Tuesday, March 8, 2005:
Being on federal watch list doesn't disqualify buyers.
By ERIC LICHTBLAU - THE NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON -- Dozens of terrorist suspects on federal watch lists were allowed to buy firearms legally in the United States last year, according to a congressional investigation that points up major vulnerabilities in federal gun laws.
People suspected of being members of terrorist groups are not automatically barred from legally buying a gun, and the new investigation, conducted by congressional officials at the Government Accountability Office, indicated that people with clear links to terrorist groups had taken advantage of this gap on a regular basis.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, law enforcement officials and gun control groups have voiced increasing concern about the prospect of having a terrorist walk into a gun shop, legally buying an assault rifle or other type of weapon and using it in an attack.
The GAO study offers the first full-scale examination of the possible dangers posed by gaps in the law, congressional officials said, and it concludes that the FBI could do a better job of matching gun background checks against lists of suspected terrorists.
At least 44 times between February and June of 2004, people regarded by the FBI as known or suspected members of terrorist groups sought permission to buy or carry guns, the GAO found.
In all but nine cases, the FBI or state authorities who handled the requests allowed the gun applications to proceed because a check of the would-be buyer found no automatic disqualification, such as being a felon, an illegal immigrant or a person deemed "mentally defective," the report found.
In the four months after the formal study ended, authorities received an additional 14 gun applications from terror suspects, and all but two of those were cleared to proceed, the investigation found. In all, officials approved 47 of 58 gun applications from terror suspects over a nine-month period last year, the GAO found.
The gun buyers came up as positive matches on a classified internal FBI watch list that includes thousands of high-risk terrorist suspects, many of them being monitored, trailed or sought for questioning as part of continuing terrorism investigations, officials said.
GAO investigators were not given access to the identities or histories of the gun buyers because of the sensitivity of those terrorism investigations.
The report is to be released today, and an advance copy was provided to The New York Times.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., who requested the GAO study, plans to introduce legislation to address the problem in part by requiring federal officials to keep records of gun purchases by terror suspects for a minimum of 10 years.
Such records must now be destroyed within 24 hours as a result of a change ordered by Congress last year, but Lautenberg maintains that the new policy has hindered terrorism investigations by eliminating the paper trail on gun purchases.
"Destroying these records in 24 hours is senseless and will only help terrorists cover their tracks," Lautenberg said. "It's an absurd policy."
Lautenberg blamed the problem on what he called the Bush administration's "twisted allegiances" to the National Rifle Association.
The NRA and gun rights supporters in Congress have fought -- successfully, for the most part -- to limit the use of the FBI's national gun-purchasing database in West Virginia as a tool for law enforcement investigators, saying the database would amount to an illegal registry of gun owners nationwide.
The legal debate over how gun records are used became particularly contentious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, when it was disclosed that the Justice Department and Attorney General John Ashcroft, a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, had blocked the FBI from using the gun-purchasing records to match against about 1,200 suspects who were detained as part of the investigation.
Ashcroft maintained that using the gun records in a criminal investigation would have violated the congressional law that created the system for instant background gun checks, but Justice Department lawyers who reviewed the issue said they saw no such prohibition.
In response to the GAO report, Lautenberg also plans to ask Alberto Gonzales, Ashcroft's successor, to assess whether people on the FBI's terror watch list should be automatically banned from buying guns. Such a policy would require a change in federal law, since being a member of a terrorist group is not a banned category.
Tuesday, March 8, 2005:
Navy deploys N.C. civilians to repair aircraft in Iraq:
the associated press
HAVELOCK, N.C.
The Navy has sent its first large deployment of civilian employees from the Naval Air Depot to Iraq this month to maintain Marine aircraft squadrons in the desert.
The 15 employees were send March 5-6 in transport aircraft along with more than 61 tons of equipment. The employees will set up a maintenance unit to perform depot-level repair work on Marine H-46 and H-53 helicopters.
Members of the initial all-volunteer group are scheduled to spend up to 179 days in the Middle East, with replacements and supplemental teams sent over as needed until the mission is no longer required by the Marine Corps.
Prior to this deployment, an average of four to six NADEP employees were in Iraq at any given time, said depot official Randy Gay. The depot is located at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point.
The civilians' primary mission will include battle-damage repair and basic service repair, including repair of the aircraft's surface skin, clean up and airframe corrosion repair.
"They will add a very good service to the fleet," says Maj. Allen L. Gilbert, the depot's H-46 Programs officer. "These are artisans with multiple trades who can take care of many things while they are there working as a team with the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing."
Gilbert said the mission isn't risk-free, but the team will be located on a secure air base.
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