ICE and INTERPOL Cooperation Nabs Child Predator

One of the most important lessons for law enforcement in the 21st century is that cooperation in investigations is absolutely essential. As criminals and terrorists become more mobile, more sophisticated and more technologically savvy, it’s critical that law enforcement agencies across the board work together to get the job done.

That spirit of cooperation was on display in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) most recent success yesterday when we arrested a suspect in an international child predator investigation in New Jersey. The arrest stemmed from an alert circulated earlier this week by INTERPOL, the international law enforcement organization that works closely with ICE agents in fighting transnational criminal activity.

It was a tough case: The suspect’s name, nationality and location were a mystery. But his face was known from a series of photographs depicting the sexual abuse of three boys between the ages of six and 10 years old. The pictures, believed to have been taken in Southeast Asia, were originally discovered by police in Norway two years ago. Since then, the photographs have been circulated widely to law enforcement agencies around the world.

INTERPOL, working with ICE investigators, distributed a new alert on the suspect on May 6. Traffic to the INTERPOL Web site exploded, with more than a quarter million hits, as the public and law enforcement officials joined in to help offer information that might identify the suspect. Thanks to these Internet tips, by the morning of May 8, ICE agents arrested 59-year-old Wayne Nelson Corliss of Union City, N.J., who at this time is believed to be the man in the photographs.

This alleged predator is now in custody and will face charges for the exploitation of vulnerable children. It could not have happened without the coordination and cooperation of law enforcement investigators working around the world to keep children safe.

Julie L. Myers

Assistant Secretary

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

In Case You Missed It

While the media dwell on celebrity peccadilloes and microscopic analysis of political comments, sometimes really important news gets overlooked. Right now, buried in the pages of a number of U.S. newspapers is a very significant story that tells us a lot about why we need some of the moderately inconvenient security measures with which we live.

If you fly commercially, you will remember that about 18 months ago new restrictions on hand-carried liquids were imposed at airports here and overseas. As we explained at the time, these actions were the result of a major disrupted plot to detonate liquid explosives on airliners flying from Britain to North America. Because we couldn’t say more without violating British legal rules, some of you may have wondered whether the plot was all that serious.

The trial of a number of the plotters is now underway in a London courtroom. The details being unfolded are riveting – and chilling. Unfortunately, the trial is not getting much play in our domestic news outlets, but the evidence should be required reading for those who travel by air.

As the prosecutor has explained, the plotters intended to smuggle liquid explosives on airplanes in plastic bottles of popular soft drinks. To conceal the liquid explosives, the terrorists injected them into the bottles with a syringe and used food coloring to approximate the appearance of a drink. Blueprints showed in court demonstrated how the explosives could be combined with detonators in mid-air.

The targets: at least half a dozen flights, including aircraft headed for Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.

Particularly disturbing, the terrorists intended to detonate these bombs only when the aircraft were all midway over the Atlantic Ocean and packed with summer travelers. The sinister idea was that after the first plane exploded, the others would be too far from land to reach safety before the next detonation.

Not much imagination is required to conceive of the horror that would have been experienced when word of the first explosion reached crews and even passengers of other transatlantic flights.

Was the plot real? The courtroom was told that the plot was “almost ready.”

I recommend following this story in the newspapers over the next few weeks (if you can find it). The evidence is powerful proof of the reason that we work 24/7 to avert terrorist plots by devoting time, money, and energy to security.

Michael Chertoff

The National Response Framework

Today Secretary Chertoff and I released a new National Response Framework to guide how our nation plans, prepares for, and responds to disasters and emergencies of all kinds and all sizes.

The National Response Framework builds on the previous National Response Plan. It is designed to give senior elected and appointed officials from federal, tribal, state, and local government, as well as members of the private sector, a clear, straightforward, easy-to-understand system for working together before, during, and after disasters. It can be used to manage everything from the smallest local incident to a major catastrophic event that impacts our entire nation.

The Framework was not written by Washington bureaucrats working in isolation. It reflects extensive coordination and input from state and local officials and emergency managers from across the country – the very people who will be using the plan. As such, the National Response Framework is not a federal plan; it is a national plan that will make sure everyone involved in the response effort is working from the same sheet of music.

The new Framework builds on a set of core principles

• It stresses the need for partnerships across government and the private sector.
• It emphasizes a “bottom up” approach that recognizes most incidents are managed locally and that all incidents should be handled at the lowest jurisdictional level.
• It is designed to be scalable so that it can be expanded or narrowed based on the scope and nature of the incident, and it is flexible and adaptable to different kinds of disasters.
• It recognizes that successful emergency preparedness and response depend on unity of command and a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities among all involved.
• It is always activated and encourages a forward leaning posture by emphasizing preparedness planning, organizing, training, equipping, exercising and applying lessons learned. Planning ahead of the disaster is critical to a successful response, and the Framework encourages such coordination.

Today’s release of the National Response Framework marks the culmination of extensive outreach and coordination among the Department, FEMA, and literally thousands of people across the country involved in emergency management. We are grateful for the expertise that so many individuals lent to its creation, and we are pleased to present the Framework today to federal, state, local, and private sector partners and to the American people.

David Paulison
Federal Emergency Management Agency