Tag Archives: Medill D.C.

DEA quotas called into question

DEA

WASHINGTON — The embattled Drug Enforcement Administration came under fire Tuesday as senators dug into the agency’s controlled substances quota program, questioning whether it contributes to shortages of certain medications.

A Government Accountability Office report stops short of explicitly linking DEA mismanagement to the shortages, but that caution has not stopped some on Capitol Hill from assigning blame.

The DEA, long criticized for internal dysfunction by the GAO and some lawmakers, is still reeling from a sex scandal involving several agents. A Justice Department report in March alleged that DEA officers in Colombia attended parties with prostitutes paid for with drug cartel money.

The charges have not improved the agency’s stock in Congress, where members of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control grilled the DEA’s Joseph Rannazzisi, a 28-year veteran of the agency who serves as deputy assistant administrator for drug diversion.

“DEA refused to comply with GAO’s requests for information from a particular DEA database for over a year,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the caucus’s chairman as well as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“I had to get personally involved in the process to make sure GAO had the information it needed,” Grassley said.

Some caucus members worried that DEA delays in processing supplier applications and setting quotas have contributed to the problem.

Between January 2001 and June 2013, 168 drug shortages —instances where needed drugs were unavailable to patients— were reported, according to the GAO, an investigative arm of Congress. Many were controlled prescription medications, including pain relievers, anxiolytics and stimulants.

Rannazzisi and Capt. Valerie Jensen, associate director of the Food and Drug Administration’s drug shortages program, insisted that drug manufacturers bear most of the responsibility.

“Shortages are usually preceded by a production disruption,” Jensen said, referring to the quality control issues that sometimes force drug companies to recall certain medications.

GAO Health Care Team Director Marcia Crosse however, painted a different picture. According to Crosse, the GAO’s ultimate inability to establish a relationship between shortages and quotas stems from inaccurate and incomplete data provided by the DEA.

“[DEA] did not have performance measures related to setting quotas or insuring an adequate and uninterrupted supply of controlled substances,” Crosse said.

The shortages issue has come to light at a time when the DEA is facing criticism on multiple fronts. Liberal activists have faulted the agency for holding fast to marijuana scheduling regulations that they say are outdated. Attempted collaborations with and investigations by other government agencies, like the FDA and GAO, routinely expose an agency where dysfunction and secrecy are the norm, some lawmakers say.

One of the most damning indictments however, has come from the DEA’s detention of UC San Diego student Daniel Chung.

In 2012, Chung was arrested by DEA agents after going over a friend’s house to smoke marijuana. Despite promises that he would be processed and released, Chung was left in a holding cell for five days without food or water with his hands cuffed behind his back. When he was discovered, Chung was suffering from dehydration and kidney failure. He was later paid a $4.1 million settlement.

Sen. Grassley, asked Rannazzisi why Grassley had not received an answer from the DEA after sending a letter asking about Chung’s ordeal.

“It’s been eight months and I still don’t have a response,” said Grassley. “There’s no ongoing investigation to hide behind now.”

Rannazzisi said that he could not guarantee a response before the end of the month.

Referring specifically to the Chung case, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said that the reputation of the DEA has taken a huge blow.

“I hope this is not the DEA of today, because if it is, you won’t have any support up here,” Feinstein said.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said he had reached the point “where it’s starting to look to me like DEA is an agency that cannot manage administrative and regulatory responsibilities, and maybe they should be moved elsewhere and it should just purely become an investigative agency with no more administrative responsibilities.”

Afghanistan’s advances for women could disappear as soon as US troops leave

Women of Hutal village discuss building a women's center with the Maiwand District Governor - courtesy of Cythia Hogle

Women of Hutal village discuss building a women’s center with the Maiwand District Governor – courtesy of Cythia Hogle

WASHINGTON — In a rural village southwest of Kandahar, a local police force operates out of a posh modern facility surrounded by mud-brick buildings.

Three years ago it was built as a cooperative US-Afghan venture to be a focal point for the advancement of women in the community.

The Malalai Anaa Center for Women and School for Girls in Hutal village was the face of success for American policy in Afghanistan: a collaborative effort by the US military, the US Agency for International Development, NGOs and local leaders and laborers. It would provide vocational training, a girls’ school and a water source for the women of Maiwand District. It would be a prime example of the advances women have been able to make in Afghanistan since coalition forces moved in.

Except, now it’s gone.

As soon as US forces turned over the area to the Afghan National Security Forces in 2013, local police closed the center, ran the women out and commandeered the building for their own headquarters.

“We could have predicted it,” recalled Cynthia Hogle, a cultural adviser with the US Army’s Human Terrain System who coordinated the project.

“We didn’t have any plan for sustainability and relied on the [Afghan] government, who made empty promises” to continue supporting the center, she told Medill News by phone.

Advancing Afghan women’s rights has been a key US policy objective since 2001, when Congress passed the Afghan Women and Children Relief Act. Under the previous rule of the Taliban, women were banned from schools, work, health care and all manner of public life.

Significant gains have been made over the last 13 years. But some experts are worried that without sustainable support, those inroads will reverse as soon as US forces leave the country.

According to USAID, the agency primarily responsible for implementing US gender policy in Afghanistan, girls today comprise more than one-third of all school children. More than 40,000 women are enrolled in post-secondary education, and women now maintain an active and visible role in economic and political life, including holding 25 percent of the seats in the Afghan parliament.

Yet increasingly, those advocating for women’s rights in Afghanistan are subjected to violence and intimidation as well as government indifference, according to an Amnesty International report from April.

Throughout Afghanistan, the “common thread … is that the pattern of abuse against women human rights defenders is matched by the government’s systematic failure to provide an environment that protects them or to bring the perpetrators of abuses to justice,” the report claims.

Ill-conceived economic and political support from the international community makes the problem worse, AI says. Investment tends to be limited, focusing on short-term projects developed with little input from those who would benefit.

The US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the agency set up by Congress to oversee approximately $104 billion invested in the country for redevelopment, is also concerned. Last month, SIGAR released an inquiry letter into the joint US-Afghan Promoting Gender Equity in National Priority Programs (PROMOTE).

USAID’s flagship program for women’s empowerment in Afghanistan — and its largest in the world — plans to spend $416 million targeting 75,000 Afghan women ages 18 to 30 to become future political, business and civil society leaders.

But in the letter, SIGAR Inspector General John Sopko worried that “some very basic programmatic issues remain unresolved and that the Afghan women engaged in the program may be left without any tangible benefit upon completion.”

Donald Sampler, USAID’s assistant administrator for Afghanistan and Pakistan, acknowledged that the “context in which PROMOTE is being implemented is not an easy one,” but believes the program will be successful.

Sustainability will be achieved “by prioritizing local ownership of activities and employing Afghan organizations to undertake PROMOTE activities,” Sampler says.

Sopko, however, was unconvinced.

“SIGAR continues to have concerns about how USAID will implement the PROMOTE program, assess its outcomes, ensure its sustainability, and conduct oversight, concerns which are shared by other senior US and Afghan officials,” he said in an interview, adding that SIGAR will continue to monitor the program.

Even Afghanistan’s new first lady, Rula Ghani, was skeptical about the program in a speech last November.

“The immediate effect in Kabul [of PROMOTE] has been a flurry of NGOs, newly created or reconfigured with the view of attracting some of the windfalls of that budget,” Ghani said.

“I do hope that we are not going to fall again into the game of contracting and sub-contracting and the routine of workshops and training sessions generating a lot of certificates on paper and little else.”

Between 2011 and 2013, USAID spent almost $850 million on 17 women’s empowerment programs in Afghanistan, but were unable to demonstrate this money directly helped Afghan women, according to a December 2014 SIGAR audit.

Despite general improvements in the status of Afghan women, according to the report, there is “no comprehensive assessment available to confirm that these gains were the direct result of specific US efforts.”

The women of Hutal village might agree. The Malalai Anaa Center — named for a local heroine who led Pashtun tribesmen to successfully revolt against the British in 1880 — might soon be just a memory.

“Without the support of their government or the men in their community, all the work and progress will come to a halt and the hopes of the women will be dashed,” Hogle said.

“There are just too many challenges for them to overcome without some source of continuing support.”


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Supporters of imprisoned ‘Lady al Qaida’ want proof she’s alive

A national civil right group is requesting an independent medical investigation for a political prisoner Aafia Siddiqui. (Andersen Xia/Medill)

A national civil right group is requesting an independent medical investigation for a political prisoner Aafia Siddiqui. (Andersen Xia/Medill)

— The lawyer for a Pakistani woman who was the first female terrorist suspect after the 9/11 attacks is demanding evidence that she is still alive at a federal prison in Texas, despite prison officials’ assertion that she is.

Aafia Siddiqui, a U.S.-trained scientist known as “Lady al Qaida,” is serving 86 years in a Fort Worth, Texas, federal prison for shooting at U.S. Army officers and FBI agents who were interrogating her in 2010 in Pakistan for her alleged involvement in terrorist efforts against the U.S. A New York jury in 2010 found her guilty of attempted murder and assault.

“We believe only by having an independent medical evaluation can the world be assured that she is alive and well,” Siddiqui lawyer Stephen Downs said this week at a news conference in Washington.

Downs, executive director of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms, said Siddiqui has not been seen or heard from by her family or friends in more than a year. Pakistani consulate staff who tried to visit her at the Federal Medical Center Carswell were only shown the back of a woman, which made it impossible to identify whether it was Siddiqui, the lawyer said.

The organization demanded that Siddiqui be examined by a medical team that would include her sister, a Harvard-trained neurologist living in Pakistan.

Federal Medical Center Carswell spokeswoman Patricia Comstock said Wednesday that Siddiqui is alive, and she has seen her recently. However, Comstock declined to reveal Siddiqui’s medical condition.

The FBI in 2003 declared Siddiqui the world’s most wanted woman until she was captured five years later in Ghazni, Afghanistan. Upon her arrest, she was found to be in possession of numerous documents describing the making of chemical weapons, dirty bombs and instructions to attack landmarks in the U.S.

During her American interrogation in Pakistan, Siddiqui allegedly picked up an unsecured M-4 rifleand fired twice, missing both. She was subdued after the officers returned fire with a pistol and hit her in the torso.

The U.S. government said Siddiqui was a jihadist who married a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind, even though Siddiqui’s family denied the marriage. Both the Islamic State, known by various acronyms – including ISIS – and the Taliban had reportedly tried to swap American captives for her.

“ISIS is trying to get in on the popularity of Aafia,” Downs said. “She has nothing to do with ISIS. She was locked up before ISIS even got going.”

A petition was filed in July on whitehouse.gov with more than 100,000 signatures demanding Siddiqui’s repatriation to Pakistan. Supporters held a protest three weeks ago in front of the Federal Bureau of Prisons calling for her release.


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Kerry makes national-security pitch for trade deals

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (File Photo by Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory/MEDILL)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (File Photo by Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory/MEDILL)

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State John Kerry placed the issue of U.S. trade agreements firmly in a national security context Thursday, saying two pending trade deals demonstrate how U.S. economic and national security interests are one and the same.

“In our era, the economic and security realms are absolutely integrated,” he told a room full of analysts and policymakers at an Atlantic Council event, making the case for the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, two sweeping trade deals being negotiated by the U.S. Trade Representative.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership would set rules for the U.S. and 11 Asian countries, which notably exclude China, by far the biggest economic force in the region.

“The idea is to put pressure on China and write the rules before they have a chance to write them first,” said Garrett Workman, associate director of global business and economics and Atlantic Council.

But many economists and Washington insiders see the move to couch these economic issues in a national security context as a way to make them more palatable to the mounting domestic forces that oppose them.

“They need to make this a national security argument,” said Dan Ikenson, director of the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, “because the economic argument is falling on deaf ears in the Congress and in the more traditionally resistant arms of the Democratic Party.”

Perhaps the most resistant is organized labor, which has long fought the TPP and similar trade agreements that have come before, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was passed during the Clinton administration to open trade with Mexico and Canada.

“When these kinds of agreements fail to make their case on economic grounds,” said Thea Mei Lee, a deputy chief of staff at the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the U.S., “the leadership tends to invoke these sorts of amorphous national security issues.”

Labor isn’t the only point of friction for the TPP, which is in its final stages of negotiation internationally but still has to make it through Congress once the trading partners have settled on the terms. The American dairy industry, which is being pressured to accept more dairy imports from abroad, is trying to offset this breach into their market share by exporting their own product to other countries.

“If Canada opens its dairy market to some extent and if the U.S. gets a good package from Japan, then the U.S. could lower its barriers to New Zealand,” said Michael Smart, vice president of Rock Creek Global Advisors, a consulting firm that works on trade.

Negotiators have many such wrinkles to iron out in the coming weeks, and the Obama administration will likely have to account for many more when the TPP comes before Congress, which is likely to happen in September or October.

But some participants foresee a longer timeline for the agreement.

Moderating a panel before Kerry delivered his address, Frederick Kempe, the president and chief executive of the Atlantic Council, set the tone for the discussion by telling an anecdote.

“I asked a someone who worked on NAFTA what it takes to get one of these things done,” he said. “The reply was, ‘You have no idea what you’re getting into.’”


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The drone debate: Does the coming swarm of flying gadgets require new privacy laws?

CyPhy drone (Image courtesy of CyPhy Works)

CyPhy drone (Image courtesy of CyPhy Works)

Noticeably missing from the recommendations unveiled earlier this year were any privacy oversights. For the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the plaintiffs in the suit against the FAA, that was inexcusable.

The advocacy group’s website site is full of unnerving facts about camera-wielding drones. They can be equipped with facial recognition, license plate scanners, the capacity to track multiple targets, and the ability to operate at distances and heights making them impossible to detect. Drones are “designed to undertake constant, persistent surveillance to a degree that former methods of video surveillance were unable to achieve,” according to EPIC.

The courts are not the only avenue to affect policy change at the FAA. Public comment on the framework will be accepted until this Friday.

But many experts argue that the FAA isn’t the governing body that should be charged with ensuring drones don’t violate privacy. What’s more, others – chiefly drone-makers and their advocates – question whether unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, even require a new set of privacy standards, saying that existing laws are already enough.

In a privacy impact assessment issued alongside the proposed framework, the FAA stated that while it “acknowledges that privacy concerns have been raised about unmanned aircraft operations … these issues are beyond the scope of this rulemaking.”

While some privacy advocates are worried that the omission may allow for invasive surveillance from commercial or government drones operating inside the US, the drone community said those concerns are more of a red herring than anything else.

“The FAA has wisely backed off all privacy issues [because]there’s no need for a new federal privacy bureaucracy [when]states already have protections in place,” says Charles Tobin, a privacy rights lawyer at the law firm Holland & Knight, who represents a coalition of media outlets advocating for drone usage for the purposes of journalism.

“The laws that are on the books are all technology agnostic. They apply to computers, they apply to still cameras, they apply to wireless microphones, they apply to video cameras … and there’s no reason that they can’t be applied – as already written – to UAV,” he says.

Relying on existing legal protections should be the obvious choice, says Brendan Schulman, head of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems practice at the law firm Kramer Levin in New York.

Nicknamed “the Drone Lawyer,” Mr. Schulman says that “if the concern is physical intrusion or inappropriate photographs, state law governing offenses such as trespass, stalking, peeping or unlawful surveillance … apply.” That means that what people are most fearful of – being stalked, harassed, or surveilled by a drone, or being victimized by a peeping tom behind a drone – are already acts bound by law.

Simply put: the states have things covered, he says.

REGULATORS LAG BEHIND TECHNOLOGY
A presidential memorandum issued the same day as the FAA’s proposed regulations relays the responsibility to “develop a framework regarding privacy, accountability, and transparency for commercial and private [unmanned aerial systems]use” to the Department of Commerce. The memo states that the department must initiate a “multistakeholder engagement process” within 90 days of the memo’s release – so it must begin work by mid-May.

But government trying to regulate a specific piece of technology is not the best approach, says Matt Waite, professor of journalism and founder of the Drone Journalism Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which explores the ways in which drones can be used to further journalistic aims.

“As we are already seeing, the government lags way behind technology when it comes to laws that would deal with that technology. It’s taken the FAA a long time to come up with [proposed]rules for these drones and they’re flying around right now. They’re being used for commercial purposes even though the FAA says, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ ”

Mr. Waite says it’s important to determine exactly what people can’t do – what actions need to be stopped. “We need to start thinking about what we consider a reasonable expectation of privacy in our modern times. And if that’s not allowing [me to]photograph [someone]streaking in their backyard, then that’s great. We can say I can’t do that. But it shouldn’t matter how I do that, [just that]you don’t want me to do it.”

It’s about recognizing that once privacy has been violated, how it was violated is no longer important, says Helen Greiner, chief executive officer of Massachusetts robotics and drone company CyPhy Works. She says that although she understands the privacy concerns related to the commercial use of drones, those concerns are often misdirected: “It’s not a drone issue. It’s a camera issue. In that way, it’s kind of a red herring.”

“You need to go to the real issue, which is pointing cameras at things they shouldn’t be pointed at,” Ms. Greiner says. “And if we’re going to talk about privacy with cameras, it should be for all cameras … whether they’re on a drone or a balloon.”

She says she doesn’t worry that public fear might hurt her business because the drones sold by CyPhy Works are used to perform specific commercial functions. “They may be used to survey a property or a facility, for example,” but they’re not being used to capture footage surreptitiously, Greiner says.

“I believe privacy is an important issue and that it should be regulated, but rules already exist,” she explains. She says it’s unlikely that fears related to the perceived loss of privacy will bog down final passage of FAA regulations – something she’s anxiously awaiting: “It might be wishful thinking, but I don’t foresee a tightening in terms of the finalized regulations.”

THE CASE FOR PRIVACY POLICIES
A public commentary period on the proposed regulations expires Friday, but there’s no firm deadline for when the FAA must have finalized regulations in place. Experts think it could take two years, possibly longer – which means the waiting game has only begun. It also means that commercial drone use will remain technically illegal for the duration, outside of a handful of exemption-type permissions granted by the FAA.

Amie Stepanovich, senior policy counsel for privacy advocacy group Access Now, says that there’s room for improvement when it comes to ensuring personal privacy. That’s because drone technology is in a league of its own: “Drones have [the]capacity to bring a bunch of different surveillance technologies onto a singular platform and to reach into areas that other vehicles have not been able to get to.”

Ms. Stepanovich says that limitations should be put in place to restrict the ways in which government agencies can use drone technology for the purpose of surveillance. “We need things that will, for example, protect users’ location information from being collected and tracked,” she says. “It comes back to tracking people over time without a warrant and being able to pinpoint their exact location. … and we need to make sure that that information is adequately protected.”

But she’s also a fan of technology agnosticism. She says that whatever restrictions are put in place, they should not be drawn up as drone-specific. “There are several other different kinds of technologies that are coming out,” she says, referring to Stingray trackers that are now being used by law enforcement agencies to gather data from cellphones.

The presidential memo issued in conjunction with the FAA’s proposal states that agencies must “comply with the Privacy Act of 1974, which, among other things, restricts the collection and dissemination of individuals’ information that is maintained in systems of records, including personally identifiable information.”

Although the White House’s assurance that government agencies will be held accountable to legacy privacy standards is a start, Stepanovich recommends further attribution and transparency.

“The FAA has a publicly accessible database of who is able to fly airplanes in any specific geographic area in the United States. But they haven’t made a similar commitment to do that for drone operators,” Stepanovich says. She calls that a double standard.

People won’t know which agency, company, or person is behind the remote control of the drone flying over their homes, Stepanovich says. “So the FAA definitely has a role to play in protecting privacy,” she says.

Stepanovich suggests the FAA incorporate a registry: “We’re talking about transparency, requiring that drone users register what technology they are deploying on their drones, and what capacity these drones will have. This just gets at making sure people are aware of what’s going on in their own area.”

Philly VA pushes back on investigation

US-DeptOfVeteransAffairs-Seal-Large-702x336

WASHINGTON — The Philadelphia branch of the Department of Veterans Affairs has already fixed some of the problems noted by federal inspectors who said the office altered quality reviews, violated claim policies and had stacks of unopened mail, a top VA official said Monday.

Last week’s report by the VA inspector general’s office is the latest blow to an organization routinely accused of chronic mismanagement, cooked books and retaliation against whistleblowers. The investigation began in June when the inspector general’s hotline received numerous complaints about the Philadelphia VA regional office. According to the report, many of those callers were VA staff concerned with reprisals against employees who raised problematic issues with management.

VA Under Secretary of Benefits Allison Hickey told reporters in a conference call that while she agrees with the findings in the VA inspector general’s report, recent restructuring has already solved most of the regional office’s problems.

“The report that was released by the IG, from my perspective, reflects conditions as they were over a year ago, and we knew that,” Hickey said.

The VA inspector general’s report was released last Wednesday. It documents numerous problems in the way the office operates. They include confirmed cases in which the Philadelphia VA violated claim processing protocol and, in at least one instance, concealed bins of unprocessed mail. The report also expressed concern for employees at a VA call center, who routinely complained about a lack of bathrooms, leaking roofs and insect and vermin infestations.

Hickey claims that the report does not reflect changes made last summer, including improved claim dating procedures, new call center facilities and mass retraining of VA staff. She also noted that the VA encourages employees to report problems without fearing reprisal.

“We are inviting our employees to tell us when they see something that causes them concern,” said Hickey when asked what will happen to those employees who reported the Philadelphia and National Call Center problems.

“The majority of [problems raised by the report] have already been fixed,” she said.

Hickey is overseeing a parallel internal investigation of the Philadelphia VA that will be completed at the end of June.

Many veterans’ groups were unimpressed with Hickey’s assurances.

Joe Davis, director of public affairs for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, viewed the Philadelphia VA’s story with skepticism.

“When the VA says they’ve fixed everything, you better make sure somebody goes in there and does fix everything. And that’s a trust problem that the VA has,” Davis said.

Davis also pointed to the culture of the VA, which he believes is out of sync with the military it serves.

“The problem with the VA is they forgot who they work for,” said Davis. “They don’t work for the next line supervisor, director, hospital manager or regional office director. They work for the veterans.”

Obama to wounded warriors: ‘We’ve got your back’

  • President Barack Obama speaks with spectators after the cyclists have set off on the Soldier Ride. (Nick Kariuki/MEDILL)
    President Barack Obama speaks with spectators after the cyclists have set off on the Soldier Ride. (Nick Kariuki/MEDILL)

WASHINGTON — Under clear skies, President Obama blasted an air horn Thursday to start the Wounded Warrior Project’s Soldier Ride from the White House’s South Lawn.

Speaking before the bikes rolled out, Obama said the event was “a chance to say to all the returning heroes that you’re not alone. That we’ve got your back. We’re going to be with you every step of the way.”

The nationwide, annual ride offers wounded service members and veterans the chance to salve the physical, mental and emotional wounds they may have suffered through cycling and the common bond of military service.

Over 50 riders from all branches of the armed forces signed up for the three-day, 60 mile challenge, many riding on adaptive bicycles.

Obama was joined by Vice President Joe Biden and Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald. This year marked the sixth time that the event was welcomed to the White House.

The first Soldier Ride was in 2004 when Chris Carney, a Long Island, New York, bartender, biked across the country to raise money for the Wounded Warrior Project, an organization that supports injured troops.

The WWP claims over 68,000 alumni and more than 10,500 family members involved, as of April 1.


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Hard-luck vets find therapy partners in rescue dogs

CHICAGO — For many in the armed services, valor means courage against impossible odds. But for one group in Chicago, valor has a different meaning. Veterans Advancing Lives of Rescues, VALOR, is the name of a new program created by Safe Humane Chicago. The nonprofit organization pairs veterans working through tough times with dogs that have been confiscated in criminal cases for abuse or neglect and are now property of the city of Chicago.

“They are a little on a parallel track, in the sense that they have suffered some setbacks in their lives emotionally and sometimes physically,” said Janice Triptow, manager of behavior and training at Safe Humane Chicago. “So the marriage of these two populations is interesting and I think heartwarming.”

VALOR’s eight-week pilot program finished in November, when five veterans from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps learned training techniques and socialization skills to help the dogs become more adoptable. All of the veterans in VALOR are part of Thresholds, a Chicago-based provider of recovery services for people facing mental health challenges.

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, “more than 1.3 million veterans received specialized mental health treatment from VA for issues related to mental health.” The 2014 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress estimated that 49,933 veterans were homeless in the U.S. on a given night in January 2014.

Christa Velbel, VALOR co-founder and a Safe Humane Chicago volunteer, said the goal of the program is “to use this magical but scientifically documented human-animal bond to take people and dogs who have been through a lot of difficulty and a lot of pain and make their lives happier again.”

Donald Birdsong discusses why he joined the Army in the 1970s.

Army veteran Donald Birdsong, who suffered setbacks after losing his job, participated in VALOR’s second session along with four other veterans and graduated from the program on March 23. Of the 19 dogs that went through his session, seven have been adopted, nine are in foster homes, two remain in city custody and one was returned to its owner, according to Velbel.

VALOR’s next eight-week training session begins Monday and will include five more veterans. Learn more about this endeavor here.


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The Marine Corps’ Archeological Treasure Trove

An Afghan soldier, second from left, and U.S. Marines respond to an explosion inside a mock Afghan village during a training exercise on Sept. 23, 2008, at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif. The U.S. Marine Corps recently licensed another 300 square miles at Twentynine Palms from the Bureau of Land Management.

An Afghan soldier, second from left, and U.S. Marines respond to an explosion inside a mock Afghan village during a training exercise on Sept. 23, 2008, at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif. The U.S. Marine Corps recently licensed another 300 square miles at Twentynine Palms from the Bureau of Land Management.

TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. — The Twentynine Palms Air Ground Combat Center is a 1,100-square-mile training facility for U.S. Marines where infantry units hurl grenades, aircraft drop bombs and artillery batteries pummel the earth with 100-pound shells.

But buried beneath the ground in this large swath of California’s Mojave Desert are brittle pieces of stone technology dating back 12,000 years.

So before Marines can start training, Defense Department archaeologists have to ensure that the cache of prehistoric Native American artifacts scattered about are surveyed, catalogued and collected. The Marines recently licensed another 300 square miles from the Bureau of Land Management, and the archeologists already are on the ground there.

“We have more than 2,000 sites on the base,” said John Hale, one of the three full-time archaeologists who work at Twentynine Palms, “and we’ve only surveyed about 50 percent of it.”

Hale’s team has completed the initial phase of archaeological assessment for the new acquisition, which involves systematically walking around the land and noting areas of interest and possible past habitation. But the real work begins once sites have been singled out for excavation.

John Hale is one of three full-time archaeologists who work at Twentynine Palms. (Tobias Burns/MEDILL)

John Hale is one of three full-time archaeologists who work at Twentynine Palms. (Tobias Burns/MEDILL)

“We’re looking for areas that have a potential subsurface component,” said Leslie Glover, another of the base’s archaeologists. “When you start to see relationships between objects over horizontal distances, that’s when things really get interesting.” For example, if scientists find stone shavings in one spot and burnt seeds nearby, they begin to see the patterns of a rudimentary economy.

But discerning these kinds of ancient geographical relationships takes time, and work can continue on a dig site for months and sometimes years. Given that the Marine Corps has been fighting for usage rights to the BLM-managed land for almost a decade, this is time the military says it does not have.

“We need the land for brigade-level training, which is essential,” said Capt. Justin Smith, a public affairs officer at Twentynine Palms. “This is the first time the base is going to be able to do live fire exercises on such a large scale, with 15,000 Marines and sailors working together.”

The military archeologists’ first responsibility is to accommodate the training needs of the Marines, but it’s only part of the job. “The other 50 percent comes from our own evaluations of what has to get done from a cultural perspective,” Smith said.

After the excavations are completed, the team members begin what they call the mitigation phase of their work, looking at the potential impact of various activities on or near the site, moving targets and cordoning off sensitive locations.

“We put a lot of things in boxes and prep them for display,” said Charlene Keck, collections manager for the department. “That’s often the best thing we can do to preserve the heritage here.”

The preservation sites at Twentynine Palms are numerous enough to fill an on-base museum full of projectile points, milling slabs and rock art panels, some types of which are unique to the region. There are two main display areas, rooms for examination and a storage facility packed to the brim with artifacts.

An on-base museum at Twentynine Palms features projectile sites and milling slabs. (Tobias Burns/MEDILL)

An on-base museum at Twentynine Palms features projectile sites and milling slabs. (Tobias Burns/MEDILL)

The artifacts are thought to be mostly Serrano, one of the indigenous peoples of California, but other migratory populations are likely represented as well.
At one site on the base, Dead Man Lake, charred bits of ancient mesquite pods have been found, as well as pictographs and rock drawings as old as 10,000 years.
The base also has more-recent archaeological evidence to consider and collect. Much of it relates to early American homesteading and mining operations. There are old American military roads and airstrips, as well.

But the heart of the archaeology office at Twentynine Palms lies in the prehistoric past. “I have a particular fondness for some of the oldest artifacts,” Glover said, referencing some domed scraping tools used by the Serrano. “I have the incredibly scientific view that they’re really, really cool.”


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Congresswomen: Abducted Nigerian schoolgirls should not be forgotten

Rep. Federica Wilson, (D) - Florida, is giving a speech Wednesday at the Capitol to remind people of the Nigerian schoolgirls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram one year ago. (Andersen Xia/MEDILL)

Rep. Federica Wilson, (D) – Florida, is giving a speech Wednesday at the Capitol to remind people of the Nigerian schoolgirls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram one year ago. (Andersen Xia/MEDILL)

WASHINGTON — Marking the one-year anniversary of the abduction of 276 Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram, lawmakers spoke at the Capitol Wednesday. Two girls who escaped, along with some 50 others, attended the press conference. The House Foreign Affairs committee is considering funding to resettle some of the displaced people in the U.S., using some of millions of dollars seized by the United States from former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha. The new Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said Tuesday in a statement that he cannot promise to find the remaining missing girls. Continue reading