Secretive Legion of Christ Under Fire

As sex abuse scandals rock the Vatican, the results of an investigation into a rich, ultra-conservative and secretive Roman Catholic order founded by a priest accused of pedophilia and incest are due to be filed in Rome tomorrow.

The sordid story of the Legion of Christ, whose late founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, was a close ally of Pope John Paul II before being forcibly retired by the Vatican in 2006, is a microcosm of the crisis currently enveloping the church.

At stake is whether Pope Benedict XVI will decide to take over the Legion and install new leaders from the outside or allow it to continue with its same hierarchy. Five bishops from five countries are expected to submit their reports about the Legion Monday.

Pope John Paul II gives his blessing to Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legion of Christ, at the Vatican in a November 2004 file photo. The late pope once called Maciel “an efficacious guide to youth.”
The controversy over the Legion, which is now barred or severely restricted from operating in six U.S. dioceses, is especially awkward for Benedict because he wants to have John Paul, a staunch defender of the order, canonized.

“Maciel was a sexual criminal of epic proportions who gained the trust of John Paul II and created a movement that is as close to a cult as anything we’ve seen in the church,” said author Jason Berry, one of two reporters who broke the Maciel story in 1997 and who directed a 2008 documentary about the priest called “Vows of Silence.”

“But he got away with it for years and still in a sense he’s getting away with it.”

The Vatican ordered a worldwide investigation into the Legion, founded in Mexico in 1941, last year. But its response to decades of allegations involving Maciel has been as slow and often reluctant as its reaction to the long-festering sex abuse scandals now erupting in Ireland, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.

In 1997, nine former high-ranking seminarians accused Maciel, who died in 2008, of sexually abusing them when they were boys training for the priesthood. Last year, it was discovered Maciel had an illegitimate daughter born in 1986 in Spain. Two Mexican men who say they are Maciel’s sons claim he also sexually abused them as children.

With a leader said to be a manipulative monster who built a shadowy but powerful organization for elite, wealthy Catholics with schools in 22 countries – and a tradition of grooming handsome, clean-cut priests who all wear their hair parted on the left and black double-breasted suits — the Legion of Christ sounds straight out of a Dan Brown novel.

But while Opus Dei, the other controversial conservative Catholic order, was made famous in Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code,” the Legion of Christ is virtually unknown to most Americans – at least on the surface.

Two of the most visible priests in America are Father Thomas Williams, a movie-star-handsome CBS News analyst, and Father Jonathan Morris, who is sometimes referred to as “Father Knows Best” on the Fox News Channel. They belong to the Legion of Christ but rarely identify themselves as such on camera. … Continue Reading

Mexicans Kill US Consulate Staff

Comment: If the war on drugs did not exist, you would not be reading this article!

WASHINGTON — Suspected drug cartel “hit teams” gunned down an American consular employee and her husband in a Mexican border city and killed a co-worker’s Mexican husband in a separate attack, a US official said Sunday.

Killed: Arthur Redelfs, 34, was killed along with his wife Lesley Enriquez, who worked at the U.S. consulate. Their one-year-old baby was unharmed

The victims — two Americans and a Mexican — came under fire in separate locations as they were driving Saturday through Ciudad Juarez after earlier attending the same social event, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The killings marked an ominous turn in the drug violence wracking northern Mexico, and prompted the State Department to announce that Americans working at six US consulates in the border area could send their families away.

President Barack Obama said he was “deeply saddened and outraged by the news of the brutal murders,” said National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer.

The victims came under fire in separate locations after attending the same social event earlier in the day, the US official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Suspected drug cartel hit teams fired on locally employed staff, Consulate General Juarez, in their privately owned vehicles,” the official said.

“The attacks resulted in three fatalities — two American citizens and one Mexican citizen,” he said.

The victims included a US woman employed by the consulate’s American citizens services section who was with her American husband and infant daughter when they came under fire, the official said.

The infant, who was in the back seat, survived the attack unharmed, but the woman and her husband were killed, he said.

In the second attack, a Mexican employee of the consulate was following her husband and two children in a separate car, when her husband’s vehicle came under fire, killing him and wounding the two children, the official said.

“Both families had attended the same social event earlier in the afternoon off-post away from the consulate,” the US official said. “It has not been determined if the victims were specifically targeted.”

Shortly after the killings were disclosed by the White House, the State Department issued a travel warning for Mexico.

It said Americans working in consulates in the northern cities of Tijuana, Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey and Matamoros were authorized to send family members home until April 12 because of security concerns.

The departure authorization only affect relatives of US government personnel in those cities, the statement said.

The travel warning said that due to the “recent violent attacks,” US citizens were urged to “delay unnecessary travel to parts of Durango, Coahuila and Chihuahua states.”

“While millions of US citizens safely visit Mexico each year … violence in the country has increased,” the State Department said.

“Drug cartels and associated criminal elements have retaliated violently against individuals who speak out against them or whom they otherwise view as a threat to their organizations,” it read.

The State Department travel warning was issued “coupled with the increase of violence in that northern area,” said Department spokesman Fred Lash.

“It’s not an ordered departure, it’s up to them if they want to come out or not,” said Lash told AFP.

Ciudad Juarez, population 1.3 million, is a major hub for smuggling illegal drugs into the United States. It is directly across the border from El Paso, Texas.

More than 2,600 people were murdered in Ciudad Juarez in 2009 in drug-related violence.

The war between rival drug cartels to control major border crossing points, as well as the government’s attempt to crackdown on the cartels, has killed more than 15,000 people across Mexico over the last three years, according to government figures.

The State Department warning said that some of the recent clashes “have resembled small-unit combat, with cartels employing automatic weapons and grenades.”

“Large firefights have taken place in towns and cities across Mexico, but occur mostly in northern Mexico,” the statement read. “During some of these incidents, US citizens have been trapped and temporarily prevented from leaving the area.”

More than 60 people were killed over the weekend in Mexico, including 38 in the southern state of Guerrero, Mexican officials said.

Drug violence: Staff at the U.S. consulate gather outside the building in Ciudad Juarez after two fatal drive-by shootings

The State Department issued this Travel warning.

TSA Data Analyst Planned Cyber Attack

A former Transportation Security Administration contractor is being charged in Colorado for allegedly injecting malicious code into a government network used for screening airport security workers and others.

The malicious code, a logic bomb installed last October, was designed to cause damage and disrupt data on servers on an undisclosed date but was caught by other workers before it delivered its payload.

denver airport security

Douglas James Duchak, 46, had worked as a data analyst at the TSA’s Colorado Springs Operations Center, or CSOC, since 2004. The CSOC is used to vet people who have “access to sensitive information and secure areas of the nation’s transportation network,” according to the indictment. A source involved in the case said this involved screening of both passengers and workers at airports and other transportation facilities.

He pleaded not guilty in a Denver federal court on Wednesday and was released on a $25,000 unsecured bond. The indictment did not say whether the malware was crafted to erase or alter data, or simply disable servers.

The CSOC network stores updated information from the government’s terrorist watchlist as well as criminal histories from the U.S. Marshal’s Service Warrant Information Network.

Duchak’s job was to update the CSOC database as new information arrived from these two sources. But on Oct. 15, he was given two weeks’ notice that his job would be terminated.

About a week later, on Oct. 22, Duchak allegedly transmitted the malicious code onto a CSOC server that stored data from the U.S. Marshal’s Service, according to the indictment (.pdf). The next day, he allegedly loaded malicious code to a server containing the Terrorist Screening Database. The source involved in the case said the servers “are part of the system that contains the no-fly list” and added that the code, if it had gone undetected, could have traveled to a facility in another state that uses a similar computer system.

Duchak has been charged in the U.S. District of Colorado with two counts of attempting to cause damage to a protected computer. If convicted, he faces a possible prison sentence of 10 years and a $250,000 fine for each count.

Duchak’s attorney, David Lindsey, disputes the government’s charges and says that the system Duchak worked on was a beta system used for testing statistical analyses.

“It wasn’t connected to anything that had to do with security,” Lindsey said. “Before anything he had his hands on left, it went to another system before it got into any live system that did screening. As I understand it, it is a system that does statistical analyses on the systems that are up and running. And when the tests are run, those are done at one level and then [go to] a second level and then at a final level before the analyses are verified and passed onto anything you would call a live system.”

Lindsey said the CSOC servers that were allegedly targeted for sabotage were used for screening workers primarily and were only “remotely, remotely” related to passenger screening, though he could not elaborate.

“The government has been very misleading in the indictment and press release as to any potential harm [this might have caused] to the public,” he said, adding that the alleged malware was not a virus and will ultimately be shown to have been “nothing.”

Lindsey said that his client was not given a clear answer about why he was let go from his job.

British Airways Employee Charged in Terror Plot

A British Airways computer expert who allegedly offered to cover for cabin crew in the event of a strike appeared in court today charged with plotting suicide bombings.

Rajib Karim, who was born in Bangladesh but now lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, faced three charges under counter-terrorism legislation.

The 30-year-old is accused of planning his own martyrdom. One of the charges involves the UK and another alleges that he conspired with contacts in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Yemen.

The prosecutor, Colin Gibbs, told City of Westminster magistrates court that the charge sheet alleged Karim shared information about his work – including security measures – and offered to take advantage of planned strikes by BA staff to join the airline’s cabin crew.

It is claimed that he deliberately stayed in Britain, obtaining a passport and getting a job at the airline in order to further the conspiracy.

The software expert also faced a third charge, alleging that he collected money and transferred it through intermediaries and wire services to terrorist associates overseas.

The three offences are alleged to have taken place over a four-year period between April 2006 and February this year.

Karim was arrested by officers from Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command and local detectives in the north-east of England on 25 February.

They targeted the Newcastle office complex where he worked as an IT developer and searched his home in the city. Hundreds of computer files seized from the workplace and home are being examined.

Karim spoke only to confirm his name and date of birth during the 15-minute hearing.

District Judge Timothy Workman remanded him in custody and adjourned the case until 26 March at the Old Bailey.

Scotland Yard arrested three men in Slough, Berkshire, during the inquiry. They were released without charge on Tuesday.

School Administrators: Webcam Spying

According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools’ administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins’s child was disciplined for “improper behavior in his home” and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines.

If true, these allegations are about as creepy as they come. I don’t know about you, but I often have the laptop in the room while I’m getting dressed, having private discussions with my family, and so on. The idea that a school district would not only spy on its students’ clickstreams and emails (bad enough), but also use these machines as AV bugs is purely horrifying.

Schools are in an absolute panic about kids divulging too much online, worried about pedos and marketers and embarrassing photos that will haunt you when you run for office or apply for a job in 10 years. They tell kids to treat their personal details as though they were precious.

But when schools take that personal information, indiscriminately invading privacy (and, of course, punishing students who use proxies and other privacy tools to avoid official surveillance), they send a much more powerful message: your privacy is worthless and you shouldn’t try to protect it.

Robbins v. Lower Merion School District (PDF)