A Justice Department plane carrying prisoners took off from Oklahoma City on Tuesday morning and came right back again after smoke was reported in the passenger section, The Oklahoman reported.
The aircraft landed without incident only minutes after takeoff, and no one was injured, an airport spokeswoman, Karen Carney, told the newspaper. About 150 people were on the twin-engine jetliner, but it was not known how many were prisoners, or where the prisoners were destined.
The prisoners remained on the plane while the problem was investigated. The DOJ was sending another plane to Oklahoma City to take the prisoners to their destination.
The incident was the second involving a DOJ aircraft in less than a month. About three weeks ago, a DOJ craft had to set down on Interstate 80 in northern New Jersey because of a fuel line malfunction. No one was injured.
A former U.S. Attorney and University of South Carolina graduate will join his alma mater to help with alumni relations, fundraising and development, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce-sponsored LegalNewsLine.com reported Tuesday.
South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster
Henry McMaster, who was the Columbia-based U.S. Attorney from 1981 to 1985, will be a senior adviser at the college. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of South Carolina in 1969 and a degree from its law school in 1973.
“Henry McMaster is an established and recognized leader who brings a wealth of experience and contacts with USC alumni, donors and friends,” Michelle Dodenhoff, University of South Carolina vice president for development and alumni relations, said in a statement. “His assistance will be invaluable.”
McMaster previously served as South Carolina attorney general from 2003 to 2011. He had an unsuccessful bid for the state’s Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2010.
A lawyer for a witness in an insider-trading case will have to choose between his client and his personal ambition, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled on Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Robert P. Patterson of the Southern District of New York told the lawyer, Francisco Navarro, that he couldn’t continue to represent the witness, Ali Far, if he followed through on his intent to apply for a post in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, Preet Bahrara, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“My belief is, if you do apply, you will be disqualified and your firm may be disqualified,” the judge said. Navarro is with the firm Kobre & Kim LLP.
Navarro acknowledged that he planned to apply to become an Assistant U.S. Attorney, but he said he had not yet done so. The judge told him he must not apply at this time if he continues to represent Far, The Journal reported.
Far, who founded a California hedge fund, is a cooperating witness in a broad insider-trading investigation. He is expected to testify against Galleon Group hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam, who is accused by the government of reaping millions in illicit profits from an insider-trading scheme.
Just over a year ago, a prosecutor in the case announced his plans to leave the U.S. Attorney’s office and start his own firm, as we reported at the time.
Remarks by ICE Director John Morton at the Funeral Mass for ICE Special Agent Jaime J. Zapata
AS DELIVERED
Good morning. My name is John Morton. I’m a colleague of Jaime Zapata’s and Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The American poet William Wallace once wrote “Every man dies. Not every man really lives.” We are here today, in this place, to honor a man who really lived – Jaime Jorge Zapata. A man who followed his father Amador into a career of law enforcement – a career not of riches but of service and sacrifice; a career of protecting people and their communities from criminals; a career of putting himself in harm’s way for the benefit of others.
Jaime died at the hands of gunmen on a highway in the state of San Luis Potosi in Mexico, a long, long way from home. His death was a dark moment – an unspeakable loss for his parents, for his four brothers, for his fiancé Stacye. It was also a dark day for ICE and all of Jaime’s fellow agents and officers.
I submit to you, however, that as dark as this moment is, Jaime’s life is really all about light. Everyone in this room will eventually meet his or her Maker, and the real question on that day won’t be how we died but how we lived. When it’s my turn, I want to say that I lived like Jaime.
I want to say that I fought like Jaime for what was right, what was decent, what was good. I want to say that I treated others like Jaime did – standing by my friends and family through thick and thin; more concerned about others than myself. I want to say that I had a purpose like Jaime did – wanting to make a difference in this world; believing in my agency and its mission; doing my job with integrity.
Jaime Zapata died fighting for what was right. Fighting to protect not only the people of this country but also the people of Mexico from drug traffickers and organized criminals.
Mr. and Mrs. Zapata your son represents the best of America – he is why we are a great country. The men who shot into his car are empty and without souls. They could live a thousand years but would still amount to nothing, nothing compared to Jaime.
Like so many of our agents and officers, Jaime joined ICE after a stint with the Border Patrol. He spent his last five years in our office in Laredo. In short order he became one of our best, investigating drug trafficking, gun running and money laundering. He was simply born to be a special agent.
He was known for his dedication, love of his job, and caring nature. He loved fishing and barbequing, had a beautiful voice, and a great sense of humor. His best quality, however, was that he didn’t have a selfish bone in his body. His mother raised him right.
He loved his friends and family without reservation; he was always more concerned about helping others than himself, and he never did a truly mean turn to anyone. As Victor Avila, the man shot with Jaime that day put it, “Jaime was just genuinely a good guy.”
Folks, we have lost something special in Jaime Zapata. Something rare. Something not easily replaced. ICE is fortunate to count him as one of our own.
Now I say ICE is fortunate, and not was fortunate, because Jaime is and always will be very much alive at ICE. His approach to life is our approach: belief in the mission; in our country; in making a difference; in right always, always triumphing over wrong.
This has been a very hard week for ICE, but we are a great agency doing right by the people of this country. We will prevail in this dark moment. No one – not gunmen in Mexico, not criminals here – will keep us from doing our job.
And it’s not just ICE that will rise to honor and vindicate Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila. Like the Zapata family, ICE has brothers – a lot of them. DEA, FBI, ATF, CBP, the Secret Service, the Marshals, CIS, state police, county sheriffs, city police departments. In Mexico, SSP, PGR, the military, Aduanas.
Together, the United States and Mexico will bring the long, hard arm of the law down on Jaime and Victor’s shooters. Together we will look after our people. Together we will continue to see that Jaime and Victor’s work is done and that the rule of law triumphs over lawlessness and empty violence. There is no other way. Acquiescing to the rule of criminals consigns our children, Mexico’s children to a hopeless and empty path. My friends: no retreat, no compromise. Our cause is just, our cause is right, there is no other way.
Let me close by thanking the Zapata family for lending us Jaime. Your son, your brother, your fiancé was an exceptional man, and you should take enormous pride in his work and the way he lived his life. He was a credit to our agency and someone we will honor for a very, very long time.
Thank God America has people like Jaime Zapata. We would be lost if we didn’t.
God bless and all of you remember Jaime Zapata for the great agent and the great person that he was.
One of the targets of the deadly anthrax letters of 2001 still doubts the FBI’s conclusion that Bruce E. Ivins, who worked at a Maryland Army laboratory and committed suicide in 2008 as he was about to be indicted, was the sole culprit.
“I still wonder who sent it and why they sent it,” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, remarked last month at the Newseum Washington, D.C., according to an account in the Washington Post.
Leahy’s skepticism may have been reinforced last week, when a panel of scientists questioned the efficacy of the genetic testing used by the FBI to allege that a Ivins acted alone in mailing the deadly letters to Capitol Hill and media outlets. Despite the scientists’ findings, the FBI said it had no reason, given all the evidence, to alter its conclusion that Ivins was guilty in the crime that killed five people and sickened 17 others.
But in an interview with the Post last week, Leahy said he still has “extreme doubts” about the case. “I’ve expressed those concerns to the FBI, and this report adds to those concerns,” Leahy said. Other Capitol Hill critics of the anthrax investigation include Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the judiciary panel, and Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), from whose district the letters were sent.
Those who doubt the FBI’s investigation can point out that the government had to pay several million dollars to settle a suit brought by Steven J. Hatfill, another scientist who was long a focus of the investigation but was ultimately cleared.
Then, too, some things about the mailings have never been explained, among them why Leahy and Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, then the Democratic majority leader, were targets of anthrax-contaminated letters. It is doubtful that, outside of political Washington, either senator’s name was instantly recognizable.
Leahy’s doubts about the anthrax investigation may carry extra weight, given that he was a prosecutor in Vermont and he is hardly a flamboyant publicity-seeker. “Were there people who at the very least were accessories after the fact?” Leahy asked. “I think there were.”
“Call it an old prosecutor’s instinct,” he added.
Attorney General Eric Holder spoke at former Indiana Secretary of State Joseph Hogsett’s investiture as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, the Associated Press said.
Holder, who spoke at the ceremony Friday at the Indiana Repertory Theater in downtown Indianapolis, said he looks forward to working with Hogsett on high-priority issues like terrorism, white-collar crime, gun violence and civil rights.
Hogsett was confirmed by the Senate in September, the Associated Press said.
