Anthrax hoax closes Supreme Court Monday

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court was closed briefly Monday after discovery of an envelope containing white powder. The powder was not anthrax, a court spokeswoman said.

The powder was found about 4:20 p.m. by workers in the clerk’s office, spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said. The building was closed about 40 minutes until tests came back negative.

Arberg said the powder was in an envelope that appeared to be court correspondence. It was turned over to the FBI, which will decide whether to investigate further, Arberg said.

Last week, a U.S. Capitol Police officer was indicted in an anthrax hoax at the Capitol. James Pickett is accused of leaving white powder at a police security station in November with an anonymous note.

All mail bound for the Capitol and the court building has been intercepted and irradiated off-site since shortly after an anthrax-laced letter was opened in October in the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.

President George W. Bush, right, meets with his economic advisors, including Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, left, in the Oval Office Thursday, Jan. 10.

-Associated Press

NJ troopers plea less to avoid racial profiling in shooting

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Two white state troopers avoided jail Monday by pleading guilty to lesser charges in a turnpike shooting that forced New Jersey and the nation to confront the issue of racial profiling.

The men said they had been trained and encouraged by their superiors to target minorities.

James Kenna and John Hogan fired 11 shots at a van they had pulled over for speeding on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1998. The two have said they thought the driver was trying to run them over and they feared for their lives. Three of the four young men — three blacks and one Hispanic — in the van were wounded.

Under a plea bargain, James Kenna and John Hogan pleaded guilty to official misconduct and providing false information. Kenna had been charged with attempted murder, and both had been charged with aggravated assault.

Kenna and Hogan were fined $155 each for official misconduct and $125 each for giving false information, and were barred from ever holding jobs as police officers in New Jersey.

The plea agreement also avoids federal civil rights charges.

The turnpike shooting stirred accusations that New Jersey state police targeted minority motorists for searches along the busy highway.

Egyptian man put on trial for pilot disguise at Kennedy

NEW YORK (AP) — An Egyptian man who arrived at Kennedy Airport a week after the terrorist attacks with a fake pilot’s uniform and license and a forged flight-school certificate went on trial Monday on charges of lying to authorities.

Prosecutors have acknowledged they have no evidence that Wael Abdel Rahman Kishk, 21, was part of a potential “second wave” of attacks following Sept. 11, but said he acted enough like a suicide hijacker to arouse suspicion.

Kishk lied to federal agents by claiming he was in the country to attend business school when he really intended to take flying lessons, prosecutor Dwight Holton said in opening statements.

Defense attorney Michael Schneider said Kishk, who held a legitimate U.S. visa, meant no harm. He described the pilot’s document as “the crudest kind of fake” — the work of a young man who wanted to impress a girlfriend.

If convicted of charges he lied to a terrorist task force detective to conceal his plans to study aviation, Kishk could get five years in prison.

Kishk was stopped Sept. 19 by Immigration and Naturalization Service agents for a luggage search after arriving from Spain on a flight that originated in Cairo, Egypt.

Military looks to scale back funds, patrols on homefront

WASHINGTON (AP) — The military has flown more than 13,000 fighter-jet patrols over American cities since Sept. 11 at a cost exceeding $324 million. Now it wants to cut back.

The round-the-clock patrols designed to deter terrorists may be straining planes and personnel, the Pentagon said Monday.

Four months after the airliner attacks, any decision on ending or changing the patrols may come down to a calculation of how safe Americans would feel with the change, some officials say.

Part of the homeland defense efforts called Operation Noble Eagle, the flights began after terrorist hijackers crashed jetliners into the Pentagon and World Trade Center. U.S. fighters have been flying over New York and Washington since then.

Other patrols fly from time to time over other major metropolitan areas and key sites, and jets are on alert at 30 bases to scramble if called. The combat air patrols are the first of their kind over the United States since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

The operation uses 11,000 people and 250 aircraft, another official said. Those figures include maintenance crews, pilots for 100 F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, crews for tankers needed for midair refueling and crews for AWACS — Airborne Warning and Control System — planes to provide radar information.

From Sept. 11 to Dec. 10, the operation flew 13,000 sorties. The cost was $324 million, Defense Department spokeswoman Susan Hansen said.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command, which runs the operation, says that through Dec. 10, its jets responded 207 times to problems such as unidentified aircraft, planes violating restricted air space and in-flight emergencies.

Not included in the figure is the case in which two jets escorted a Paris-to-Miami flight to Boston later last month after a passenger tried to ignite what authorities said was an explosive hidden in his shoes.

In 92 of the cases, jets on alert on the ground were scrambled to respond. In the other 115 cases, NORAD diverted jets that already were in the air on patrol.

The TCU Daily Skiff © 2002