Informants

I have read with interest the three articles (Nov. 5, Dec. 11 and Dec. 16 "Scandal Over Jail Informants Forces Retrial") on informants and the investigation into the conviction of Carlos Vargas, who is serving 29 years to life for the first-degree murder of Mary Ann Torres. The final result leaves me numb, because I see that justice is blind. Factually, defendant Vargas offered Mary Ann a ride home after entertaining her at a nightclub. He then went out of his way to drop his brother off at his house, at 2 a.m., so he could be alone with Mary Ann. Her beaten, strangled, and sexually assaulted body, with her throat cut, was found in an alley the next morning at 7:30 a.m., a few blocks away from the nightclub.

His wife was a patient at the clinic where I worked in my early days as a doctor. I saw her regularly for hypertension. But on one visit, she was more concerned about her husband - let's call him Pedro. He was having stomach pains and difficulty swallowing. I told her to make an appointment for him with me. When I saw him, Pedro explained that he had lost weight and was having trouble swallowing solid food. A barium swallow study confirmed my fears: He had esophageal cancer. Another doctor at the clinic received the report before I saw Pedro again and made an urgent referral to surgery.

As part of an elite intelligence team, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies Michael Rathbun and James Sexton turn inmates into informants, looking for tips on crimes and gang activity inside the nation's largest jail system. Earlier this year, one of their informants offered up a bombshell: A fellow jail deputy was working as an operative for drug-smuggling, skinhead gangsters. Following protocol, the partners detailed the allegations in a direct memo to their boss, Lt. Greg Thompson, the head of jailhouse intelligence.

WASHINGTON - Disclosure of a highly classified intelligence operation in Yemen last year compromised an exceedingly rare and valuable espionage achievement: an informant who had earned the trust of hardened terrorists, according to U.S. officials. The operation received new scrutiny this week after the Justice Department disclosed it had obtained telephone records for calls to and from more than 20 lines belonging to the Associated Press news service and its journalists in April and May 2012 in a high-level investigation of the alleged leak of classified information.

Ernesto Gamboa was a rare find -- the sort of informant who might come along once or twice in a cop's career. The 41-year-old Salvadoran auto mechanic assisted police in making hundreds of drug busts in the Pacific Northwest over 14 years. Armed only with a cellphone, he had a knack for posing as a drug buyer or seller, leading to harrowing transactions between heavily armed traffickers and narcotics agents. For about $10,000 a year, he risked his life time and again, according to those who worked with him. Undercover detectives came to trust him with their own lives.

The U.S. handed over its largest reward in the campaign to wipe out Al Qaeda-linked militants in the southern Philippines, giving $10 million to Philippine informants in the killing of two top terrorism suspects. Four masked informants collected on promised $5-million rewards against Abu Sayyaf chieftain Khadafi Abubakar Janjalani, who was slain in a September clash on southern Jolo island, and against his presumed successor, Abu Solaiman, who was killed on Jolo in January. More than 7,000 U.S.

Federal agents paid $3.5 million to informants in Pakistan and Afghanistan to help catch Mir Aimal Kansi, who was arrested in Pakistan four years after shootings outside CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., left two dead, a report in Newsweek said. Another report, in Time, said President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright personally contacted Pakistani President Farooq Leghari to win approval for the June 15 operation that resulted in Kansi's arrest at a hotel in Pakistan.

The State Bar of California has opened an investigation into whether Los Angeles County prosecutors have used the testimony of jailhouse informants known to have been unreliable, officials said Tuesday. The law requires that an attorney call only witnesses he believes are telling the truth, officials said.

A state prison inmate may be punished solely on evidence provided by secret informants who have not appeared for questioning before a disciplinary hearing officer, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday. The court unanimously upheld state regulations that permit prisoners to be disciplined on the basis of such information, provided that the hearing officer takes other steps to independently make sure that the informants are reliable.

I am responding to the Jan. 22 Valley Commentary ("Turning Schoolchildren Into Informants Carries Risks") by Diana Beard-Williams. As a resident of the Antelope Valley, she pointed out a new and potentially hazardous trend in the school system there. This January, the board of the Antelope Valley Union High School District readopted a 2-month-old policy where school administrators would give cash rewards to students who informed them about other students breaking the law. In other words, administrators were encouraging school kids to tattle on each other.

WASHINGTON -- The unauthorized disclosure of a counter-terrorism operation in Yemen last year compromised an exceedingly rare and valuable espionage achievement: an informant who had earned the trust of hardened terrorists, according to U.S. officials. His information was said to have led to the U.S. drone strike that killed a senior Al Qaeda leader, Fahd Mohammed Ahmed Quso, on May 6, 2012. U.S. officials say Quso had helped direct the terrorist attack on the Cole, a U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer, in a Yemeni harbor in October 2000.

Officials at Bloomberg, the New York financial news and information service, scrambled to deal with an unfolding customer privacy scandal after admitting its journalists had snooped on business clients for years through its network of terminals ubiquitous on Wall Street. Seeking to calm Bloomberg's 315,000 subscribers worldwide, the editor in chief of Bloomberg News said Monday: "Our reporters should not have access to any data considered proprietary. " "Last month, we immediately changed our policy so that reporters now have no greater access to information than our customers," Matthew Winkler said in a post on Bloomberg's website.

WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors secretly obtained telephone records from more than 20 lines belonging to the Associated Press and its journalists in an attempt to learn who leaked information on how the CIA thwarted an apparent terrorist plot hatched in Yemen. The Associated Press on Monday called the action a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into news gathering. The government subpoenaed records covering a two-month period in early 2012 from telephones in the wire service's offices in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., as well as the homes and cellphones of at least five reporters and an editor.

WASHINGTON - A top Internal Revenue Service official knew as early as June 2011 that conservative groups seeking nonprofit status were being singled out for additional scrutiny, raising questions about when senior officials were informed and why the IRS allowed the agency's commissioner to deny the targeting effort in March 2012 testimony before Congress. The IRS has said the commissioner was not aware of the targeting at the time, but it has not explained why the testimony was never corrected.

Massing the heavy legal artillery of 1st Amendment principles, a federal appeals court has ruled that the federal government can't order businesses to post signs informing employees that they have a right to join a union and to bargain for better wages. It's a troubling ruling. The case stems from a 2011 decision by the National Labor Relations Board that employers must "post notices to employees, in conspicuous places," informing them of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act, and include the information in electronic mailings.

WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans boycotted a committee vote Thursday on President Obama's nomination of Gina McCarthy to head the Environmental Protection Agency, drawing accusations of obstructionism from Democrats. Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said McCarthy had not adequately responded to their requests for information, so they didn't show up for the scheduled vote. They want more information on how the EPA makes decisions on new regulations, how it has used private email to conduct public business, and other transparency issues.

David Berst, director of enforcement for the National Collegiate Athletic Assn., took issue Thursday with statements made by Ron Watson, assistant athletic director at Oklahoma. Watson criticized the NCAA for giving Oklahoma State wide receiver Hart Lee Dykes immunity in exchange for information implicating four schools in recruiting violations. "If you want to find out what really happened, you have to have limited immunity," Berst told the Tulsa Tribune.

FBI Director Robert Mueller says his agency will continue to use informants inside American mosques despite complaints from Muslim organizations. Mueller told reporters Monday in Los Angeles that investigations in places of worship will be respectful of 1st Amendment rights but will continue if warranted by evidence of possible wrongdoing. A Muslim organization has asked the Justice Department to investigate complaints that the FBI is asking followers of the faith to spy on Islamic leaders.

Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies and animal control officers were searching by air Thursday for four pit bulls believed to have mauled a woman to death earlier in the day in the Antelope Valley community of Littlerock. Hours after the attack, Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the dogs' capture. The 63-year-old woman was out for her morning walk about 9 o'clock when she was mauled by the dogs. Her name has not been released.

Four people who provided crucial information in the hunt for former Los Angeles Police Officer Christopher Dorner will split what is expected to be a $1-million reward in the case, authorities announced Tuesday afternoon. The division of the highly anticipated reward, sought by at least 12 people after a February gun battle that led to Dorner's death, was overseen by three retired judges and made public in a 12-page report released by the Los Angeles Police Department. The money will be paid in installments to a couple held captive by Dorner, a ski resort employee and a tow truck driver.