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Date Posted: 09:37:52 06/23/01 Sat
Author: Anonymous
Subject: News and Issues

F.B.I. Analyst Arrested for Selling Information to Mafia





June 20, 2001


F.B.I. Analyst Arrested for Selling Information to Mafia

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


Filed at 6:02 a.m. ET

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- An FBI security expert who had access to informant identities and witness lists is accused of selling classified files to the mafia and others involved in criminal investigations, according to a complaint filed against him by the FBI.

James J. Hill, 51, an Air Force veteran and security analyst in the Las Vegas FBI office, is charged with obstruction of justice, conspiracy and stealing and selling the top-secret FBI information.

The six-page complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, says Hill was paid $25,000 for files from November 1999 until last week. He was arrested Friday in Las Vegas after allegedly faxing classified information drawn from computer files to an FBI informant in New York.

A detention hearing was scheduled Wednesday in Las Vegas.

The accusations against Hill follow a series of embarrassments for the FBI, including the arrest in February of counterintelligence agent Robert Hanssen who is accused of spying for Moscow for 15 years; the announcement last month that more than 4,000 FBI documents had been withheld from lawyers for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh; and the botched investigation last year of former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee.

They also come as a Senate Judiciary committee prepares for a hearing on the agency Wednesday and as the White House seeks a replacement for retiring FBI director Louis Freeh.

The FBI spent Tuesday assessing the damage that could have been caused by the potential release of what the complaint refers to as ``hundreds of different classified FBI records and documents pertaining to criminal cases and grand jury investigations.''

According to the complaint, Hill had security clearances and access to national security data, confidential informant identities, witness lists and electronic surveillance information. An FBI official in New York said the case involves criminal files and not national security secrets.

The complaint, filed by Special Agent Demetrius Barkoukis, accuses Hill of selling classified FBI records relating to organized crime, white collar investigations and international immigrant smuggling.

The unnamed informant, identified as a private investigator arrested Thursday, told the bureau he got FBI records from Hill. In one recent case, the informant said he sold them for $4,000 to a man in Oyster Bay, N.Y., who also has been indicted in the case, the complaint said.

Barkoukis also cited telephone records showing that Hill was in communication with people in Cuba and Mexico and said passport records showed Hill had traveled within the last year to Colombia.

Grant D. Ashley, Las Vegas' FBI special agent in charge, declined to provide further details because a criminal investigation is continuing.

^------

On the Net:

FBI Las Vegas: http://lasvegas.fbi.gov



Skeleton's fate still unclear: Court hears Kennewick Man debate

By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter
PORTLAND - A federal magistrate wrestled with the meaning of the word "is" yesterday as he sought to determine the fate of the 9,300-year-old Kennewick Man skeleton that five Pacific Northwest tribes seek to bury and scientists want to study.

In 1990, Congress authorized the repatriation of Native American remains and defined Native American as relating to a tribe, people or culture that "is" indigenous to the United States.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John Jelderks appeared skeptical that Kennewick Man bore a relationship to any tribe that is now in the U.S. And without that relationship, he appeared uncertain that Kennewick Man qualified as a Native American under the 1990 act.

"We're spending a lot of time on this," Jelderks said. "It might be very important."

Yesterday's hearing is part of a bitter six-year legal battle over the Kennewick Man, one of the oldest and best-preserved skeletons ever found in North America. The case pits scientists who seek further study of the skeleton against federal Interior Department officials who say it should be turned over to the five Pacific Northwest tribes.

The skeleton is held, under court order, at the Burke Museum in Seattle, and Jelderks is expected to issue a written ruling in the next few months to decide the disposition of the skeleton.


Yesterday's hearing was attended by more than a dozen attorneys, with some giving lengthy oral arguments that are scheduled to continue today.

Attorneys for the Interior Department and the tribes said Jelderks may be reading too much into the word "is." They say Congress, in passing the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, intended a broad definition of Native American. That definition would include the direct ancestors of current tribes but also more ancient remains with ties less fully understood. They said that even if Jelderks had doubts about congressional intent, those doubts - under federal Indian law - should be resolved in favor of the tribes.

"When there is more than one interpretation here, it would be erroneous, in my view, to adapt the more narrow interpretation," said Walter Echohawk, an attorney with the National Congress of American Indians.


Kennewick Man was found in the Columbia River shallows near Kennewick on July 28, 1996. In September of that year, federal officials - citing the 1990 act - said that Kennewick Man should be turned over to Northwest tribes for reburial.

That decision touched off the legal battle by eight scientists who sued in federal court for the right to conduct DNA and other tests.


Interior Department officials, through a limited series of scientific tests and other research, found that the skeleton resembled people from southern Asia. But former department Secretary Bruce Babbitt ruled that the skeleton is "culturally affiliated" with modern tribes.


The 1990 Native American Graves and Repatriation Act reflected tribes' frustrations with the warehousing of human remains and cultural artifacts that had been gathered through more than a century of intensive collection.

Since the passage of the act, museums have returned some remains and artifacts to tribes. Tribes have been able to take control of new finds of Native American remains and artifacts on tribal and federal lands. In some instances, tribal officials say cooperative efforts have allowed studies before reburial.

Echohawk said cooperation is more likely if scientists acknowledge they must first gain consent for studies.


Hal Bernton can be reached at 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com.



Aboriginal rights are meaningless
July-2001
Aboriginal rights are meaningless

Taiaiake Alfred, Windspeaker Columnist
Recently, on the pretext of ruling against Mike Mitchell, a Mohawk of
Akwesasne, who asserted an Aboriginal right to conduct cross-border trade,
the Supreme Court of Canada went much further and took the opportunity to
deny the Mohawks of Akwesasne, and by extension Indigenous peoples as a
whole, any rights at all outside of those accorded them by the Canadian
government. In Mitchell v. MNR, the Supreme Court has explicitly denied that
we have an existence that is in any way independent of Canadian law and
society. That is a statement of major significance.

Many of our people were upset when the Supreme Court of Canada gave its
decision on the Mitchell case. To be sure, there were upsetting and even
sickening words contained in the Supreme Court's decision. It always hurts to
be hit in the face with the racism that bubbles just below the surface of
polite Canadian society, especially when it is laid bare in clinically
precise legal language. But beyond the Supreme Court justices' shocking
ignorance of fact and the plodding, sophomoric attacks on history, there is
nothing much surprising in the decision. Did anyone actually think that the
Supreme Court of Canada would recognize Mohawk sovereignty?

Spiteful denials of our rights by government lawyers and judges are nothing
new. After a generation of jurisprudence on the question of our peoples'
relation to the Canadian state, a time in which the trend and the vanishing
point of our rights have been visible, we should not be surprised by what was
said in Mitchell. All of the recent Supreme Court decisions on Aboriginal
rights have given and taken away at the same time, yet our lawyers and our
leaders have been looking at those decisions through rose coloured glasses.
The problem is that we have wanted to see progress where there was none, and
we have bought into the false promise of steady progress toward a just
accommodation of our existence as peoples with that of the Canadian state.
This decision surely puts that lie to rest.

Am I being too cynical? Read the chief justice's words yourself: She wrote
that the court has "affirmed the doctrines of extinguishment, infringement
and justification as the appropriate framework for resolving conflicts
between Aboriginal rights and competing claims, including claims based on
Crown sovereignty." She is telling us here in no uncertain terms that any
conflicts between the rights we claim and the Canadian government's claimed
authorities, between our law and Canadian law, will be resolved by
extinguishing our rights. Case closed. Aboriginal rights and title have been
rendered meaningless.

The vaunted section 35(1) of the Canadian Constitution has been exposed as an ultimately useless protection in the face of white people's material or
ideological interests. The Supreme Court's decisions have been proven time
and again, especially in Marshall II and now Mitchell, to be nothing more
than transparent covers for government policy decisions, and obviously based
on economic and political factors rather than on historical facts or sound
legal reasoning (Mitchell explicitly links the interests of the Canadian
state to the denial of the Aboriginal right).

So now what? The lesson is very clear: politics and economics determine
everything. The lesson also points the way forward. We must reconcile
ourselves to the fact that our struggle is political. It is not about law but
about power. Forget about appealing to the courts; forget negotiating
self-government and land claims agreements; forget about Aboriginal rights
and title. All of these can only lead our people toward an imminent vanishing
point on a very short horizon. The horizon of our future generations can only
be extended if we commit to take direct action in defence of our lands and
rights, and begin to demand respect from Canada.

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