Hagel: US to deploy 2 more destroyers to Japan by 2017

TOKYO — The U.S. will deploy two additional ballistic missile defense destroyers to Japan by 2017 as part of an effort to bolster protection from North Korean missile threats, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Sunday.

Speaking to reporters after a meeting with Japan Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera, Hagel said their talks revolved around the threat posed by Pyongyang. He said the two ships are in response to North Korea's "pattern of provocative and destabilizing actions, including missile launches" that violate U.N. resolutions.

Hagel said the ships also will provide more protection to the U.S. from those threats.

The announcement came as tensions with North Korea spiked again, with Pyongyang continuing to threaten additional missile and nuclear tests. North and South Korea fired hundreds of artillery shells into each other's waters in late March in the most recent flare-up.

On Friday, North Korea accused the U.S. of being "hell-bent on regime change" and warned that any maneuvers with that intention will be viewed as a "red line" that will result in countermeasures. Pyongyang's deputy U.N. ambassador, Ri Tong Il, also said his government "made it very clear we will carry out a new form of nuclear test" but refused to provide details.

The two additional ships would bring the total to seven U.S. ballistic missile defense warships in Japan, and it continues U.S. efforts to increase its focus on the Asia Pacific.

Hagel is on a 10-day trip across the Asia Pacific, and just spent three days in Hawaii meeting with Southeast Asian defense ministers, talking about efforts to improve defense and humanitarian assistance cooperation. Japan is his second stop, where he said he wants to assure Japanese leaders that the U.S. is strongly committed to protecting their country's security.

Japan and China have been engaged in a long, bitter dispute over remote islands in the East China Sea. The U.S. has said it takes no side on the question of the disputed islands' sovereignty, but it recognizes Japan's administration of them and has responsibilities to protect Japanese territory under a mutual defense treaty.

Hagel said the U.S. wants the countries in the region to resolve the disputes peacefully. But he added that the United States would honor its treaty commitments.

Last October, the U.S. and Japan agreed to broad plans to expand their defense alliance, including plans to position a second early warning radar there by the end of this year. There is one in northern Japan and the second one would be designed to provide better missile defense coverage in the event of a North Korean attack.

The U.S. will begin sending long-range Global Hawk surveillance drones to Japan this month for rotational deployments. They are intended to help step up surveillance around the Senkaku islands, a source of heated debate between Japan and China over claims to the remote territories.

In its latest symbolic gesture of support for Japan, the U.S. decided not to send a warship to participate in a Chinese naval parade as part of the Western Pacific Naval Symposium because the Japanese were not invited. U.S. military leaders, including the Navy's top officer, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, will attend the symposium and ship review.

The ships serve as both defensive and offensive weapons. They carry sophisticated systems that can track missile launches, and their SM-3 missiles can zero in on and take out short- to medium-range missiles that might be fired at U.S. or allied nations. They can also carry Tomahawk cruise missiles, which can be launched from sea and hit high-value targets or enemy weapons systems from afar, without risking pilots or aircraft.

Fort Hood major shot 'in the gut' continued to help other soldiers

FORT HOOD, Texas – As investigators continue to canvass a crime scene an area the size of two city blocks, details are emerging about the bravery soldiers displayed Wednesday when one of their own began shooting.

Maj. Patrick Miller, an Iraq veteran from New York, heard the “pop, pop, pop” of gunfire and rushed to get his soldiers into a closed office as quickly as possible, U.S. Rep. John Carter said Saturday.

While Miller was trying to help others, he was shot “in the gut,” but he put pressure on his own wound and kept moving the soldiers behind a door, said Carter, R-Texas, calling Miller “a very courageous young man.”

Sgt. 1st Class Daniel M. Ferguson, who was killed in the shooting, saved others by blocking a door with his body, Carter said.

Friday, Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, commander of III Corps and Fort Hood, said a chaplain also stepped in to shield and save other soldiers.

Investigators now believe an argument Spc. Ivan A. Lopez had with his superiors, which reportedly involved a leave request, was the impetus for the shooting, Milley said.

Carter and U.S. Rep. Roger Williams, R-Texas, met with survivors of the shooting on Saturday morning. Ten of the 16 wounded have been released from hospitals and returned to their units, Milley said.

This is the second mass shooting by a soldier in uniform at the enormous Army post, one of the largest military installations in the world. Maj. Nidal Hasan last year was convicted and sentenced to death for an attack in 2009 that killed 13 people and wounded 32 others.

Lopez bought the .45-caliber semi-automatic Smith and Wesson on March 1 at Guns Galore, the same Killeen, Texas, store where Hasan purchased the weapon he used in the 2009 shooting. Lopez has not been linked to any terrorist or extremist groups, and investigators do not believe he had a plan to target any of the victims, Milley and Chris Grey said Friday. Grey is spokesman for the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command.

Still, Carter said he believes Hasan “planted the seed” for the most recent shooting.

“The man who wears your uniform is your battle buddy. You’re supposed to be able to trust him,” Carter said, calling the shooting of soldiers by other soldiers “a punch in the kidneys” to all servicemembers.

Servicemembers “expect, and rightfully so, to be safe in their home and on this post,” Williams said.

“Wednesday’s shooting brought the danger and the risk of the combat zone right into Fort Hood.”

Carter and Williams are pushing a bill called the Honoring the Fort Hood Heroes Act, which would declare the 2009 shootings a terrorist attack and allow the servicemembers wounded or killed to be awarded the Purple Heart, and for the civilians wounded or killed to receive the Secretary of Defense Medal for the Defense of Freedom.

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US military sent to help sick baby on family's sailboat in the Pacific

SAN DIEGO — A U.S. Navy warship was headed Saturday to rescue a 1-year-old girl who fell ill on a crippled sailboat that was attempting to circle the world.

Slicing the Pacific at 25 knots, the USS Vandegrift was expected to reach the Rebel Heart in the late afternoon or evening.

The 36-foot sailboat was about 900 miles off the Mexican coast when it sent a satellite ping for help to the U.S. Coast Guard on Thursday about a sick child. A family member says the boat is owned by a San Diego couple, Charlotte and Eric Kaufman, whose daughter, Lyra, had developed a fever and a rash covering most of her body and who wasn't responding to medications.

The California Air National Guard dispatched a team of rescuers, who parachuted into the water and reached the disabled vessel. The team was able to stabilize the girl and pointed the sailboat toward Mexico, though officials didn't immediately release what was wrong with the vessel.

The rescuers stayed aboard the Rebel Heart and are keeping watch on the ill child until the Navy frigate arrives to transfer them to shore.

The USS Vandegrift is equipped with an inflatable boat and a helicopter, but no decision has been made yet about the mode of transfer until officials can evaluate the sea conditions and other factors, said Lt. Lenaya Rotklein of the U.S. Third Fleet.

The Kaufmans, along with Lyra and 3-year-old Cora, were two weeks into a journey bound for the South Pacific islands and eventually New Zealand.

Before the family left, Lyra had salmonella poisoning, but doctors cleared her to travel after she was healthy again, said Charlotte Kaufman's sister, Sariah Kay English.

English initially was in daily email contact with the family but realized something was wrong when the communication stopped several days ago.

Though it was not immediately clear what kind of trouble the sailboat ran into, English said she was told the vessel took on water every time the motor was turned on. It's now slowly moving using only the sails.

When her sister first mentioned plans to sail with two young children, English recalled, "I thought it was nuts."

But English said the couple were always careful. Eric Kaufman is a Coast Guard-licensed captain who introduced sailing to Charlotte Kaufman during one of their early dates.

"They were not going into this blind. I knew they were doing this wisely," English said.

English said the couple made a network of friends who traveled around the globe with children and always stocked the sailboat with more food than they need.

"They were very overcautious. They're not new at sailing," English said. Unfortunately, "sickness sometimes happens."

A day of hope, as Afghans vote, but a long process ahead

KABUL — On election day in this tense, war-weary capital, rolling afternoon thunder was the only boom heard in the city. Long lines at polling stations were the story on a day many feared violence would mar the vote for the country’s next president.

After more than a week of steady attacks, Kabul was quiet as Afghans turned out in droves to vote in a presidential election that could see the first democratic transfer of power in the country’s history, go a long way toward convincing donor countries to keep financing the impoverished country’s government, and mark a high point in an otherwise troubled, unpopular international military campaign.

Voting was extended by an hour to accommodate large crowds.

That is not to say the day went by without incident. Low turnout was reported in some of the more dangerous areas of the country, some stations ran out of ballots, and there were some deadly attacks in the provinces, though not nearly as many as the Taliban had promised in their furious threats against what they derided as “the fake election.”

Still, turnout was high across the country. The director of the Independent Election Commission, Mohammad Yousuf Nuristani, said 7 million people voted, which would mark about a 50 percent increase over the validated votes from 2009. About one million votes in that election, which war marred by allegations of fraud and vote-rigging, were thrown out.

Mohammed Younas patiently waited to vote for more than an hour in a line that snaked for hundreds of meters through muddy alleyways in western Kabul. He said the election process is a chance for Afghans to fix problems themselves.

“If we see challenges, if we see problems, then we must cast a vote for our future,” Younas said.

Large numbers of women also waited to vote Saturday, though in separate lines from the men. The treatment and subjugation of women has been a long-standing issue in the deeply conservative country.

“Men and women have equal rights, and we all need to work for our rights,” said Karima Hashemi, a 37-year-old teacher at a polling station in eastern Kabul.

The biggest winner may have been the Afghan security forces, on their own to secure a major election for the first time, said Ahmad Majidyar, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

“It was a major test for the Afghan government and the Afghan security forces and they did a great job,” he said.

Saturday’s vote was just the beginning of what could be a drawn out, tortuous process. Counting of ballots began at 5 p.m., when polls closed, and could continue until April 20. Preliminary results won’t be released until April 24, though The Associated Press reported partial results were expected as soon as Sunday. Because of the crowded field of frontrunners, it’s likely no one will win more than 50 percent of the vote, which would trigger a run-off election. The tentative date for that, should it be necessary, is May 28. Then the vote counting and complaints process would start over again, meaning the political wrangling could last into the summer.

Hamid Karzai has been the only president since the U.S. invaded the country in 2001, knocking out the Taliban government, and Saturday marked the first time ever an Afghan leader has voted for his potential successor.

The vote follows a spirited campaign that saw hundreds of thousands turn out for massive political rallies throughout the country, with the field narrowing to three frontrunners: Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister who was runner up to Karzai in the 2009 election; Ashraf Ghani, a technocrat and former finance minister; and Zalmai Rassoul, a former foreign minister who is seen as Karzai’s preferred candidate.

Seeing voters trudge through mud and waterlogged streets en masse on a soggy day, ignoring Taliban threats of mass violence is a hopeful sign for the future of the country, said Shahla Fareed, an analyst and professor of political science at Kabul University.

“It’s very good news for Afghanistan that the people, not guns, can hand power from one leader to another,” she said.

A Stripes reporter was initially barred from a polling place in Pul-e Charki, a Kabul suburb controlled by warlord and parliament member Mullah Tarakhel Mohammedi that saw massive fraud in the 2009 election. Tarakhel insisted the reporter first meet with him in his compound before being allowed into his madrassa, which was also serving as a polling station — there were no election observers to be found in the station.

In some areas, the ballots never arrived because of insecurity. Munsef Bacha, who lives in the restive Uzbin area of Kabul province said polling stations there never opened.

“There was no election in Uzbin,” he said. “People thought the government might make a big effort to bring the ballots, but they didn’t.”

And some sat out the vote because they are disillusioned by politicians they see as ineffective and corrupt.

“I don’t believe in these candidates,” said Fahim, who like many Afghans goes by only one name. “They just make promises but don’t actually act. If the coming government is like the past government, then I won’t support them.”

In addition to violence, fraud was the biggest worry going into the election. No one expected the election to be fraud free, but the extent of irregularities is unlikely to be known for some time, as the lengthy process of vote counting and complaints adjudication has just begun.

For the first time, Afghan election workers had tools such as ink only visible under ultraviolet light as a backup to the traditional fraud-fighting purple ink placed on voters’ fingers to ensure they don’t vote more than once, said Kit Spence, an election monitor with Democracy International.

He said while it is too early to draw any conclusions, initial impressions from the stations he observed in Kabul indicated that the process ran “quite well.”

While the coming days will reveal whether concerns over fraud are fully founded, Spence noted that a high turnout could diminish the impact that any fraudulent ballots have on the results.

All of the major candidates have said they will not accept fraudulent results and Afghans will be watching to see how the losers react when the votes are tallied.

Abdullah, a leading contender in many polls, said he was hopeful Saturday morning as he cast his own ballot at a Kabul high school.

“There have been problems and issues around the country,” he told Stripes as he left the polling center. “But it is very early still and we will see in coming days. We tend to be optimistic.”

Washington, too, will be closely monitoring the results to see who their next partner will be.

The winner is unlikely to be announced for some time, but after more than a year of bitter acrimony between Karzai and America, the three frontrunners have all said they would sign a long-sought security agreement with the U.S., which would pave the way for a small force of international troops to remain after all combat troops withdraw at the end of the year.

That means a possible thaw in relations with the United States and perhaps a rescue of NATO’s checkered military legacy in Afghanistan, Majidyar said.

“I think the election and the coming into office of a new president provides a very good opportunity both for Kabul and for Washington to repair their damaged relations,” he said. “The relationship has deteriorated and as a result of that, the military mission and a lot of governance issues in the country have suffered.”

Zubair Babakarkhail contributed to this report

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North Korea: US is 'hell-bent on regime change'

UNITED NATIONS — North Korea on Friday accused the United States of being "hell-bent on regime change" and warned that any maneuvers with that intention will be viewed as a "red line" that will result in countermeasures.

Pyongyang's deputy U.N. ambassador Ri Tong Il also repeated that his government "made it very clear we will carry out a new form of nuclear test" but refused to elaborate, saying only that "I recommend you to wait and see what it is."

His comments came at North Korea's second press conference at the United Nations in two weeks, a surprising rate for the reclusive Communist regime.

Ri blamed the U.S. for aggravating tensions on the Korean Peninsula by continuing "very dangerous" military drills with South Korea, by pursuing action in the U.N. Security Council against his country's recent ballistic missile launches and by going after Pyongyang's human rights performance.

Ri also accused the U.S. of blocking a resumption of six-party talks on its nuclear program by settling preconditions and said Washington's primary goal is to maintain tensions and prevent denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

A U.S. diplomat who was not authorized to comment publicly later responded: "We have long made clear — in close consultation with our allies — that we are open to improved relations with the DPRK if it is willing to take clear actions to live up to its international obligations and commitments."

North Korea walked away from the six-party nuclear disarmament talks in 2009 over disagreements on how to verify steps the North was meant to take to end its nuclear programs. The U.S. and its allies are demanding that the North demonstrate its sincerity in ending its drive to acquire nuclear weapons.

Since pulling out of the six-party talks, the North has conducted two nuclear tests, at least two long-range rocket tests and most recently short-range rocket launches.

Using the initials of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the country's official name, Ri said, "The DPRK has been making strenuous, hard efforts, very generous, toward easing the tensions on the Korean Peninsula, but ignoring all this generous position of the DPRK and its proposals, the U.S. went ahead with opening the joint military drills, very aggressive nature, and they're now expanding in a crazy manner the scale of this exercise."

He also rejected as "illegal" a Security Council statement last week that condemned North Korea's test-firing of two medium-range ballistic missiles as violations of council resolutions.

The deputy ambassador did not answer questions on detained American Kenneth Bae or on his country's drone program, which it has been promoting recently. South Korean experts this week claimed that two small, camera-equipped drones had been flown across the border by the North, calling them crude and decidedly low-tech. Both drones crashed in South Korea.

Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer contributed.

Despite Taliban threat, Afghans line up for blocks at polling stations

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan voters lined up for blocks at polling stations nationwide on Saturday, defying a threat of violence by the Taliban to cast ballots in what promises to be the nation's first democratic transfer of power.

Amid tight security, men in traditional tunics and loose trousers, and women clad in the all-encompassing burqas arrived at polling centers more than an hour before they opened in Kabul and elsewhere.

Independent Election Commission chairman Ahmad Yousuf Nouristani marked his ballot live on television then urged all Afghans to vote as he launched the nationwide elections for a new president and provincial councils.

Nazia Azizi, a 40-year-old housewife, was first in line at a school in eastern Kabul.

"I have suffered so much from the fighting and I want prosperity and security in Afghanistan. That is why I have come here to cast my vote," she said. "I hope that the votes that we are casting will be counted and that there will be no fraud in this election."

The militants have vowed to disrupt the balloting by targeting polling centers and election workers, and recent high-profile attacks in the heart of Kabul are clearly designed to show they are perfectly capable of doing just that.

On Friday, a veteran Associated Press photographer was killed and an AP reporter was wounded when an Afghan policeman opened fire while the two were sitting in their car in the city of Khost, in eastern Afghanistan. The two were at a security forces base, waiting to move in a convoy of election workers delivering ballots.

If the turnout is high and the Afghans are able to hold a successful election, that could undermine the Taliban's appeal by showing democracy can indeed work.

With President Hamid Karzai constitutionally barred from a third term, Afghans will choose a new president from a field of eight candidates, with three of them widely considered the main contenders. As international combat forces prepare to withdraw by the end of this year, the country is so unstable that the very fact the crucial elections are being held is touted as one of the few successes in Karzai's tenure.

Nearly 200,000 Afghan security forces fanned out on Saturday to protect polling stations and voters. On Friday evening, mobile phone messaging services stopped working in the capital, Kabul, in what appeared to be a security measure by authorities to prevent militants from using messages for attacks.

Three men are considered top contenders in the race — a major shift from past elections dominated by Karzai, who has ruled the country since the Taliban were ousted in 2001. That has presented Afghans with their first presidential vote in which the outcome is uncertain.

There do not appear to be major policy differences toward the West between the front-runners — Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's top rival in the last election; Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, an academic and former World Bank official; and Zalmai Rassoul, a former foreign minister. All have promised to sign a security agreement with the United States that will allow thousands of foreign troops to remain in the country after 2014 — which Karzai has refused to do. The candidates differ on some issues such as the country's border dispute with Pakistan. But all preach against fraud and corruption and vow to improve security.

The candidates have stumped for votes with near-daily debates and rallies across the Texas-sized country, a far greater level of campaigning than in the past, when certain blocs of voters were largely taken for granted in a patronage system. They also have named running mates including warlords, leaders from rival ethnic groups and in some cases, women. None is expected to get a majority needed to secure a win outright, so a runoff between the top two vote getters is widely expected.

"The election excitement is being felt all over the place," said Aimal Jan Ghafoori, who worked at a voter registration center in the southern city of Kandahar. "It's really good to see this change. I hope this change helps in changing the fate of our country soon enough."

He said barely three dozen people showed up to register each day in 2009, when massive vote-rigging marred Karzai's re-election, while as many as 300 lined up daily to beat Tuesday's deadline to register for this year's elections for president and provincial councils.

Kabul has experienced several attacks over the past few weeks, but long lines at polling stations in the Afghan capital suggested that voters were not being scared away.

In Friday's attack in Khost, a unit commander named Naqibullah walked up to the car with the AP photographer and reporter, yelled "Allahu Akbar" — God is Great — and opened fire on them in the back seat with his AK-47.

Anja Niedringhaus, 48, an internationally acclaimed German photographer, was killed instantly, while Kathy Gannon, an AP correspondent who for many years was the news organization's Afghanistan bureau chief and currently is a special correspondent for the region, was shot twice and later underwent surgery. She was reported as being in stable condition.

Security forces have been on high alert since a suicide bomber struck the entrance of the heavily fortified Interior Ministry in Kabul on Wednesday, killing six policemen. Police are searching cars and checking ID cards at checkpoints throughout the city.

The candidates also have expressed concern about fraud in the balloting, particularly government interference.

International officials say a level of fraud is to be expected but note that Afghan electoral officials have learned from the past and implemented strict protocols to minimize it. That includes bar codes on the ballot boxes being delivered to nearly 6,500 polling centers in all 34 provinces and plans to tally the results immediately after the vote closes and post a copy of the results at each center.

Graeme Smith, an analyst with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, said all signs pointed to a heavy turnout despite fears of violence, in part because voters actually feel like they have a choice.

"The indications are that people are going to vote, at the very least tribes and local strongmen are going to be able to muster votes," he said. "The fact that it's a horse race might bring out the vote."

Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez and Amir Shah contributed to this report.

From the eye of Anja Niedringhaus: Afghanistan, war and life

Anja Niedringhaus, a courageous and immensely talented Associated Press photographer who has covered everything from sports to war, was killed while covering elections in Afghanistan on Friday.

Niedringhaus was in a car in eastern Afghanistan with AP reporter Kathy Gannon when, according to a freelancer who was with them, an Afghan policeman approached them, yelled "Allahu Akbar" - God is Great - and opened fire on them in the back seat with his AK-47. Niedringhaus was killed instantly and Gannon was wounded.

"Anja and Kathy together have spent years in Afghanistan covering the conflict and the people there. Anja was a vibrant, dynamic journalist well-loved for her insightful photographs, her warm heart and joy for life. We are heartbroken at her loss," said AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll, speaking in New York.

Niedringhaus has long been recognized for her expertise in gaining a subject's trust and photographing them with a style that is immediately recognizable. Her attention to detail, composition and light come together to not only tell insightful stories but also to create works of art.

Niedringhaus covered conflict zones including Kuwait, Iraq, Libya, Gaza and the West Bank during a 20-year stretch, beginning with the Balkans in the 1990s. She had traveled to Afghanistan numerous times since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

Niedringhaus, who also covered sports events around the globe, has received numerous awards for her works.

She was part of an AP team that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in breaking news photography for coverage of the war in Iraq, and was awarded the Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation. She joined the AP in 2002 and had since been based in Geneva, Switzerland. From 2006 to 2007, she was awarded a Nieman Fellowship in journalism at Harvard University.

Here is a look at the work of Anja Niedringhaus, which touched many.

Despite years of research, Navy still relying on aging anti-mine tech

A generation ago, the Navy vowed to get better at finding and destroying sea mines.

The proclamation came months after the first Gulf War, when Iraq’s use of more than 1,000 underwater bombs overwhelmed the Navy’s fleet of anti-mine ships and helicopters. Two U.S. warships were rocked by explosions, and the Pentagon was forced to abort plans for an amphibious assault on Kuwait, leaving some 30,000 Marines stuck at sea.

More than 20 years after that embarrassment, the sea service is still working to make good on its promise to fully address a centuries-old threat that some analysts have called the Navy’s Achilles’ heel.

“Only when things go bad and ships can’t go where they need to go do we seem to care about mine countermeasures,” said Scott Truver, a Washington-based defense analyst who has spent 30 years studying mine warfare. “It’s easier to sell a new nuclear submarine program or a new aircraft carrier.”

Today, after hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development — and despite some meaningful gains in technology — the Navy’s core mine countermeasures force looks a lot like the one that struggled two decades ago in the Persian Gulf.

The service relies primarily on 11 Cold War-era mine countermeasures ships and a dwindling fleet of heavy-lift helicopters to sweep and clear underwater minefields. Plans to retire the Navy’s Avenger-class ships and its 28 remaining MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopters have been delayed over the past decade.

The aging ship and helicopter fleets have struggled with maintenance issues in recent years, but both will be needed for at least another decade. That’s because the Navy’s new minehunting technology is still being developed — delayed along with the troubled littoral combat ship that is intended to play a major role in future countermine operations.

The Navy says its new fleet of littoral combat ships will be fully operational and ready to clear mines by 2019. But a report this week by the Government Accountability Office found the Navy hasn’t yet demonstrated that its new anti-mine systems will be able to handle the job.

Some analysts worry the new systems won’t be ready before the old ones need to be shut down.

A spate of Sea Dragon accidents since 2012 — including a deadly crash off the coast of Virginia Beach in January — spurred the Navy to devote more attention to its oldest and most crash-prone helicopters. And the service’s fleet of Avenger-class ships shrank by 20 percent over the past year after the Navy retired two and had to scrap another that ran aground near the Philippines.

“The mines are getting more sophisticated,” Truver said. “The systems we put in place 20 years ago are wearing out. They have been ridden hard and put away wet. We’re now trying, in a period of deep budgetary restraints, to transition to a new way of doing mine countermeasures.”

Mines are cheap and easy to produce. They’re also extremely dangerous and difficult to detect. Of the 19 Navy ships seriously damaged or sunk since World War II, 14 were done in by mines.

After the first Gulf War, the Navy consolidated its mine warfare force under a single command based in Texas. But after a 2005 restructuring, the Navy changed course. There is no longer a centralized command or admiral solely devoted to mine countermeasures, a mission that also’s carried out by explosive ordnance disposal units and a team of mine-hunting dolphins.

“It’s fragmented,” said Paul Ryan, a retired rear admiral who served from 2000 to 2004 as head of the Navy’s Mine Warfare Command, which has since been merged with the San Diego-based anti-submarine warfare command. “There is no single champion for mine warfare.”

The Navy’s investment in its anti-mine force has traditionally followed a cyclical pattern, said Bob O’Donnell, a retired captain who directed the service’s program office for mine warfare in the years following the first Gulf War.

“We start out with low funding for mine countermeasures,” O’Donnell said. “Then mines cause a problem. The Navy rushes funds into mine countermeasures. The mine threat is diminished. Interest in mine countermeasures wanes. Money dries up. And then repeat.”

After focusing elsewhere for much of the past decade, O’Donnell said, the Navy has renewed its interest and investment in mine warfare, spurred in part by Iran’s 2012 threat to lay mines in the Strait of Hormuz. About of fifth of the world’s oil supply moves through the congested chokepoint; shutting it down for even a day would likely cause oil prices to soar.

That same year, separate reviews revealed problems with the Navy’s existing and future countermine forces.

A third of the Navy’s remaining Sea Dragons weren’t even equipped to sweep for mines, and only a single Avenger-class ship was able to conduct its required anti-mine missions at any given time.

In a report that July, the director of the Navy’s operational test and evaluation force found that the littoral combat ship’s, or LCS, core systems for identifying mines — a sonar sled and an advanced laser designed to detect mines from a helicopter — were “deficient” for their primary task. It was the latest in a series of setbacks for the LCS program.

Since then, the Navy has spent more than $300 million to boost existing mine countermeasures forces, including upgrades to aging equipment. Every Sea Dragon is now equipped for minesweeping, and most of the Avenger-class ships have received significant engine and sonar upgrades.

Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the chief of naval operations, has earned a reputation as a high-ranking advocate for the niche mine warfare community. He acknowledged weaknesses in the Navy’s dedicated mine countermeasures force after becoming the service’s top officer in 2011 and has committed resources to fix it.

Under his watch, the Navy has invested in what it terms a “transition force” for mine countermeasures: underwater and surface robots that should help bridge the gap between old and new platforms, said Capt. Glenn Allen, the head of the Navy’s mine warfare program office.

“I’m not concerned with there being a capability gap” between the existing and future mine countermeasures force, Allen said. “It’s correct that many of the LCS programs were behind deadline, but since that time, the program has done a great job to bring it back, and I believe we’re on target now.”

Allen agrees that the Navy has historically ignored mine countermeasures in favor of more prominent, offensive weapons systems. Even within the small anti-mine community, mine warfare is jokingly referred to as the Navy’s stepchild. This time, Allen said, he believes the Navy has finally committed for the long haul.

“I’ve been involved in mine warfare for 25 years, and you do tend to get a chip on your shoulder,” Allen said. “It is a community that does more with less. It is amazing what our sailors can do with a small number of resources.”

The future of mine warfare will be rooted in drastic advancements in technology, Allen said. Some of those improvements have been 25 years in the making. The LCS relies heavily on unmanned vehicles to clear mines, a change designed to remove sailors from the minefield.

But the Navy has yet to prove it has corrected problems with its new mine hunting sonar and laser detection system, according to the GAO report published this week. The report was also critical of a change in tactics that will require three separate searches before a mine is destroyed: One device is deployed from a ship to locate underwater objects that might be mines. A second device is deployed to scan those objects to determine if they are in fact mines. And a third device is deployed to disarm the mines.

That approach will slow the process, the GAO report said. And O’Donnell, the former mine warfare boss, said the strategy might reduce effectiveness. The upgraded Avenger-class ships are able to find, identify and disarm a mine without ever losing contact with it. Sea Dragons can pull a sled through the sea that cuts the cables to a certain depth of any moored mines, a one-step process that clears the way for more intensive mine hunting.

Nothing planned for the LCS replaces that capability.

“With the future system, after you find a possible mine, you have to re-acquire that contact twice,” O’Donnell said. “What happens if you’re not able to locate it the second or the third time? Can you confidently say you’ve cleared the minefield if that happens?”

The Navy argues that using the LCS for anti-mine missions will allow it to respond more quickly, cover more territory and keep sailors out of harm’s way. Its future mine-clearing force will have three times the capability of the current force, a Navy official told a Congressional subcommittee last summer.

Other challenges remain. The Navy had planned to buy 52 littoral combat ships; in late February, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced that the Pentagon would purchase only 32. Allen said the reduction shouldn’t affect the anti-mine program.

No amount of money can fully eliminate the threat of mines, analysts say. Sea mines are increasingly regarded as a likely weapon for terrorist groups and rogue nations looking to disrupt global commerce.

More than a quarter-million sea mines are held in the inventories of 50 navies around the world — including Iran, China and North Korea — and they come in more than 300 varieties, the Navy estimates. That figures doesn’t include underwater improvised explosive devices, which can be fashioned from fuel bladders, 50-gallon drums and even discarded refrigerators.

“We’ve been vulnerable to the threat for years,” Truver said. “We will never be able to buy enough ships and mission packages to declare all major waterways are clear. We’re never going to be able to have enough assets.”

Retired general investigating AF nuclear force gave positive 2013 review

WASHINGTON — A retired general chosen to explore flaws in U.S. nuclear forces signed off one year ago on a study describing the nuclear Air Force as "thoroughly professional, disciplined" and performing effectively — an assessment service leaders interpreted as an encouraging thumbs-up.

The overall judgment conveyed in the April 2013 report by a Pentagon advisory group headed by retired Gen. Larry Welch, a former Air Force chief of staff, appears to contradict the picture that has emerged since then of a nuclear missile corps suffering from breakdowns in discipline, morale, training and leadership.

That same month last year, for example, an Air Force officer wrote that the nuclear missile unit at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., was suffering from "rot," including lax attitudes and a poor performance by launch officers on a March 2013 inspection.

It's unclear whether the Air Force took an overly rosy view of the Welch assessment, which was not uniformly positive, or whether his inquiry missed signs of the kinds of trouble documented in recent months in a series of Associated Press reports.

Whichever the case, Welch is again at the forefront of an effort — this time at Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's personal direction — to dig for root causes of problems that Hagel says threaten to undermine public trust in the nation's nuclear arsenal. The most recent such problem is an exam-cheating scandal at a nuclear missile base that prompted the Air Force to remove nine midlevel commanders and accept the resignation of the base's top commander. Dozens of officers implicated in the cheating face disciplinary action, and some might be kicked out.

Welch began the new Hagel-directed review in early March, teaming with retired Navy Adm. John C. Harvey, who was not involved in the earlier reviews but has extensive nuclear experience. Much rides on what they find, not least because Hagel and the White House want to remove any doubt about the safety and security of the U.S. arsenal and the men and women entrusted with it.

Hagel's written instruction to Welch and Harvey in February said they should examine the nuclear mission in both the Air Force and the Navy, focusing on "personnel, training, testing, command oversight, mission performance and investment" and recommend ways to address any deficiencies they identify.

A fighter pilot by training and a former top nuclear commander, Welch also is known for integrity and honesty. Hagel "believes there is no one better suited to examine these issues than Gen. Welch," Hagel's press secretary, Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby, said Friday. "Like his partner Adm. Harvey, he's tough and pragmatic. And he flat out knows his stuff."

Welch led the initial outside review of arguably the most startling nuclear failure of recent years, the unauthorized movement in August 2007 of six nuclear-armed cruise missiles from an air base in North Dakota to Louisiana. Welch led that inquiry as chairman of a special task force of the Defense Science Board, which is a group of outside experts who advise the secretary of defense on a wide range of technical issues. The panel's report was published in February 2008.

The same task force, again under Welch's direction, published follow-up assessments in April 2011 and April 2013. Each of those examined both sides of the nuclear Air Force — strategic bombers as well as the intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, forces whose problems have gained wide attention over the past year.

The April 2011 study cited morale issues among missile crews.

"They perceive a lack of knowledge of and respect for their mission from within the larger Air Force," it said.

The April 2013 report ticked off numerous significant improvements. It found that senior leaders were paying more attention, with more clarity of responsibility for the nuclear mission than in the years leading up to the 2007 mishap. The system of inspections and the support for nuclear personnel, logistics and facilities had improved. Yet at that point the first signs of new trouble had begun to emerge, including the mass suspension of 19 launch officers at Minot in April 2013, followed by a failed inspection in August at another nuclear missile base in Montana.

Welch's report also cited "enduring issues that require more responsive attention." And he said the Air Force needed to prove that the nuclear mission is the No. 1 priority it claims it to be. He also found that ground water intrusion in nuclear missile silos and the underground launch control posts to which they are connected had done major damage, including collapsing electrical conduits.

The bottom-line conclusion, however, was this:

"The nuclear force is professional, disciplined, committed and attentive to the special demands of the mission."

The AP made a request last week through Pentagon channels for comment by Welch about his 2013 task force report, but he did not respond.

Shortly after Welch's group completed that review, he briefed the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Mark Welsh. Welsh mentioned the briefing in an email to other generals in which he said the conclusions were reassuring.

"His view of mission performance was positive and didn't identify any concerns that would lead me to believe there is a larger, hidden problem in this area," Welsh wrote.

A spokeswoman for Welsh said this week that he saw the April 2013 report as addressing organizational and other aspects of the nuclear mission, not primarily the personnel and attitude issues.

Welsh, the Air Force chief, told the AP last November that he had been aware of bad behavioral trends in the ICBM force, including high rates of spouse abuse, and in fall 2012 had asked the top ICBM commander, Maj. Gen. Michael Carey, to fix that. Last October Carey was fired from his position after an Air Force investigation found he had engaged in inappropriate behavior while on an official visit to Russia last summer.

Maj. Megan Schafer, the spokeswoman for Welsh, said he has been diligent about implementing changes in the ICBM force as recommended by a string of official inquiries, including the 2013 Welch task force report.

Compared to 2010, when Welch's study group had last examined the nuclear Air Force, morale had improved, he wrote. There remained skepticism, however, about promises of future improvements for the workforce.

"The force is patiently waiting for ... visibly increased support for their daily mission work," the report said.

That patience seems, however, to be wearing thin.

A swelling wave of problems inside the force responsible for the nation's 450 ICBMs broke into the open last week with the unprecedented firing of nine midlevel commanders at an ICBM base in Montana, and the news that 90 or more junior officers there face disciplinary action for their role in an exam-cheating ring.

Extending a series of sackings of top ICBM leaders in recent months, the top operational commander at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, Col. Donald W. Holloway, was relieved of duty last week for reasons not publicly explained in full. F.E. Warren is home to 150 Minuteman 3 missiles and headquarters of the whole ICBM force.

Those are just a few examples of trouble facing the ICBM force. It also is caught in an unfinished criminal investigation of illegal drug use by at least three nuclear missile launch officers. More broadly, the Pentagon is looking for ways to fix what Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James calls "systemic" flaws that were years in the making in an ICBM force that operates largely out of the public spotlight with limited resources.

Hood officials downplay mental issues as details of leave argument emerge

FORT HOOD, Texas — Investigators believe that an escalating argument Wednesday afternoon was the “precipitating event” to the shootings that left four soldiers, including the shooter, dead and 16 more injured, Lt. Gen. Mark A. Milley said Friday.

Spc. Ivan Lopez was being treated for depression and other mental issues, and Milley on Thursday said there is “strong evidence that he had a medical history that indicates an unstable psychiatric or psychological condition.” However, Milley said, Lopez’s underlying medical conditions are now not believed to have been the “immediate precipitating factor” that caused the shooting.

The New York Times on Friday reported that Lopez met with superiors Wednesday about a leave request that had been denied. A law enforcement source told the Times that Lopez was acting agitated and disrespectful after the meeting.

Milley, the commander of the post and of III Corps, and Chris Grey, spokesman for the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, said they could not offer details about the argument, but said some of the soldiers injured in the gunfire were involved in the verbal altercation.

Lopez began shooting around 4 p.m. Wednesday near the intersection of 72nd Street and Tank Destroyer Boulevard, then moved to his car and fired indiscriminately while moving to another location, where he fired more shots, Grey said. At the second location, Lopez approached a military police sergeant and drew his weapon. The MP fired one round, Grey said.

According to witnesses, Lopez then put the gun to his head and fired, Grey said.

Sgt. 1st Class Daniel M. Ferguson, Sgt. Timothy Owens and Staff Sgt. Carlos Alberto Lazaney Rodriguez were killed. Ferguson and Owens were, like Lopez, part of the 49th Transportation Battalion (Movement Control). Rodriguez was assigned to 1st Medical Brigade.

Milley said there is no evidence thus far that any of the victims were targeted in advance.

Earlier Friday, Gov. Rick Perry and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, met with the survivors. After the visit, they called for more prayers and less discussion about policy.

“There aren’t any easy answers here,” Perry said. “There’s no way to push away the suffering.”

Lopez purchased the .45-caliber Smith and Wesson on March 1 at Guns Galore, the same local gun store that Maj. Nidal Hasan purchased the weapons he used in the mass shooting at Fort Hood in 2009. He did not register the weapon on base.

The most recent shooting renewed calls by gun advocates and victims of the 2009 shooting to allow servicemembers to carry concealed weapons on base. Current Army policy prohibits carrying concealed weapons on base, and bars soldiers from carrying weapons they do own on base unless authorized by a senior commander.

But there is time later to focus on the public policy issues, Cruz said.

Perry agreed, saying now is the time to focus on the short-term needs of the survivors and the community.

“It’s times like this that you see the resilience of the military family,” Perry said. “They’ll recover from this latest tragedy.”

A memorial service for the victims is planned for Wednesday, Milley said.

hlad.jennifer@stripes.com

Twitter: @jhlad

Black women worried about Army hair regulations

WASHINGTON -- New Army regulations meant to help standardized and professionalize soldiers' appearance are now coming under criticism by some black military women, who say changes in the requirement for their hair are racially biased.

Read the Army's rules

The Army earlier this week issued new appearance standards, which included bans on most twists, dreadlocks and large cornrows, all styles used predominantly by African-American women with natural hairstyles. More than 11,000 people have signed a White House petition asking President Barack Obama, the commander in chief, to have the military review the regulations to allow for "neat and maintained natural hairstyles."

Some black military women, who make up about a third of the women in the armed forces, feel they have been singled out with these new regulations.

"I think that it primarily targets black women, and I'm not in agreement with it," said Patricia Jackson-Kelley of the National Association of Black Military Women. "I don't see how a woman wearing three braids in her hair, how that affects her ability to perform her duty in the military."

Even before the current controversy, the association had already planned to showcase the hairstyles of African-American women in the military throughout the years at its national convention in Phoenix in September.

While she also feels the new regulations unfairly target black women, former association president Kathleen Harris also said she could understand why the regulations needed some uniformity. "The military is supposed to be conservative," she said. "My thing is that some folks look gorgeous in their twists, and some people go overboard. The twists are not small twists but they're real large ones and it doesn't fit the cover, your hat."

The changes and several other Army appearance modifications were first published Monday in the Army Times.

"The Army is a profession, and one of the ways our leaders and the American public measure our professionalism is by our appearance," Army Sgt. Maj. Raymond F. Chandler III said of the updates on the Army's website.

The changes also banned several male hairstyles, including Mohawks and long sideburns. Body piercings were also specifically banned, with an exception made for earrings. Also banned was the use of wireless earpieces outside a vehicle and tattoos visible below the elbow or knee or above the neckline. Current soldiers would be permitted to keep any tattoos not deemed racist, sexist or extremist.

Iraq War amputee, now a club pro, set to play in celebrity golf tourney

When Chad Pfeifer lost his left leg during his deployment with the Army in Iraq, he thought his days as a competitor were done.

Once a college baseball player, Pfeifer simply wasn’t mobile enough anymore in his new prosthetic for baseball or basketball.

Then, one, day, while rehabbing at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, he stumbled upon golf.

Fast forward seven years, and Pfeifer has climbed the ranks of top tournament players, having won the George W. Bush Presidential Center’s Warrior Open three years running.

The retired corporal’s ascent in the golf world reaches a new level this summer. Pfeifer has been invited to play in the American Century Championship at Lake Tahoe, Calif. He will be in the field of 80 professional athletes and entertainers competing for $600,000 in prize money in the charity tournament’s 25h anniversary year.

Pfeifer will join the likes of Jerry Rice, Aaron Rodgers, Brian Urlacher and many other household names for the mid-July event, widely considered as America’s best celebrity sporting event.

Despite his success on the golf course, the invitation still came as a surprise.

“I’m no celebrity, that’s for sure,” said Pfeifer, who is a PGA club professional at Goodyear’s Golf Club of Estrella. “So to be included in that lineup and for me to be able to be around all those guys, guys I idolized growing up, it’s pretty cool.”

Pfeifer, 32, lost his left leg above the knee on April 12, 2007, when a roadside bomb exploded while Pfeifer was on patrol in Iraq. He also was inflicted with a heel fracture, minor traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Golf became his medication.

He had played before joining the Army, casually with family and a few times during college, but didn’t fall in love with the sport until he began rehab in San Antonio.

“They had two courses there on the base, and it wasn’t too far from the Intrepid Center where the guys with injuries stayed,” Pfeifer said. “I would just go to the course and just hit balls, and they’d let us play for free in the afternoons when it slowed down.”

It started when Pfeifer’s friend and bilateral amputee, Christian Bagge, convinced Pfeifer, who hadn’t even been fit for a prosthetic yet, to hit the links.

Pfeifer, who once thought golf was “an old man’s sport,” was instantly intrigued. For one, he could play golf while still recovering from his leg injury, as a therapy of sorts.

“Playing the other sports growing up that I loved so much was frustrating with the prosthetic, getting used to it,” Pfeifer said. “But golf got me outside, it got me walking around on different terrains, walking uphill, downhill, so it was great practice as far as getting used to the prosthetic.”

The three-sport high school athlete played college baseball at a few smaller schools and enjoyed playing basketball before his injury, but he couldn’t compete at the same level in those more-physical sports. Golf leveled the playing field.

“A one-legged guy can compete with a guy playing for 20 years that’s maybe a scratcher or better than scratch golfer,” said Pfeifer, who in 2011 won the National Amputee Golf Association Tournament at Rio Verde Country Club.

The American Century Championship, which this year will honor Pfeifer and other members of the armed forces, runs from July 18 to July 20 at Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course in Stateline, Calif., known for its high altitude and short holes.

“Not having played it before, I’m not too sure what to expect,” Pfeifer said. “Some of the par 5s, some of the guys eagle because they’re shorter and the ball flies farther.”

But perhaps the most notable aspect of the tournament itself is the style of play — modified Stableford format — that essentially eliminates the one bad hole that can ruin a decent round.

“Basically you’re still just trying to have a low gross,” Pfeifer said. “But if you have a seven or eight on a hole, it may not kill you as bad as in stroke play.”

Many returning military vets bound for college

COLUMBIA, S.C. — After five years in the Marines, including a tour in Afghanistan in which he saw buddies die in combat, Andrew Kispert found going back to college as a new veteran one of his biggest challenges yet. For starters, there was the strangeness of resuming civilian life.

“The hardest part is the culture shock,” said Kispert, a 27-year-old veteran student at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C., who expects to graduate next year with a degree in political science. “It’s the shock of no longer being in the military and under that strict regimen.”

There’s a surge coming to America. Tens of thousands of new veterans are expected to return to the workforce or to college in the next several years as the military downsizes after wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and as the Pentagon budget is pared back. The Army is drawing down to 490,000 troops from its current 522,000-strong. Defense Secretary Hagel has proposed even steeper cuts in his latest budget, which would reduce the Army alone to its smallest size since before World War II — about 440,000 troops if approved.

And that means more vets on college campuses everywhere.

The challenges of helping the veterans go to college and stick with it until they graduate is the focus of a major conference getting underway Friday at the University of South Carolina that is drawing representatives from schools as far off as California and Arizona — and as close as Mississippi and the Carolinas.

For Kispert, life after the military meant overcoming a sense of isolation he felt with younger college students who had never experienced combat.

“You can’t really strike up a conversation too well because you haven’t gone through the same experiences,” Kispert noted.

Currently there are more than 100 veterans enrolled at The Citadel, where about 60 percent of the alumni are veterans, and which has a veterans services center and the recently ran an ad campaign urging vets to finish their degrees there.

Kispert, who takes day classes with cadets but does not participate in the military system, says being at The Citadel has helped.

“I’m still surrounded by a military lifestyle which has helped me say goodbye to one chapter of my life and open up a new one,” he said.

Karen Pettus, director of disability services at the University of South Carolina, said schools across the country are trying to get ready, adding, “We all know there will be a significant increase of military veterans on campuses in coming years.”

Among the challenges, schools will have to work with returning vets on establishing their academic credentials and finding areas of study that take advantage of skills learned in the military.

Pettus, who has a doctorate in educational psychology and research, said the conference is attracting academic advisers and officials who work in student affairs or disabilities services and want to expand their services for veterans.

Her university campus in Columbia is a case in point. Pettus has worked with veterans and student with disabilities there since 1994 and estimates the number of military veterans there has doubled in recent years to about 1,200 — many of them transfer students.

She said academia must better grasp the difficulties servicemen and women might have getting accepted into the university or college, and also how to help vets adapt from disciplined military life to the more free-wheeling “campus culture.” She herself was a military spouse for 20 years while her husband was in the Army. Her daughter is in the Air Force stationed in Germany and her son is working with the military as a civilian medic in Afghanistan, she said.

Some veterans may be wounded or suffer from post-traumatic stress, Pettus noted. She said universities should be able to help them use the many technologies that assist in reading, hearing, or communicating in the classroom. Some veterans may need to bring service dogs with them, or need to carry a reduced course load, she added.

What academia does to help with that transition will be key, experts say.

“We want to help them transition into school. We want to help them stay there and then get out of school, and find jobs,” said Lawrence Braue, the director of Veteran Services at the University of South Florida, one of several specialists planning to address the three-day conference.

Braue said he retired from the Army after 27 years in uniform and began to work with veterans at the University of South Florida about four years ago. Initially his office had four staff members, but it has grown to a full time staff of seven, has added a full-time Veterans Administration benefits adviser, and has about 18 part-time staffers.

In recent years, the veteran population at his university has grown from about 500 to 600 veterans to more than 1,500 now, he said. And the key to attracting them, and helping them succeed, has been gathering people together who can give veterans the help they need, Braue said.

“We set up a one-stop shop,” Braue said, a center populated with people who understood the complex medical and financial benefit systems that they must navigate in order to pay for their education.

Braue said many vets also need help with academic issues, and they are often loathe to seek help.

“My advice to other schools will be to not just set up a veteran’s center, set up a full-service veterans center,” he said.

———

Associated Press writer Bruce Smith in Charleston, S.C., contributed to this report.

Investigators assemble clues about Fort Hood shooter

AUSTIN, Texas — On March 1, Spc. Ivan A. Lopez walked into a store called Guns Galore on the southern outskirts of Killeen and bought a .45-caliber Smith and Wesson semi-automatic pistol.

Around the same time, an Army psychiatrist gave the 34-year-old native of Puerto Rico a full evaluation. Lopez was undergoing treatment for depression, anxiety and sleeping disorders, and he had been prescribed a number of drugs, including the sleep aid Ambien.

His psychiatrist, however, concluded that he posed no threat of violence, either to himself or to others, Army Secretary John McHugh said Thursday.

A month later, he opened fire at the headquarters of his unit, the 49th Transportation Movement Control Battalion, which he had just joined in February. He killed three soldiers and wounded 16 others before turning the gun on himself Wednesday.

The identities of two of the slain soldiers emerged Thursday: Puerto Rican soldier Carlos Lazaney, 38, and Sgt. Timothy Owens, 37, of Illinois. Both were identified by family members to media outlets.

On Thursday, investigators continued to piece together the puzzle of Lopez, who according to senior military leaders, was “a very experienced soldier” who had served two overseas tours during more than a decade of military service.

Fort Hood Commander Lt. Gen. Mark Milley said Thursday there was a “strong indication” that the rampage was preceded by an argument with another soldier. Yet Milley concluded that there wasn’t evidence that Lopez was targeting specific soldiers.

And despite the psychiatrist’s evaluation that he posed no threat, Milley said Thursday that Lopez’s mental state led to the shooting rampage. Had medical professionals determined that Lopez was a threat, they would have been empowered to inquire about any gun purchases and ask him to turn in any personal weapons, according to Fort Hood policy.

Army officials repeated Thursday that they have found nothing linking Lopez to extremist or terrorist groups.

Meanwhile, more examples of heroism among the soldiers targeted by López emerged. Milley said the first 911 calls were made by two soldiers after they had been shot and wounded.

During the rampage, a chaplain, who Milley declined to name, helped shelter soldiers, breaking a window and allowing soldiers to escape safely.

And the rampage, which began in his unit’s headquarters, ended when a military police officer fired at Lopez in a parking lot after he drew his weapon on her. At that point, Lopez killed himself with a gunshot to the head, Milley said. It’s unclear if he was hit by any of the officer’s shots.

Fort Hood officials said a memorial service for the victims would be held early next week.

Three soldiers remain in serious condition at Scott & White Hospital-Temple. Three soldiers were at Fort Hood’s Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center on Thursday evening, according to Fort Hood. Ten soldiers have been treated and released.

For many in the Fort Hood area, the shooting brought back unwelcome memories of the Nov. 5, 2009, mass shooting, in which 13 were killed and more than 30 wounded. Survivors of that attack called Thursday for increased security measures at military installations.

Retired Staff Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford, injured in the 2009 attack, placed blame for the shooting on the government.

“How many lives are going to have to be lost before the powers that be strengthen security on base?” Lunsford told The Austin American-Statesman.

Last month, a panel convened after last year’s deadly shooting at the Washington Navy Yard called for just such an overhaul. “For decades, the Department (of Defense) has approached security from a perimeter perspective,” former Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Stockton told reporters. “That approach is outmoded, it is broken, and the department needs to replace it. … What the Department of Defense should do is build security from within.”

At Lopez’s residence in Terrace Heights Apartments in Killeen, neighbors said they were unsettled to learn the man identified as the shooter lived so close.

“It freaked me out,” Daz Briggins said.

Iesha Bradley said Lopez’s wife was crying uncontrollably after it was reported that her husband was the shooter and that he was dead. Bradley and others attempted to console her.

On Wednesday night, First United Methodist Church in Killeen held a prayer vigil that drew 65 or so members. None of the church members were among the victims, “but obviously, there was anxiety and concern, especially among those who were here in 2009,” lead pastor Jeff Miller said.

Milley promised an “external investigation” into Fort Hood’s mental health programs in coming weeks to probe for any gaps. After the 2009 shooting, officials found shortages of behavioral health specialists and conducted a similar evaluation of the post’s mental health capacity.

Although suicides at Fort Hood spiked in recent years, hitting a record 22 in 2010, suicides dipped to just seven last year, the lowest since 2007. Reported suicide attempts, however, increased in 2013.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, called military mental health issues among the “most vexing” facing the nation, but also urged caution in characterizing combat veterans. “We have to be very careful not to paint with too broad a brush,” Cornyn said Thursday outside the gates of Fort Hood. “We shouldn’t stigmatize healthy people who are resilient.”

Media outlets covering Fort Hood shooting call wrong Ivan Lopez

Ivan Hurtado Lopez had just left class when the first phone calls and text messages started to come in Wednesday.

“Hey, where you?”

“Are you in Arizona?”

“Are you OK?”

He was in Phoenix, where he lives with his wife and their 9-year-old daughter. Lopez attends a refrigeration technical school there, and he was planning to start studying when he got home that afternoon.

But the 32-year-old used to live in Fort Hood, where he was stationed from September 2007 to March 2011 before he retired from the Army. So when U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, announced on national TV that the suspect in a shooting at the military installation was named Ivan Lopez, reporters started calling his relatives.

Some websites posted a photo of him that had run with a feature story in the Killeen (Texas) Daily Herald in 2010.

Media outlets in Tucson, Ariz., where he lived for several years after leaving the military, went to his house and asked his wife whether she knew that “Mr. Lopez was shot and killed.”

His daughter, who was within earshot, started to cry.

Lopez said it was a one in a million chance that two Ivan Lopezes, both Army specialists who went to Iraq and both in their early 30s, were both from Fort Hood. It was the other one — Ivan A. Lopez — who officials say opened fire there, killing three and injuring 14 before killing himself Wednesday.

Back in Arizona, Ivan Hurtado Lopez shrugged off the mistaken identification, patiently explaining who he was to the TV and newspaper reporters who called.

He served in the Marine Corps in 2001 and did two tours in Iraq before joining the Army. He’s been married for more than 12 years. He was at Fort Hood in 2009 when Nidal Hasan shot and killed 13 people there.

Lopez said he still feels the repercussions of that shooting, and even though he wasn’t in Fort Hood this week, he said he’s feeling the effects of this attack, too. The confusion over whether he was involved in the rampage has compounded that.

The Austin American-Statesman didn’t identify him as the gunman.

Phone calls from unknown numbers lasted until 5 a.m. Thursday, he said. Television cameras camped outside his sister-in-law’s house. The word “monster” appears online with his photo.

He said the media should get its facts straight before publishing. Reporters don’t think about what they’re doing, he said. And then it’s too late.

“My name is my name,” he said. “That’s all I have.”

“I don’t want to be known as the Fort Hood shooter.”

Crews detonate small bomb found in neighborhood near Fort Hood

49 minutes ago

By Kolten Parker

San Antonio Express-News

Published: April 4, 2014

SAN ANTONIO — Fort Hood explosive crews detonated a small improvised explosive device in a neighborhood adjacent to the Army post Thursday, police said.

The device appeared to be two small plastic pipes duct taped to a mobile phone wired to a battery device, according to a photo tweeted by an Austin American-Statesman reporter. No injuries were reported when Fort Hood Explosive Ordnance Disposal crews detonated the suspicious package that was reported by a resident around 9 a.m. on the hood of his truck.

Police evacuated an eight-block radius around the 1500 block of North Gray Street and escorted residents to a nearby community center, said Carroll Smith, public information officer for Killeen Police Department.

“We do not believe there is any connection (with Wednesday's shooting),” she said. “But this is not an everyday thing. ... It puts everybody on heightened alert, but you have to handle each situation as they arise.”

Army Spc. Ivan A. Lopez, 34, opened fire with a .45 caliber pistol on the Killeen Army post around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday. The event lasted for about 15 minutes before Lopez, an Iraq war veteran from Puerto Rico, took his own life with a gunshot after being cornered by a military policewoman.

All injured were soldiers and nine remain in an area hospital, with three in critical condition, doctors from Scott & White Health Centers said.

Leroy Ferrell lives at the home. He came back from the store Thursday morning to find the item on the hood of his friend's red pickup truck, which was parked at his house.

“I have no idea where it came from. I started to pick it up and throw it into that field over there.” But then he saw the phone and the wires. “I thought, wait a minute.”

Houston Chronicle staff writer Mike Morris contributed to this report.

Ramstein continues its Kaiserslautern hex

KAISERSLAUTERN,Germany -- The visiting Ramstein Royals extended their mastery of the rival Kaiserslautern Raiders on Thursday night, snuffing out another regular season of Raider upset hopes with a boys and girls soccer sweep.

Girls

Ramstein 1, Kaiserslautern 0: The Royal goal that seemed inevitable all game eventually came to pass.

And what a pass it was.

Journey Legg delivered a spot-on cross kick to teammate Hunter Pace, and the Ramstein captain headed the ball into the net for the only goal the Royals would need.

Pace said her goal was almost another near-miss in an evening full of them, describing a brief "panic attack" when she lost the ball in the stadium's unfamiliar lights.

"I thought for sure I was going to miss it," Pace said. "I found it just in time."

And she found it just as time was starting to work against her side. The winning goal came 35 minutes into the second half, but it was the product of an evening's worth of steady-paced legwork.

Legg, Pace and omnipresent striker Ebony Madrid kept constant pressure on the Raider defense, necessitating a number of diving stops by Kaiserslautern goalkeeper Montana Staab. The busy Raider goalie made 16 saves and saw several more attempts sail high or wide before the odds caught up with her.

"I told the girls, 'Keep working on your passing game,'" Ramstein coach Ricardo Buitrago said. "'Keep shooting and it will eventually go in.'"

While bending and finally breaking the Raider defense, the precise Royal offense also served to smother Kaiserslautern's attack. The home team managed only a handful of runs into the Royal backfield and never seriously threatened to score.

It's all part of the Royals' holistic approach to winning soccer, Pace explained.

"What we want to do is make fast, accurate passes, so it's kind of like pinball when we play, so that it frustrates the other team," Pace said. "At that point, it gets really tiring for the other team. And then that opens opportunities for us to shoot."

Boys

Ramstein 4, Kaiserslautern 0: While the girls bided their time, the Royal boys weren't nearly as patient. But they were just as persistent.

Devin McGeehan smashed in a close-range shot just 45 seconds into the game, stunning the Raiders, shushing the home crowd and setting the tone for what turned into a runaway victory.

Every time Kaiserslautern attempted to make a game of it, Ramstein responded with another timely goal to press its advantage. Brienno Illari scored just before halftime and again soon after the intermission. A late goal by Cameron Hansen finished off the Raiders.

"It's huge to score early," Ramstein coach Dominik Ludes said. But he added that Illari's goals bookending halftime were what really extinguished any potential Raider rally.

"It kills the momentum of the opposing team, and it just lifts us," Ludes said.

Illari, while distributing credit to his table-setting teammates, agreed that his goal late in the first half was a turning point.

"After we got that second goal, you could see Kaiserslautern kind of drop their head, and we picked it up and we capitalized," Illari said. "We kind of got that boost of energy that we needed."

broome.gregory@stripes.com

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DOD pushes plan for new BRAC round

The Department of Defense is continuing with its push for another BRAC round.

On Wednesday, John C. Conger, acting deputy undersecretary of defense for installations, told a subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington that a Base Realignment and Closure round is the best way for the DOD to keep pace with the continual slashing of the defense budget.

"The budget challenges facing the (defense) department are deep, and they extend for many years," Conger told the subcommittee. "We continue to believe that an important way to ease this pressure is with base closure, allowing us to avoid paying upkeep for unneeded infrastructure and making those funds available for readiness and modernization of our forces."

When Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel unveiled details of his proposed five-year Pentagon budget in February, it included a new BRAC round.

If the budget were approved, the BRAC would take place three years from now.

BRAC is a process in which the federal government aims to increase Department of Defense efficiency by closing military installations that are deemed unnecessary.

More than 350 installations have been closed in five BRAC rounds that came in 1989, 1991, 1993, 1995 and 2005.

When addressing concerns about the high cost of the last BRAC in 2005, Conger said those closures were geared toward transformation, rather than efficiency.

Conger said his staff reviewed each of the recommendations from the 2005 round of BRAC and found that the defense department actually conducted two parallel base realignment and closure rounds.

The transformation recommendations "didn't pay back," Conger said.

Almost half of the 2005 round's recommendations were focused on transformation, and they either didn't pay back at all or paid back in seven years or more, he said. The transformation BRAC cost $29 billion and resulted in just $1 billion in annual savings. "In other words," he said, "the reason we were doing those moves wasn't to save money."

The other recommendations, though, were focused on saving money, Conger said. Those paid back in less than seven years and cost just $6 billion out of the overall BRAC cost of $35 billion. They also yielded recurring savings of $3 billion a year.

"(That) proves that when we're trying to save money, we do," Conger said. "That's the kind of round we're seeking to conduct now. It is fair to say that the department needs to save money, now."

Members of Utah's congressional delegation and local military experts have said that Hill Air Force Base, with its F-35 maintenance workload, it being the future destination of three F-35 fighter wings and a bevy of other work critical to future defense, is in relatively good shape if another BRAC were to occur.

Congress would have to authorize another BRAC round before it could occur.

The American Forces Press Service contributed to this report.

Fort Hood shootings raise questions about tolls of Iraq, Afghanistan wars

WASHINGTON — For years after the 9/11 attacks, Americans worried about fundamentalist Islamic cells infiltrating the homeland and radical jihadists hiding in their midst.

The latest mass shooting at a U.S. military base — and the second in less than five years at Fort Hood, Texas — raises a potentially more disturbing question: Have the Iraq and Afghanistan wars created American-grown human time bombs with grievous mental and physical wounds that the military and veterans’ health-care systems can’t adequately track and treat?

Senior Army officials Thursday provided conflicting views of Spec. Ivan A. Lopez’s state of mind before his shooting rampage at Fort Hood a day earlier. Lopez killed three people at the base and wounded 16 others before taking his own life.

Military officials said Lopez bought the gun he used in Wednesday’s attack on March 1 but had not registered it at Fort Hood as required by regulations.

“We have very strong evidence that he had a medical history that indicates an unstable psychiatric or psychological condition,” said Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, the commander at Fort Hood. “We believe that is the fundamental underlying causal factor here.”

Army Secretary John McHugh, however, told Congress that a psychiatrist’s examination of the Puerto Rico-born Lopez last month had not disclosed deep enough problems for him to be considered a threat to others.

“As of this morning, we had no indication on the record of that examination that there was any sign of likely violence, either to himself or to others, no suicidal ideation,” McHugh told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Lopez, who served four months in Iraq, “was undergoing a variety of treatment and diagnoses for mental health conditions, ranging from depression to anxiety to some sleep disturbance,” McHugh said. Lopez had been “prescribed a number of drugs,” among them Ambien, a common sleeping pill, McHugh said.

Relatives of Lopez said he told them that he had sustained a brain injury and was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. The Pentagon did not confirm those health problems.

Whatever Lopez’s condition or motive turns out to be — should it become known at all — his rampage Wednesday brings to at least nine the number of fatal criminal shooting incidents at U.S. military bases since 2008. It was the same year that the number of American troops in Iraq reached a peak and the United States was simultaneously fighting another bloody war in Afghanistan.

In November 2009 at Fort Hood, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 people and wounded 32 others. Hasan, a self-avowed jihadist and “soldier of Allah,” was sentenced to death last year and is imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Aaron Alexis, a former Navy sailor, shot 12 people dead last August at the Washington Navy Yard before he was slain.

With the suicide rate rising in recent years among both active-duty servicemembers and veterans, analysts said the military and veterans’ health-care systems are struggling to deal with a broad range of mental health problems exacerbated by more than 12 years of war.

Drake Logan, a researcher with Civilian-Soldier Alliance, a group that tries to give servicemembers a greater voice, is completing a report based in part on extensive interviews during the past two years with soldiers at Fort Hood and veterans who formerly served there.

Logan said commanders at Fort Hood and other military installations where she’s interviewed service members often ignore or countermand the directions of mental health providers treating their troops.

“Commanders in the military are allowed discretion over soldiers’ medical and mental health treatment and the work restrictions that are placed on them by medical professionals,” Logan said.

Harry Croft, a former Army psychiatrist who has treated 1,700 cases of PTSD and wrote a 2012 book on the illness, said he and other health-care providers tread a thin line between trying not to exaggerate such problems and imploring the government to do more to address them.

Noting that Lopez was under treatment when he went on his rampage, Croft said it is very difficult to identify such insider threats in advance.

“We still can’t predict with tremendous accuracy whether someone is going to go out and hurt themselves or other people,” Croft said. “I wish we could, but it’s as much an art as a science.”

Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, made a similar point at a Fort Hood news briefing with Milley.

“Mental health issues are the most vexing issues from my perspective in terms of how do we identify people who have genuine problems that need to be treated,” Cornyn said. “But I think at the same time, we have to be very careful and not paint with too broad a brush and assume that just because someone has been in combat that they necessarily have those issues.”

In releasing the results of Pentagon investigations probes of the Washington Navy Yard shootings, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel last month said that the reviews had “identified troubling gaps in our ability to detect, prevent and respond to instances where someone working with us — a government employee, member of our military or a contractor — decides to inflict harm.”

Almost one-third of all Iraq and Afghanistan veterans seen at Department of Veterans Affairs medical facilities have been treated for PTSD, according to the most recent VA report, and mental disorders are the second most frequent diagnosis.

While veterans have better luck finding jobs than their civilian counterparts, younger former troops who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan still lag behind, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last month.

“At the same time we recognize that the vast majority of our military and vets are not in crisis, we must all acknowledge that there are indeed problems with the way mental health and transitional support is managed and available to our service members and veterans,” Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, told a Senate panel last month.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki told Congress last month that his agency added 2,400 mental health providers in the past two years, but shortages remain.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday that President Barack Obama is frustrated by the failure of Congress to act on his legislation to increase mental health and criminal background checks for gun buyers.

“During the course of (more than) a decade of war, many (service members) have been on multiple tours of duty,” Obama said. “To see unspeakable, senseless violence happen in a place where they’re supposed to feel safe, home base, is tragic.”

Lesley Clark, Maria Recio and David Goldstein of the Washington Bureau contributed.

Coast Guard releases incident report on cutter crewman's death

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Equipment failure, improper placement of a Coast Guard crewman on a small boat and a Bering Sea swell contributed to the crewman's death aboard a California-based cutter during an Alaska rescue mission, an investigation has concluded.

The Coast Guard on Thursday released its major investigation incident report in the death of Petty Officer 3rd Class Travis Obendorf, who died Dec. 18 from injuries suffered five weeks earlier aboard the Alameda-based 418-foot Cutter Waesche.

The Waesche on Nov. 10 was on its way to a port of call at Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands when it received orders to help a fishing boat, the 166-foot Alaska Mist, which had a mechanical failure and was adrift 30 miles north of Amak Island. The fishing boat with 22 crewmen was able to anchor 8.5 miles from the island 625 miles southwest of Anchorage.

The Waesche reached the stricken vessel at 2:30 p.m. Nov. 11, four hours before sunset, and made plans to tow the Alaska Mist. However, officers decided to ferry 14 nonessential crew members from the disabled boat, using a small boat aboard the cutter called a "short-range prosecutor."

The 25-foot boats are driven by a crewman at a center console. They are launched and captured from a stern notch in the cutter. A capture line is supposed to mechanically hook up to a horn on the small boat and pull it into a capture net. However, the capture line did not function as designed, investigators said, and needed human assistance. The cutter "overcame the functional deficiency of the capture line by placing a boat crewman forward of the boat's center console during the notching evolution," investigators said.

The proved fatal. The wind was blowing at 20 mph and swells were 10 to 12 feet but coming from different directions.

About 3:15, the 25-foot boat with five fishermen and three crew members approached the stern of the cutter, lined up for a capture and moved forward. As the small boat entered the cutter notch, a large swell surged into the rear of the small boat, lifting the stern and shoving the bow underneath the capture net, which slammed Obendorf into the center console. He bounced up and gave a thumbs-up signal, but seconds later, a larger swell hit the small boat again.

The small boat surged forward and the capture net again slammed Obendorf into the center console, this time seriously injuring his head and knocking him unconscious.

A Coast Guard helicopter from Cold Bay reached the cutter 65 minutes after the accident. Obendorf was flown to Cold Bay, Anchorage, and finally, Seattle, where he died.

The capture line, designed to work without human assistance, did not work, investigators concluded. Prevailing weather also played a role. The cutter had made 130 safe launches, and the weather Nov. 11 did not strike key personnel as extreme to the point of being unsafe despite conditions in excess of published, safe operating limits, investigators said.

"Despite the planning, risk assessment, active monitoring of an on scene conditions and adjustments to ship course and speed to optimize a safe recovery, the mishap occurred," investigators said.

Fort Hood gunman's attack mystifies quiet hometown in Puerto Rico

GUAYANILLA, Puerto Rico — He grew up in Puerto Rico and played percussion in his high school band. He spent a decade working as a police officer and serving in the National Guard, part of that time as a peacekeeper in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. And then he joined the U.S. Army.

That was Ivan Lopez's seemingly unremarkable route into the military. But what happened from there — and why the 34-year-old soldier turned against his comrades at Fort Hood, Texas, with such deadly fury — baffled some of those who knew him.

"He had a lot of friends. I never saw him fighting. He never seemed like a boy who had emotional problems," said Guayanilla Mayor Edgardo Arlequin Velez, who was also the leader of the school band that Lopez played in in this small, working-class town.

But Fort Hood commander Lt. Gen. Mark Milley said Thursday that there was evidence Lopez was psychologically unstable, which is thought to be a "fundamental underlying cause" in Wednesday's shooting rampage, in which Lopez killed three people, wounded 16 and took his own life.

Lopez was sent to Iraq as a truck driver in 2011 during the final months of the war there. He did not see combat and was not wounded, military officials said.

He sought help for depression and anxiety and was being evaluated for post-traumatic stress disorder, military officials said. But Army Secretary John McHugh said Thursday that a psychiatrist last month found no violent or suicidal tendencies. The soldier was prescribed Ambien for a sleeping problem.

He had no apparent links to extremists, McHugh said.

Glidden Lopez Torres, who is not related to the gunman but identified himself as a family friend speaking on behalf of the soldier's family in Puerto Rico, said Lopez's mother died of a heart attack in November.

Lopez was close to her and was apparently upset that he was granted only a short leave — 24 hours, later extended to two days — to go to her funeral, which was delayed for almost a week so he could make it, the family spokesman said.

"That was a very frustrating time for him," said Yaritza Castro, who grew up with Lopez and now lives in Miami.

Castro said Lopez had two children from a previous marriage and a third with his widow. He took all three children to Disney World not long before his mother's death.

Castro said Lopez was a thoughtful person who called to check on her when her husband was deployed with the military, and he also sent care packages to her husband.

"He wasn't a monster. He was a very good person," Castro said.

Lopez's family was unaware he was receiving any treatment for mental problems, the family spokesman said. Torres said Lopez's relatives were devastated, trying to comprehend the shooting.

"He was a very laid-back person. I would even say a bit shy," Torres said. "That's why we are so surprised."

Lopez grew up in Guayanilla, a town of fewer than 10,000 people, where small, well-kept houses are painted bright colors. The house he grew up in was empty Thursday. It is a one-story, concrete home painted white with green trim.

There are few jobs in the town, and many young people have joined the military in recent years.

The mayor described Lopez as passionate about music. His parents attended school functions, and they seemed close.

Puerto Rico police officials and Torres, the family spokesman, said Lopez had worked as a state police officer from 2000 until he received leave to serve in the military. He played in bands for both the police department and the National Guard.

In January, his wife, Karla Lopez, wrote "te amo," or "I love you," under a profile picture on a Facebook page believed to belong to Ivan Lopez. The picture shows him leaning back in a car, wearing dark sunglasses, with earphones hanging from his lobes.

The profile, under the name "Ivan Slipknot," includes photos of him in uniform and carrying weapons. Others appear to be family photos.

He spent four years at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, before moving on to Fort Hood. In a statement, Fort Bliss officials said he served as an infantryman, with duties as a rifleman, grenadier and vehicle driver. Because of an unspecified "medical condition," he was reclassified as a truck driver.

In Killeen, Texas, where the family moved after Lopez was transferred to Fort Hood, neighbors in a three-story, blue and gray apartment building described him as friendly.

Shaneice Banks, a 21-year-old business management student who lives downstairs, said that hours before the shooting rampage Wednesday, she ran into Lopez when he came home for lunch.

"They get an hour to come home," Banks said. "He was going to his car and I was like, 'Hey, how's your day going?' And he seemed perfectly fine. He was like, 'Day's going pretty good. I'll see you whenever I come back home.'"

Coto reported from Guayanilla; Weissert from Killeen, Texas; Mohr from Jackson, Miss. Associated Press writers Ramit Plushnick-Masti in Houston; Paul J. Weber at Fort Hood, Texas; Christopher Sherman in McAllen, Texas; Juan Carlos Llorca in El Paso, Texas; Eric Tucker and Alicia Caldwell in Washington; Lolita C. Baldor in Honolulu; Nedra Pickler in Chicago; Michael Kunzelman in New Orleans; Ben Fox in Miami; and AP researcher Jennifer Farrar contributed to this report.