WASHINGTON

FBI MANAGERS SAY THEY DIDN’T SEEK OUT TERRORISM EXPERTS AFTER 9/11

In sworn testimony that contrasts with their promises to the public, the FBI managers who crafted the post-September 11 fight against terrorism say expertise about the Middle East or terrorism was not important in choosing the agents they promoted to top jobs. And they still do not believe such experience is necessary today even as terrorist acts occur across the globe.

“A bombing case is a bombing case,” the FBI’s terrorism chief in the two years after September 11, 2001, Dale Watson, said. “A crime scene in a bank robbery case is the same as a crime scene, you know, across the board.” The FBI’s current terror-fighting chief, the executive assistant director, Gary Bald, said his first terrorism training came “on the job” when he moved to headquarters to oversee antiterrorism strategy two years ago. Asked about his grasp of Middle Eastern culture and history, Mr. Bald responded: “I wish that I had it. It would be nice.”

“You need leadership. You don’t need subject matter expertise,” Mr. Bald testified in an ongoing FBI employment case. “It is certainly not what I look for in selecting an official for a position in a counterterrorism position.”

– Associated Press

GOP DOGS DURBIN OVER REMARKS ABOUT PRISONERS’ TREATMENT

A Senate Democratic leader is facing mounting criticism for recent comments he made comparing American treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to inhumane tactics used in Nazi, Soviet, and Cambodian concentration camps.

Senator Durbin, a Democrat of Illinois, the assistant minority leader, subsequently said he regretted that his comments were misunderstood as criticism of American troops. But Republicans have continued to call for a more forthright apology. “He should certainly apologize,” Senator McCain, a Republican of Arizona, said yesterday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “There’s no comparison whatsoever.”

The day before, Senate Majority Leader Frist, a Republican of Tennessee, called on the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat to apologize and withdraw his comments. Democrats, asked about the controversy, said they said accepted Mr. Durbin’s statement of regret as sufficient apology.

– Los Angeles Times

BIDEN SAYS HE INTENDS TO SEEK DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION FOR PRESIDENT

Senator Biden, a Democrat of Delaware, said yesterday he intends to run for president in 2008. But Mr. Biden, who also sought the nomination in 1988, said he would give himself until the end of this year to determine if he really can raise enough money and attract enough support. Going after the nomination “is a real possibility,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“My intention, as I sit here now, is, as I’ve proceeded since last November, as if I were going to run. I’m quite frankly going out, seeing whether I can gather the kind of support,” Mr. Biden said. Mr. Biden said he was taking his “game on the road, letting people know what I think.”

– Associated Press

CIA CHIEF SAYS HE HAS ‘EXCELLENT IDEA’ WHERE BIN LADEN IS

The director of the CIA says he has an “excellent idea” where Osama bin Laden is hiding, but that America’s respect for sovereign nations makes it more difficult to capture the Al Qaeda chief. In an interview with Time for the magazine’s June 27 issue, Porter Goss was asked about the progress of the hunt for Mr. bin Laden.

Asked whether that meant he knew where Mr. bin Laden is, Mr. Goss responded: “I have an excellent idea where he is. What’s the next question?” Mr. Goss did not say where he thinks Mr. bin Laden is, nor did he specify what country or countries he was referring to when he spoke of foreign sanctuaries. But American officials have long said they believed Mr. bin Laden was hiding in rugged mountains along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

– Associated Press

HEALTH

SCIENTISTS FINDING EARLIEST SIGNS OF ALZHEIMER’S

A subtle change in a memory-making brain region seems to predict who will get Alzheimer’s disease nine years before symptoms appear, scientists reported yesterday. The finding is part of a wave of research aimed at early detection of the deadly dementia – and one day perhaps even preventing it. Researchers scanned the brains of middle-aged and older people while they were still healthy. They discovered that lower energy usage in a part of the brain called the hippocampus correctly signaled who would get Alzheimer’s or a related memory impairment 85% of the time. But it is too soon to offer Alzheimer’s-predicting PET scans. The discovery must be confirmed. Also, there are serious ethical questions about how soon people should know that Alzheimer’s is approaching when nothing yet can be done to forestall the disease.

– Associated Press

WEST

NONPROFIT DISTRIBUTES ‘I LOVE GITMO’ BUMPER STICKERS

In an effort to galvanize public support for the American detention center at Guantanamo Bay, a California-based nonprofit group has begun distributing “I Love Gitmo” bumper stickers over the Internet and is planning an ad campaign targeting the detention center’s most vocal critics. Move America Forward, the group spearheading the ad campaign, issued a statement last week saying that “the food served to terrorist detainees and terrorist suspects held at ‘Gitmo’ is better in many cases than the food being served to our troops in the Armed Services.” Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican of California, said last week that detainees at a recent meal were served orange-glazed chicken and rice pilaf.

The group’s portrayal of conditions at Guantanamo contrasts starkly with comments by William Schulz, director of Amnesty International USA, who last month compared the detention center to a Soviet gulag. Move America Forward’s co-chair, San Francisco talk radio host Melanie Morgan, said last week that the “domestic enemies who have fanned the flames of a ‘gulag at Guantanamo’ are jeopardizing the lives and well-being of our servicemen and women stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The group says that it has sold thousands of bumper stickers, but the effort has yet to make an impression on leading human rights activists. Mr. Schulz, reached by The New York Sun at his Long Island home yesterday, said, “I know nothing about this.” The national director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Anthony Romero, also told the Sun that he had not heard of the campaign. Both men declined to comment further.

– Special to the Sun