THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TUESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2015
PAGE 3
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Border Protection helps with Super Bowl security
ASTRID GALVAN
Associated Press
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Black Hawk helicopters and truck-sized X-ray machines that are typically deployed along the U.S.-Mexico border have been brought to the Super Bowl venue to assist with the security effort.
U. S. Customs and Border Protection showed off the technology Monday as it helps with Super Bowl security.
Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske was on hand for a demonstration of the agency's Black Hawks and large mobile X-ray machines that are used to detect contraband and explosives. The helicopters and X-ray machines are from Tucson and Nogales, some of the busiest spots in the nation for the smuggling of drugs and immigrants.
The X-ray machines are mobile and the size of a large truck.
He said it's not just the technology that will help keep the big game safe, but the expertise behind it.
"The real key about this equipment is the people who operate them," Kerlikowske said.
Kerikowske said Arizona's border with Mexico still has adequate security while some equipment is used in Glendale for the Super Bowl.
They slowly pan outside a semi-truck while operators inside the X-ray machine look for anomalies. The X-ray machines are in heavy use at the Mariposa Port of Entry in Nogales, one of the busiest ports of entry for commerce in the country.
"The real key about this equipment is the people who operate them."
The CBP is also deploying about 100 officers who will assist other federal and local law enforcement agencies.
R. GIL KERLIKOWSKE Commissioner
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection Black Hawk helicopter circles above University of Phoenix Stadium, site of the NFL Super Bowl XLIX football game, during a security demonstration for the media Monday in Glendale, Ariz.
ROSS D. FRANKLIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Within a few minutes, the X-ray machines will have scanned an entire semi-trailer, looking for contraband and explosives.
The CBP also will use its Tucson-based helicopters' and Black Hawks to monitor the air during the game, when other aircrafts are not allowed to fly nearby. The Black Hawkes are used by the CBP and the Border Patrol for a variety of missions, including for rescuing border crossers who become sick or injured. They've also recently been commonly used to arrest so-called scouts, or men who act as lookouts in the desert for drug and human smuggling organizations.
KEVIN WOLF/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, second from left, leaves the Alexandria Federal Courthouse Monday in Alexandria, Va., with his wife, Holly, second from right, attorney Barry Pollack, right, and attorney Edward MacMahon, after he was convicted on all nine counts he faced of leaking classified details of an operation to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions to a New York Times reporter.
Ex-CIA officer convicted of leaking secrets to reporter
MATTHEW BARAKAT
Associated Press
Associated Press
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A former CIA officer was convicted Monday of leaking classified details of an operation to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions to a New York Times reporter.
Jurors convicted 47-year-old Jeffrey Sterling, of O'Fallon, Missouri, of all nine counts he faced in federal court. On the third day of deliberations, the jurors had told the judge that they could not reach a unanimous verdict. But they delivered guilty verdicts later in the afternoon after the judge urged them to keep talking.
At issue in the two-week trial: Who told journalist James Risen about the secret mission, one that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice testified was one of the government's most closely held secrets as well as one of its best chances to thwart Iran's nuclear-weapons ambitions?
The case was delayed for years as prosecutors fought to force Risen to divulge his sources, though they ultimately decided not to call him to testify once it
became clear he would not reveal those sources even if jailed for contempt of court.
The plan involved using a CIA asset nicknamed Merlin, who had been a Russian nuclear engineer, to foist deliberately flawed nuclear-weapons blueprints on the Iranians, hoping they would spend years trying to develop parts that had no hope of ever working.
Risen's 2006 book, "State of War," describes the mission as hopelessly botched, and possibly backfiring by giving the Iranian blueprints that could be useful to them if they sorted out the good information from the errors.
Prosecutors had acknowledged a lack of direct evidence against Sterling but said the circumstantial evidence against him was overwhelming. Defense lawyers had said the evidence showed that Capitol Hill staffers who had been briefed on the classified operation were more likely the source of the leak.
In his closing arguments, prosecutor Eric Olshan said the chapter of Risen's book seemed to be clearly written from Sterling's perspective as Merlin's case handler. The
book describes the handler's misgivings about the operation while others at the CIA push the plan through despite its risks.
Risen had written about that complaint, and he was known to have a relationship with Sterling. The two exchanged dozens of phone calls and emails, Olshan said.
But defense lawyers said the government had no evidence that Risen and Sterling talked about anything classified in those phone calls and emails. The government failed to obtain Risen's records to see who else he may have contacted.
Furthermore, Sterling believed he had been mistreated and was angry that the agency refused to settle his racial discrimination complaint, Olshan said.
Defense attorney Barry Pollack said Risen first got wind of the operation in early 2003, within weeks of Sterling reporting his misgivings to staffers at a Senate intelligence committee — a channel that Sterling was legally allowed to pursue. Pollack said it makes more sense that a Hill staffer leaked to Risen.
NASA will save money with SpaceX and Boeing
MARCIA DUNN
Associated Press
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. NASA expects to save millions of dollars sending astronauts to the International Space Station, once its commercial crew program starts flying in a couple of years.
SpaceX and Boeing said Monday that they are on track to carry out their first manned test flights to the space station in 2017. NASA chose the two private companies last September to transport American astronauts to and from the orbiting lab.
JAE C. HONG/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The SpaceX Dragon V2 spaceship is unveiled at its headquarters, in Hawthorne, Calif. SpaceX and Boeing said Monday that they are on track to carry out their first manned test flights to the International Space Station in 2017.
U. S. manned launches ended with the retirement of the space shuttles in 2011. Until SpaceX and Boeing begin flying crews from Cape Canaveral, NASA astronauts must continue to hitch rocket rides with Russia.
NASA's commercial crew program manager, Kathy Lueders, said the average price for a seat aboard the SpaceX Dragon and Boeing CST-100 capsules will be $58 million. That compares with $71 million a seat charged by Russia under its latest NASA contract.
"I don't ever want to have to write another check" to the Russian Space Agency after 2017, said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a former shuttle commander.
“If we can make that date,” he said, referring to 2017, “I'm a happy camper.”
Unlike the Russian charge, the $58 million per-person cost estimate includes a fair amount of cargo to be flown aboard the SpaceX and Boeing spacecraft, along with four crew members. That price tag is based on a five-year period, Lueders said.
The Russian Soyuz holds a maximum of three people, with at least one a Russian to pilot the craft.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said the future enhanced Dragon capsule could carry five astronauts — one more than NASA's stipulated four — and still meet all the cargo requirements.
The Hawthorne, California, company, led by billionaire Elon Musk, was the space station's first commercial shipper. It's been successfully delivering supplies since 2012 with the Dragon. Virginia's Orbital Sciences Corp., NASA's other contracted supplier, has grounded its rocket fleet following a launch explosion last fall.
Lueders said the plan is to have two "robust providers" for crew transport, in case one of them ends up grounded by technical problems. NASA awarded SpaceX $2.6 billion for crew transport, while Boeing got $4.2 billion. Each is to provide two to six missions.
Boeing's vice president and general manager for Houston-based space exploration, John Elbon, said an unmanned test flight of the CST-100 capsule in 2017 will be followed a few months later by the first crewed test flight. That first manned mission will include one Boeing test pilot and one NASA astronaut, he said.
Shotwell said the SpaceX unmanned test flight could occur as early as 2016, followed by a crewed flight in 2017. She said the company is still working on the number and makeup of the
It was the first in-depth public description of the commercial crew effort by NASA and winners SpaceX and Boeing; discussion had been stalled because of a protest lodged by losing competitor Sierra Nevada Corp., developer of the mini-shuttle Dream Chaser. The Government Accountability Office dismissed Sierra Nevada's challenge earlier this month.
first crew.
Some of NASA's 40-something-member astronaut corps turned out for the event at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Bolden urged "they better start smiling."
While the current astronauts will be the ones flying to the space station on Dragons and CST-100s, it will be the younger, future crop that ends up bound for Mars, he noted.
NASA conducted a successful orbital test flight of its new Orion spacecraft last month. That's the capsule that, along with linked habitats, would get crews to and from Mars in the 2030s under NASAs current plan.
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