Italy on Friday approved the creation of a national DNA database to allow greater cooperation among states in the fight against terrorism, a step in the wake of the Brussels terror attacks that killed 31 people and injured around 300.
The database would store the DNA samples from different categories of people including those who are being held in custody or under house arrest, those who are arrested while committing a crime, the presumed authors of voluntary crimes and convicts with a definitive sentence.
Based on the new law, profiles can be retained for a maximum of 40 years while biological samples would be destroyed after 20 years.
Interior Minister Angelino Alfano hailed the database as a "formidable power tool from the IT point of view." He said the database will allow to store DNA information of fundamental importance both in the fight against terrorism, and against organized crime and irregular immigration.
The move came in the wake of the Brussels terror attacks. Local media said among the victims there could be also an Italian national, Patricia Rizzo, an official for a European Commission agency who is presently listed among the missing people.
Justice Minister Andrea Orlando stressed that the DNA database will be crucial to increase the security level in Italy. He said the data collection will start soon in the coming days and will not only ease investigations but also help deal with cases that had been considered unresolved so far.
Italian experts agree that Italy has one of the most advanced anti-terrorism systems in Europe, but the strategic aim should be increased exchange of information with European Union (EU) member states, an objective which looks very hard to achieve.
"In a geopolitical scenario where it is difficult to get along as regards short term migration policies, I wonder whether it is possible that (EU) member states give up one of the cornerstones of their sovereignty, that is to say their intelligence," Rome Prefect Franco Gabrielli was quoted as saying by Corriere della Sera newspaper.
"Robust increase in public investment, and with a common intelligence, defense and foreign policy should be put at the center of the anti-terror fight," Italy's leading economic daily
Il Sole 24 Ore said.
As part of anti-terrorism measures, according to Alfano also on Friday, Italy has repatriated nine terror-related people so far this year and a total of 75 last year. The latest was a Moroccan
national and former president of a local Islamic center "known for his fundamentalist stance and desire to go fight in Syria."
Earlier this week, Italian leaders called for a European common strategy as the only effective tool against the terrorist threat as the country raised security measures at airports, railway stations, subways, and all places considered at risk.
Thanks to Marzie De Giuli.
Monday, March 28, 2016
An Offer We Can't Refuse - The Mafia in the Mind of America
It's ironic that at a time when the real-life Mafia has never been weaker
, its grip on the American consciousness has never been stronger. Just as Westerns - first as novels, then television shows and movies - did not become popular until long after the frontier was settled, the Mafia seems to be reaching a media peak even as its leaders die, get sent away or turn state's evidence.
It's been all but conceded that "The Sopranos" is the greatest thing on television ever, and "The Godfather" trilogy continues to occupy a huge space in the cultural landscape. Mafioso appear regularly in movies, television shows, commercials and even animated cartoons. Robert De Niro provided the voice for a piscine godfather in the movie "Shark Tale."
Why the public so loves media portrayals of the Mafia is the subject of George De Stefano's "An Offer We Can't Refuse: The Mafia in the Mind of America." Journalist De Stefano traces the roots of the American Mafia to southern Italy and explains how prejudice against Italian immigrants fostered the growth of organized crime here even as it exaggerated the Mafia's reach and power.
Early portrayals of Italian criminals were crude and racist, but the public's fascination with stylish outlaws eventually gave celluloid gangsters an anti-hero cachet. While disparaging earlier, racist depictions of the Mafia, De Stefano has little patience with Italian-Americans who think "The Sopranos" and "Goodfellas" hurt the community. It is too well established and too successful to be hurt by Tony Soprano's excesses. In fact, the author singles out "The Sopranos" for its realistic portrayal of the Mob as chaotic and in decline, hardly the omnipotent syndicate of popular fiction.
The subject is a fascinating one, but "An Offer We Can't Refuse" only partly delivers. For one, it feels padded. Scarcely a page goes by without a lengthy quotation from an Italian-American critic, actor or social commentator. No point is made unless it is belabored. Nonetheless, people who want to know how we got from Edward G. Robinson's Rico "Little Caesar" Bandello to James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano will enjoy this book.
Thanks to James Sweeney
, its grip on the American consciousness has never been stronger. Just as Westerns - first as novels, then television shows and movies - did not become popular until long after the frontier was settled, the Mafia seems to be reaching a media peak even as its leaders die, get sent away or turn state's evidence.It's been all but conceded that "The Sopranos" is the greatest thing on television ever, and "The Godfather" trilogy continues to occupy a huge space in the cultural landscape. Mafioso appear regularly in movies, television shows, commercials and even animated cartoons. Robert De Niro provided the voice for a piscine godfather in the movie "Shark Tale."
Why the public so loves media portrayals of the Mafia is the subject of George De Stefano's "An Offer We Can't Refuse: The Mafia in the Mind of America." Journalist De Stefano traces the roots of the American Mafia to southern Italy and explains how prejudice against Italian immigrants fostered the growth of organized crime here even as it exaggerated the Mafia's reach and power.
Early portrayals of Italian criminals were crude and racist, but the public's fascination with stylish outlaws eventually gave celluloid gangsters an anti-hero cachet. While disparaging earlier, racist depictions of the Mafia, De Stefano has little patience with Italian-Americans who think "The Sopranos" and "Goodfellas" hurt the community. It is too well established and too successful to be hurt by Tony Soprano's excesses. In fact, the author singles out "The Sopranos" for its realistic portrayal of the Mob as chaotic and in decline, hardly the omnipotent syndicate of popular fiction.
The subject is a fascinating one, but "An Offer We Can't Refuse" only partly delivers. For one, it feels padded. Scarcely a page goes by without a lengthy quotation from an Italian-American critic, actor or social commentator. No point is made unless it is belabored. Nonetheless, people who want to know how we got from Edward G. Robinson's Rico "Little Caesar" Bandello to James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano will enjoy this book.
Thanks to James Sweeney
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires By Selwyn Raab
As the Mafia grew into a malignantly powerful force during the middle of the last century, it owed much of its success to its low-priority ranking as a law enforcement target. During most of his reign as FBI director from 1924 to 1972, J. Edgar Hoover denied that the Mafia even existed. In the late 1950s, Hoover was ''still publicly in denial" that there was such a thing as the Mafia, writes Selwyn Raab in ''Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires," his engaging history of the New York mob.
Even Hoover
, who hesitated to tackle mob cases because they were difficult to win and might corrupt his agents, grudgingly came around. ''Five Families," a gritty cops-and-robbers narrative and a meticulous case history of an extraordinary law enforcement mobilization, shows how the federal government finally brought the Mafia down.
Raab, a former reporter for The New York Times whose beat was organized crime, exudes the authority of a writer who has lived and breathed his subject. Indeed, Raab seems too attached to every last nugget that he has unearthed. ''Five Families" bogs down in places under the groaning weight of excessive, repetitious detail.
Even as he tosses congratulatory bouquets to the cops for having reduced the mob to a ''fading anachronism," as one of them puts it, Raab inserts a cautionary note. The redeployment since 9/11 of US law enforcement personnel from an anti-Mafia to an antiterrorism posture is providing Cosa Nostra -- as the Italian-American organized-crime syndicates refer to themselves, meaning ''Our Thing" -- a ''renewed hope for survival," Raab says.
If they are to prosper again, all five of New York's mob families (the Gambinos, Luccheses, Colombos, Genoveses, and Bonannos) must first rebuild their leadership. The top bosses of the five families, along with many underlings, have been convicted in racketeering prosecutions and sentenced to long terms in federal prison. Those prosecutions constitute ''arguably the most successful anticrime expedition in American history," according to Raab.
The decades-long jelling of the law enforcement response to the Mafia threat commands Raab's close attention. An impetus came from Democratic Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, whose subcommittee investigated labor racketeering in the late 1960s. One key behind-the-scenes figure -- an American hero, in Raab's account -- was G. Robert Blakey, who helped craft the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations legislation as an aide to McClellan and, as a crusading law professor, tirelessly promoted the statute's use after Congress enacted it in 1970.
The law enabled prosecutors to throw the book at top mobsters, who otherwise would have been able to insulate themselves more easily from criminal accountability. Electronic surveillance, which a related law authorized, added another invaluable weapon to the federal prosecutors' arsenal.
Another of Raab's heroes, G. Bruce Mouw, supervised the FBI's Gambino Squad. Mouw's relentless, six-year investigation of John Gotti stands as a model of aggressive anti-Mafia pursuit. Gotti, whom the tabloids dubbed ''the Teflon Don," beat federal charges three times. Mouw produced ironclad evidence of Gotti's guilt by identifying an old lady's apartment as the Gambino godfather's clandestine inner sanctum and bugging it. Prosecutors nailed the Teflon Don in a fourth trial.
As for the villains portrayed by Raab, they and their operatic brutality seem endless. Raab's profiles of such ogres as Joseph ''Crazy Joe" Gallo or Salvatore ''Sammy the Bull" Gravano quickly dispel any Hollywood depiction of mobsters as lovable rogues or, as in the case of Tony Soprano of HBO's prize-winning series, as an angst-ridden man groping for life's meaning.
Mobsters typically start out as losers, dropouts from school at an early age. They are natural bullies who turn to crime out of desperation and indolence. As adults, to quote Raab's description of Gotti's wise guys, they join together as a ''hardened band of pea-brained hijackers, loan-shark collectors, gamblers, and robotic hit men."
No surprise, then, that such lowlifes would resort to violence as their modus operandi. But their cavalier acts of viciousness are nonetheless shocking. Thus, when Vito Genovese falls in love with a married cousin, he apparently has her husband strangled to death so he can marry her.
Or when Lucchese thugs believe that one of their own, Bruno Facciolo, is talking to authorities, they shoot and stab him to death. They then murder two of his mob buddies, Al Visconti and Larry Taylor, to prevent them from retaliating. Visconti is deliberately shot several times in the groin because the Luccheses believe he is a homosexual and has shamed the family.
Although ''Five Families" detours outside New York to chronicle aspects of the Cosa Nostra story, New England's Patriarcas, who deferred to New York's Gigante family, rate only passing mention. Summarizing how officials view Cosa Nostra's once-thriving 20-odd families around the country, Raab reports that those in New York and Chicago retain a ''semblance of [their] organizational frameworks," while the others, including Patriarca's, are ''in disarray or practically defunct."
Raab has much to say about what he regards as the possible involvement of a Florida mafioso, Santo Trafficante Jr., in President Kennedy's assassination. Raab theorizes that Trafficante -- who lost his organized-crime base in Havana when Fidel Castro took over and who loathed Kennedy for not unhorsing the Cuban revolutionary -- may have conspired to kill Kennedy.
Exhibit A is the confession of a gravely ill Trafficante, four days before his death in 1987, that he had had a hand in Kennedy's murder. Raab's source for the purported confession was Trafficante's longtime lawyer, Frank Ragano. Raab collaborated with Ragano on a book, ''Mob Lawyer."
Of course, any mob role in Kennedy's assassination remains a speculative matter, as Raab concedes. But in ''Five Families," he notes that ''Ragano's assertions are among the starkest signs implicating Mafia bosses in the death of President Kennedy." To buttress his theory, Raab might have mentioned that the Mafia was at or near the apex of its power in 1963, the year of Kennedy's murder.
Reviewed by Joseph Rosenbloom
Even Hoover
, who hesitated to tackle mob cases because they were difficult to win and might corrupt his agents, grudgingly came around. ''Five Families," a gritty cops-and-robbers narrative and a meticulous case history of an extraordinary law enforcement mobilization, shows how the federal government finally brought the Mafia down.Raab, a former reporter for The New York Times whose beat was organized crime, exudes the authority of a writer who has lived and breathed his subject. Indeed, Raab seems too attached to every last nugget that he has unearthed. ''Five Families" bogs down in places under the groaning weight of excessive, repetitious detail.
Even as he tosses congratulatory bouquets to the cops for having reduced the mob to a ''fading anachronism," as one of them puts it, Raab inserts a cautionary note. The redeployment since 9/11 of US law enforcement personnel from an anti-Mafia to an antiterrorism posture is providing Cosa Nostra -- as the Italian-American organized-crime syndicates refer to themselves, meaning ''Our Thing" -- a ''renewed hope for survival," Raab says.
If they are to prosper again, all five of New York's mob families (the Gambinos, Luccheses, Colombos, Genoveses, and Bonannos) must first rebuild their leadership. The top bosses of the five families, along with many underlings, have been convicted in racketeering prosecutions and sentenced to long terms in federal prison. Those prosecutions constitute ''arguably the most successful anticrime expedition in American history," according to Raab.
The decades-long jelling of the law enforcement response to the Mafia threat commands Raab's close attention. An impetus came from Democratic Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, whose subcommittee investigated labor racketeering in the late 1960s. One key behind-the-scenes figure -- an American hero, in Raab's account -- was G. Robert Blakey, who helped craft the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations legislation as an aide to McClellan and, as a crusading law professor, tirelessly promoted the statute's use after Congress enacted it in 1970.
The law enabled prosecutors to throw the book at top mobsters, who otherwise would have been able to insulate themselves more easily from criminal accountability. Electronic surveillance, which a related law authorized, added another invaluable weapon to the federal prosecutors' arsenal.
Another of Raab's heroes, G. Bruce Mouw, supervised the FBI's Gambino Squad. Mouw's relentless, six-year investigation of John Gotti stands as a model of aggressive anti-Mafia pursuit. Gotti, whom the tabloids dubbed ''the Teflon Don," beat federal charges three times. Mouw produced ironclad evidence of Gotti's guilt by identifying an old lady's apartment as the Gambino godfather's clandestine inner sanctum and bugging it. Prosecutors nailed the Teflon Don in a fourth trial.
As for the villains portrayed by Raab, they and their operatic brutality seem endless. Raab's profiles of such ogres as Joseph ''Crazy Joe" Gallo or Salvatore ''Sammy the Bull" Gravano quickly dispel any Hollywood depiction of mobsters as lovable rogues or, as in the case of Tony Soprano of HBO's prize-winning series, as an angst-ridden man groping for life's meaning.
Mobsters typically start out as losers, dropouts from school at an early age. They are natural bullies who turn to crime out of desperation and indolence. As adults, to quote Raab's description of Gotti's wise guys, they join together as a ''hardened band of pea-brained hijackers, loan-shark collectors, gamblers, and robotic hit men."
No surprise, then, that such lowlifes would resort to violence as their modus operandi. But their cavalier acts of viciousness are nonetheless shocking. Thus, when Vito Genovese falls in love with a married cousin, he apparently has her husband strangled to death so he can marry her.
Or when Lucchese thugs believe that one of their own, Bruno Facciolo, is talking to authorities, they shoot and stab him to death. They then murder two of his mob buddies, Al Visconti and Larry Taylor, to prevent them from retaliating. Visconti is deliberately shot several times in the groin because the Luccheses believe he is a homosexual and has shamed the family.
Although ''Five Families" detours outside New York to chronicle aspects of the Cosa Nostra story, New England's Patriarcas, who deferred to New York's Gigante family, rate only passing mention. Summarizing how officials view Cosa Nostra's once-thriving 20-odd families around the country, Raab reports that those in New York and Chicago retain a ''semblance of [their] organizational frameworks," while the others, including Patriarca's, are ''in disarray or practically defunct."
Raab has much to say about what he regards as the possible involvement of a Florida mafioso, Santo Trafficante Jr., in President Kennedy's assassination. Raab theorizes that Trafficante -- who lost his organized-crime base in Havana when Fidel Castro took over and who loathed Kennedy for not unhorsing the Cuban revolutionary -- may have conspired to kill Kennedy.
Exhibit A is the confession of a gravely ill Trafficante, four days before his death in 1987, that he had had a hand in Kennedy's murder. Raab's source for the purported confession was Trafficante's longtime lawyer, Frank Ragano. Raab collaborated with Ragano on a book, ''Mob Lawyer."
Of course, any mob role in Kennedy's assassination remains a speculative matter, as Raab concedes. But in ''Five Families," he notes that ''Ragano's assertions are among the starkest signs implicating Mafia bosses in the death of President Kennedy." To buttress his theory, Raab might have mentioned that the Mafia was at or near the apex of its power in 1963, the year of Kennedy's murder.
Reviewed by Joseph Rosenbloom
Friday, March 25, 2016
Guilty Plea in Hobbs Act Extortion Conspiracy Involving Extortion of Restaurant and Social Clubs
Denis Nikolla pleaded guilty to two counts of Hobbs Act extortion conspiracy, one count of threatening physical violence in furtherance of an extortion plan, and one count of brandishing a firearm. The proceeding took place before United States District Judge Eric N. Vitaliano. When sentenced, Nikolla faces up to life in prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of seven years. One of his co-defendants, Besnik Llakatura, who served as a police officer with the New York City Police Department during the charged crimes, previously pleaded guilty in this case.
The plea was announced by Robert L. Capers, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Diego Rodriguez, Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office, and William J. Bratton, Commissioner, New York Police Department.
According to prior court filings and facts presented during the plea proceeding, between May and November 2013, Nikolla, Llakatura and their co-defendant conspired and attempted to extort a Queens restaurant owner, demanding regular payments in exchange for so-called “protection.” The extortion began shortly after the victim opened a restaurant in Astoria when he was visited by the co-defendant and told that he had opened a business in “our neighborhood” and, as a result, “you have to pay us” $4,000 per month. The restaurant owner sought help from his friend Llakatura.
Unbeknownst to him, Llakatura, an NYPD officer in Staten Island since 2006, was conspiring with the co-defendant in the extortion. Llakatura actively discouraged the restaurant owner from going to the police and sought to leverage his position of trust as a friend and a police officer to persuade the victim that he had no choice but to make the demanded payments, warning the victim that the co-defendant and his associates would physically harm him if he did not pay. When the victim resisted, Nikolla threatened him with physical violence and chased him at gunpoint down the street in Queens. Over the course of five months, each of the three defendants took turns collecting monthly payments from the Astoria restaurant owner, ultimately collecting $24,000 in so-called protection money.
Between April 2012 and November 2013, Nikolla and the co-defendant also conspired and attempted to extort the proceeds of two nightclubs located in Queens, New York, and used a firearm in their efforts to do so. In or about April 2012, around the time that one of the clubs was opened, Nikolla approached the owner with an extortion demand, indicating to the victim that other businesses in the area were paying him for so-called “protection.” Nikolla demanded $200 per week from the owner for each of the two nightclubs. After the owner refused to pay, Nikolla retrieved a firearm from the codefendant’s side, stuck the firearm in owner’s ribs, and informed the owner that if he wasn’t paid, Nikolla would come to the owner’s house and beat up the owner in front of the owner’s wife and children.
Finally, during 2013, Nikolla, Llakatura, and the co-defendant also conspired and attempted to extort a proprietor of two social clubs in Astoria. Nikolla, accompanied by the co-defendant, made the initial extortion demand, seeking payments of $1,000 per week from the proprietor for so-called “protection.” The proprietor refused to make the demanded payments and ceased going to his social clubs out of fear for his safety. Court-authorized wiretaps of the defendants’ telephones revealed evidence of Nikolla’s participation in this extortion conspiracy with Llakatura and the co-defendant, and their attempts to locate the victim. In one instance, Nikolla, Llakatura, and the co-defendant threatened, punched, and pulled a gun on a friend of the victim in an effort to make the friend locate the victim. The victim ultimately fled to a foreign country for a period of time to avoid the defendants’ extortionate threats.
The co-defendant is scheduled to commence trial later this month.
The plea was announced by Robert L. Capers, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Diego Rodriguez, Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office, and William J. Bratton, Commissioner, New York Police Department.
According to prior court filings and facts presented during the plea proceeding, between May and November 2013, Nikolla, Llakatura and their co-defendant conspired and attempted to extort a Queens restaurant owner, demanding regular payments in exchange for so-called “protection.” The extortion began shortly after the victim opened a restaurant in Astoria when he was visited by the co-defendant and told that he had opened a business in “our neighborhood” and, as a result, “you have to pay us” $4,000 per month. The restaurant owner sought help from his friend Llakatura.
Unbeknownst to him, Llakatura, an NYPD officer in Staten Island since 2006, was conspiring with the co-defendant in the extortion. Llakatura actively discouraged the restaurant owner from going to the police and sought to leverage his position of trust as a friend and a police officer to persuade the victim that he had no choice but to make the demanded payments, warning the victim that the co-defendant and his associates would physically harm him if he did not pay. When the victim resisted, Nikolla threatened him with physical violence and chased him at gunpoint down the street in Queens. Over the course of five months, each of the three defendants took turns collecting monthly payments from the Astoria restaurant owner, ultimately collecting $24,000 in so-called protection money.
Between April 2012 and November 2013, Nikolla and the co-defendant also conspired and attempted to extort the proceeds of two nightclubs located in Queens, New York, and used a firearm in their efforts to do so. In or about April 2012, around the time that one of the clubs was opened, Nikolla approached the owner with an extortion demand, indicating to the victim that other businesses in the area were paying him for so-called “protection.” Nikolla demanded $200 per week from the owner for each of the two nightclubs. After the owner refused to pay, Nikolla retrieved a firearm from the codefendant’s side, stuck the firearm in owner’s ribs, and informed the owner that if he wasn’t paid, Nikolla would come to the owner’s house and beat up the owner in front of the owner’s wife and children.
Finally, during 2013, Nikolla, Llakatura, and the co-defendant also conspired and attempted to extort a proprietor of two social clubs in Astoria. Nikolla, accompanied by the co-defendant, made the initial extortion demand, seeking payments of $1,000 per week from the proprietor for so-called “protection.” The proprietor refused to make the demanded payments and ceased going to his social clubs out of fear for his safety. Court-authorized wiretaps of the defendants’ telephones revealed evidence of Nikolla’s participation in this extortion conspiracy with Llakatura and the co-defendant, and their attempts to locate the victim. In one instance, Nikolla, Llakatura, and the co-defendant threatened, punched, and pulled a gun on a friend of the victim in an effort to make the friend locate the victim. The victim ultimately fled to a foreign country for a period of time to avoid the defendants’ extortionate threats.
The co-defendant is scheduled to commence trial later this month.
Thursday, March 24, 2016
Grape Street Crips Crack-Cocaine Distributor Sentenced to Over 14 Years in Prison
A drug supplier for the Grape Street Crips street gang was sentenced to 176 months in prison for his role in distributing large quantities of crack-cocaine in and around Newark, New Jersey, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.
Jihad Coles, a/k/a “Half Dead,” 31, of Newark, previously pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Esther Salas to an information charging him with one count of conspiracy to distribute 280 grams or more of crack-cocaine. Judge Salas imposed the sentence in Newark federal court.
In May 2015, over the course of three weeks, 50 alleged members and associates of the Grape Street Crips were charged in criminal complaints that alleged drug-trafficking, physical assaults, and witness intimidation. The charges were the result of a long-running investigation led by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the FBI, in conjunction with the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, the Newark Police Department and Essex County Sheriff’s Office Bureau of Narcotics. Over the course of the entire investigation, 71 defendants have been charged with federal and state charges.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:
Coles admitted that between March 2012 and August 2012 he conspired with others to distribute hundreds of grams of crack-cocaine at the Mildred Terrell Homes public-housing complex located on Riverview Terrace in Newark, New Jersey. As a long-time member of the Grape Street Crips, Coles admitted that he served as an organizer and leader of the crack-cocaine distribution conspiracy.
In addition to the prison term, which will be served consecutively to a state prison term that he is currently serving, Coles was sentenced to five years of supervised release.
Jihad Coles, a/k/a “Half Dead,” 31, of Newark, previously pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Esther Salas to an information charging him with one count of conspiracy to distribute 280 grams or more of crack-cocaine. Judge Salas imposed the sentence in Newark federal court.
In May 2015, over the course of three weeks, 50 alleged members and associates of the Grape Street Crips were charged in criminal complaints that alleged drug-trafficking, physical assaults, and witness intimidation. The charges were the result of a long-running investigation led by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the FBI, in conjunction with the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, the Newark Police Department and Essex County Sheriff’s Office Bureau of Narcotics. Over the course of the entire investigation, 71 defendants have been charged with federal and state charges.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:
Coles admitted that between March 2012 and August 2012 he conspired with others to distribute hundreds of grams of crack-cocaine at the Mildred Terrell Homes public-housing complex located on Riverview Terrace in Newark, New Jersey. As a long-time member of the Grape Street Crips, Coles admitted that he served as an organizer and leader of the crack-cocaine distribution conspiracy.
In addition to the prison term, which will be served consecutively to a state prison term that he is currently serving, Coles was sentenced to five years of supervised release.
Monday, March 14, 2016
Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror with @GenMhayden
The 1990s ushered in a new era of technological advances that changed nearly every imaginable facet of human existence. The rise of the Internet meant the world got a whole lot smaller as email and online forums facilitated communications worldwide. The proliferation of cell phones allowed calls to be made from nearly anywhere in the world.
This was a dream come true for the average Joe
, but a nightmare for America’s largest and most powerful spy agency, the National Security Agency. With funding reduced, a downsized workforce, and antiquated IT systems, the job NSA Director Michael Hayden walked into in 1999 was no walk in the park. The attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 shortly thereafter made fulfilling the mission downright Herculean.
In “Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror,” Hayden recounts the step-by-step journey of reinventing the NSA technologically, undertaking long overdue organizational changes, and trying to balance liberty and security in a rapidly changing world. All while carrying out the mission the NSA has had since the agency’s founding under President Truman in 1952 — “intercepting communications that contain information that would help keep Americans free and safe and advance [America’s] vital national security interests.”
Sometimes, indeed oftentimes, that mission included the development of programs that were deemed controversial. Among those detailed in “Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror” is Stellarwind, a presidentially authorized program that gave the NSA the ability to access a large percentage of the calls entering and leaving the United States. The agency would only access and collect the call if it had probable cause that one or both ends were al Qaeda related. Typically under-reported is the fact that the overwhelming majority of calls intercepted were actually foreign-to-foreign, Hayden notes.
Kick-starting a program such as this was not a matter of drawing up plans within the agency and then executing them; no, it required intricately assessing the legalities, securing presidential approval, briefing a select few members of Congress, ramping up the agency’s infrastructure to be able to carry out the program, and more.
Hayden’s detailed accounts truly gives the reader a new-found appreciation for all the hoops that must be jumped through in order to instate programs that serve to keep Americans safe in a post-9/11 world, and how seriously the agency guards the privacy of U.S. persons—regardless of how it’s reported. Therein lies another issue Hayden dedicated significant portions of the book to: discussing the efforts the agency undertakes to keep these programs secret so they actually work. Inevitably, however, they are leaked to the press, and Hayden takes the reader through the process of how he handled the media once it was on to a story and what he did to manage public relations for the agency once the news broke.
During his tenure at the NSA and later as director at the CIA, calming the storm—whether on the Hill, in the media, or among the public—was commonplace. The discussions about misjudgments over WMDs in Iraq, the controversial practice of waterboarding, Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and the CIA’s black sites were just some of the more interesting segments of the book that Hayden had to address while director—and he doesn’t hold back fascinating details about each that only an insider at his level would be privy to.
The book predominately focuses on the shifting intelligence landscape in the 2000s while he was heading up the NSA and CIA, but Hayden also offers a brief glimpse into his life and background. He confronts the heavy personal, familial, and moral burdens those in the field of espionage undertake while protecting America and its national security interests.
American intelligence has undergone fascinating changes in the age of terror and Hayden’s account offers the reader a long overdue perspective to counter the often incomplete and flawed version of the story in the media, particularly after Edward Snowden’s leaks. And while the subject matter is serious and at times dense, Hayden has a knack for explaining complex programs simplistically, never bogging the reader down with extraneous detail or inundating the pages with Washington’s alphabet soup. Those interested in learning the truth about what goes on behind some of America’s most tightly sealed agencies will find tremendous value in this compelling book.
This was a dream come true for the average Joe
, but a nightmare for America’s largest and most powerful spy agency, the National Security Agency. With funding reduced, a downsized workforce, and antiquated IT systems, the job NSA Director Michael Hayden walked into in 1999 was no walk in the park. The attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 shortly thereafter made fulfilling the mission downright Herculean.
In “Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror,” Hayden recounts the step-by-step journey of reinventing the NSA technologically, undertaking long overdue organizational changes, and trying to balance liberty and security in a rapidly changing world. All while carrying out the mission the NSA has had since the agency’s founding under President Truman in 1952 — “intercepting communications that contain information that would help keep Americans free and safe and advance [America’s] vital national security interests.”
Sometimes, indeed oftentimes, that mission included the development of programs that were deemed controversial. Among those detailed in “Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror” is Stellarwind, a presidentially authorized program that gave the NSA the ability to access a large percentage of the calls entering and leaving the United States. The agency would only access and collect the call if it had probable cause that one or both ends were al Qaeda related. Typically under-reported is the fact that the overwhelming majority of calls intercepted were actually foreign-to-foreign, Hayden notes.
Kick-starting a program such as this was not a matter of drawing up plans within the agency and then executing them; no, it required intricately assessing the legalities, securing presidential approval, briefing a select few members of Congress, ramping up the agency’s infrastructure to be able to carry out the program, and more.
Hayden’s detailed accounts truly gives the reader a new-found appreciation for all the hoops that must be jumped through in order to instate programs that serve to keep Americans safe in a post-9/11 world, and how seriously the agency guards the privacy of U.S. persons—regardless of how it’s reported. Therein lies another issue Hayden dedicated significant portions of the book to: discussing the efforts the agency undertakes to keep these programs secret so they actually work. Inevitably, however, they are leaked to the press, and Hayden takes the reader through the process of how he handled the media once it was on to a story and what he did to manage public relations for the agency once the news broke.
During his tenure at the NSA and later as director at the CIA, calming the storm—whether on the Hill, in the media, or among the public—was commonplace. The discussions about misjudgments over WMDs in Iraq, the controversial practice of waterboarding, Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and the CIA’s black sites were just some of the more interesting segments of the book that Hayden had to address while director—and he doesn’t hold back fascinating details about each that only an insider at his level would be privy to.
The book predominately focuses on the shifting intelligence landscape in the 2000s while he was heading up the NSA and CIA, but Hayden also offers a brief glimpse into his life and background. He confronts the heavy personal, familial, and moral burdens those in the field of espionage undertake while protecting America and its national security interests.
American intelligence has undergone fascinating changes in the age of terror and Hayden’s account offers the reader a long overdue perspective to counter the often incomplete and flawed version of the story in the media, particularly after Edward Snowden’s leaks. And while the subject matter is serious and at times dense, Hayden has a knack for explaining complex programs simplistically, never bogging the reader down with extraneous detail or inundating the pages with Washington’s alphabet soup. Those interested in learning the truth about what goes on behind some of America’s most tightly sealed agencies will find tremendous value in this compelling book.
Friday, March 11, 2016
Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster
Here is the shocking true saga of the Irish American mob
. In Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster, bestselling author and organized crime expert T. J. English brings to life nearly two centuries of Irish American gangsterism, which spawned such unforgettable characters as Mike "King Mike" McDonald, Chicago's subterranean godfather; Big Bill Dwyer, New York's most notorious rumrunner during Prohibition; Mickey Featherstone, troubled Vietnam vet turned Westies gang leader; and James "Whitey" Bulger, the ruthless and untouchable Southie legend.
Stretching from the earliest New York and New Orleans street wars through decades of bootlegging scams, union strikes, gang wars, and FBI investigations, Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster, is a riveting tour de force that restores the Irish American gangster to his rightful preeminent place in our criminal history -- and penetrates to the heart of the American experience.
. In Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster, bestselling author and organized crime expert T. J. English brings to life nearly two centuries of Irish American gangsterism, which spawned such unforgettable characters as Mike "King Mike" McDonald, Chicago's subterranean godfather; Big Bill Dwyer, New York's most notorious rumrunner during Prohibition; Mickey Featherstone, troubled Vietnam vet turned Westies gang leader; and James "Whitey" Bulger, the ruthless and untouchable Southie legend.Stretching from the earliest New York and New Orleans street wars through decades of bootlegging scams, union strikes, gang wars, and FBI investigations, Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster, is a riveting tour de force that restores the Irish American gangster to his rightful preeminent place in our criminal history -- and penetrates to the heart of the American experience.
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