FBI used mob, woman testifies
The FBI used mob muscle to solve the 1964 disappearance of three civil rights volunteers in Mississippi, a gangster’s ex-girlfriend testified Monday.
Linda Schiro said that her boyfriend, Mafia tough guy Gregory Scarpa Sr., was recruited by the FBI to help find the volunteers’ bodies. She said Scarpa later told her he put a gun in a Ku Klux Klansman’s mouth and forced him to reveal the whereabouts of the victims.
The FBI has never acknowledged that Scarpa, nicknamed “The Grim Reaper,” was involved in the case. The bureau did not immediately return a call for comment Monday.
Schiro took the stand as a witness for the prosecution at the trial of former FBI agent R. Lindley DeVecchio, who is charged in state court with four counts of murder in what authorities have called one of the worst law enforcement corruption cases in U.S. history.
WASHINGTON
Book: Ford opposed Iraq war rationale
Former President Gerald Ford believed President Bush made the right decision to go to war in Iraq but did so for the wrong reason, a new book says.
The late president said the war was justified because Saddam Hussein was an evil person, journalist Thomas DeFrank wrote. But Ford said Bush should not have cited as his rationale the belief that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
DeFrank, Washington bureau chief for the New York Daily News, had covered Ford while he was vice president and president. He said the book, “Write It When I’m Gone,” was based on “obit interviews” that could only be published after Ford’s death. Ford died Dec. 26, 2006, at age 93.
NEW DELHI
Gap allegedly employed children
The Indian children reportedly found making clothes for Gap Inc. should be reunited with their families and compensated by the government, activists said Monday amid a spreading scandal.
Government officials offered no comment Monday about the reported discovery of children as young as 10 sewing clothes for clothing retailer Gap Inc. in a New Delhi factory.
Britain’s Observer newspaper on Sunday reported that it had found children making clothes with Gap labels in a squalid factory in New Delhi. It quoted the children as saying they had been sold to the sweatshop by their impoverished families. Some said they were not paid.
Gap responded quickly, saying the factory was being run by a subcontractor who was hired in violation of Gap’s policies, and none of the products made there will be sold in its stores.
CAIRO, Egypt
Egypt planning nuclear plants
Egypt’s president announced plans Monday to build several nuclear power plants – the latest in a string of ambitious proposals from moderate Arab countries. The United States immediately welcomed the plan, in a sharp contrast to what it called nuclear “cheating” by Iran.
President Hosni Mubarak said the aim was to diversify Egypt’s energy resources and preserve its oil and gas reserves for future generations. In a televised speech, he pledged Egypt would work with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency at all times and would not seek a nuclear bomb.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the U.S. would not object to the program as long as Egypt adhered to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and International Atomic Energy Agency guidelines.