THURSDAY,MAY1,2003 NEWS THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN - 11A Search for Columbia debris ends The Associated Press LUFKIN, Texas (AP) - The search in east Texas for debris from space shuttle Columbia formally ended yesterday, with the Federal Emergency Management Agency handing operations over to NASA. "The search officially ended today." said representative Kelly Humphries, of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. "We've been winding it down over the last couple weeks." Columbia disintegrated over Texas during re-entry on Feb. 1, killing all seven crew members. Camps for searchers that had been set up in Hemphill and Palestine closed last week, and those in Nacogdoches and Corsicana closed this week. Humphries said. A command center in Lufkin was expected to close May 10. 1. 2 million acres. They recovered more than 80,000 pounds of debris, or about 40 percent of the shuttles weight, said FEMA public information officer Kim Pease. During the three-month search about 17,000 searchers scoured The westernmost piece of confirmed debris was a shuttle tile found in the west Texas town of Littlefield; the easternmost pieces were turbo pumps found in Fort Polk, La., Pease said. At the height of the search, teams were finding between 700 and 900 items a day, Pease said. At least 150 pieces of debris were found this week as the recovery effort wrapped up. The search, overseen by the Johnson Space Center in Houston, will continue in Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. "These are smaller-scale searches," Humphries said. "They're looking for items that may have fallen off much earlier in the breakup." Border forests not patrolled by U.S. The Associated Press WASHINGTON-About 1,000 miles of national forest land bordering Canada and Mexico go virtually unpatrolled by the U.S. Forest Service, creating wide swaths for terrorists and criminals to enter the country undetected, an internal government audit saves. Even though the Forest Service is not the lead agency responsible for border security, it oversees areas "that are potentially vulnerable to infiltration by terrorists, smugglers, and other criminal agents," the Agriculture Department's inspector general said in a report yesterday. The Forest Service oversees 460 miles of land along the 3,000 mile border between the continental United States and Canada. It also monitors 450 miles between Alaska and Canada,and 60 miles along the border with Mexico. With just 620 officers to monitor the 196.1 million acres managed by the Forest Service, a "relatively small number" of those patrol 520 miles of forest land along those borders, they said. The remaining 450 border miles aren't patrolled at all, the auditors said. Specific numbers were omitted for security reasons, said Sharon Friend, a representative for the inspector general, "so no one would know how many or how little we had." It was not clear whether other security services,such as the Border Patrol, had dedicated resources to patrolling national forest land in border areas. The audit also pointed out the Forest Service's limited powers. Forest Service officers generally cannot arrest anyone entering the country illegally unless they're breaking a law enforced by the agency. But they can detain suspicious people until Border Patrol officers arrive to make an arrest. is an essential element of national security, especially in light of the Sept. 11,2001, terrorist attacks," the audit is the latest in a series of reports spotlighting significant gaps in security at the Forest Service. Noting that "border security Last week, the inspector general said the Forest Service has been lax in securing guns and explosives in storage buildings on federal lands and at ski resorts. And last year, the same auditors raised similar concerns about air tanker planes used to fight wildfires. Without increased oversight, terrorists could steal the planes and spray harmful chemicals, they warned. Judge closes anti-tax activist's charity The Associated Press PORTLAND, Ore. — A judge yesterday shut down a charity run by a prominent anti-tax activist that was allegedly used to fund the activist's private petition-gathering organization and boost his political ambitions. The judge also banned Bill Sizemore from organizing another charity similarly linked to a political action committee "to avoid the type of racketeering violations which have occurred in this case." The ruling followed a jury's decision last September that Sizemore's Oregon Taxpayers United Education Foundation and his political action committee filed false campaign and tax reports and committed fraud and forgery to obtain signatures for petitions on two anti-union initiatives. The measures, rejected by voters in 2000, sought to prohibit union dues from being used for political purposes without members' prior approval. The jury ordered Sizemore's groups to pay $2.5 million to the two largest teachers' unions in the state, which reportedly spent nearly $700,000 fighting the two measures. Sizemore, an unsuccessful Republican gubernatorial candidate in 1998, has crafted a number of anti-tax ballot measures, including a successful property tax limit approved in 1996. Attorney Greg Byrne said Sizemore will appeal the ruling. While acknowledging the ruling was a setback to Sizemore's political career, "he's not going to allow this judgment to silence him politically,"Byrne said. Gene Mechanic, an attorney for the unions, said the ruling does not restrict political speech by Sizemore. "But it does mean he has to play by the rules," Mechanic said. Witness accused of false testimony The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) Eleven days before Timothy McVeigh was executed, lawyers for FBI lab employees sent an urgent letter to the attention of Attorney General John Ashcroft alleging that a key prosecution witness in the Oklahoma City trial might have given false testimony about forensic evidence in the trial. The allegations involving Stephen Burmeister, now the FBI lab's chief of scientific analysis, were never turned over to McVeigh, though they surfaced as a judge was weighing whether to delay his execution because the government withheld evidence. The letter, however, was recently turned over to bombing conspirator Terry Nichols who faces another trial on Oklahoma state murder charges. "Material evidence presented by the government in the OKBOMB prosecution through the testimony of Mr. Burmeister appears to be false, misleading and potentially fabricated," said the June 1, 2001, letter to Ashcroft obtained by The Associated Press. The letter cited Burmeister's testimony in a civil case as evidence contradicting his earlier McVeigh testimony. Justice officials said yesterday the letter was routed to Ashcroft's clerical office, where it sat for nearly two months and then was forwarded to the FBI. Neither Ashcroft nor other top officials in the Justice Department who handled the McVeigh case saw the letter, representative Barbara Comstock said. McVeigh's lawyers expressed dismay at the revelation. At the time the letter was sent, a judge had dramatically delayed McVeigh's execution by one month because of other evidence the FBI failed to turn over during his trial. Rob Nigh, an Oklahoma attorney who represented McVeigh from trial through his final appeal, added: "Had we had this letter, we would have had additional arguments to make to Judge Matsch why the execution should be stayed." Justice officials could not explain how a letter marked for urgent attention by Ashcroft could be misrouted. The allegations surfaced in mid-May 2001 when Burmeister, who made a key forensic discovery in the McVeigh case, was being questioned by lawyers for FBI lab employees who had sued the agency. A transcript of the deposition obtained by AP shows Justice and FBI lawyers became concerned that statements Burmeister might make would be helpful to McVeigh and Nichols, and they ordered lawyers to cut off that line of questioning. "We can't have him now second guess his testimony in the McVeigh case," a Justice lawyer interjected. "I mean the effect of it to embarrass the FBI." FBI officials stood by Burmeister. "It didn't happen," FBI lab director Dwight Adams said when asked about the allegations of false testimony. "Steve Burmeister is one of the FBI's finest experts. He is meticulous and honest." Enjoy the comfort of a small community Now Leasing! 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