost two years ago, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Le Figaro is reading political significance into the note because they assume the use of the word "peace" was a veiled reference to Obama's differences with current-President Sarkozy over the war in Iraq. For all I know, maybe it was. Maybe Obama is sending subtle digs at Sarkozy. But I find it odd that Obama would deliberately associate his policies with a has-been French politician who left office with a trail of scandals behind him.

Anyone who has worked in Washington for more than a week knows not to attribute intent to something that can be explained just as well by incompetence. It is entirely plausible that the note was drafted by a protocol guy in the embassy who more or less automatically produced a safely bland and unobjectionable President-to-Président sentiment, and just didn't quite focus on the implications of Obama pledging to work harmoniously for the next four years with someone who is no longer President of France. A plain old gaffe is so much more likely than a fiendishly clever veiled message. I'll bet the only message associated with this note was the Homeric "D'oh!" that sounded in the political section of U.S. Embassy Paris after the text was published.

Here's the quote from Le Fig with the text of the note in French:

Le président américain vient d'adresser une lettre très sympathique à Jacques Chirac, selon l'expression de ce dernier. "Je suis certain que nous pourrons au cours des quatre années à venir collaborer ensemble dans un esprit de paix et d'amitié afin de construire un monde plus sûr," écrit le successeur de George W. Bush au prédécesseur de Nicolas Sarkozy. En évoquant le mot de paix, Obama rend un hommage implicite à l'action de l'ancien président français qui s'était opposé à la guerre en Irak. Une intervention américaine contre laquelle le futur président américain s'était opposé comme sénateur, lors du vote au Congrès.

It could have been worse. At least the note didn't come with a pile of American-format DVDs of Hollywood classics. On the other hand, Chirac has unlimited free time these days so maybe he would have appreciated that, especially if any of those classic films featured Jerry Lewis.