Wochit
2 Brothers Pardoned, Clearing Way for Them to Receive $750K

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — When DNA evidence freed two brothers wrongfully imprisoned for an 11-year-old girl's killing, each was given $45 by prison officials.

Nine months later, pardons issued Thursday by North Carolina's governor have cleared the way for Henry McCollum and Leon Brown to receive $750,000 each from the state for spending three decades in prison. It's been a long wait for the men who have been relying on help from family and donations while their application was pending.

The brothers' family, friends and attorneys were jubilant in early September after a judge vacated their convictions and ordered their release, citing new DNA evidence that points to another man killing and raping 11-year-old Sabrina Buie in 1983.

But their freedom also came with difficult adjustments to the outside world. When McCollum walked out of death row, he needed help putting on the seatbelt in his father's car. At the time, he had never owned a cellphone and was unaccustomed to the Internet.

On Thursday, Gov. Pat McCrory said his decision came after a comprehensive process that included meetings with Brown, who's 47; and McCollum, who's 51.

"I'm not going to rush into making an important decision. I'm going to do the right thing," he said.

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Leon Brown listens to evidence during a court hearing for him and his brother, death row inmate Henr …

McCollum had been the longest-serving inmate on North Carolina's death row. His half brother Brown had been serving life in prison.

"We are so grateful for the governor granting us a new lease on life, for our family and those who believed in our innocence, and all of the lawyers who worked so hard to get us here today," the men said in a statement released by their lawyer, Patrick Megaro.

The brothers didn't attend the governor's announcement. They said earlier this year that they have had a hard time since their release.

"I can't do nothing to help my family," McCollum told the Raleigh News & Observer in January. "They're not able to pay their bills."

The newspaper reported that lawyers at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham held a fundraiser for them, and others donated money after reading about the case.

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In a June 10, 1987 photo, Leon Brown sits in the day room of his Death Row cell block in Raleigh, NC …

The pardon qualifies the brothers for $50,000 from the state for each year they were imprisoned, with a limit of $750,000. The compensation still needs to be approved by a state agency, but it is considered a formality.

In September 1983, Buie was found in a soybean field in rural Robeson County, naked except for a bra pushed up against her neck. A short distance away, police found two bloody sticks and cigarette butts.

Defense attorneys have said the brothers were scared teenagers who had low IQs when they were questioned by police and coerced into confessing. McCollum was then 19, and Brown was 15.

The DNA from the cigarette butts doesn't match Brown or McCollum, and fingerprints taken from a beer can at the scene weren't theirs either. No physical evidence connects them to the crime, a judge and prosecutor acknowledged last fall.

Based largely on their confessions, both were initially given death sentences, which were overturned. Upon retrial, McCollum was again sent to death row, while Brown was convicted of rape and sentenced to life.

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In an an Aug. 12, 2014 photo, Henry McCollum sits on death row at Central Prison in Raleigh, N.C. He …

Current Robeson County District Attorney Johnson Britt, who didn't prosecute the men, has said he's considering whether to reopen the case and charge the other man, whose DNA was found on a cigarette butt from the crime scene. The cigarette butt was tested as part of the recent investigation by the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, a one-of-its-kind investigative panel.

The inmate whose DNA was on the cigarette is already serving a life sentence for a similar rape and murder that happened less than a month after Sabrina's killing.

Ken Rose, a lawyer who represented McCollum for 20 years, said he's thrilled by the pardon.

"We're very happy that the governor reached this decision, but not at all surprised," Rose said. "None of us have any doubt that they are innocent. And finally the state has acknowledged actual innocence."

Still, he said he's frustrated that it took so many years to clear their names.

"If we continue executions, we are going to be executing some innocent people on death row," he said.

4 ex-workers accuse CVS in NYC of ordering them to target minority shoppers

NEW YORK (AP) -- Four former CVS theft investigators say their supervisors ordered them to target minority shoppers in some New York City stores, according to a federal lawsuit filed against the nation's second-largest drugstore chain.

The former employees said that supervisors routinely told them to racially profile black and Hispanic shoppers even when there was no indication that those people might steal. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday, states that the supervisors never gave similar instructions regarding white shoppers.

The complaint, which seeks class status, claims CVS intentionally targets and racially profiles shoppers based on the "ill-founded institutional belief ... minority customers are criminals and thieves."

CVS spokeswoman Carolyn Castel said in an email that the company doesn't tolerate discrimination and is shocked by the allegations.

"CVS Health has firm nondiscrimination policies that it rigorously enforces," she wrote. "We serve all communities and we do not tolerate any policy or practice that discriminates against any group."

The plaintiffs said that they were subjected to increased scrutiny within weeks of complaining about the procedures, and they were eventually fired.

The plaintiffs are all either black or Hispanic.

CVS Health Corp., based in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, runs 7,800 drugstores, a total that trails only Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc.

CVS accused of profiling minority customers

Store supervisors told theft investigators to watch black and Hispanic shoppers, according to a federal lawsuit.
Company responds

WSJ Live
Hacking Accusations Plague U.S.-China Relations

WASHINGTON (AP) — China-based hackers are suspected once again of breaking into U.S. government computer networks, and the entire federal workforce could be at risk this time.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that data from the Office of Personnel Management — the human resources department for the federal government — and the Interior Department had been compromised.

"The FBI is conducting an investigation to identify how and why this occurred," the statement Thursday said.

The hackers were believed to be based in China, said Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican.

Collins, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the breach was "yet another indication of a foreign power probing successfully and focusing on what appears to be data that would identify people with security clearances."

But in Beijing Friday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry dismissed the allegations.

A spokesman for the ministry, Hong Lei said at a regular news briefing that Beijing hopes the U.S. would be "less suspicious and stop making any unverified allegations, but show more trust and participate more in cooperation."

Beijing routinely dismisses any allegation of its official involvement in cyberattacks on foreign targets, while invariably noting that China is itself the target of hacking attacks and calling for greater international cooperation in combating hacking.

"We know that hacker attacks are conducted anonymously, across nations, and that it is hard to track the source," Hong said. "It's irresponsible and unscientific to make conjectural, trumped-up allegations without deep investigation."

A U.S. official, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the data breach, said the breach could potentially affect every federal agency. One key question is whether intelligence agency employee information was stolen. Former government employees are affected as well.

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This Feb. 24, 2015, file photo, shows the Homeland Security Department headquarters in northwest Was …

The Office of Personnel Management conducts more than 90 percent of federal background investigations, according to its website.

The agency said it is offering credit monitoring and identity theft insurance for 18 months to individuals potentially affected. The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents workers in 31 federal agencies, said it is encouraging members to sign up for the monitoring as soon as possible.

In November, a former DHS contractor disclosed another cyberbreach that compromised the private files of more than 25,000 DHS workers and thousands of other federal employees.

Cybersecurity experts also noted that the OPM was targeted a year ago in a cyberattack that was suspected of originating in China. In that case, authorities reported no personal information was stolen.

Chinese groups have persistently attacked U.S. agencies and companies, including insurers and health-care providers, said Adam Meyers, vice president for intelligence at Irvine, California-based CrowdStrike, which has studied Chinese hacking groups extensively.

The Chinese groups may be looking for information that can be used to approach or compromise people who could provide useful intelligence, Meyers said. "If they know someone has a large financial debt, or a relative with a health condition, or any other avenues that make them susceptible to monetary targeting or coercion, that information would be useful."

One expert said hackers could use information from government personnel files for financial gain. In a recent case disclosed by the IRS, hackers appear to have obtained tax return information by posing as taxpayers, using personal information gleaned from previous commercial breaches, said Rick Holland, an information security analyst at Forrester Research.

"Given what OPM does around security clearances, and the level of detail they acquire when doing these investigations, both on the subjects of the investigations and their contacts and references, it would be a vast amount of information," Holland added.

DHS said its intrusion detection system, known as EINSTEIN, which screens federal Internet traffic to identify potential cyberthreats, identified the hack of OPM's systems and the Interior Department's data center, which is shared by other federal agencies.

It was unclear why the EINSTEIN system didn't detect the breach until after so many records had been copied and removed.

"DHS is continuing to monitor federal networks for any suspicious activity and is working aggressively with the affected agencies to conduct investigative analysis to assess the extent of this alleged intrusion," the statement said.

Cybersecurity expert Morgan Wright of the Center for Digital Government, an advisory institute, said EINSTEIN "certainly appears to be a failure at this point. The government would be better off outsourcing their security to the private sector where's there at least some accountability."

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., said the government must overhaul its cybersecurity defenses. "Our response to these attacks can no longer simply be notifying people after their personal information has been stolen," he said. "We must start to prevent these breaches in the first place."

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Associated Press writers Donna Cassata, Alicia A. Caldwell and Kevin Freking in Washington, Brandon Bailey in San Francisco and Ian Mader in Beijing contributed to this report.

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Follow Ken Dilanian on Twitter at https://twitter.com/KenDilanianAP

In Steve Reinboldt’s 1970 high school yearbook, wrestling coach Dennis Hastert wrote that Steve was his “great, right hand man” as the student equipment manager of the Yorkville, Illinois wrestling team.

But Steve was also a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of Hastert, Steve’s sister said today in an interview with ABC News. It is the first time an alleged Hastert victim has been identified by name since his indictment for lying to the FBI and violating federal banking laws to cover-up past misconduct. Hastert, due in court next week, has not responded to the allegations.

In an emotional interview, Steve Reinboldt’s sister Jolene said she first learned of her late brother’s purported years-long sexual abuse at the hands of the future Speaker of the House back in 1979 when her brother revealed to her that he was gay and had been out of high school for eight years.

“I asked him, when was your first same sex experience. He looked at me and said, ‘It was with Dennis Hastert,’” Jolene said. “I was stunned."

Jolene said she asked her brother why he never told anyone. “And he just turned around and kind of looked at me and said, ‘Who is ever going to believe me?’”

Jolene Reinbolt / Yorkville High School Yearbook

PHOTO: Dennis Hastert, top right, and Steve Reinboldt, bottom right, shown in the 1970 Yorkville High School yearbook wrestling team photo.

Jolene said that Steve told her the abuse lasted throughout Steve’s four years of high school as he served as team student manager. “Mr. Hastert had plenty of opportunities to be alone with Steve, because he was there before the meets,” she said. “He was there after everything because he did the laundry, the uniforms. So he was there by himself with him,” she added.

Her brother also spent time with Hastert as a member of an Explorers troop, which Hastert ran. Photos taken by her brother show Hastert with a group of boys on a diving trip to the Bahamas.

Reinboldt’s sister says she has no doubts about the veracity of what her brother told her 36 years ago.

“[Steve] just told me the basics. I believed him 100 percent. But he never went into any details -– where it happened, or what the sexual experiences were like, anything like that,” Jolene said.

Jolene said she believes the abuse ended when Steve moved away after his high school graduation in 1971. Reinboldt died of AIDS in 1995. She believes Hastert’s alleged actions irrevocably changed Steve's life for the worse.

“He took his belief in himself and his kind of right to be a normal person,” Jolene said. “Here was the mentor, the man who was, you know, basically his friend and stepped into that parental role, who was the one who was abusing him… He damaged Steve I think more than any of us will ever know.”

Jolene Reinbolt

PHOTO: Dennis Hastert, right of middle, led a group of high school students in the Explorer's Club on a trip to the Bahamas. Steve Reinboldt is standing on Hastert's left.

Her anger boiled over when she said Hastert was so “brash” as to show up at Steve’s funeral viewing.

“I was just there just trying to bite my tongue thinking that blood was coming out because I was just… So after he had gone through the line I followed him out into the parking lot of the funeral home,” Jolene said. “I said, ‘I want to know why you did what you did to my brother.’ And he just stood there and stared at me. He didn’t say, ‘What are you talking about?’ you know, [or], ‘What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He just stood there and stared at me.

“Then I just continued to say, ‘I want you to know your secret didn’t die in there with my brother. And I want you to remember that I’m out here and that I know.’ And again, he just stood there and he did not say a word.”

Hastert got in his car and drove away. Jolene said Hastert’s non-response “said everything.”

In the two decades after Steve’s death, Jolene said that she tried to expose Hastert, even writing to ABC News and another news organization as well as some advocacy groups in 2006 after another congressman, Rep. Mark Foley, was discovered having sexually explicit message exchanges with an underage male page.

At the time ABC News could not corroborate Jolene's allegation and Hastert denied the claim.

Jolene Reinboldt

PHOTO: Dennis Hastert, right, plays cards with members of the Explorer's Club in the Bahamas.

So for years, Jolene watched helplessly as Hastert basked in fame and power, seated to the left of the president for years in the early 2000s for the nationally-televised State of the Union address.

“I would just watch for a while and then I would just have to get up and leave the room and just, you know, either cry or scream,” Jolene said. “I can’t believe the audacity of that man and how he thinks he will get away with it.”

She said she struggled with the decision to try and put it all behind her.

“I finally got to a point where I needed – I just had to lay it down,” she said. “And right before this last Christmas, I had – I have a couple of bins and things, boxes that have a lot of his [Steve’s] stuff in it – and I just remember sitting on the floor, packing it all up and just saying, ‘Steve, I did the best I could. And I know you’re okay.’”

Luke Frazza/Getty Images

PHOTO: President George W. Bush, center, is applauded by Vice President Dick Cheney, left, and Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, right, during Bush's State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 2, 2005.

Then just two weeks ago, Jolene said she got a message from the FBI. They wanted to talk about Hastert.

“That’s when I just kind of lost it and said, 'Oh my God, I can’t believe – I never thought I was going to get this phone call… I thought it was over,'” she said.

A few days after that Jolene and her husband watched on television as it was reported Hastert had been indicted on charges of bank fraud relating to large payments to someone that Hastert undertook to conceal “prior misconduct.”

“There are no words to describe what it felt like, to, you, know, it’s just like Stevie had done it. It’s gonna happen, we got him,” she recalls thinking when the news broke.

Sources knowledgeable of the case told ABC News Hastert was paying a man -- still unidentified except as “Individual A” -- hundreds of thousands of dollars to hide that Hastert had engaged in sexual misconduct with him while Hastert was the high school wrestling coach.

Jolene Reinboldt

PHOTO: Dennis Hastert's note to Steve Reinboldt in Reinboldt's 1970 high school yearbook.

Jolene never asked for money from Hastert, but his sister believes that “Individual A” is familiar with what happened with her brother. She does not know who Individual A is, but she said she’s thankful that Hastert’s alleged misconduct is coming to light.

“I feel vindicated and that Steve’s vindicated, that Mr. Hastert can’t pull this wool over everybody’s eyes,” she said. “Finally the truth comes out.”

Jolene said she wanted to speak publicly on behalf of her family about her brother’s ordeal because she believes there may be other victims and she wanted them to know they’re not alone, “that when they were kids, at that point in their life when they were going through this, it wasn't talked about like it is now.”

“But now there’s people that are going to believe them,” Jolene said. “I just think it’s really important that these kids get a chance to work through this because I think it’s going to give them a lot of relief... Please, come forward.”

Hastert, now 73, is scheduled to make his first court appearance regarding the fraud charges next week. Hastert and his representatives have repeatedly declined to comment on the allegations, including to ABC News for this report.

The FBI declined to comment for this report.

ABC News / Jolene Reinboldt

PHOTO: Steve Reinboldt seen here on the beaches of the Bahamas.

ABC News' Megan Chuchmach, Whitney Lloyd, Randy Kreider and Cho Park contributed to this report. John Capell is a freelance journalist based in the Northwest and frequent contributor to ABC News.

An American scholar in Wisconsin says a serious investigation into the background of fifteen alleged Saudi 9/11 hijackers, who were falsely blamed for “the 9/11 inside job”, would open up a huge can of worms.

“This missing document, these 28 pages, allegedly contain evidence of Saudi involvement in financing and backing the alleged 9/11 hijackers,” said Dr. Kevin Barrett, a founding member of the Scientific Panel for the Investigation of 9/11.

“And those who have seen these pages, including [former] Florida Senator Bob Graham and other people in the Congress have said that it completely transforms one’s viewpoint of 9/11,” he told Press TV in a phone interview on Wednesday.

Dr. Barrett made the remarks a day after Republican Senator Rand Paul joined a group of bipartisan House lawmakers to force the disclosure of pages extracted from a 2002 Congressional inquiry into the September 11, 2001 attacks.

He said the reason that the classified pages are still hidden from the American people and the world is that an investigation into “the links revealed between the Saudi government and these patsies” will reveal that 19 hijackers were actually trained by the CIA in the United States.

The political commentator and activist said the document “utterly annihilates the official version and it reveals that 9/11 was not an attack by a rogue group of terrorists, but it was actually a state-sponsored operation.”

“So the real reason that this document is such a hot potato is that if an investigation genuinely tried to find out why these 19 young men, who were falsely blamed for the crime of the century, were being supported by the Saudi government, then that would then lead to a detailed investigation of their backgrounds and we would learn that these people were actually US intelligence agents; they were not merely supported by the Saudi government, they were also supported by the FBI,” he noted.

"They were living with an FBI informant at times they were getting money from the Saudis. And they were also in the United States on CIA snitch visas. These are the visas that CIA issues to people who spy for it in Saudi Arabia. It’s part of the reward; you get paid if you’re Saudis and spy for CIA, and you get a free trip to America on a snitch visa,” Dr. Barrett revealed.

“So, the CIA brought the 15 Saudi hijackers to America -- alleged hijackers I should say -- on this these visas that prove that these fifteen Saudis were actually CIA agents. That’s just one of the facts that will emerge if there is a serious investigation of this,” he added.

“We will also learn that these alleged 19 hijackers [were] trained in secure US military facilities during the run-up to 9/11, including Pensacola Naval Air Station and others."

Dr. Barrett offered the example that “Muhammad Atta, or the person who posed Muhammad Atta, who spoke fluent Hebrew by the way, was a regular at the officers club at the Florida military base.”

“So looking at the backgrounds of the patsies, who were falsely blamed for the 9/11 inside job, the coup d’état by Zionist neo-conservatives with the help of Israeli intelligence and treasonous elements in the United States military and political system, will reveal this huge can of worms,” the American scholar underlined.

“It will be the scandal of the century; it will completely destabilize the United States, by revealing that the top leaders in the United States are the worst sort of liars and traitors,” he said.

“And frankly many people in positions of power here in the US, even those who are not at all complicit in the 9/11 coup d’état, don’t want to destabilize the country that much. And that’s why there’s been so much resistance to declassifying these critically important 28 pages,” Dr. Barrett concluded.

The September, 11, 2001 attacks, also known as the 9/11 attacks, were a series of strikes in the US which killed nearly 3,000 people and caused about $10 billion worth of property and infrastructure damage.

US officials assert that the attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda terrorists but many experts have raised questions about the official account.

They believe that rogue elements within the US government orchestrated or at least encouraged the 9/11 attacks in order to accelerate the US war machine and advance the Zionist agenda.

SB/GJH

(PRESSTV)