Dr. James S. Ketchum, an Army psychiatrist who in the 1960s conducted experiments with LSD and other powerful hallucinogens using volunteer soldiers as test subjects in secret research on chemical agents that might incapacitate the minds of battlefield adversaries, died on May 27 at his home in Peoria, Ariz. He was 87. His wife, Judy Ketchum, confirmed the death on Monday, adding that the cause had not been determined. Decades before a convention eventually signed by more than 190 nations outlawed chemical weapons, Dr. Ketchum argued that recreational drugs favored by the counterculture could be used humanely to befuddle small units of enemy troops, and that a psychedelic "cloud of confusion" could stupefy whole battlefield regiments more ethically than the lethal explosions and flying steel of conventional weapons. [continues 1413 words]
The wife and daughter of one murder victim called it a shock. Lawyers for the men who had been convicted called it sound legal reasoning, a vindication of their trial strategy, and said that freedom on bail -- not life in prison -- might be next. Prosecutors, carefully avoiding hints of disappointment, promised to appeal. After months of twists and turns in a federal case that ended in guilty verdicts for two former city police detectives, including convictions in eight murders for the mob a generation ago, Judge Jack B. Weinstein's decision yesterday to toss out the convictions on a statute-of-limitations ruling stunned practically everyone involved, although the defendants' lawyers were calmly making "I-told-you-so" statements. [continues 1016 words]
Three survivors of a missionary plane shot down in Peru after being mistaken for drug smugglers returned to the United States yesterday as details of their ordeal in the jungle, and of their years as backwater missionaries, were recounted by colleagues and friends. Officials of their mission vehemently disputed Peruvian accounts of the Friday incident, saying that the plane was easily identifiable by its markings and that its pilot had filed a flight plan and had been in radio contact with an airport where he intended to land. They said the Peruvian military plane had opened fire without warning, killing the missionary's wife and infant daughter. [continues 1449 words]
A state senator planning hearings on racial profiling in New Jersey said yesterday that the reinstatement of criminal charges against two troopers who shot three black and Hispanic men in a turnpike stop in 1998 did not settle questions about a State Supreme Court justice who played a role in the case. The senator, William L. Gormley, a Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would proceed with hearings in late February or early March to explore questions about the role of the justice, Peter G. Verniero, in the case and, more broadly, about what Mr. Verniero knew of racial profiling, and when he knew it, when he was the state's attorney general. [continues 945 words]
On a day of solemnity and outrage that degenerated into violence, Patrick M. Dorismond, the unarmed son of Haitian immigrants who was shot to death in a confrontation with the police on March 16, was carried across Brooklyn, eulogized as a martyr and laid to rest yesterday after a march and funeral that drew thousands of anguished mourners and angry protesters. Before and after his funeral, there were clashes between protesters and the police, and wild scenes and sounds of chaos: barricades tumbling under surging crowds, American flags burning, the clashing chords of car horns, and the crash of glass thrown from a height, all beneath the airborne staccato of police helicopters. [continues 1848 words]
A professor of anthropology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who has studied drugs and drug cultures for 25 years was accused in a Federal complaint on Monday of misusing funds from a $2.6 million Federal grant to buy drugs for addicts he interviewed and to pay for travel and other personal expenses. The professor, Ansley Hamid, 55, was accused of misusing thousands in grant money in 1996 and 1997 to pay for trips to Florida, Hawaii and Trinidad, to buy compact disks and CD equipment and to hire two assistants who worked mainly on his book manuscripts, all unrelated to his study of drug use in New York City. [continues 383 words]
In April and May, Laurie Anne Hiett, the wife of an Army colonel in charge of all United States military operations in Colombia, mailed six packages to New York from the American Embassy in Bogota. Each was sealed in brown paper and weighed several pounds. Hiett sent four of them to an apartment in Queens and the others to mail drops in Queens and Manhattan. She wrote her name on the return addresses and filled out Customs forms declaring the contents to be books about Colombia or items such as candy, a T-shirt, coffee and candles. [continues 627 words]
Scheme Used Embassy Privileges NEW YORK -- In April and May, Laurie Anne Hiett, the wife of an Army colonel in charge of all U.S. military operations in Colombia, mailed six packages to New York City from the U.S. Embassy in Bogota. Each was sealed in plain brown paper and weighed several pounds. Hiett, 36, sent four of them to an apartment in Queens and the others to mail drops in Queens and Manhattan. She wrote her name clearly on the return addresses and filled out customs forms declaring the contents to be books on Colombia or items like candy, a T-shirt, coffee or candles. [continues 940 words]
She Used Embassy Mail, Prosecutors Say NEW YORK -- In April and May, Laurie Anne Hiett, the wife of an Army colonel in charge of all U.S. military operations in Colombia, mailed six packages to New York City from the U.S. Embassy in Bogota. Each was sealed in plain brown paper and weighed several pounds. Hiett, 36, sent four to an apartment in Queens and the others to mail drops in Queens and Manhattan. She wrote her name clearly on the return addresses and filled out U.S. Customs forms declaring the contents to be books on Colombia or items like candy, a T-shirt, coffee or candles. [continues 706 words]
Charges Filed Over Shipments From U.S. Embassy In Colombia In April and May, Laurie Anne Hiett, the wife of an Army colonel in charge of all U.S. military operations in Colombia, mailed six packages to New York City from the American Embassy in Bogota. Each was sealed in plain brown paper and weighed several pounds. Hiett, 36, sent four of them to an apartment in Queens and the others to mail drops in Queens and Manhattan. She wrote her name clearly on the return addresses and filled out U.S. Customs forms declaring the contents to be books on Colombia or items like candy, a T-shirt, coffee or candles. But the names of the recipients were fictitious and the packages turned out to contain a total of 15.8 pounds of pure cocaine with a street value of up to $230,000, according to a criminal complaint filed on Thursday in federal court in Brooklyn charging Hiett and two others in a bizarre drug-trafficking conspiracy that took advantage of the embassy's special mailing privileges. A three-month undercover operation by New York police, U.S. Customs agents and the Army's Criminal Investigation Division found no evidence of involvement by Col. James Hiett, her husband. [continues 949 words]
In April and May, Laurie Anne Hiett, the wife of an Army colonel in charge of all United States military operations in Colombia, mailed six packages to New York City from the American Embassy in Bogota. Each was sealed in plain brown paper and weighed several pounds. Ms. Hiett sent four of them to an apartment in Queens and the others to mail drops in Queens and Manhattan. She wrote her name clearly on the return addresses and filled out United States Customs forms declaring the contents to be books on Colombia or items like candy, a T-shirt, coffee or candles. [continues 1290 words]
After weeks of protests over the combative police policies of the Giuliani administration, Commissioner Howard Safir yesterday unveiled major changes in the Street Crime Unit aimed at averting confrontations like that in which four white officers gunned down Amadou Diallo, an unarmed black man, last month. Commissioner Safir, reflecting Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's more conciliatory approach to the biggest crisis of his tenure, said that 50 of the 380 officers in the overwhelmingly white plainclothes unit would be replaced with minority members, and that all of its officers hereafter would work in uniform to minimize potentially deadly confusion in heat-of-the moment face-offs on the streets. [continues 1630 words]
N.J. superintendent linked drugs, crime to minority groups New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman ousted the superintendent of the state police Sunday after a published report quoted him saying it was naive to think race was not an issue in drug crimes and that cocaine and marijuana traffickers were most likely to be members of minority groups. Her decision came the same day the Star-Ledger of Newark published a lengthy report quoting the police superintendent, Col. Carl Williams, in a wide-ranging interview as linking minority groups with drug trafficking and making other comments that seemed to fuel a racial controversy around the New Jersey State Police. [continues 490 words]
NEW YORK -- A police sergeant leading an undercover buy-and-bust operation was wounded and a drug suspect was killed in a burst of gunfire early Friday as they wrestled in a notorious crack house in Brooklyn. The police said the sergeant, who was saved by his bulletproof vest, may have been shot by backup officers. Investigators said 11 shots were fired by the sergeant and two backup officers in scenes of wild and bloody confusion as the sergeant grappled with two suspects in the narrow hallway of a tenement abandoned by all but the drug trade at 325 Franklin Ave., in Bedford-Stuyvesant. [continues 536 words]
