Cory Booker vs Jeff Vanderbeek: No Tickets To Newark's Springsteen Concert

Newark Mayor Booker says he was denied Springsteen tickets after blasting N.J. Devils Executive

Call him a "high-class, highfalutin huckster and hustler?"

Well then, you can just forget about those Springsteen tickets.

A day after Newark Mayor Cory Booker lashed out at Devils managing partner Jeff Vanderbeek — accusing him of exploiting the city — the mayor said the team owner turned down his request for seats to next month’s sold-out Bruce Springsteen concert at the Prudential Center.

The growing animosity follows an arbitrators’ decision earlier this week that came down hard against the city over millions in rent and parking revenues at the downtown arena.

Booker resolved this week that he would not set foot inside the Prudential Center until the revenue dispute is settled.

The uneasy partnership between Vanderbeek and Booker has long been strained by the dispute over back rent and unpaid parking revenues.

That relationship flared anew on Tuesday, after an arbitrators panel found the city — which invested $210 million in the arena — was owed $14.7 million in back rent and relocation expenses. But the arbitrators also said the city owed the Devils $15.3 million in parking revenue, excess taxes and capital costs.

The decision infuriated Booker. Calling Vanderbeek "one of the most despicable owners" in the National Hockey League, the mayor labeled the Devils owner a "highfalutin, high-class huckster and hustler."

Vanderbeek declined to discuss the matter today. But after a reporter asked whether any elected officials had sought Springsteen tickets for the May 2 concert, arena officials immediately offered a copy of a March 22 private e-mail request from the mayor’s campaign staff for tickets — a communication that ordinarily would have likely been kept confidential.

Its release gave voice to the team owner’s obvious displeasure over the mayor’s name-calling.

In the e-mail, a staffer for the mayor’s "Booker Team" wrote that Booker "would like to attend the Bruce Springsteen concert with a group of his family. I completely understand this is on high demand and probably sold out. Do you know if there is at least 4 tickets?

Originally he asked for 10, if they are available which I doubt it, please let me know if you can get us those tickets for him.

I will get his credit card as soon as you let me know how many are available."

Though Booker agreed to pay for the tickets, the concert is sold out and fans can no longer get seats unless they go to a scalper.

Booker said today the Devils’ release of the e-mail was "petty," considering he played a crucial role in getting The Boss to Newark in the first place.

"They called me and asked me to lobby to get Bruce Springsteen to come to the arena," Booker said referring to conversations with the Devils. "I went through a lot of hoops to try to get him to come here."

Booker also noted that despite putting up the bulk of the money to build the arena, the city has no seats for big events.

"Usually when the government bodies put in a large amount of money, the officials have some tickets for community use," Booker said, adding that the tickets were not for his family. "This is something that Jeff never allowed for."

The mayor said the Devils informed him today that his ticket request had been denied, which is rendered moot by his refusal to set foot in the arena until the rent and parking dispute is resolved.

Asked if Prudential Center denied the mayor’s request, a spokesman for the arena said Booker’s statement "simply is not true."

Booker, a lifelong Springsteen fan, said he was going to see Bruce at Madison Square Garden Friday night.


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Sources: CBS, David Letterman Show, NJ.com, Youtube, Google Maps

Obama & Gates Clashed Over McChrystal, Obama Won

Gates Advocated Keeping McChrystal, Source Says


Defense Secretary Robert Gates backed keeping Gen. Stanley McChrystal on the job because he was vital to the war effort in Afghanistan, but Gates was overruled, a senior Pentagon official told CNN's Barbara Starr.

The official has direct knowledge of the events but declined to be identified because of the internal administration discussions.

President Barack Obama relieved McChrystal of command of the Afghan war on Wednesday, a day after Rolling Stone published critical comments about top White House officials by members of McChrystal's staff.

Gates was initially furious about the article, but said McChrystal had to stay in command because the war is at such a critical point, a second source -- who also asked not to be named on internal administration discussions -- told CNN.

But as it became clear the White House didn't feel same way and the issue was not going to fade, Gates shifted his position and agreed that keeping the general would be an untenable distraction.

Technically, McChrystal resigned.

It's still unclear whether Obama had made up his mind before sitting down with McChrystal, but CNN has learned that during their one-on-one meeting, Obama gave the general a chance to defend himself.

"The president asked him about the (Rolling Stone) article," said a senior administration official.

McChrystal "tried to explain the situation," the official said.

That senior administration official, who briefed reporters, said that once Obama accepted McChrystal's resignation, he wasted no time finding his replacement.

After McChrystal walked out of the White House following his 30-minute face-to-face meeting with the president, the president immediately huddled with a team of advisors to decide who would replace McChrystal.

That group included Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Gates, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, National Security Advisor Jim Jones and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

For 45 minutes, they mulled over the president's options.

The White House earlier had asked for a list of possible replacements for McChrystal in the event the president replaced him.

Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, was one of those considered. The president chose Petraeus.

There is a continuity -- Petraeus is familiar with all the players in the region and he is familiar to NATO partners.

Then Obama called Petraeus, who was already in the White House Situation Room, into the Oval Office to ask him to take over the mission in Afghanistan.

The meeting lasted for 40 minutes, and Petraeus agreed.

The senior administration official said despite the fact that Petraeus was asked to give up Central Command, he did not consider it a demotion.

Obama acknowledged the move was not "the normal course" for a top general to go from being in charge of Central Command to taking command in Afghanistan.

The president also acknowledged it was "a sacrifice for Petraeus."

Obama then went to the Situation Room, where his national security team was waiting.

The senior administration official described the president as "stern" as he walked the team through his decision.

The official said the president told everyone, "We need to remember why we're doing this."

Obama went on to explain that it was understandable to have disagreements or tension within his security team, but when those disagreements turn petty, that does not serve the men and women fighting for the mission.

The president expressed "regret" and "sorrow", saying that "this was a sad day", the senior administration official said.

Then Obama wrapped up the meeting, and called Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai to explain his decision.

McChrystal and Karzai had been close, according to administration and Pentagon officials.

The president then went to the Rose Garden to face the cameras and announce his decision to the American people.

Since then, according to White House spokesman Tommy Vietor, Obama has talked to British Prime Minister David Cameron, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Sens. Harry Reid, Carl Levin and John McCain.

He is urging the Senate to follow his lead and to quickly confirm his nominee.


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Sources: CNN, MSNBC, Google Maps

Graham, Rove, Rubio & Jeb Bush Slam Arizona's Immigration Law (Unconstitutional)

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Ariz. Immigration Law Draws GOP Criticism


When Arizona’s governor signed the country’s toughest immigration enforcement rules into law last week, Democrats — including President Barack Obama — immediately denounced it as a poorly-conceived bill that could threaten Americans’ civil liberties.

Now several national Republicans, many of them hailing from states with large Latino populations, are echoing some of those concerns.

"While I don't believe Arizona's policy was based on anything other than trying to get a handle on our broken borders, I think aspects of the law, especially that dealing with 'reasonable suspicion,' are going to put our law enforcement officers in an incredibly difficult position,” said Florida GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio in a statement Tuesday, adding that the law could “unreasonably single out people who are here legally, including many American citizens."

Another Floridian, former governor Jeb Bush, agreed with Rubio’s assessment in an interview with POLITICO, saying that the Arizona law is not “the proper approach” to solving the problem of illegal immigration.

Republican Meg Whitman, the front-runner in California's gubernatorial primary, declined to say whether the law is "racist" — as some critics allege — but told The Associated Press that Arizona's law does not offer the most effective strategy. "I think there's just better ways to solve this problem," she said.

The bill signed by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer gives local police broad authority to stop and request documents from anyone they suspect is an illegal immigrant.

Attorney General Eric Holder said earlier this week that the law could face a constitutional challenge.

That forecast was echoed by GOP strategist Karl Rove, who told an audience at a senior center in Florida that the bill could face "constitutional problems."

"I wish they hadn't passed it, in a way," Rove said, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

Using his sharpest language to date while speaking in Iowa Tuesday, Obama again said that the Arizona law could encourage racial profiling by law enforcement officials.

“You can imagine if you are an Hispanic American in Arizona — your great grandparents may have been there before Arizona was a state — but now suddenly if you don't have your papers and if you took your kid for ice cream, you're going to be harassed,” he said. “That's not the right way to go.”

Former Alaska governor and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin called Obama’s warning a “myth” during an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Tuesday.

“It's shameful, too, that the Obama administration has allowed this to become more of a racial issue by perpetuating this myth that racial profiling is a part of this law,” she said.


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Sources: Countdown with Keith Olbermann, MSNBC, Politico, Google Maps

Arianna Huffington vs Rudy Giuliani: They Spar On "Morning Joe" Over His Record

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Arianna, Giuliani Spar Over His Record


Arianna Huffington sparred with Rudy Giuliani on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" today over his endorsement of Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio over Charlie Crist in Florida's Republican Senate primary. Arianna noted that Giuliani's judgment in people "has not been stellar," a relevant factor when people are considering how much weight to give his endorsement of Rubio.

There's all this talk, that we've just heard from the mayor [Giuliani], about the takeover of government by Obama and his administration, which is so over the top, with the greatest respect, Mr. Mayor. And also, your judgment in people has not been stellar -- Bernard Kerik, anybody? So the fact that you're supporting Rubio now, I don't know exactly how seriously we should take it.

Kerik was one of Giuliani's closest allies, who went from being the mayor's bodyguard to New York's police commissioner. He later took a lucrative position at Giuliani Partners, leaving to take a job training the Iraqi police force soon after the U.S. invasion.

He failed miserably.

Despite this failure (the former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq called Kerik's tenure "a waste of time and effort"), Giuliani successfully lobbied the Bush administration to nominate Kerik as Director of Homeland Security.

Kerik ultimately withdrew his nomination, unable to survive the vetting process. He was recently sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to eight felonies charges, including tax fraud and lying to White House officials.

Giuliani defended himself by touting his record of cleaning up New York City as mayor, and saying that Kerik was just a small part of his overall reputation. Arianna responded:

That's not either/or. You are not judging the mayor's entire history. We're talking about something very important, something very specific. And we're talking also about this knee-jerk attempt to criticize the administration on everything, especially the position of the president on terrorism from a man who said you don't know if waterboarding is torture. I don't know if you still hold that position.


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Sources: MSNBC, Morning Joe Show, Huffington Post, NY Daily News, NY Mag, NY Times, The Nation, Google Maps

Robert Gates vs Obama: Dismantling U.S. Nuclear Program, Gates Disagrees

President Obama, Robert Gates Not Always Eye-to-Eye On New Nukes


President Barack Obama has been clear. He wants no new nukes.

Pentagon chief Robert Gates has been equally direct, advocating in recent years for a new generation of warheads.

And nearly 14 months into their bi-partisan-tinged partnership, Obama and Gates haven’t publicly reconciled their views. Some anti-nuclear activists suspect the pair still don’t see completely eye-to-eye and that Gates has never fully abandoned his goal of refurbishing the American nuclear arsenal with new weapons.

Now, the administration is on the verge of releasing a major nuclear policy review that could call attention to this disagreement between the Democratic president and his holdover Defense Secretary – just in time for a nuclear safety summit Obama is hosting for heads of state next month in Washington.

“Quite clearly,” said Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, “the secretary has been stating he sees a need for replacement warheads and new designs, and I’m not sure those are the words the president would want to use at this stage in the process.”

The Obama administration is acutely aware of perceptions that the Nuclear Posture Review has divided senior officials—with Vice President Joe Biden viewed as heading up an arms-control focused camp, and Gates perceived as speaking for a military and nuclear establishment that favors more funding and new weapons programs.

“This is the big challenge of the Obama administration, that it has to find some common ground for those two relatively, I wouldn’t say contradictory, but what can be distant positions,” Kristensen said.

When Obama asked Gates to stay on, the move was widely hailed for bringing continuity to the Pentagon at a time of two wars, and for avoiding the temptation any president faces to purge all of his predecessor’s appointees.

But holding over a member of the Cabinet, especially one who served a president of the opposing party, inevitably means some awkward policy clashes.

It’s not merely that a president and one of his senior advisers might diverge on an important policy question. It’s that Obama’s call to move toward a world without nuclear weapons is one of the signature tenets of his foreign policy.

And liberal arms control activists worry that Obama’s 2011 budget – which would spend more on nuclear weapons labs and related activities than the United States did at the height of the Cold War, even adjusted for inflation—goes too far to assuage the concerns of the defense secretary and leaders of the nuclear weapons complex.

“Increasing funds for nuclear weapons appears to conflict with a vision of a world without them,” former Office of Management and Budget analyst Robert Civiak said.

Asked directly about whether Obama and Gates had squared up their past differences, White House officials dismissed the question as premature ahead of the release of the policy review.

“The NPR is still being worked,” National Security Council Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said in response to questions from POLITICO.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said the Obama administration’s overall approach is in line with Gates’ views. Gates “still believes in the fundamental goals of ensuring warhead safety, security, and reliability, and believes we need a modern infrastructure to support that. Those investments are in the budget,” the spokesman said. “The RRW [Reliable Replacement Warhead] program was killed by Congress, and isn't coming back. Sec. Gates recognizes that fact.”

However, Morrell said it was too soon to say how modernization of nuclear warhead stocks would be carried out. The Pentagon is "not going to say now what the policy will be on this issue," the spokesman said.

During the presidential campaign, Obama was unequivocal in his opposition to new designs. “I will not authorize the development of new nuclear weapons,” he told Arms Control Today in September 2008.

About a month later, while still working for Bush, Gates delivered a speech calling for “urgent attention” to the Bush administration’s call for a new Reliable Replacement Warhead and warning of a “bleak” outlook for the U.S. nuclear arsenal if the new devices weren’t pursued.

“Sensitive parts do not last forever. We can and do re-engineer our current stockpile to extend its lifespan,” Gates said. “With every adjustment we move farther away from the original design that was successfully tested when the weapon was first fielded…At a certain point it will become impossible to keep extending the life of our arsenal—especially in light of our testing moratorium.”

Gates might have been expected to keep mum on the point after Obama was elected, at least in public. He didn’t.

“It is clear, at least to me, that it is important for us to continue to make investments, and I think larger investments in modernizing our nuclear infrastructure, the labs and so on, the expertise in those places, to have the resources for life extension programs and in one or two cases probably new designs that will be safer or more reliable,” Gates said last September, fielding a question at an Air Force Association conference.

So it was no accident that when Biden delivered a policy address last month about nuclear disarmament and the need to boost funding for America’s atomic labs, Gates introduced the vice president—who quickly downplayed any divisions.

“This speech was a collaborative document,” Biden told the audience at the National Defense University, in an apparent ad lib. “Bob Gates could have delivered this speech.”

Unsurprisingly, Obama’s categorical opposition to any new nuclear weapons appears to have carried the day—at least on the surface. When the administration’s 2011 budget plan emerged last month, there was no mention of any new atomic weapons programs.

But the question of whether Gates is still pushing for new designs isn’t as clear-cut, despite Biden’s 22-minute speech and the public budget proposal.

Analysts say squaring the previously stated positions of the president and the Pentagon chief depends on what the definition of the word ‘new’ is. And, as is so often the case with the federal government, the Obama budget’s proposal for a huge injection of cash should help smooth over any hard feelings at the Pentagon and the nuclear labs.

“It comes down to what constitutes ‘new,’ ’’ Kristensen added. “Even very new concepts can be proposed that are not necessarily considered ‘new,’ but as modifications of existing types of warheads. It’s not a black and white thing.”

“A big part of the nuclear review was to assure Secretary Gates and others that we would be investing in all the tools and programs necessary to keep the arsenal safe and effective for the indefinite future,” said one longtime arms control advocate, Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund. “I believe the Secretary’s concerns have been met.”

Some say Gates, a veteran government official who served as CIA director under Bush’s father, also knows when he has to get on the team.

“My guess is that Gates’s bureaucratic instincts are on autopilot,” said John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. under the Bush administration. He said the Defense Secretary may be trying to adjust to the “overwhelmingly pro-arms control” Obama team.

No matter how the Obama administration irons out its differences, Bolton contends that the U.S needs new nuclear weapons, like bunker-busters and low-yield nuclear weapons. “It would be better, cleaner, safer and more reliable simply to design what are clean, new designs intended for that purpose, which is very necessary given countries like Iran and North Korea are doing to bury hardened targets,” he said.

If Gates were to publicly renounce his call for new warheads, he would be able to cite a new study released last fall in which scientists concluded the current arsenal could last for decades without all-new warheads. In his public comments, Gates has consistently said his sole concern was reliability and safety, not trying to seek a military advantage.

“We have no desire for new capabilities. That's a red herring,” Gates said last September. “This is about modernizing and keeping safe a capability that everyone acknowledges we will have to have for some considerable period into the future.”

While the arms control community has generally been ecstatic about the repeated public calls from Obama and his administration to move towards a nuclear-free world, they are nervous that the large budget hike the White House proposed for nuclear programs pulls in the opposite direction, all but ensuring that the U.S. will have a large and growing nuclear weapons complex for the indefinite future.

Obama is proposing spending $7.3 billion in nuclear weapons-related activities in fiscal 2011, up 14 percent from this year, according to Civiak. The total 2011 request is the largest ever, and 40 percent higher, adjusted for inflation, than during the Cold War.

“Future administrations could use this new capacity to produce new nuclear weapons,” warned said Nickolas Roth of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability.

Administration officials are scrambling to wrap up the delayed nuclear posture review in advance of Obama’s nuclear safety summit in Washington and a Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty review conference set to take place in May at the United Nations.

Given Gates’s earlier statements in favor of new warheads, arms control advocates will be reading the U.S. strategy paper closely to see whether programs purportedly aimed at refurbishing the current nuclear arsenal could amount to new weapons programs in disguise.

“That’s a very fair concern,” Cirincione said. “People will be taking a very close look at what the posture review says about the Life Extension Program for exactly this reason…..I think this is mostly on the up and up.”

Speaking to reporters earlier this year, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher said she was keenly aware of suspicions that ramping up funding for the nuclear labs could be seen as undercutting disarmament efforts. She said the scientists have been given explicit instructions to avoid that. “You’re not going to do things that are going to cause people to think that we’re saying one thing and doing another. Because we don’t have enough time in the day to unwind that monster,” she said.

Tauscher also insisted that Gates was fully on board with the administration’s approach—notwithstanding his past statements. “A lot of people have morphed to where we are right now,” she said.

Sources: Politico, MSNBC

Why Desiree Rogers Is Leaving: Wrong Fit For Job, Spat With Valerie

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How Desiree's Fate Was Sealed


Embattled White House social secretary Desiree Rogers finally stepped down yesterday. Sandra McElwaine on why she was always the wrong person for the job—and how she might bounce back.

Don’t cry for Desiree even though she’s gotten the hook.

Let’s face it, she was never right for the job. Traditional White House social secretaries are behind the scenes, detail-oriented worker bees who toil from dawn to dusk polishing guest lists, overseeing menus, and delicately smoothing over last-minute catastrophes. The highly visible and glamorous former corporate executive could never play that role. With her trendy designer clothes and penchant for publicity she was determined to be star, and simply too high-profile and too in your face.

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It didn’t take the gate-crashing episode at the Obamas first state dinner in November to predict the end this front-page career. She began the process herself by blitzing the media last April. In a revealing Wall Street Journal interview she crowed about a “strategic plan" to launch "the best brand on earth: the Obama brand."

"Our possibilities are endless," she enthused as she spoke of marketing the “crown jewel,” the White House. She then went on to discuss her job, which she described as a business. "Otherwise you never get there. You get caught in linen hell and flower hell, list hell.”

Wait a minute it — isn’t that what the job is supposed to be? Many former social secretaries were taken aback and grumbled discreetly among themselves. It didn’t take long for a number Washington insiders to realize she would soon be toast.

”A social secretary’s job is to help the first family put their own social mark on the White House, and it’s not about them, it’s about the family, about the first lady and the president. If it becomes about them, then there’s a problem," observes Nancy Reagan's former press secretary Sheila Tate. "There’s a difference between staff and principles. Sometimes people who have been important in their private career can’t make that adjustment."

"I don’t understand why she took the job, and I think she was quickly bored with it,” says a long-time acquaintance of Rogers'. “Arranging flowers and picking out tablecloths is definitely not her bag."

The same person also dismisses Rogers' claim that her goal was to turn the executive mansion into “the people's house.”

“Chic people are what she cares about,” she says. "They don’t have to be rich—just chic!”

After the security breach, for which the Secret Service took the rap, Desiree tried to play down her glitzy image, but a number of political players saw an opportunity, stepped in, and supervised every decision she made. Some say in December she was told to start pulling up stakes and planned to head back to Chicago, where her ex-husband, John Rogers, with whom she remains close, is an immensely wealthy and powerful hedge fund manager. (He had been trying for months to orchestrate his wife’s resurrection by talking to a variety media mavens around town.)

Before coming to Washington, Desiree was a high-powered executive and major player who raised funds for her close friends Michelle and Barack Obama and introduced them to the philanthropic and social scene. With theses illustrious connections she seemed invulnerable.

When the news of her resignation broke on Friday, many speculated that a cat fight between Desiree, presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett (who was still furious over the Indian State Dinner debacle) and Michelle Obama's chief of staff Susan Sher expedited her departure. The three women were friends and lived in the same Georgetown apartment building. Apparently they battled over East Wing turf. “I think this is a good time for me to explore opportunities in the corporate world," Rogers told the Chicago Sun-Times yesterday.

Jarrett’s response: “I completely respect her decision to return the private sector.”

According to Desiree she made her decision to move on in January but did not intend to announce it for some time. When it leaked, the Obamas issued a short statement thanking their long time friend for her service and wishing her “all the best in her future endeavors.

It’s hard to tell whose hand wielded the dagger in this particular caper. As a White House reporter reflected, "I think the real reason is that she wasn’t a good fit, not used to being an underling. In Chicago, Desiree was the queen bee – a CEO and social powerhouse – and the Obamas were just that nice young couple from the South Side.”


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Sources: The Daily Beast, MSNBC, Hardball, Chicago Suntimes, Google Maps

Amy Bishop Cover-up Completely Unveiled: Race, Privilege & William Delahunt

Massachusetts DA Rips Gap In Amy Bishop Police Report


The Norfolk district attorney ramped up his criticism of the 1986 investigation of Seth Bishop’s death yesterday, saying that it was “glaring’’ and “striking’’ that local police accounts of Amy Bishop’s armed standoff at a local business were not included in the State Police report or considered as part of the prosecutor’s decision about whether to pursue charges.

“It was a glaring omission that . . . there wasn’t the inclusion of the shooter who exited her house with a gun, leveling the gun at an innocent bystander, and making demands on that bystander,’’ William R. Keating said in a telephone interview.



Although Braintree police had documented in great detail how Bishop had pointed a 12-gauge shotgun at two employees at a local auto body shop and demanded a getaway car, there is no indication in the final State Police report that they shared this information with the troopers who worked out of the district attorney’s office and were assigned to the case.

Keating also revealed yesterday that the state trooper who wrote the report, Brian L. Howe, has told investigators in Keating’s office that he “did not have a recollection’’ of Braintree police telling him of the incident. That backs up the repeated assertions of the assistant district attorney assigned to the 1986 case, who also said he was never made aware of the second assault.

Last Friday, 23 years after Bishop escaped charges in the shooting death of her brother and her armed encounter at the body shop, police say the Harvard-educated neurobiologist fatally shot three of her colleagues at the University of Alabama at Huntsville and injured three others.

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In the aftermath, a series of troubling questions have been raised about how the Braintree case was handled, with several key figures in the investigation - including former Braintree police chief John Polio - saying they were unaware of crucial facts surrounding the death of 18-year-old Seth Bishop.

Keating said yesterday that he was confounded by Polio’s admission that he did not know Bishop had pointed her firearm at a mechanic and demanded a getaway car. These details were included in Braintree police reports made public on Tuesday after they had previously been declared missing.

“The report reflects what his own police officers saw,’’ Keating said. “And if he’s saying that he wasn’t aware that Amy Bishop took a loaded shotgun and pointed it at an innocent bystander, I find that astounding. He’s saying he didn’t read his own [officers’] reports.’’

Polio acknowledged yesterday that he read the reports of his own officers for the first time when they were released by Keating’s office this week. Polio said he did not read the reports in 1986 because his officers told him the case would be handled by State Police and the district attorney’s office.

“I’m not fingerpointing at anybody,’’ Polio said. “I know what part I played and what I did, but the lines of communication broke somewhere. I have no regrets whatsoever.’’

US Representative William D. Delahunt, who was Norfolk district attorney at the time of the 1986 shooting, has been in Israel since the Alabama shootings, but was questioned about the case yesterday at a press availability called after the congressional delegation was blocked from entering Gaza.

“I haven’t had a real opportunity to get into the details of the case, but I suspect when I return I’ll have an opportunity to become debriefed,’’ the congressman told the Associated Press.

Braintree Police Chief Paul Frazier first raised concerns about the handling of the investigation during a Saturday press conference. Yesterday, an assistant in his office referred calls to Braintree’s mayor, Joseph Sullivan, who declined to comment on Keating’s remarks.

Sullivan said town officials worked through the weekend to find the Braintree police reports, which Frazier said had been missing for more than 20 years. They were ultimately found in a box at the police station among the papers of an investigator on the case, who has since died.

“I wanted to get the facts out as quick as we could,’’ Sullivan said.

On Sunday, the Globe, citing an anonymous law enforcement official, reported that Bishop and her husband were questioned in the attempted bombing of a Harvard Medical School professor in 1993. Investigators searched the home Bishop shared with her husband, but no one was ever charged in the crime.

Bishop’s husband, James Anderson, acknowledged that he and his wife had been questioned, but he told the New York Times that he had been given a letter from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms that said: “You are hereby cleared in this incident. You are no longer a subject of the investigation.’’

However, Michael J. Sullivan, who served as US attorney for Massachusetts from 2001 to 2009 and had been acting director of the ATF, said it is extremely unusual for federal officials to write such a letter unless the suspects or those questioned were publicly linked to the case. The names of Bishop and her husband were never publicly linked to the case until after Friday’s shootings.

“There probably were one or two times during my career as a federal and state prosecutor where I felt an obligation to give that type of letter because a person’s reputation was harmed through no fault of their own and there was an exoneration of the individual,’’ said Sullivan, who emphasized that he had no personal knowledge of the Bishop case.

On Tuesday, Keating said Bishop should have been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, unlawful possession of a firearm, and unlawful possession of ammunition for pointing her shotgun at innocent bystanders. Braintree police had to order her to put down her weapon, which she did not do, forcing one officer to grab her from behind, according to the newly released reports.

Keating said the errors made in the 1986 case are the kind that shake public confidence in law enforcement.

“It’s important to go forward so that the same mistakes can’t be repeated,’’ he said.

Among those mistakes, said Keating, were letting Bishop go without questioning her the day of the shooting because police concluded she was too distraught to be interviewed and the decision by local and State Police to wait 11 days before interviewing her and her mother, the sole witnesses to the shooting.

“If you eliminated everyone from an interview that was emotionally upset after a shooting death, you’d have no one to talk to,’’ Keating said. “If someone takes a loaded shotgun, levels it at someone, and makes demands, and the person goes to the police station and gets released and there are no charges, I don’t think anyone could say that wasn’t a mistake.’’

Braintree police also should have waited for the State Police crime scene response unit to arrive at the house and allowed their troopers to take pictures and document evidence, Keating said.

According to the local police report, in the moments following the shooting, Braintree officers photographed the scene and removed evidence, like spent shells, after Howe reportedly told Captain Theodore Buker of the Braintree police that “State Police would not respond.’’ But in Howe’s six-page report, which he wrote in March 1987, he said he was directed on the day of the shooting to conduct an investigation.

It is unclear from the state and town reports when or whether State Police went to the scene that day.

Keating said it is standard procedure for smaller towns, like Braintree, to immediately hand over death investigations to the State Police and the district attorney’s office, which have more resources.

“The statutes are clear that the district attorney and the State Police attached to the district attorney have primary responsibility over the investigations of death,’’ Keating said. “There should be a clear chain of command on investigations, and as I reviewed the documents . . . based on those reports, that chain of command, that sharing of information was not there.’’





Prosecutor Says Amy Bishop Could Have Been Charged In 1986 Shooting

Norfolk County prosecutors have just announced that they have located the missing files in the 1986 shooting death of Seth Bishop by his sister, Amy Bishop. The Norfolk County district attorney now says that, after reviewing the files, he has concluded that probable cause existed in 1986 to arrest Amy Bishop and charge her with assault and weapons crimes. But, at the time, the death was declared accidental.

Here is the statement from the Norfolk District Attorney's Office:

"As a result of an internal audit of municipal records ordered by Braintree Mayor Joseph Sullivan over the weekend, today Mayor Sullivan and Braintree Police Officials hand-delivered to the Norfolk District Attorney's Office a substantial body of police reports, previously believed to be missing, relative to the 1986 shooting of Seth Bishop.

These reports have been reviewed by senior staff at the District Attorney's Office, including the Chief of Homicide, the Chief Appellate Attorney and a lieutenant detective of the State Police assigned to the Norfolk District Attorney's Detective Unit.

The District Attorney's Office is also in receipt of the State Police ballistics report relating to the shotgun that was used in the Dec. 6, 1986 shooting.

All of these documents are attached for your review, along with previously released documents.

The analysis of the newly received documents, as well as the previously released March 30, 1987 State Police report indicate that probable cause existed at that time to place Amy Bishop under arrest charged with:
Assault with a Dangerous Weapon, Chap. 265 Sec. 15B
Carrying a Dangerous Weapon, Chap. 269 Sec. 10, 12D
Unlawful possession of ammunition, Chap. 269 Ch. 10 (h)

The statute of limitations has run on all of those charges.

The reports supply significant additional details into the incident and the circumstances of the apprehension of Amy Bishop. The reports do not contradict the previously released information regarding the sole eye witness, the victim's mother, who told police at the time that she directly observed the shotgun in her daughter's hands discharge accidentally, striking and killing Seth Bishop.

Even if a Grand Jury were to hear allegations that this incident involved wanton and reckless conduct on the part of Amy Bishop -- the lowest standard for Manslaughter in Massachusetts -- the statute of limitations has barred indictment on that charge since 1992.

Mayor Sullivan stated: "On Monday, February 15, 2010 after a search of archived records, Chief Frazier located the Braintree Police reports written by officers involved with the incident. The reports were found among other investigative files maintained by a retired Braintree Police Captain." Mayor Sullivan further stated: "A review of Braintree municipal records also revealed that Amy Bishop's mother was one of 240 elected Town Meeting members. She represented Precinct 3 from 1980 to 1993. She served one year (1985) on the Braintree Arts Lottery Council, with her husband. There is no indication in town records that she served on the Personnel Board or any other elected or appointed office."

"I appreciate the work we were able to accomplish with District Attorney Keating throughout this matter and I believe our combined efforts are in the best interest of the town of Braintree," Mayor Sullivan said.

"Although the reports and my statements contain minor discrepancies, I am relieved that we now have the incident reports from the responding officers available to us," Chief Paul Frazier stated.





Amy Bishop Case: A Flawed Calculus


When it comes to Amy Bishop, the Harvard-trained biologist accused of opening fire on a roomful of colleagues at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, nothing adds up.

She was 21 years old when she shot her 18-year-old brother, Seth, to death at their family’s home in Braintree in 1986. The death was ruled an accident.

Given that Amy Bishop fired the shotgun that killed her brother into her upstairs bedroom wall before she went downstairs and shot her brother in the kitchen, that was some accident. There were inconsistencies in what she and her mother, the only other witness to the shooting, told police, but she was never charged.

In 1993, Amy Bishop and her husband, James Anderson, were questioned about a bomb in a package left at the Newton home of Dr. Paul Rosenberg. Amy Bishop and Rosenberg clashed when they both worked at Children’s Hospital in Boston. Neither Amy Bishop nor James Anderson was charged in connection with the bomb, which didn’t go off only because Rosenberg was cautious enough, in the middle of the Unabomber’s reign of terror, not to fully open the package.

And then on Sunday, three days after Amy Bishop was charged with murder - facing the death penalty in her husband’s home state, where they have considerably fewer qualms about executing people than in her home state - Anderson told Eric Moskowitz, the Globe reporter who knocked on his door, that he hadn’t bothered to learn the identities of the people his wife is accused of shooting, even though he assumes he knows them.

“I haven’t even looked to see who was killed,’’ he said. “Because I worked with those people.’’

Does that add up? If it was your spouse accused, wouldn’t you want to know who he or she supposedly shot?

Agents from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives say Dr. Rosenberg and his wife would have been killed if he had fully opened the package containing two pipe bombs. Instead, Rosenberg used a knife to cut around the top of the box and peer inside. He and his wife, an attorney, ran out of the house and called the police. The bomb didn’t detonate because the cardboard flaps that would have triggered the device were never raised.

Needless to say, with the Unabomber still running around at the time, terrorizing and targeting people who fit Rosenberg’s profile, not to mention the usual anti-Semitic loons out there, the investigation into who sent a bomb to the Rosenbergs was a serious one indeed.

But Anderson downplayed it, suggesting federal agents were on a fishing expedition. He told the Globe he considered it “being bothered, harassed,’’ when agents from the ATF questioned him and his wife about it. Given that it was common knowledge at the lab at Children’s that Amy Bishop had clashed with Rosenberg, the questioning was to be expected.

Police in Alabama say Amy Bishop shot her peers in a dispute over having been denied tenure. James Anderson said his wife should have received tenure, in part because she was generating millions for the university. Why would the university reject such a money-maker?

This is shaping up as a real blame game. Everybody is going to be second-guessed on why they didn’t hold Amy Bishop accountable for something, anything, before last Friday.

As he weighs whether he’ll run for reelection to Congress, Bill Delahunt will have to worry about more than people saying he’s too chummy with Hugo Chávez. How long before a political opponent suggests Delahunt dropped the ball when, as Norfolk County district attorney at the time, his office decided not to charge Amy Bishop with anything, even involuntary manslaughter, after she shot her brother?

Nothing we know about Amy Bishop adds up, except the number six, because that’s how many people the cops say she shot last week, and three, because that’s how many of them died.






New Doubts About 1986 Shooting



A former Braintree police chief backed away yesterday from his earlier defense of a 1986 decision not to press charges against Amy Bishop, who shot her brother to death that year and then, on Friday, allegedly killed three of her colleagues at the University of Alabama.

John Polio, now 87, said in an interview yesterday that after reading a State Police report compiled in 1986 and released to the public last weekend, he has questions about the quality of the investigation into the death of Seth Bishop, which was declared an accident.

The report, which Polio said was not given to him at the time, reveals that State Police did not interview Amy Bishop and her mother, who witnessed the shooting, until 11 days later, and there were some discrepancies in their accounts of what happened.

“When I hear everything and I see this report for the first time, if this information was at my hands then, yes, I would have to do a lot of thinking before I made a decision then,’’ Polio said.

Polio’s comments came as Bishop, 45, stood before a judge in Alabama for the first time since the shooting. At a closed-door hearing, the charges against her were explained.

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, neighbors and colleagues shared revealing recollections about Bishop during her days living in Braintree, Newton, and Ipswich and studying at Northeastern and Harvard universities. They described her as someone who was obviously bright, but also difficult or odd.

In Newton, neighbor Johnny Henk said he remembered Bishop as a “wacky’’ woman who was often seen yelling at her husband and children, but who also would play the violin in her home and invite neighborhood children to sit and listen.

“One minute she’s fine, the other minutes hollering and screaming,’’ Henk said.

In Ipswich, police said that Bishop called 911 so many times to complain about the noise of children riding dirt bikes or playing basketball that police referred to her and her husband as “regular customers.’’

“There was never enough we could do for them,’’ Officer Michael Thomas said. “When someone calls the police a lot about their neighbors, it says either they are not able to cooperate enough with them or that they are just unable to adapt to a neighborhood.’’

And in Hamilton, where Bishop joined a writing group, other aspiring authors recalled that the biologist-writer was talented but awkward. Bishop had penned three dramatic novels - a suspense thriller about an IRA operative; a tale about a virus that made all women barren and ended mankind; and a book she titled “Martians in Belfast,’’ which recounted the life of a girl growing up during the Troubles of Ireland, according to Rob Dinsmoor, a member of the Hamilton Writers Group, which Bishop attended in the late 1990s.

“She really had a knack for writing character, dread, and suspense,’’ Dinsmoor said. But, he said, she sometimes felt ill at ease in the academic world. “She didn’t know how to interact with them. She would just say what’s on her mind, and that would get her in trouble.’’

The shootings in Alabama dredged up some powerful memories for a former mechanic in Braintree, who was at work on the day in 1986 that Bishop shot her brother and then ran from the family home.

Tom Pettigrew said a wild-eyed Bishop burst into the dealership where he was working, pointed a shotgun at employees, and said that she had had a fight with her husband and he was going to come after her, so she needed a getaway car.

“I yelled, ‘What are you doing?’ and she screamed at me to put my hands up. So I put my hands up,’’ recalled Pettigrew, 45, in an interview at his home in Quincy yesterday.

Pettigrew said Braintree police briefly questioned him and several other employees, but authorities never contacted him again. Now, after the deaths in Alabama, Pettigrew wonders why authorities didn’t follow up more aggressively.

“It was almost like they wanted to put it on the shelf and forget about it,’’ said Pettigrew, whose encounter with Bishop was first reported by the Boston Herald yesterday. “I think if that happened to me I’d be wrapping up a long prison sentence. But with this, it seems like they just wanted it to go away.’’

Polio, the Braintree police chief at the time, said yesterday that he knew Bishop had to be apprehended at gunpoint, but he said he did not know she had pointed the shotgun at Pettigrew. Polio said he allowed officers to release Bishop on the day of the shooting because the lead investigator, Captain Theodore Buker, told him she was too emotional to interview.

Buker recommended that the case be handed to the district attorney’s office because “there were too many questions,’’ Polio said. Buker remained on the case, but State Police were the lead investigators, Polio said.

Polio said Buker, who has since died, told him the district attorney’s office had decided not to pursue the charges. Polio had no reason to question it at the time, he said yesterday.

“I took the word of my captain, I took the word of the State Police,’’ he said. “All I know is that they investigated, they found it to be accidental and that was it. But when I got all this other material . . . I found it to be deficient in answers.’’

In particular, Polio said, the report has too little information about ballistics.

Polio’s handling of the case has been questioned by the current Braintree police chief, Paul H. Frazier, and the mayor of Braintree, Joseph Sullivan, has pledged to look for missing police records about the case.

The district attorney who decided not to pursue charges against Bishop in 1986 was William Delahunt, now a member of Congress from Massachusetts.

Delahunt, who is in the Middle East, has not returned calls for comment over the last three days. Yesterday his spokesman, Mark Forest, said the congressman has “very little recollection’’ of the case but said his decision was based on a State Police investigation that declared the shooting an accident.

John Kivlan, Delahunt’s first assistant district attorney who reviewed the police reports into the shooting of Seth Bishop and accepted the police finding of an accident, yesterday acknowledged there were inconsistencies in the statements that Amy Bishop and her mother, Judy Bishop, provided. But he said those discrepancies did not challenge the overall finding by police that it was an accidental discharge.

Kivlan, however, said his assessment would probably have been different if he had been aware that Amy Bishop had fled the residence and pointed a shotgun at a man at a nearby car dealership, demanding keys to a car. He said that information was not contained in the report.

“At the end of the day, we don’t have to accept the [police] report given to us,’’ Kivlan said. “But there was nothing we knew of to contradict the finding of an accidental discharge.’’

State Police spokesman Dave Procopio said the trooper who conducted the investigation has retired, but that the agency will check its archives this week to see if there are additional records. A spokesman for the current Norfolk district attorney, William Keating, said that at this point, prosecutors have no reason to reopen the case.

Bishop is now facing one count of capital murder and three counts of attempted murder after allegedly shooting her colleagues during a faculty meeting Friday afternoon. Three people were killed and three others were injured.

Huntsville police spokesman Mark Roberts said yesterday that Bishop did not have a permit to carry the 9mm handgun she allegedly used Friday and investigators are still trying to determine who owned the gun and how Bishop acquired it.

Bishop’s husband, James Anderson, told the Chronicle of Higher Education yesterday that his wife had recently borrowed a handgun and had practiced with it at an indoor gun range. He said she would not tell him who loaned her the gun and was “very cagey.’’

He said she had been worried about “crazy students’’ since someone had followed her across campus last summer. But he said he warned his wife not to bring the gun to work.

Huntsville police also remain interested in Bishop’s connection to a 1993 attempted mail-bombing of a Harvard professor with whom she worked in a hospital laboratory. Federal authorities did not press charges and have never apprehended anyone in the case. Anderson has said that he and his wife were not suspects in the case, but rather “subjects’’ who were cleared by investigators.





Amy Bishop Was Charged With Assault In 2002 IHOP Dispute


In March, 2002, Bishop walked into an International House of Pancakes in Peabody with her family, asked for a booster seat for one of her children, and learned the last seat had gone to another mother.

Bishop, according to a police report, strode over to the other woman, demanded the seat and launched into a profanity-laced rant.

When the woman would not give the seat up, Bishop punched her in the head, all the while yelling "I am Dr. Amy Bishop."

Bishop received probation and prosecutors recommended that she be sent to anger management classes, though it is unclear from court documents whether a judge ever sent her there.
The woman, identified in court documents as Michelle Gjika, declined to comment, saying only "It's not something I want to relive."





Alabama Shooting Survivor: "There Was No Way To Ever Anticipate This"


There was nothing about last Friday's biology department faculty meeting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville that portended the carnage that was to come, Professor Debra Moriarity told a reporter Wednesday.

"It was actually a really laid-back, mundane kind of faculty meeting," the biochemist told CNN affiliate WAAY about the 13 people seated around an oval table in Room 369 of the Shelby Center for Science and Technology. "Events coming up, scheduling classes, budgets. It was really actually one of the easiest faculty meetings we've had."

Among the participants was Amy Bishop, a Harvard-trained geneticist with whom Moriarity had developed a professional relationship nurtured by the fact that the two women worked with cell cultures. "Sometimes you borrow things back and forth from each other," she said. "We had talked about writing grant proposals together."

After about an hour, just before 4 p.m., Bishop -- who had recently been denied tenure -- ended the calm. "All of a sudden, she just stood up and shot," Moriarity said.

Moriarity reacted quickly, dropping onto her hands and knees on the gray carpet. "Just dropped to the floor and crawled under the table and crawled towards Amy," said Moriarity, who was focused on one thing.

"I mean, you're crawling under a table, you see the legs of a person who's shooting above the table. I grabbed her leg and, I don't know what I was thinking. I wasn't thinking anything. I was just thinking: 'Grab her!'

"And she sidestepped me. I mean, she pulled her leg free and I was in the doorway then with my back kind of to her. And I think she tried to shoot at me then, but that's when I started yelling at her, 'Amy, Amy, think about my grandson, think about my daughter! This is me! I've helped you before; I'll help you again! Don't do this Amy! Don't do this!'"

Bishop then stepped out into the hall, pointed the gun at Moriarity and pulled the trigger, the biologist said. "It clicked, and it clicked again, and I crawled right back in the room and shut the door and she was left out in the hall."

The survivors burst into action. One person locked the wooden door, another shoved a table against it, others moved a refrigerator into place to further block the door, another called 911, others moved to help the six people who had been shot, Moriarity said.

Three people died; three others were wounded. Two of them remained hospitalized Wednesday in critical condition, according to a spokeswoman for Huntsville Hospital. The third has been released.

Moriarity, who joined the school's faculty in 1984, said the casualties have not affected her plans to remain at the school. And she rejected any suggestion that her role in getting Bishop out of the room was heroic.

"She followed me out in the hall and then the gun jammed and I could get back in the room," Moriarity said. "That's not being a hero. That's just God looks out for you."

She said she had had little time to think. "From the beginning until we finally got things barricaded, it couldn't have been more than 20 seconds," she said.

Moriarity further rejected suggestions that anything could have been done to protect the victims. "There was no way to ever anticipate this," she said. "And there was nothing that could ever have been done to stop her. It all happened too fast."

And she worried that any attempt to tighten security could have negative consequences. "There is evil in the world; it is unfortunate that good people are hurt by that. But a university is a place of free thought and freedom to explore ideas and to search out new knowledge and you don't want to put anything in place that dampens that."

Moriarity returned to her office on Wednesday and said she plans to resume teaching next week. She predicted that, with the help of anti-anxiety medication, she would be able to sleep Wednesday night.

"I've been talking to family and friends and just getting their support helps you deal with it," she said. "I think right now most of us want to get back there and get things going, make plans for who is going to cover classes."

A memorial service to honor the lives of the dead -- faculty members Maria Davis, Adriel Johnson and Gopi Podila -- is to be held Friday.



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Sources: AP, Boston Globe, MSNBC, CNN, Youtube, Google Maps