Prosecutor won’t fire for e-mails

Kootenai County Prosecutor Bill Douglas will not fire any employees for a slew of sexually explicit e-mails several of them exchanged on county-owned computers over the past year.

Douglas told the Coeur d’Alene Press that he’s counseled his employees about the notes, which contained graphic sexual images and videos. But he said he will not fire them, despite some officials calling for a crackdown.

“They are against county policy and those people who sent them are subject to discipline,” Douglas said. “Those who forwarded these used bad judgment, but no one was fired for it.”

The e-mails came out of a probe into sexual harassment allegations against Kootenai County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Rick Baughman. Baughman was put on paid administrative leave Nov. 6 after two female co-workers quit, claiming that he made inappropriate advances, lewd comments and pestered them for dates.

Baughman exchanged more than 50 e-mail messages with the two former co-workers, some of which included attachments that depicted bestiality, oral sex, and a toddler with genitals exposed.

Douglas said he reviewed all the e-mails, and that the extent of the computer abuse has been exaggerated in media reports.

“A lot of that stuff is in every workplace in the county,” he said. “You have to look at the context in which they were sent: as jokes.”

No formal charges have been filed against the county or Baughman.

The investigation is expected to conclude this week.

Spokane

Teens critical after poisonings

Two teenage boys remained in critical condition at Deaconess Medical Center on Saturday, three days after they were found unconscious in a garage at the Westfall Village apartment complex in northeast Spokane.

The boys, whose ages and names weren’t available, apparently were working on a car in the garage when they were overcome by carbon monoxide, said Assistant Fire Chief Brian Schaeffer.

Preliminary information from police investigators suggested the poisonings were accidental, but other information wasn’t available, Schaeffer said.

The victims were found at 12:34 p.m. Wednesday, about 12 hours after they were last seen by friends.

Fire department paramedics initiated life-saving measures, including providing airways and IV lines for the pair, who were transported by ambulances to Deaconess.

Westfall Village is located at 3724 N. Cook St., and is operated by Spokane Housing Authority.

SEATTLE

Judge will read terrorist’s letter

U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour says he will read a letter from convicted terrorist Ahmed Ressam, despite the objections of Ressam’s attorneys.

Coughenour issued his one-page decision about the letter Friday, but said he would not read it until Jan. 5. He gave no reason for the delay. The letter was originally written in Arabic but has been translated into English, court documents say.

Ressam’s lead attorney, Thomas Hillier, revealed the existence of the letter in a Nov. 27 filing, in which he urged Coughenour not to read it because it could be an improper communication that would taint Coughenour’s handling of the case. Coughenour sentenced Ressam last year to 22 years in prison, but the sentence could be sent back to the judge on appeal.

Federal prosecutors argued in favor of Coughenour’s reading the letter, saying that it could represent a pleading, a wish for new lawyers or a desire to resume cooperating with terrorism investigators.

Ressam was convicted in 2001 of terrorism and explosives charges for plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on the eve of the millennium. Customs agents in Port Angeles caught him with explosives in the trunk of his rental car when he drove off a ferry from British Columbia in December 1999.

BOISE

Scams using Idaho return addresses

Con artists are taking advantage of Idaho’s good reputation by using the state as the return address in their mailing scams.

Better Business Bureau officials said Idaho addresses have become popular in mail scams because Americans are familiar enough with the state to think of it as a safe, stable place, but not familiar enough to spot the bogus addresses.

“It just very simply creates a false sense of believability,” said Nora Carpenter, executive director of the Better Business Bureau of Southwest Idaho and Eastern Oregon.

One of the latest Idaho-based scams involves a mailer claiming to be from the Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes Center that tells recipients that they’ve won, ac- companied by a fake check for $78,000. The mailer lists an address in Caldwell.

Recipients of a scam letter should contact the Better Business Bureau at (208) 342-4649 or (800) 212-1001.

OLYMPIA

State aid sought after flooding

Gov. Chris Gregoire on Saturday asked President Bush for federal disaster money to repair public facilities damaged in 12 Washington counties during last month’s floods.

Roads, buildings, parks and utilities were damaged in Chelan, Cowlitz, Grays Harbor, Jefferson, King, Lewis, Pacific, Pierce, Skagit, Skamania, Snohomish and Wahkiakum counties, Gregoire said.

The governor asked that the request for disaster aid for public facilities be added to her Nov. 22 request for aid to individuals in 11 counties. The request for individual aid covers Clark, Cowlitz, Grays Harbor, King, Lewis, Pierce, Skagit, Skamania, Snohomish, Thurston and Wahkiakum counties.

A team of local, state and federal officials found an estimated $37 million in damages to public facilities. Damage must reach $7.5 million to be considered for a federal disaster declaration.

IDAHO FALLS

Idaho to rancher: Elk must be killed

A domesticated cow elk from an eastern Idaho ranch that is suspected of having red deer hybrid genes must be killed, the state has ordered.

The Idaho Department of Agriculture told Fremont County rancher Rex Rammell on Thursday that he would have to destroy the animal to ensure that its hybrid genes could not be passed into the state’s wild elk herds.

Rammell said Saturday he won’t kill the animal himself, but he will allow state officials to do so. They are expected to destroy it Monday.

Even though they can produce larger antlers than pure elk, red deer hybrids are banned in Idaho for fear that they could pollute the gene pool of Idaho wild elk. The wild elk herds are the state’s main hunting attraction and bring millions of dollars into its economy.

Rammell’s cow tested free of red deer genes when he bought the animal in 1997 for his hunting ranch, but since then, genetic tests have improved, said John Chatburn, the agriculture department’s deputy administrator for animal industries.

Although the tests did not confirm the cow has the hybrid genes, they couldn’t rule it out, Chatburn said.

Rammell remains skeptical of the test results.

The cow was one of as many as 160 elk that fled Rammell’s Chief Joseph hunting preserve near Rexburg in August.