CIA let 9/11 prisoner design vacuum cleaner
SANFORD, FLA. Zimmerman jury can consider lesser charge
In an unmistakable setback for George Zimmerman, the jury at the neighborhood watch captain’s second-degree murder trial was given the option Thursday of convicting him on the lesser charge of manslaughter in the shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Judge Debra Nelson issued her ruling over the objections of Zimmerman’s lawyers shortly before a prosecutor delivered a closing argument in which he portrayed the defendant as an aspiring police officer who assumed Martin was up to no good and took the law into his own hands.
GUANTANAMO BAY
Genital searches halted
A federal judge Thursday ordered the government to stop genital searches of Guantanamo Bay detainees who want to meet with their lawyers, concluding that the motivation for the searches is not to enhance security, but to deter the detainees’ access to attorneys. In a blistering 35-page opinion, Royce Lamberth, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Washington, ordered prison commanders to return to the old search method: grasping the waistband of a detainee’s trousers and shaking the pants to dislodge any contraband. Confined to the basement of a CIA secret prison in Romania about a decade ago, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, asked his jailers whether he could embark on an unusual project: Would the spy agency allow Mohammed, who had earned his bachelor’s in mechanical engineering, to design a vacuum cleaner? The agency officer in charge of the prison called CIA headquarters and a manager approved the request, a former senior CIA official told The Associated Press. Mohammed had endured the most brutal of the CIA’s harsh interrogation methods and had confessed to a career of atrocities. But the agency had no long-term plan for him. Someday, he might prove useful again. Perhaps, he’d even stand trial one day. And for that, he’d need to be sane. “We didn’t want them to go nuts,” the former senior CIA official said, one of several who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the now-shuttered CIA prisons or Mohammed’s interest in vacuums. So, using schematics from the Internet as his guide, Mohammed began re-engineering one of the most mundane of household appliances. That the CIA may be in possession of the world’s most highly classified vacuum cleaner blueprints is but one peculiar, lasting byproduct of the controversial U.S. detention and interrogation program. By the CIA’s own account, the program’s methods were “designed to psychologically ‘dislocate’” people. But once interrogations stopped, the agency had to try to undo the psychological damage inflicted on the detainees. In Romania, the prison provided books for detainees to read. Mohammed, former officials said, enjoyed the Harry Potter series. The CIA apparently succeeded in keeping him sane. He appears to be in good health, according to military records. Others haven’t fared as well. Accused al-Qaida terrorists Ramzi Binalshibh and Abd al-Nashiri, who were also locked up in Poland and Romania with Mohammed, have had mental issues. Al-Nashiri suffers from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Binalshibh is being treated for schizophrenia with a slew of anti-psychotic medications.
BOSTON DNA links victim to Boston Strangler case
The man who once claimed to be the Boston Strangler has been linked to one of the 11 victims by DNA evidence for the first time, leading to the planned exhumation of his remains and perhaps putting to rest some speculation that he wasn’t the notorious killer. Albert DeSalvo’s remains will be dug up because DNA from the scene of Mary Sullivan’s rape and murder produced a “familial match” with him, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley said Thursday. Police secretly followed DeSalvo’s nephew to collect DNA from a discarded water bottle to help make the connection, officials said.
WASHINGTON, D.C. House OKs scaled-down farm bill sans food stamps
Republicans pushed a scaleddown farm bill through the House on Thursday, putting off a fight over food stamp spending and giving GOP leaders a victory after a decisive defeat on the larger bill last month.
DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK, CALIF. Please stop frying eggs on pavement
It gets so hot in Death Valley that you can fry an egg with sun power. That’s what one Death Valley National Park employee did last week, when she took a frying pan to the pavement and posted a video. Park visitors were quick to imitate her, but they didn’t use skillets and left gooey messes. The park then issued a plea on its Facebook page to crack down on the egg-frying fiasco. Death Valley highs have been hovering around 120 degrees.