GULFPORT, Miss. —Â
The planned overthrow of the U.S. government ended rather prosaically this fall, with a giant pile of mashed-up trucks in a muddy scrap yard a mile or so off the Interstate.
The crew at Alter Metal Recycling has been piling up the old trucks since summer and sending them to Alabama, for melting down and reincarnation as everything from cars to washers and dryers.
In certain circles in the mid-1990s, rumors sprouted among those inclined to keep an eye out for black helicopters. To them, the presence of 700 military-looking trucks bearing Soviet-bloc markings in a weed-strewn lot north of Gulfport was clear proof of a U.N. plan to take over the United States.
The specific outlines of such a plot were rather vague. But conspiracy-cult radio shows and right-wing fringe newsletters delivered somber reports about the vehicles, speaking of armored tanks, secret roads and the role of the vehicles in the establishment of a New World Order.
But the real tale behind the trucks, as is often the case, turns out to be more interesting than the conspiracy.
Charles Chawafaty, an Egyptian businessman, and Fred Koval, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, met in a Saudi Arabian prison.
Koval, now 88, had moved to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1979 to teach electronics at a school run by the Lockheed Corp. In 1981, Koval spent 4 1/2 months in a Saudi prison. While there, he said, he met Chawafaty.
In 1993, Chawafaty’s company, Agrinvest International, which is based in Phoenix, bought roughly 1,000 former Soviet bloc vehicles that had been demilitarized and auctioned. Some were stored in Britain, but most made their way to an 18-acre lot north of Gulfport that Koval had found. Chawafaty said the plan was to retrofit the vehicles and sell them to the United Nations for humanitarian missions.
All of this set off the conspiracy theories. “But none of it attracted buyers,” Koval said.
In the end, the vehicles mostly sat unwanted in the lot. The conspiracy theories dwindled, as did customs officials’ visits.
The rusting accelerated after Hurricane Katrina. For various reasons, including the expiration of a trade license and the fact that nobody was interested in rust-covered trucks, Chawafaty decided to scrap them.
Koval laughed about the whole episode, which produced little more than proof that most business schemes, like most conspiracy theories, end up on the ash heap of history.
The ongoing criminal case involving Sacramento real estate magnate Michael Lyon is prompting Sacramento’s district attorney to seek legislative relief for alleged victims of video voyeurism.
At issue: the state’s three-year statute of limitations, which sets a limit on the time prosecutors can initiate criminal proceedings after the offense occurred. Each state determines its own statute of limitations for criminal and civil matters, which aims to balance a victim’s right to justice with a would-be defendant’s right to be free from open-ended legal action.
Memories fade, investigations grow stale and witnesses die or move away.
In California and elsewhere, though, the statute of limitations for video voyeurism has presented a quandary for law enforcement officials, who say predators often operate for years before their activities are discovered. When they are, evidence may literally be staring investigators in the face, but the case is “too old” to seek justice for victims in the criminal courts.
“It’s just basic fairness here,” said Sacramento County Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Jeff Rose.
“The whole purpose of somebody having surreptitious recordings is to keep it secret. Therefore, they get rewarded if they keep it secret long enough – i.e., three years – where they can never be prosecuted. Somehow, that just doesn’t seem fair.”
Rose said the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office has asked the California District Attorneys Association to back legislation that would start the meter running when the illegal videotaping is discovered – not when the offenses occurred.
In Lyon’s case, investigators have discovered sordid images of people being secretly taped in private acts dating back to at least 1988, including two former nannies, sources told The Bee.
However, given the three-year statute of limitations, the District Attorney’s Office was able to bring charges based only on Lyon’s alleged sexual encounters with three prostitutes in 2008 and 2009.
Wiretap charges filed
In late August, Lyon, 54, stepped down as CEO of the company his father founded amid an investigation into whether he had illegally recorded houseguests, friends and prostitutes with cameras hidden in bathrooms and bedrooms.
A 16-month federal probe was closed that same month after the U.S. attorney’s office concluded it lacked the evidence to bring federal charges. But the Sacramento County sheriff and district attorney picked up the investigation in light of the allegations of long-running illegal taping and arrested the prominent businessman in November.
Lyon faces four felony counts of recording confidential communications, charges that stem from allegations that he recorded his sex acts with three prostitutes, without their knowledge, over the past three years. His attorney, William Portanova, has said his client will fight the charges, and Lyon is expected to enter a plea at his next hearing on Jan. 12.
Portanova has repeatedly said Lyon did nothing wrong and recently told The Bee that his client “does not electronically eavesdrop on anybody without their permission, period, plain and simple.”
Lyon is being charged under the state’s wiretapping law, which makes it a crime to record or eavesdrop on private communications – which has been interpreted in California to include sexual relations. The state also has a law specifically addressing video voyeurism, a misdemeanor with a one-year statute of limitations.
By filing under the wiretapping law, the district attorney was able to pursue the more serious felony charges and get a wider berth with a three-year statute of limitations. While the current case revolves around prostitutes, Rose recently told The Bee that prosecutors may be able to present the older evidence involving the nannies, houseguests and others to establish a pattern of conduct.
Cory Salzillo, director of legislation for the California District Attorneys Association, said the group will have no formal position on the proposal to change the statute of limitations until after the legislation committee meets in January.
Statutes trail technology
Meanwhile, the idea intrigues several legal experts and victims rights advocates, who say many states’ statute of limitations on illicit recording failed to keep pace with technology and the increasing ease with which unsuspecting victims can be monitored.
Law enforcement documents reviewed by The Bee indicate Lyon concealed high-tech cameras inside clock radios and other household items. Detectives who served search warrants at his home and on his vehicles seized computers, cameras, digital storage devices and a pair of high-tech eyeglasses that can be used to watch videos or make recordings, court documents indicate.
Rose said California’s statute of limitations treats similar crimes unevenly. For instance, in cases of fraud, the three-year time period in which prosecutors can bring charges begins when the crime is discovered. Rose likened fraud to video voyeurism, in that perpetrators of both crimes rely on secrecy and deception and often avoid detection for years.
“Why shouldn’t it be the same in these cases?” he asked.
California’s civil courts also are less restrictive, with victims of illegal taping given one year to file suit from the time the crime was discovered.
In fact, Lyon is being sued by a former nanny and a long-time family friend for allegedly videotaping them secretly when both were teenagers. The two, whose names were not revealed in the lawsuit, accuse Lyon of committing “an egregious breach of societal norms” by taping them while they used bathrooms in his homes.
The former nanny was taped in the shower and bathroom of the Lyon family vacation home near Lake Tahoe sometime around 1992, according to law enforcement documents reviewed by The Bee. The woman was about 16 at the time she was recorded emerging from the shower and blow-drying her hair, the documents state.
The other plaintiff is a family friend who was 18 at the time he was recorded in 2006 while in the bathroom of the Lyon’s Arden Arcade-area home.
Shock is still fresh
Despite the passage of time, the injuries are fresh to the plaintiffs, who recently had to identify themselves on tapes recovered by the FBI, said their attorney, Robert Zimmerman. The recordings have revealed numerous people – not just prostitutes – who were captured in private moments in Lyon’s homes, the attorney said.
“When you see the cross-section of people involved in this secret monitoring, it just violates trust on so many different levels,” Zimmerman said.
Portanova, Lyon’s attorney, said the limits on prosecuting alleged crimes “are on the books for a reason.” Evidence gets old, memories falter.
“It is difficult to prove your defense years after the fact,” he said. “Generally speaking, the most heinous crimes like murder have no statutes of limitations, and of course that makes sense. But most misdemeanor crimes are prosecutable within a year or the opportunity to prosecute is gone forever, as it should be.”
Every crime – misdemeanors and felonies – has its own statute of limitations enacted by the Legislature over the past 100 years, he said.
“There’s a balance that has to be found between rational law enforcement and the ability of an individual to gather evidence to meet the accusation,” Portanova said.
Others believe the balance has tipped too far toward defendants when it comes to video voyeurism.
Susan Howley of the National Center for Victims of Crime said she believes it “makes a lot of policy sense” for states to re-examine their statutes for these unique crimes, especially with advancing technology.
“When you have cases like this where you have significant evidence – and the prosecutor believes he or she can move forward and make the case – there shouldn’t be an arbitrary cutoff of justice here,” she said.
“For many victims, it can be just as devastating – even after the passage of time.”
CATCHING UP WITH THE LYON CASE
• In late August, real estate magnate Michael Lyon, 54, stepped down as CEO of the company his father founded amid an investigation into whether he had illegally recorded houseguests, friends and prostitutes with cameras hidden in bathrooms and bedrooms.
• A 16-month federal probe was closed that same month after the U.S. attorney’s office concluded it lacked the evidence to bring federal charges.
• The Sacramento County sheriff and district attorney picked up the investigation in light of the allegations of long-running illegal taping and arrested Lyon in November. He faces four felony counts.
• Lyon’s attorney has said his client will fight the charges, and Lyon is expected to enter a plea at his next hearing on Jan. 12.
Hard on the heels of the WikiLeaks scandal comes yet another spy dispute, this time between Russia and Britain. London has expelled a Russian diplomat for what Foreign Secretary William Hague called overstepping the unwritten rules of espionage and Russia has responded tit-for-tat by sending a Brit home.
This is hardly a scandal – each side pocketed one ball in this game of diplomatic billiards, so it’s a draw. And the game was played with traditional, impersonal diplomatic politeness. The Russian Embassy was told on December 10 that the official in question must leave within the week, which he did. On December 16, the Russian Embassy replied in kind, and a British diplomat was sent packing, to return to his own snowbound homeland.
London clearly expected a retaliatory gesture. Foreign Secretary Hague announced the results of this billiard game only on December 21, after the British diplomat had been expelled from Russia. He described Russia’s response as groundless and expressed hope for the normalization of relations. Everything was comically routine.
Where is the good old Cold War where you need it? Back then, the ramifications of this dispute would have lasted for weeks.
Hands off the secret source
Diplomats are expelled for a variety of reasons. It’s not exactly difficult to identify those officials that work for intelligence agencies. Sometimes it is a purely political move. In this case, British newspapers reported that the expelled Russian diplomat had overstepped the mark, crossing the line between what is regarded acceptable and unacceptable behavior for an intelligence officer. The collection of any information of interest to intelligence agencies is considered acceptable behavior.
All spies working undercover as diplomats do roughly the same job as regular diplomats and journalists in every country. They gather information. The only difference is that they put it into different baskets and it is processed differently. That’s it. There is nothing sinister about it.
The Brits claim that the Russian diplomat was discovered approaching an individual rather than stealing information or entering sensitive buildings. He was asked to leave this secret source alone. These things happen.
One-off expulsions never produce any meaningful results, but they are inevitable when the rules of the game are broken. In this case, the expulsion is a message to the other side to “cool off.” Russia’s retaliation carries the same message.
The case of Zatuliveter
This would have been an entirely routine incident had it not been for the intrigue surrounding the case of Katia Zatuliveter. Foreign Secretary Hague said that the Russian diplomat’s expulsion was entirely unconnected with the allegations leveled against Zatuliveter. The 25 year-old Russian had studied in Britain before landing a job in 2008 as a research assistant for Mike Hancock, Liberal Democrat MP for Portsmouth South. Hancock chaired the All-Party Group on Russia in the House of Commons, where his unabashed affection for the country certainly raised some eyebrows. He was ultimately removed from that post, but continues to sit on the defense select committee.
Zatuliveter acted as the Russia group’s secretary and accompanied Hancock on his trips to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg, where the MP also serves. Hancock has been accused of hiring a Russian agent who supplied sensitive information from the House of Commons and PACE directly to the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency. Zatuliveter was arrested and held in an immigration center outside London before the UK Home Office announced that she was to be deported.
Hancock’s colleagues in the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in PACE – Matyas Eorsi (Hungary) and Serhiy Holovaty (Ukraine) – told newspapers that they had long suspected Hancock. They said he had always invited young, leggy Russian girls to the group’s secret meetings at L’Eveil des Sans, an upscale restaurant in Strasbourg. His glamorous but dubious companions also accompanied him at secret discussions regarding Europe’s future.
Portsmouth, which Hancock represents in Parliament, is a port city. His father and grandfather were sailors. And he gave a salty response worthy of a sailor to the accusations, calling them “absolute rubbish.” He said that the defense committee’s papers had been leaked to the press in the past and that he had never seen any information in them that was not available from open sources. He also said that he took not only Russian but also Bulgarian and Romanian girls to sessions in Strasbourg, adding: “Who the hell would be interested in what the Lib Dem delegation was doing and what we were thinking? It’s absolute nonsense.”
Zatuliveter declared that she is no Anna Chapman. She hired a lawyer and will now appeal what she considers to be her illegal deportation in court. The Home Office is no doubt unhappy that it has been ensnared in this case.
Le Carre’s verdict
If the spy scandals during the Cold War had been this routine, the world would have been deprived of great spy novelists like Ian Fleming or John Le Carre. There would have been no James Bond or George Smiley. Sadly, this is the direction we seem to be moving in; this is exactly what these masters of the spy novel predicted after the recent spy swaps and expulsions.
When the Americans arrested 11 Russian sleeper agents, including the darling of the British press Anna Chapman (aka Agent 90-60-90), David John Moore Cornwell (aka John Le Carre) wrote an article for the Guardian about the affair. Not only is Le Carre an outstanding spy novelist, he also served with the British intelligence services MI5 and MI6. So, out of respect for the man, I’ll permit myself a lengthy quote:Â
“Once upon a time spies had motives. There was capitalism and there was communism. You could choose. And all right, there was the money and the sex and the blackmail, and needing to get your own back on your superiors by betraying them when you’d been passed over for promotion, and there was the God-feeling, and playing the world’s game, and the whole familiar repertoire of noble and grubby motives, but in the end you either spied for a cause or against it.
“But what in heaven’s name was their cause? Who did they think they were protecting in their distorted, programmed little minds as they tried and tried again, unsuccessfully, to slither up the slippery pole of western society? What was there to choose between Mother Russia and Mother America, two huge continents out of control drowning together in the oily waters of capitalism? Was it really only the name on the lifebelt that made the difference? Mother Russia right or wrong?”
The world is like a tiny, cramped communal apartment, and naturally everyone wants to know what everyone else is doing. But peeping through the keyhole is not as exciting as breaking down the door. Espionage has become boring.
Once there was an emergency brake on the train of diplomacy, and when it was pulled, the train would come to a screeching, abrupt halt. In 1971, the Brits expelled 105 Soviet diplomats in Operation Foot. In 1985, after Oleg Gordievsky defected to London, the UK expelled almost all the KGB agents operating there. Under Ronald Reagan in 1986, the Americans asked 80 Soviet diplomats to leave. In 2001, they expelled another six, and then 45 more.
Those were the days. Now that emergency brake is no longer used. The train makes regular stops. Four Russians and one American get off at the next stop, some Brits get off at the next one.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and may not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
KNOXVILLE — Heads up kids: Big Brother can’t tap your phones, but mom and dad can.
So says the state Court of Appeals in a legally groundbreaking opinion that uses a Knox County custody battle as the backdrop.
“The parties agree that this is an issue of first impression in Tennessee,” Appellate Judge Charles D. Susano Jr. wrote in a recently released opinion, meaning that this is the first case of its kind.
Since 1994, it has been a crime in Tennessee to secretly record or eavesdrop on a phone call between two unsuspecting adults.
That made tapping a cheating spouse’s phone, for instance, to garner proof of a liaison a legal no-no, punishable by jail time and civil damages.
But what if mom secretly records a chat between dad and daughter and uses it in a custody fight? Do children have a right to telephonic privacy?
Until now, the issue had never been tested. Enter Knox County parents Chris Lawrence and Leigh Ann Lawrence and their toddler daughter, then 30 months old.
While father and daughter chatted on the phone in the spring of 2007, Leigh Ann Lawrence held up a tape recorder to a phone in another room and recorded the conversation.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said it would be “politically impossible” for Britain to extradite him to the United States for espionage.
Mr Assange told the Guardian newspaper there was a “high chance” he would be killed if he was jailed in America.
US authorities are thought to be considering whether they could extradite him on espionage charges.
He is currently on bail facing extradition proceedings to Sweden on sexual assault allegations.
Mr Assange denies the claims and says the case is politically motivated.
His Wikileaks website has published tens of thousands of leaked US diplomatic cables.
Mr Assange said strong public support for him in the UK would make it difficult for the British to hand him over to the Americans.
“It’s all a matter of politics. We can presume there will be an attempt to influence UK political opinion, and to influence the perception of our standing as a moral actor,” he said.
“Legally the UK has the right to not extradite for political crimes. Espionage is the classic case of political crimes. It is at the discretion of the UK government as to whether to apply to that exception.”
He also said that if was extradited to the US, there was a “high chance” of him being killed “Jack Ruby-style”.
This is a reference to the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald before he was brought to trial for the murder of President John F Kennedy.
