Distress Signals From Cruise Lines

The news of the norovirus aboard the Explorer of the Seas (seen in the above photo) distressed me not only because I sailed with my wife and friends aboard the cruise ship to Bermuda in 2012, but also as we plan to sail again on the ship.

As a seasoned sailor who served aboard U.S. Navy ships, including a two-year stint on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk during the Vietnam War, I thought the Exployer of the Seas was a clean and efficiently run ship. I also have no fear of setting sail on the cruise ship again when we shove off for the Caribbean.

But, as a Philadelphia Inquirer editorial rightly notes, more oversight of the cruise industry is needed.

The Royal Caribbean cruise ship that set sail from a New Jersey port over the weekend may be the most spotless craft plying the waves - having undergone a top-to-bottom scrubbing after a stomach bug sickened nearly 700 passemgers and crew, cutting short the ship's previous getaway.

... The ordeal hardly compared to waht unfolded a year ago after a Carnival ship lost power, leaving it without air-conditioning or working toilets. Far worst was the horrific grounding of a cruise ship off Italy in 2012, which left 32 dead.

But with many likely dreaming of bidding bon voyage to the frozen Northeast aboard a cruise, yet another saga of sickened passengers is a reminder of the need for more official oversight, operator vigilance and customer savvy.

You can read the rest of the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20140204_Inquirer_Editorial__Distress_signals_from_cruise_lines.html

You can also read my earlier post on the Explorer of the Seas via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2012/10/ahead-of-storm-cruise-to-bermuda.html

U.S. Faces Many Threats, Intelligence Chief Says

Claudette Roulo at the American Forces Press Service offers the below piece:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4, 2014 - Never in his more than 50 years of intelligence experience has the nation been beset by more crises and threats from around the world than it now faces, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper (seen above in his official photo) said today during a House hearing on worldwide threats.

The long list of global threats includes terrorism, sectarian violence and radical extremism, Clapper said.

"And there are many other crises and threats around the globe," he added, "to include the spillover of the Syria conflict into neighboring Lebanon and Iraq, the destabilizing flood of refugees in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon — now about 2.5 million people, essentially one of the largest humanitarian disasters in a decade."

Adding to the list of threats, Clapper said, are the implications of the drawdown in Afghanistan, the deteriorating internal security posture in Iraq, the growth of foreign cyber capabilities, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, aggressive nation-state intelligence efforts against the United States, an assertive Russia, a competitive China, a dangerous and unpredictable North Korea, a challenging Iran, the lingering ethnic divisions in the Balkans, and perpetual conflict and extremism throughout Africa.

"I could go on with this litany, but suffice to say that we live in a complex, dangerous world," he said.

The intelligence community also is threatened by the fallout from leaks by former contract employee Edward Snowden, Clapper said. Though he didn't want to dwell on the debate about Snowden's motives, he added, he did want to address the damage caused by his disclosures.

"As a consequence, in my view, this nation is less safe and its people less secure," he said. "What Snowden has stolen and exposed has gone way, way beyond his professed concerns with so-called domestic surveillance programs. As a result, we've lost critical foreign intelligence collections sources, including some shared with us by valued partners."

The leaks have provided terrorists and other adversaries insight into U.S. intelligence sources, methods and tradecraft, Clapper said. "And the insights that they are gaining are making our jobs much, much harder," he added.

"The stark consequences of this perfect storm are plainly evident," he said. "The intelligence community is going to have less capacity to protect our nation and its allies than we've had."

But if it's necessary to operate with reduced capabilities to restore the faith and confidence of the American people and their elected representatives, Clapper said, "then we in the intelligence community will work as hard as we can to meet the expectations before us."

The major lesson for the intelligence community from the revelations by Snowden and other leakers is that the community must lean in the direction of transparency wherever and whenever it can, he said. "With greater transparency about these intelligence programs, the American people may be more likely to accept them," Clapper noted.

President Barack Obama described the way forward for the intelligence community in a speech Jan. 14, and a new presidential directive, Clapper said. The major characteristic of this new direction is transparency, he said.

Clapper and Attorney General Eric H. Holder were ordered to conduct further declassification, to develop special protections under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act governing collection of non-U.S. persons overseas, to modify how telephone metadata is collected under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, and to ensure more oversight of sensitive collection activities, he said.

"Through all of this, we must, and we will, sustain our professional tradecraft and integrity. We must continue to protect our sources and methods so that we can accomplish what we've always been chartered to do; to protect the lives of American citizens here and abroad to a myriad of threats," Clapper said.

Clapper was joined at the hearing by Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, Defense Intelligence Agency director, and Matthew G. Olsen, National Counterterrorism Center director.

FBI: A Byte Out Of History - A $10 Million Hack, 1994-Style

The FBI web site offers a piece on a computer hacking case from 1994.

It was hardly the opening salvo in a new era of virtual crime, but it was certainly a shot across the bow.

Two decades ago, a group of enterprising criminals on multiple continents—led by a young computer programmer in St. Petersburg, Russia—hacked into the electronic systems of a major U.S. bank and secretly started stealing money. No mask, no note, no gun—this was bank robbery for the technological age.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/january/byte-out-of-history-10-million-hack-1994-style/byte-out-of-history-10-million-hack-1994-style?utm_campaign=email-Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_source=fbi-top-stories&utm_content=294290 

Congress To Probe Navy Contracting Practices And Multimillion-Dollar Bribery Scheme

The Navy Times offers a piece on Congress looking into the Navy's contracting practrices and the bribery scandal.  

SAN DIEGO — The House Oversight Committee is looking into Navy contracting practices amid a widening federal probe into a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving a Singapore-based defense contractor accused of offering prostitution services and pricey vacations to Navy officers.

Rep. Darrell Issa’s office said Friday that Navy Secretary Ray Mabus is expected next week to brief the committee, which the California Republican chairs.

In a Jan. 28 letter sent to Mabus, Issa asked for copies of contracts between the Navy and defense contractor Leonard Glenn Francis, since 2009. He also requested the Navy’s total expenditures on port services — food, fuel, etc. — for the last five fiscal years.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.navytimes.com/article/20140131/NEWS05/301310020/Congress-looks-Navy-contracting-practices

You can also read an earlier post on the Navy's bribery scandal via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/11/us-navy-suspends-contractors-with.html

Jerry Capeci On 'Mob Boss: The Life Of Little Al D'Arco, The Man Who Brought Down The Mafia

Veteran organized crime reporter and Gangland columnist Jerry Capeci talks to New York WCBS' Irene Cornell about his new book, Mob Book: The Life of Little Al D'Arco, the Man Who Brought Down the Mafia.

NEW YORK(CBSNewYork) — Mafioso Alfonso ”Little Al” D’Arco was one of the first mob bosses to tell all when he bailed on the Luchese crime family in 1991.

... “He had an incredible memory and he was the highest ranking gangster to flip when he did back in 1991. I mean, after he decided to flip Sammy Gravano followed him and it was kind of like an onslaught of gangsters who were looking to flip and make a better deal for themselves,” Capeci said.    

You can listen to the rest of the interview via the below link:

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/02/01/new-book-shines-light-on-life-of-former-luchese-boss-little-al-darco/

The Art Of Fiction: George Plimpton's Interview With Ernest Hemingway

George Plimpton interviewed Ernest Hemingway in the Paris Review:

HEMINGWAY

You go to the races?

 

INTERVIEWER

Yes, occasionally.

 

HEMINGWAY

Then you read the Racing Form . . . . There you have the true art of fiction.

 

—Conversation in a Madrid café, May 1954

 

Ernest Hemingway writes in the bedroom of his house in the Havana suburb of San Francisco de Paula. He has a special workroom prepared for him in a square tower at the southwest corner of the house, but prefers to work in his bedroom, climbing to the tower room only when “characters” drive him up there.

 

The bedroom is on the ground floor and connects with the main room of the house. The door between the two is kept ajar by a heavy volume listing and describing The World’s Aircraft Engines. The bedroom is large, sunny, the windows facing east and south letting in the day’s light on white walls and a yellow-tinged tile floor.

 

The room is divided into two alcoves by a pair of chest-high bookcases that stand out into the room at right angles from opposite walls. A large and low double bed dominates one section, oversized slippers and loafers neatly arranged at the foot, the two bedside tables at the head piled seven-high with books. In the other alcove stands a massive flat-top desk with a chair at either side, its surface an ordered clutter of papers and mementos. Beyond it, at the far end of the room, is an armoire with a leopard skin draped across the top. The other walls are lined with white-painted bookcases from which books overflow to the floor, and are piled on top among old newspapers, bullfight journals, and stacks of letters bound together by rubber bands.

 

It is on the top of one of these cluttered bookcases—the one against the wall by the east window and three feet or so from his bed—that Hemingway has his “work desk”—a square foot of cramped area hemmed in by books on one side and on the other by a newspaper-covered heap of papers, manuscripts, and pamphlets. There is just enough space left on top of the bookcase for a typewriter, surmounted by a wooden reading board, five or six pencils, and a chunk of copper ore to weight down papers when the wind blows in from the east window.

 

A working habit he has had from the beginning, Hemingway stands when he writes. He stands in a pair of his oversized loafers on the worn skin of a lesser kudu—the typewriter and the reading board chest-high opposite him. 

 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

 

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4825/the-art-of-fiction-no-21-ernest-hemingway

Note: As I was an amateur boxer in my youth at the Philadelphia Boy's Club and in the Navy, one of my favorite books in my library is George Plimpton's Shadow Box.    

Leader Of Sports Betting Ring Pleads Guilty to Racketeering Charges

The U.S. Justice Department released the below information:

Joseph Vito Mastronardo Jr., 63, of Meadowbrook, Pa., pleaded guilty today to conspiring to participate in a racketeering enterprise (RICO), conducting an illegal gambling business, four counts of conspiring to launder money, eight counts of interstate travel in aid of racketeering, transmitting wagering information and aggravated structuring of cash deposits.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Zane D. Memeger of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania made the announcement.

The guilty plea stems from Mastronardo’s leadership of the Mastronardo Bookmaking Organization, a multi-million dollar sports betting operation with bettors throughout the U.S.   No sentencing date has been scheduled.

Mastronardo is one of 19 defendants charged in the case.  Three defendants were charged by information and 16 defendants were charged by indictment.   In the indictment, 15 of the 16 defendants were charged with conspiring to participate in a racketeering enterprise and conducting an illegal gambling business.  With today’s guilty plea, 11 of the 16 defendants charged in the indictment have pleaded guilty.

At its peak, the organization had more than 1,000 bettors and was generating millions of dollars a year.   According to the indictment, between Jan. 1, 2005, and Jan. 1, 2011, the organization used websites ( www.betroma.com and www.betrose.com ) and telephone numbers that allowed bettors to place sports bets on football, baseball, basketball, golf, horse racing and other sporting events.  Residents of Costa Rica staffed the websites and answered the telephones.   In 2006 and 2010, law enforcement seized over $2 million of cash that Mastronardo had hidden in and around his home, including in specially built secret compartments and in PVC pipes that were buried in his backyard.

Mastronardo ran the organization by using the Internet, telephone, Skype, e-mail, U.S. mail, and in-person communication.  The Mastronardo Bookmaking Organization laundered the gambling proceeds by using a check cashing agency, two private bank accounts and numerous international bank accounts.   On occasion, Mastronardo also provided instructions so a losing bettor could pay a gambling debt through a charitable donation.

Mastronardo supervised the agents, sub-agents and office employees and oversaw the websites.   He laundered millions of dollars of betting proceeds, collected debts, and instructed others to collect debts.   Other indicted defendants who have pleaded guilty include: Mastronardo’s son, Joseph F. Mastronardo, who worked as an office employee, collected debts and performed other financial duties; Eric Woehlcke, who worked as an office employee, collected debts and served as a sub-agent; Joseph and Anna Rose Vitelli, who owned J & A Check Cashing, which laundered the gambling proceeds; and Patrick Tronoski, Schuyler Twaddle, Michael Loftus, Michael Squillante, David Rounick and Ronald Gendrachi.

The case was investigated by the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation, the Montgomery County Detective Bureau, and the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office.   It is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Jason P. Bologna of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and Trial Attorney Kelly Pearson of the Criminal Division’s Organized Crime and Gang Section.