Wikileaks Release Protected By First Amendment; Legal Case Weak

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U.S. Looks For Way To Prosecute Over Leaks


Striking back, the Obama administration branded the WikiLeaks release of more than a quarter-million sensitive files an attack on the United States Monday and raised the prospect of criminal prosecutions in connection with the exposure.

The Pentagon detailed new security safeguards, including restraints on small computer flash drives, to make it harder for any one person to copy and reveal so many secrets.

The young Army Pfc. suspected of stealing the diplomatic memos, many of them classified, and feeding them to WikiLeaks may have defeated Pentagon security systems using little more than a Lady Gaga CD and a portable computer memory stick.

The soldier, Bradley Manning has not been charged in the latest release of internal U.S. government documents. But officials said he is the prime suspect partly because of his own description of how he pulled off a staggering heist of classified and restricted material.

"No one suspected a thing," Manning told a confidant afterward, according to a log of his computer chat published by Wired.com. "I didn't even have to hide anything."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asserted Monday that WikiLeaks acted illegally in posting the material. She said the administration was taking "aggressive steps to hold responsible those who stole this information."

Attorney General Eric Holder said the government was mounting a criminal investigation, and the Pentagon was tightening access to information, including restricting the use of computer storage devices such as CDs and flash drives.

"This is not saber-rattling," Holder said. Anyone found to have broken American law "will be held responsible."

Holder said the latest disclosure, involving classified and sensitive State Department documents, jeopardized the security of the nation, its diplomats, intelligence assets and relationships with foreign governments.

A weary-looking Clinton agreed.

"I want you to know that we are taking aggressive steps to hold responsible those who stole this information," Clinton said. She spoke in between calls to foreign capitals to make amends for scathing and gossipy memos never meant for foreign eyes.

Manning is charged in military court with taking other classified material later published by the online clearinghouse WikiLeaks. It is not clear whether others such as WikiLeaks executives might be charged separately in civilian courts.

Clinton said the State Department was adding security protections to prevent another breach. The Pentagon, embarrassed by the apparent ease with which secret documents were passed to WikiLeaks, had detailed some of its new precautions Sunday.

Col. Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said it was possible that many people could be held accountable if they were found to have ignored security protocols or somehow enabled the download without authorization.

A senior Defense Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the criminal case against Manning is pending, said he was unaware of any firings or other discipline over the security conditions at Manning's post in Iraq.

In his Internet chat, Manning described the conditions as lax to the point that he could bring a homemade music CD to work with him, erase the music and replace it with secrets. He told the computer hacker who would turn him in that he lip-synched along with pop singer Lady Gaga's hit "Telephone" while making off with "possibly the largest data spillage in American history."

Wired.com published a partial log of Manning's discussions with hacker R. Adrian Lamo in June.

"Weak servers, weak logging, weak physical security, weak counterintelligence, inattentive signal analysis," Manning wrote. "A perfect storm."

His motive, according to the chat logs: "I want people to see the truth ... because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public."

By his own admission, Manning was apparently able to pull material from outside the Pentagon, including documents he had little obvious reason to see. He was arrested shortly after those chats last spring. He was moved in July to the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia to await trial on the earlier charges and could face up to 52 years in a military prison if convicted.

There are no new charges, and none are likely at least until after a panel evaluates Manning's mental fitness early next year, said Lt. Col. Rob Manning, spokesman for the Military District of Washington. He is no relation to Bradley Manning.

Manning's civilian lawyer, David Combs, declined comment.

Lapan, the Pentagon spokesman, said the WikiLeaks experience has encouraged discussion within the military about how better to strike a balance between sharing information with those who need it and protecting it from disclosure.

So far, he said, Pentagon officials are not reviewing who has access to data but focusing instead on installing technical safeguards.

Since summer, when WikiLeaks first published stolen war logs from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Defense Department has made it harder for one person acting alone to download material from a classified network and place it on an unclassified one.

Such transfers generally take two people now, what Pentagon officials call a "two-man carry." Users also leave clearer electronic footprints by entering a computer "kiosk," or central hub, en route to downloading the classified material.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the WikiLeaks case revealed vulnerable seams in the information-sharing systems used by multiple government agencies. Some of those joint systems were designed to answer another problem: the failure of government agencies to share what they knew before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"These efforts to give diplomatic, military, law enforcement and intelligence specialists quicker and easier access to greater amounts of data have had unintended consequences," Whitman said.

Agencies across the U.S. government have installed safeguards around the use of flash drives and computer network operations, said Navy Rear Adm. Michael Brown, the Department of Homeland Security's director for cybersecurity coordination.

Like the Pentagon, Homeland Security has laid out policies to ensure that employees are using the networks correctly, that the classified and unclassified networks are properly identified, and that there are detailed procedures for moving information from one network to another.

Dale Meyerrose, former chief information officer for the U.S. intelligence community, said Monday that it will never be possible to completely stop such breaches.

"This is a personnel security issue, more than it is a technical issue," said Meyerrose, now a vice president at Harris Corp. "How can you prevent a pilot from flying the airplane into the ground? You can't. Anybody you give access to can become a disgruntled employee or an ideologue that goes bad."

One official in contact with U.S. military and diplomatic staff in Iraq said they already were seeing the effect of a tighter collar on information.

The State Department and other agencies are restricting access among the Army and nonmilitary agencies, the official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sharing of classified information.

Former CIA director Michael Hayden warned the latest leak will affect what other governments are willing to share with the U.S. as well as change the way U.S. officials share information among themselves.

"You're going to put a lot less in cables now," he said.

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U.S. Can't Let WikiLeaks Limit Candor, Diplomats Say


The release of a quarter-million secret U.S. diplomatic communiqués could lead to serious misunderstandings in some of the most sensitive parts of the world, but it can't be allowed to change how American diplomats gather and report information, current and former diplomats said Monday.

Publication of the documents by WikiLeaks.org was dangerous not so much because of what was in them — many are unclassified and none are labeled "top secret" — but because the breach of confidentiality complicates the U.S. government's gathering of "hard-hitting analysis" from its personnel around the world, said Carey Cavanaugh, a former U.S. ambassador and special negotiator for conflicts in Eurasia.

"It's a horrible thing that has happened" because foreign officials and other sources of information may be less willing to trust that what they tell the United States will remain confidential, Cavanaugh said, adding that "very frank, candid" cables are necessary "to make the world work."

Michael Sheehan, a former ambassador-at-large and assistant U.N. secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, saw a different potential problem, saying he feared that the WikiLeaks release would "make a lot of conversations go offline."

Reluctance to put diplomatic information in writing "increases the chances for a misunderstanding in some of the most sensitive discussions" around the world, said Sheehan, who cited negotiations over the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran as especially critical.

"These are very important, sensitive issues," he said. "We cannot afford to have a misunderstanding."

New restrictions under consideration

In a memo circulated Monday by its Office of Management and Budget, the White House said it was ordering a review of safeguards that could shut down some users' access to classified information.

That would further limit diplomatic communications that have been restricted in response to earlier disclosures by WikiLeaks. The Defense Department has already limited the number of computer systems that can handle classified material and made it harder to save material to removable media, such as flash drives, on classified computers.

Bryan Whitman, a Defense Department spokesman, said Monday that it was inevitable that steps like that would "compromise ... efforts to give diplomatic, military, law enforcement and intelligence specialists quicker and easier access to greater amounts of data."

But current and former ambassadors said the United States should do whatever it could to avoid that outcome.

Unvarnished analysis in secure diplomatic cables is vital to informing U.S. policy on "nonproliferation and arms control, addressing violent extremism and promoting the spread of democracy and human rights, to name just a few," Louis Susman, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, said in a statement.

And in a commentary Monday in the Pakistani newspaper The News, Cameron Munter, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, wrote that "honest dialogue — within governments and between them — is part of the basic bargain of international relations; we couldn't maintain peace, security and international stability without it."

That's because cables like those released Sunday are the way diplomats tell policymakers what they really think is going on, which often isn't what they're telling their foreign counterparts or the public, Cavanaugh said.

'It's not helpful to have it out on the table'
"At the end of the day, everyone acknowledges that these are the kinds of reports that governments need to advance the interests of their people," said Cavanaugh, who is now director of the Patterson School of Diplomacy at the University of Kentucky.

"If you think of it like a family," people always have conversations about their parents "that are important and valid and needed, but if they were fully public could also be hurtful," he said. "The kids will talk about this — they'll talk about it in frank terms — but it's not helpful to have it out on the table."

In this case, Cavanaugh said, the United States appeared to dodge a bullet, as there didn't seem to be anything seriously damaging in the new documents.

Diplomatic cables are how the United States and the former Soviet Union resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis 37 years ago this month, and if secret deals discussed in those cables had been disclosed to the public, "it could have taken both nations to the brink of nuclear war," Cavanaugh said.

To resolve the standoff over the Soviet construction of nuclear missile bases in Cuba, the United States withdrew its naval blockade of Cuba and promised never to invade the island.

President John F. Kennedy also agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey, but "a condition of that agreement was there would be no reference to it in the Cuban context," Cavanaugh said. Had that agreement been made public by a 1963 counterpart to WikiLeaks, "it would have been a disaster," he said.

"I don't see things like that" in the new documents, Cavanaugh said, "but I do see where there's information about current issues under negotiation — six-party talks in North Korea, efforts to deal with nuclear proliferation, concerns in Iran, a new START treaty. Those could become impediments."

Countries like Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran and North Korea know the United States makes judgments they wouldn't like in its diplomatic cables because "if you were to get the same things from other countries, you'd find the same types of discussions."

It's when such assessments become public that nations are forced into a diplomatic corner,as Kennedy would have been in 1963.

"It's a little rougher than people expected, but if you think of countries being like people ... you do have those conversations," he said.


Sources: MSNBC

Obama Admin vs Fradulent Foreclosures: Vows To Prosecute Bankers

Obama White House Warns Banks Over Foreclosures

The White House warned banks Tuesday it would pursue them for any mortgage practices that violated the law, piling pressure on the financial sector after two institutions lifted their freezes on home foreclosures.

Bank of America said on Monday it was partially lifting its foreclosure suspension, and GMAC Mortgage, one of the largest servicers of U.S. residential loans, followed suit.

The moves followed two weeks of damaging accusations that financial institutions' use of shoddy paperwork caused some borrowers to be illegally evicted from their homes.

The controversy, which has drawn public outrage and sparked government probes, has raised new fears about threats to bank earnings and the health of the fragile housing market, which has been battered by falling prices and foreclosures of nearly 3 million homes since January 2007.

The White House has rejected calls for a nationwide moratorium on foreclosures, but it signaled Tuesday that even as banks lift their freezes, government investigations would proceed.

"As institutions are determining their next steps in addressing these issues, we remain committed to holding accountable any bank that has violated the law," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said in a statement.

"In addition to strongly supporting the investigation by the state attorneys general, the administration's Federal Housing Administration and Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force have undertaken their own regulatory and enforcement investigation into the foreclosure process."

Sources: BOFA, CNBC, CNN, Wikipedia

Spitzer To AIG: "Show Us Company Ponzi Scheme E-mails!"

Show Us the E-Mails

(NY Times Op-Ed By ELIOT SPITZER, FRANK PARTNOY and WILLIAM BLACK)



We end this extraordinary financial year with news that the Treasury is in discussions with American International Group about selling the taxpayers’ 80 percent ownership stake in that company. The government recently permitted several banks to break free of its potential oversight by repaying loans made during the rescue. But with respect to A.I.G., the Treasury should not move so fast. There is one job left to do.

A.I.G. was at the center of the web of bad business judgments, opaque financial derivatives, failed economics and questionable political relationships that set off the economic cataclysm of the past two years. When A.I.G.’s financial products division collapsed — ultimately requiring a federal bailout of $180 billion — those who had been prospering from A.I.G.’s schemes scurried for taxpayer cover. Yet, more than a year after the rescue began, crucial questions remain unanswered. Who knew what, and when? Who benefited, and by exactly how much? Would A.I.G.’s counterparties have failed without taxpayer support?

The three of us, as experienced investigators and prosecutors of financial fraud, cannot answer these questions now. But we know where the answers are. They are in the trove of e-mail messages still backed up on A.I.G. servers, as well as in the key internal accounting documents and financial models generated by A.I.G. during the past decade. Before releasing its regulatory clutches, the government should insist that the company immediately make these materials public. By putting the evidence online, the government could establish a new form of “open source” investigation.

Once the documents are available for everyone to inspect, a thousand journalistic flowers can bloom, as reporters, victims and angry citizens have a chance to piece together the story. In past cases of financial fraud — from the complex swaps that Bankers Trust sold to Procter & Gamble in the early 1990s to the I.P.O. kickback schemes of the late 1990s to the fall of Enron — e-mail messages and internal documents became the central exhibits in our collective understanding of what happened, and why.

So far, prosecutors and regulators have been unable to build such evidence into anything resembling a persuasive case against any financial institution. Most recently, a jury acquitted Bear Stearns employees of fraud related to the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, in part because available e-mail messages suggested the employees had done nothing wrong.

Perhaps A.I.G.’s employees would also be judged not guilty. But we would like to see the record to find out. As fraud investigators, we would like to examine the trading patterns of A.I.G.’s financial products division, and its communications with Goldman Sachs and other bank counterparties who benefited from the bailout. We would like to understand whether the leaders of A.I.G. understood that they were approaching a financial Armageddon, and whether they alerted their counterparties, regulators and shareholders to the impending calamity.

We would like to see how A.I.G. was able to pay huge bonuses to its officers based on the short-term income they received from counterparties for selling guarantees that, lacking adequate loss reserves, the companies would never be able to honor. We would also like to know what regulators knew, and what they did with the information they had obtained.

Congress wants answers, too. This month, during hearings on Ben Bernanke’s nomination to a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve, several senators fumed about being denied access to his A.I.G.-related documents.

No doubt, some of the e-mail messages contain privileged conversations among lawyers. Others probably include private information that is irrelevant to A.I.G.’s role in the crisis. But the vast majority of these documents could be made public without legal concern. So why haven’t the Treasury and the Federal Reserve already made sure the public could see this information? Do they want to protect A.I.G., or do they worry about shining too much sunlight on their own performance leading up to and during the crisis?

A.I.G.’s board of directors, a distinguished group of senior business executives, holds the power to decide whether to publish the e-mail messages and other documents. But those directors serve at the behest of A.I.G.’s shareholders. And while small shareholders of public corporations generally do not have the right to force publication of internal documents, in this case one shareholder — the taxpayer — holds an 80 percent stake. Anyone with such substantial ownership has effective control over corporate decisions, even if the corporation is a large public one.

Our stake is held by something called the A.I.G. Credit Facility Trust, whose three trustees are Jill M. Considine, a former chairman of the Depository Trust Company and a former director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Chester B. Feldberg, a former New York Fed official who was chairman of Barclays Americas from 2000 to 2008; and Douglas L. Foshee, chief executive of the El Paso Corporation and chairman of the Houston branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Ultimately, these three trustees wield all the power at A.I.G., and have the right to vote out the 11 directors if the directors are unwilling to publish the e-mail messages. In other words, if these three people ask A.I.G.’s board to post the messages and other documents, the board will have no choice but to comply. Ms. Considine, Mr. Feldberg and Mr. Foshee have the opportunity to be among the most effective and influential investor advocates in history. Before A.I.G. escapes, they should demand the evidence.

The longer it remains hidden, the less likely we will be to answer many questions about the A.I.G. collapse and the larger economic crisis — including the most important one: how do we prevent a repeat? Time is the enemy of effective investigation; records disappear, memories fade. The documents should be released — without excuses, or delay.



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Sources: NY Times, Huffington Post, AP, Google Maps

Tiffany Wright's Premature Death vs. Charlotte's Racist Legal System...Feds Were Correct

Federal Prosecutors said in a recent court filing Rauscher (Royce Mitchell's Attorney) had been informed, that Adrian Powell's status as a 2nd Murder Suspect had no bearing on whether Mitchell (36), had sex with Tiffany (15).

Mitchell (36), turned himself in to Police the day of Tiffany's killing and was arrested on Statutory Rape charges. Those were dropped when a paternity test showed he wasn't the baby's father.

Later a previously taped testimony recorded prior to Tiffany's death, was played in court of Tiffany (15) telling Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Detectives she had sex with Mitchell, convincing the Federal Judge there was reason to believe Royce Mitchell (36), committed Statutory Rape which violated his Federal Probation and sent him back to prison for 30 months.

The video below shows Tiffany Wright's Grandmother Shirley Boston, speaking to New York Reporters about how her granddaughter's death could have been avoided.








2nd Murder Suspect a former W. Meck High School Student, but has no bearing on Royce Mitchell's Statutory Rape crime

Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Court documents name a former West Meck football player as a new suspect in the killing of pregnant teen Tiffany Wright, an accusation his family vigorously denies.

Tiffany Wright, 15, was eight months' pregnant when she was shot and killed in September while waiting for her school bus. Her baby died soon after.

Investigators have said they were focused on Royce Mitchell, 36, Tiffany's adoptive brother. A judge ruled in November that he had sex with Tiffany, violating conditions of his 2007 release from prison and sending him back for 30 months.

But Mitchell's attorney Claire Rauscher now argues that Adrian Powell, 17, was also a suspect in the killing and that she wasn't told until after Mitchell's hearing.

Rauscher is requesting a new hearing for Mitchell, on the grounds that Powell's status in the investigation casts doubt on testimony from the first hearing.

Adrian Powell has not been arrested or charged with any crime.

Federal Prosecutors said in a court filing that Rauscher had been informed, and that Powell's status as a suspect has no bearing on whether Mitchell had sex with Tiffany.

Mitchell turned himself in to police the day of Tiffany's killing and was arrested on statutory rape charges. Those were dropped when a paternity test showed he wasn't the baby's father.

A tape of Tiffany telling a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police detective she had sex with Mitchell convinced the judge there was reason to believe Mitchell committed statutory rape and send him back to prison for 30 months.

At Mitchell's hearing, Powell testified that he had sex with Tiffany but that he couldn't be the baby's father because he wore a condom.

Powell's mother, Kathryn Powell, vehemently denied he had anything to do with the killing.

"He's an innocent kid who just happened to be in a relationship with her," Kathryn Powell said. "The next person (Tiffany) was with, will they pin it on him, too?"

Another teenager also testified at Mitchell's hearing that he had sex with Tiffany.

Tiffany had told some of her friends at Hawthorne High that her baby's father was a football player at West Meck. Powell is listed as a football player on a Web site for the squad.

A court order mandating that Powell give police a DNA sample sheds light on why investigators are looking at him.

The document, signed by a CMPD homicide detective, says Powell was late to school the morning Tiffany died. Investigators learned that he and Tiffany had slept together, and Powell consented to a DNA swab to see if he was the baby's father.

But he soon changed his mind. On the advice of one of his teachers, Powell deleted all of his text messages and phone records from Tiffany, according to the court order.

Police say he had changed her name in his phone to "Don't Answer." The document also says he had told Tiffany he wanted nothing to do with the baby or her.

Powell swiftly withdrew from West Meck and moved to Buffalo, N.Y., after the killing.

Kathryn Powell said Powell's father lives in Buffalo and he had planned to move there before Tiffany was killed.

When detectives found out he would be back to testify as a witness at Mitchell's parole hearing, they got the court order for his DNA.

Results from the paternity test haven't been released.





Royce Mitchell sent back for more prison time


A Federal Judge sent Royce Mitchell back to prison for 30 months Wednesday.

He believed the story told on tape by a girl now dead, Tiffany Wright, who claimed Mitchell had sex with her twice. That was statutory rape, the judge found, because Mitchell is 36 and Tiffany was just 15.

And even though Mitchell wasn't convicted of a crime, U.S. Chief District Judge Bob Conrad found that Tiffany's allegations were likely true - which meant Mitchell had violated the terms of his 2007 release from federal prison.

So he sent Mitchell back.

Tiffany's story detailing her sexual contacts with Mitchell was "credible" and "reliable," Conrad said Wednesday.

"I found her to be sincere," he said. "I found her to be embarrassed to talk about the details."

Tiffany, a Hawthorne High School student, was shot dead in September while waiting for her school bus. Her statement taped by a detective in August was played in court Tuesday. The detective testified that she believed Tiffany. And Tiffany's foster mother added heft by detailing what the girl had called "her deep dark secret" about Mitchell.

Mitchell, who is Tiffany's adoptive brother, shook his head as the judge announced his rulings.

"I did not have sex with Tiffany," Mitchell, 36, told the judge before being sentenced. "I most certainly did not. This is definitely a nightmare for me and my family. I wish Tiffany could be here."

Tiffany was eight months pregnant when she was killed. Her baby also died. Police haven't charged anyone in her murder, but they call Mitchell a person of interest in the killing.

In a soft voice, Tiffany said in her taped interview that Mitchell had not forced or threatened her to have sex. But Tiffany did say that Mitchell had pressured her to have an abortion, and according to her foster mother, offered to pay $5,000.

Tiffany and her foster mother both said the teen believed Mitchell was the father of her baby. But a DNA test performed after Tiffany's murder showed he wasn't.

"We would have much preferred that Tiffany had been in the courtroom to testify about what happened...," Acting U.S. Attorney Edward Ryan told reporters Wednesday following Mitchell's sentencing. "But somebody made that impossible.

"Our hearts go out to Tiffany and her child as well as to the many people in our community who truly loved her and tried to help her under very difficult circumstances."

Mitchell was sentenced in 2002 to five years and 10 months in prison after pleading guilty to his role in a drug trafficking conspiracy. He was one of 29 people busted in a$1million-a-year cocaine ring that authorities said brought 44 pounds of crack into Buffalo, N.Y., each month, according to the Buffalo News.

Mitchell was released from prison in 2007 and placed on four years' supervision.

After Tiffany was gunned down on Sept. 14, police arrested Mitchell - charging him with statutory rape and taking indecent liberties with Tiffany.

But prosecutors dismissed the sex charges in October after the DNA test showed Mitchell wasn't the father of Tiffany's baby. Without Tiffany alive to testify, prosecutors said there was no other evidence to support the sex charges.

Although the criminal charges were dropped, federal authorities accused Mitchell of violating his conditions of release from prison, which required that he stay out of trouble.

Federal prosecutors did not have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, as they do in criminal trials, that Mitchell had sex with Tiffany. They instead had to show by a preponderance of the evidence that Mitchell committed the sex acts.

Defense witnesses had portrayed Tiffany as a rebellious teenager who didn't always tell the truth. Two teenage boys testified that they'd had sex with Tiffany. One of them said Tiffany had told him he was the father of her baby.

Defense attorney Claire Rauscher told the judge that Mitchell didn't have sex with the teen.

"This is his sister," Rauscher said. "She had been a part of the family for almost her entire 15 years."

Rauscher explained that Mitchell tried to convince Tiffany to have an abortion because he wanted to help her.

"He was looking out for her interests," the defense lawyer said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen told the judge that Tiffany wasn't trying to get back at Mitchell with her allegations. Mitchell had kicked Tiffany out of the home he shared with his wife and children.

"She didn't want to talk about (the sex)...She wasn't trying to pin something on him. In her own mind, it wasn't a crime...It was just sex."

The prosecutor then told the judge that Mitchell desperately tried to get Tiffany to abort the baby.

"He was terrified she was carrying his baby," Cullen said. "He was worried that child was his."




How Charlotte-Mecklenburg DSS System failed 15-year-old girl (Tiffany Wright) gunned down at a Charlotte, NC School bus stop


Tiffany Wright stood alone in the dark, waiting for her school bus.

It was just before 6 a.m., and her foster grandmother had walked back home to get Tiffany's water bottle.

Tiffany, 15, was eight months pregnant but determined to stay on track in school. She wanted to be a lawyer. And after just a few weeks at Hawthorne High, she had impressed teachers as smart and ambitious, despite a difficult childhood.

At 5:51, Tiffany sent a text.

"Wheres the bus?"

One stop away, replied her friend, already on the bus.

At 5:55, as the bus lumbered toward Tiffany's stop, people began calling police to report gunshots.

A school bus dispatcher radioed Tiffany's bus driver: Change course - something's happening ahead.

Tiffany lay dead in the road, shot in the head, that morning, Monday, Sept. 14. Her baby girl was delivered at the hospital and lived a week, but died Sunday.

Nobody's charged in the killings, but police call Tiffany's adoptive brother, Royce Mitchell, a "person of interest."

In the months before she died, local agencies took steps aimed at stabilizing her home life and keeping her safe. But her story exposes failures in the system that was supposed to protect her.

Among the missteps:

•In February, a Mecklenburg court clerk appointed Mitchell as Tiffany's temporary guardian — even though he was a felon who served time in federal prison. He was also tried in 2006 for murder, but found not guilty. And last year, he was accused of domestic violence, though the case was dismissed.

•In July, social workers told police that Mitchell, 36, might have committed statutory rape with Tiffany, but police didn't question him about it for seven weeks, and didn't charge him with the rape until after Tiffany was killed.

•This month, Mecklenburg social services failed to cut off communication between Tiffany, who was in foster care, and Mitchell, said a source close to the investigation.

On the day of Tiffany's killing, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police jailed Mitchell for statutory rape and indecent liberties with a child, naming Tiffany as the victim.

Police defend their work, saying they followed the industry's best practices - which takes time. Police didn't feel a need to rush, they say, because they believed Tiffany was secure, hidden in a foster home with no threat to her safety.

Police say it's hard to prove statutory rape: Of the 262 reports of statutory rape police received over three years, only 16 percent - 42 cases - were accepted by prosecutors.

Experts say statutory rape cases are complicated because they involve victims ages 13, 14 or 15 who often consider themselves voluntary participants in sex with someone at least six years older. So victims can be reluctant to help police.

But child advocates say in cases like Tiffany's, police should act more aggressively. An immediate arrest sends a signal to a suspect and can persuade them to stay away from victims.

"The cases may be difficult to win, but they're not difficult to charge," says Brett Loftis of Charlotte's Council for Children's Rights.

UNCC criminologist Paul Friday says: "Often, nothing is done in these kinds of cases because they're based on improper assumptions about the rationality of someone that age. But the minors are often unaware of disease, birth control and they can be exploited by someone."

Adopted by foster mother

Tiffany first entered the child welfare system as a toddler in Buffalo, N.Y., when her mother lost custody.

She was adopted at 4 by her foster mother, Alma Wright, an older woman with eight grown children, who was excited about raising another child.

One of Wright's grown sons was Royce Mitchell, a star quarterback in high school who'd gone on to play for a semi-pro team in Buffalo. But Mitchell also was indicted in 1999 as part of a drug trafficking ring and went to federal prison.

While he was in prison, authorities also charged Mitchell with an earlier murder, but a jury found him not guilty.

In 2004, Alma and Tiffany left Buffalo for North Carolina, settling near Kings Mountain. Tiffany made friends easily at school and church. She ran track at Bessemer City High School.

In 2007, Mitchell was released from prison and followed his mother to North Carolina.

But last fall, Alma Wright got sick. Friends at church helped out with Tiffany, inviting her for dinners and weekends. Tiffany spent time with Mitchell and his wife, too.

Alma Wright died Jan. 25, and Tiffany moved in with the Mitchells in Charlotte.

On Jan. 30, Royce Mitchell asked a Mecklenburg court to appoint him and his wife as Tiffany's guardians.

On his application, he wrote: "We are seeking guardianship because we were requested to do so by Mrs. Alma Wright before she died."

He wanted to transfer Tiffany to West Mecklenburg High School.

The court set a hearing for Feb. 5 and appointed a child advocate to study the situation and look after Tiffany's best interests in court.

There's no transcript of what happened in court, and the clerk who handled Tiffany's case declined to discuss his decision.

Frederick Benson, a Mecklenburg assistant clerk of superior court, appointed Mitchell the temporary guardian of Tiffany's welfare.

It's unclear if Benson, a lawyer, knew about Mitchell's criminal background. Court clerks are not required to perform background checks in guardianship cases, says Clerk of Superior Court Martha Curran. It's up to each clerk to decide what checks are necessary, and they often rely on court-appointed child advocates to advise them in such cases.

Tiffany's advocate, lawyer Martha Efird, declined to discuss her actions in the case.

It was in the weeks surrounding the Feb. 5 court hearing that Tiffany got pregnant, if hospital estimates are accurate.

But friends say Tiffany, who started at West Mecklenburg High in February, wouldn't realize for four or five months that she was pregnant.

On Feb. 27, clerk of court Benson ordered DSS to conduct a "home study" of the Mitchell household. Officials won't release their findings.

But Mitchell didn't keep custody long, according to several of Tiffany's friends in King's Mountain.

In late March, Mitchell left Tiffany at a group home called With Friends in Gastonia, according to Marlene Jefferies and Cruceta Jeffeirs, two adult family friends who watched Tiffany grow up.

The group home wouldn't confirm that. But the friends say the home reported to social services that Tiffany was abandoned. And she was soon back in foster care.

On March 31, Jeffeirs, a Shelby pastor, wrote a letter to Benson seeking custody of Tiffany: "My desire is to see Tiffany accomplish all the goals that she has set for herself and I believe she can do that in a stable environment with lots of guidance and love."

DSS officials in Gaston and Mecklenburg won't discuss Tiffany's case or answer questions about what steps they took to protect her.

But friends and family say Tiffany was eventually placed in the care of foster parent Susan Barber, in a townhome off Mallard Creek Road in Derita.

By July, it was clear Tiffany was pregnant, friends say.

Barber tried to shield Tiffany from talking to those she believed might be bad influences, according to Tiffany's cousin Brittany Page. But a source close to the investigation said Tiffany and Mitchell continued communicating.

Despite repeated attempts, Barber could not be reached.

As the school year approached, Tiffany prepared to change schools again, this time to Hawthorne High in Charlotte, which offers a special program for pregnant students.

Delayed Investigation

On July 27, social workers reported to police that Royce Mitchell might have committed statutory rape with Tiffany.

It took eight days for a detective to look at the case, and three days more for it to be officially assigned to Teresa Johnson, a detective with CMPD's youth crime and domestic violence unit.

Another 12 days passed before Johnson interviewed Tiffany.

It's unclear when detective Johnson discovered Mitchell's background, but it wasn't enough to ramp up the investigation. Investigators say they believed Tiffany was safe in a foster home and faced no threats from Mitchell.

Police say their performance in the case followed procedure and met standards.

Police interview alleged victims immediately if the crime has occurred within the previous 72 hours, so they can gather evidence that may remain. But in cases like Tiffany's - where months had elapsed since the alleged offense - police try to arrange just one interview when children and teen victims of abuse are involved.

Police acknowledge that strategy takes time but minimizes trauma and reduces the chances that young victims might be led into inaccurate testimony by repeated questioning.

Police also let such victims decide when they want to be interviewed at the county's child-victim center called Pat's Place. There, specially trained interviewers talk to victims, while social workers, psychologists, police and others watch from another room.

Tiffany chose an Aug. 19 interview. She didn't say much during the formal interview. But later that day, Johnson won her trust and obtained enough information to move forward with the investigation.

No response from Royce Mitchell

The next day, Aug. 20, the detective made her first call to Mitchell to ask him about the charge, she says. Johnson left a message and gave him a few days to call back.

When Mitchell didn't respond, she made calls over the next two weeks to social workers and a federal probation officer to ask Mitchell to come talk to police.

Police say they didn't immediately arrest him because they believed they could get better information if he talked voluntarily.

On Sept. 9, a federal probation official told Johnson that Mitchell was not coming in.

On Sept. 10, a team of social workers, police and other agencies held a standard follow-up meeting to discuss how to proceed in Tiffany's case.

On Friday, Sept. 11, detective Johnson phoned Mitchell's wife and left a message. She asked her to call back to discuss Tiffany, Johnson says, but didn't give details of the rape allegation.

That Monday, Tiffany was shot and killed.

As emergency vehicles rolled to the scene, Tiffany's school bus was diverted from its normal route. But the students could see flashing lights. Tiffany's friends on the bus, Cimone Black and Tamia Corpening, began to worry.

"I kept texting her phone...," Cimone said. Then she started calling, but all she got was voice mail.

The bus continued on to Hawthorne. For Tamia, the hourlong ride was excruciating.

Nobody said a word.



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Sources: McClatchy Newspapers, Charlotte Observer, WIVB, Google Maps