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text:
using Newtonsoft.Json;

namespace CompaniesHouse.Response.Insolvency
{
    public class Links
    {
        [JsonProperty("charge")]
        public string Charge { get; set; }
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Timothy Jackson Siaosi Mariner Jordan Love Taven Birdow Donald Hammond Jake Koehnke Kadin Remsberg Sports College football Football College sports
Air Force Mountain West Utah State
Jackson, Remsberg power Air Force past Utah State 31-7
By DENNIS GEORGATOS - Oct. 27, 2019 02:23 AM EDT
Air Force running back Kadin Remsberg, left, runs around the corner for a short gain as Utah State safety Troy Lefeged Jr. pursues in the first half of an NCAA college football game Saturday, Oct. 26, 2019, at Air Force Academy, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. (AP) — Timothy Jackson has been at the forefront of Air Force's punishing ground game.
Jackson ran for 148 yards and a touchdown, Kadin Remsberg added a pair of scoring runs and Air Force shut down Utah State 31-7 on Saturday night.
Jackson reached 100 yards for the third straight game to become the first Air Force running back to accomplish the feat since Cody Getz had three 100-yard rushing games in a row during the 2012 season.
"I just want to keep it going," Jackson said. "It's a testament to our offensive line, and our coaches, trusting in me to keep moving the rock. Even though we've been doing good every week, we've still got a lot to improve on, so we're just trying to get better and better."
Taven Birdow also had a touchdown run for Air Force (6-2, 4-1 Mountain West), which became bowl eligible after its third straight victory. Quarterback Donald Hammond III suffered a lower leg injury at the end of a run on the first play of the game but returned to play most of the game. He finished with 69 yards on nine carries and completed one of his five passes for 16 yards.
Jordan Love threw a 27-yard touchdown pass to Siaosi Mariner but Utah State (4-3, 3-1) could not avoid its first loss to a conference foe this season. Love finished 14 of 23 for 114 yards as the Aggies struggled to get their offense on track against the Falcons defense while the Utah State defense could not contain the Falcons' relentless running attack.
"Our offense is kind of built for that, to hold on to the ball for a long time because all we do is run," Jackson said. "With our defense holding them to really short gains and 3-and-outs, we're going to get the ball a lot and have a lot of time of possession and it just wears down their defense at the same time, so everything kind of went according to plan."
Trailing by 17 points, the Aggies got their first touchdown on Love's 27-yard strike to Mariner, pulling Utah State to 17-7 early in the third quarter. But the Falcons, after downing a punt at the Aggies' 1, held Utah State without a first down and forced a punt that traveled only 33 yards. Air Force went down the field, finishing the drive with a nine-yard TD run by Remsberg, his second scoring run of the night.
"We got beat by a better team," Utah State coach Gary Anderson said. "No question about it. Air Force pretty much dominated both sides of the football. We knew they were a good team coming in. They showed they're a good team."
Slowed initially by losing two first-quarter fumbles, Air Force broke through to take a 17-0 lead at halftime, getting a career long 57-yard field goal from Jake Koehnke as time expired in the second quarter.
Jackson touched off the second quarter burst with a short touchdown run after igniting the Falcons' first scoring drive with a 40-yard run on a third-and-8 play from Air Force's 17. He also had a hand in Air Force's second touchdown, with three rushes for 32 yards to set up a first-and goal at the 1 which Remsberg converted into another 1-yard touchdown run.
Utah State: The Aggies defense forced a pair of first-quarter fumbles but their offense could not capitalize on the early turnovers. The offense remained sluggish throughout the game, unable to sustain drives against the Falcons' pressure tactics.
Air Force: The Falcons cadre of running backs carried the offense after Hammond was slowed by a leg injury, allowing Air Force to apply steady pressure on Utah State's defense and pull away for the victory. Eight Air Force rushers combined for 448 yards to dominate possession time (45:43 to 14:17). Air Force's defense also mounted an effective pass rush to successfully counter the Aggies' passing attack.
Utah State: Hosts intrastate rival BYU next Saturday night.
Air Force: Hosts fellow service academy Army next Saturday.
More AP college football: https://apnews.com/tag/Collegefootball and http://www.twitter.com/AP_Top25

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Michelangelo's 'David' and the Gift of Limitations
July 26, 2017 | Russ Ramsey
© By Rabe! (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
More By Russ Ramsey
Opening Your Bible? Turn on Your Imagination
Regret and Hope When a Child Goes to College
The Danger of Neglecting Beauty
The Jeans-and-T-Shirt Orthodoxy of Rich Mullins
What You Can Learn from van Gogh's Bloody-Eared Self-Portrait
"At the crucial moments of choice, most of the business of choosing is already over." – Iris Murdoch
We live in a world of limits. We all run up against them. We all have them. If you're like me, you wish this weren't the case. But limits are a fact of life, part of God's design. Even our first parent, Adam, looked around and said, "I need help. I need another."
Eve didn't solve the problem of Adam's limitations. God didn't put the man to sleep and then put into him what he lacked. Instead, God took something out of the man and made a partner to come alongside him—helpful but distinct. The gift of Eve confirmed that this was how things were going to be moving forward—how they were meant to be. We wouldn't merely help ourselves. We'd be given help—and we would be given to help.
Sometimes the help we're given requires us to adapt to a new course, especially when a person has a personality that changes the rhythm of how we might work on our own. Perhaps they're faster than us, or more contemplative. Perhaps they think in concrete terms while we favor the abstract. They bring nuance into our otherwise rigid plans, structure to our hazy vision, or economics to our dream. Sometimes, we inherit the work of others, and it falls to us to carry it across the finish line. Sometimes others inherit our work.
Whatever the situation, our limits and need for others often end up producing results—beautiful, helpful, and unexpected results that none of us would've expected on our own. The story behind how Michelangelo's David came to be helps us see this point.
Michelangelo Wasn't First
Michelangelo's David is confounding. He's simultaneously vulnerable in his nakedness and imposing in his size, standing more than 13 feet tall. One hand grips a sling, ready for action; the other is relaxed, cradling a stone. The warrior is alert but calm, equipped but patient, daring but confident. His posture conveys motion, as though he's just shifted his weight or taken a step. The sling and stone signal to us that David is looking at Goliath, who is about to die. The look in David's eye tells us he has no doubt.
The shepherd's hands, his torso, his battle-ready stare, his posture all seem to animate Michelangelo's block of marble. David is a living stone. He's a masterpiece.
Yet Michelangelo wasn't the first sculptor to take hammer and chisel to this marble. Nor was he the second. In 1464, the city of Florence commissioned Agostino de Duccio to sculpt a statue of David as part of a series of 12 Old Testament figures begun in 1410 by Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi—better known as Donatello. After the city brought in a block of marble masoned from the Alps in northern Tuscany, Duccio began his work. But he only got as far as roughing out the legs before he died in 1466.
Ten years later, another sculptor named Antonio Rossellino was brought in to pick up where Duccio left off, but for reasons unknown he was soon removed from the project, and the work-in-progress sat unfinished for the next 25 years.
Finally, in 1501, a 26-year-old Michelangelo convinced city officials that he should be hired to finish the sculpture Duccio started 11 years before Michelangelo was born. He had to accommodate the work of others whose creative choices determined, at least to a degree, how David stood, which affected everything about the end result.
How different would Michelangelo's David have been if he began with a virgin stone? What artistic choices would he have made differently? Would that sculpture be as beloved as the one we've been given? We'll never know, because Michelangelo was given a block of stone others had a hand in shaping.
No Untouched Foundations
Isn't this a metaphor for life? None of us builds on an untouched foundation. Many people and their many decisions—for better or worse—have played a role in determining where our feet are planted. Consequently, we ourselves are in the process of shaping future foundations on which others will one day stand. Lord, have mercy.
We work with what we're given. We live in a world of limits. Michelangelo chipped away at the stone set before him, improving on the vision of other sculptors. But even before that, he had to accommodate the dimensions handed down by the stonemasons who first hewed the marble from the Tuscan Alps. Further still, he had to accommodate the written word of Scripture.
These limits played a role in the creative decisions Michelangelo had to make in order to sculpt the shepherd he'd read about and imagined. Some of those choices had already been made for him—and had they not been, we wouldn't have Michelangelo's David. We'd have something else.
I can't think of a single thing in my life that doesn't bear the touch of others. I bet you can't either. Of course we wish some of those chisel marks never happened—the ones that draw from us pleas for mercy and for the renewal of all things. But if we're honest, many of the marks have been necessary to give us eyes to behold God's glory, glory we wouldn't have otherwise known.
Recognizing both our limits and also our need for others is one of the ways we experience beauty we wouldn't have seen, good work we wouldn't have chosen, and relationships we wouldn't have treasured. It's one of the ways we're shaped to fit together as living stones into the body of Christ (1 Pet. 2:4–5; Eph. 2:22). As much as our strengths are a gift to the church, so are our limitations.
Russ Ramsey is a pastor at Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, where he lives with his wife and four children. He grew up in the fields of Indiana and studied at Taylor University and Covenant Theological Seminary (MDiv, ThM). Russ is the author of the Retelling the Story Series (IVP, 2018) and Struck: One Christian's Reflections on Encountering Death (IVP, 2017).
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Thomas Kidd
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This degree contains elements of traditional physics programs and the application of physics to a diversity of critical societal problems. The program is divided into three areas of emphasis; see Requirements for details.
Many courses are offered during late afternoon or evening hours to allow students with full-time employment to easily attend. Students employed at area high-technology organizations may take up to 6 credits (out of 30) for work done on the job under the guidance of a faculty member. This employment-related research may be conducted under an optional 3-credit research project or an optional 6-credit master's thesis. Master's students who are not employed full time may apply for financial aid or a limited number of research assistantships.
Individuals holding a baccalaureate degree in physics or a related field from a regionally accredited institution and who have earned a GPA of 3.00 (out of 4.00) in their last 60 credits are invited to apply for admission. If the baccalaureate degree is in a field other than physics, applicants should have taken several courses beyond the introductory physics courses, such as junior-level classical mechanics, electricity and magnetism, or electronics. Applicants may be required to make up one or two deficiencies, based on a graduate physics advisor's assessment, and be provisionally admitted into the program. Three letters of recommendation must be submitted, preferably from former professors. The general GRE and the GRE subject test in physics are recommended for applicants who received their baccalaureate degrees within the past five years.
Students should refer to the Admissions & Policies tab for specific policies related to this program. Select one emphasis and complete all the requirements therein.
Before the end of their first semester, each student must submit to the graduate coordinator's office a plan of study that has been approved by their academic advisor. The selected courses must be cohesive and lead to comprehensive knowledge in one area; it cannot be a set of disjointed courses. Any deviations from this plan must be approved by the student's academic advisor. A final, signed version of the plan must be submitted to the graduate coordinator at the start of the semester in which the student plans to graduate.
Select one emphasis and complete all the requirements therein.
This emphasis is intended for students who may wish to pursue further graduate study in physics or astrophysics or pursue graduate study following the Standard Physics concentration of the Physics PhD.
Select 9 credits of graduate-level science courses approved by an academic advisor.
These must be regular courses and not directed reading, research, or thesis credits.
Students may take PHYS 796 Directed Reading and Research and up to 6 credits of PHYS 798 Research Project as general electives. PHYS 798 Research Project is conducted under the supervision of a faculty research advisor and may be based on work done as an intern. Up to 6 credits of PHYS 799 Master's Thesis may be taken as general electives by students pursuing the thesis option and may also be based on work done as an intern.
This emphasis is intended for students who may wish to pursue employment in an engineering-related field or pursue graduate study following the Engineering Physics concentration of the Physics PhD.
Select 9 credits of graduate-level science and engineering courses approved by an academic advisor.
This emphasis is intended for students who may wish to pursue employment in an applied physics or engineering related field.
In preparation for this option, the student must form a committee comprising a chair and two other faculty members.
The student completes a thesis under the direction of the committee chair. The thesis work is typically completed while students are registered for 6 credits of PHYS 799 Master's Thesis. A thesis proposal and thesis are submitted in accordance with AP.6 Graduate Policies. The student must give an oral defense of the thesis to the committee and the George Mason community at large. Students are expected to respond to questions on the thesis and related material. The committee determines whether the defense is satisfactory.
This program allows academically strong undergraduates with a demonstrable commitment to research to obtain the Physics, BS and Applied and Engineering Physics, MS degrees by successfully completing 144 credits. Upon completion, students are well-prepared for entry into a professional school or a PhD program in physics or a related discipline.
Admitted students take selected graduate courses during their senior year and are able to use up to 6 graduate credits in partial satisfaction of requirements for the undergraduate degree. Upon completion and conferral of the bachelor's degree and with satisfactory performance (grade of 'B' or better) in each of the graduate courses, students are given advanced standing in the master's program and complete an additional 24 credits to receive the master's degree.
Applicants to all graduate programs at George Mason University must meet the admission standards and application requirements for graduate study as specified in the Graduate Admission Policies section of this catalog.
Successful applicants will have completed at least 90 credits toward their undergraduate degree and 45 credits in physics major coursework. The physics major GPA must be at least 3.50. One or more recommendation letters from one or more research supervisors are also required. Interested applicants should submit a letter to the undergraduate physics coordinator requesting admission along with the aforementioned recommendation letter(s). Contact the physics undergraduate or graduate coordinator for further details.
At the beginning of the student's final undergraduate semester, students must submit a bachelor's/accelerated master's transition form to the College of Science's Office of Academic and Student Affairs. Students must begin their master's program in the semester immediately following conferral of the bachelor's degree.
Students must maintain an overall GPA of 3.00 or higher in graduate coursework.
While still in undergraduate status, a maximum of 6 additional graduate credits may be taken as reserve graduate credit and applied to the master's program. Reserve graduate credits do not apply to the undergraduate degree.
This program allows academically strong undergraduates with a demonstrable commitment to research to obtain the Mechanical Engineering, BS and Applied and Engineering Physics, MS degrees by successfully completing 145 credits. Upon completion, students are well-prepared for entering into the professional workforce, or a PhD program in physics or a related engineering discipline.
One or more recommendation letters from one or more research supervisors are also required. Interested applicants majoring in Mechanical Engineering, BS should submit a letter to the undergraduate Mechanical Engineering coordinator and the Physics Graduate Coordinator, respectively, requesting admission along with the aforementioned recommendation letter(s). Contact the Mechanical Engineering undergraduate and the Physics graduate coordinator for further details.


text:
Baltimore County Public Library (BCPL), established in 1948, is a public library system located in central Maryland and headquartered in Towson, Maryland BCPL serves Baltimore County, Maryland, which surrounds but does not include the city of Baltimore. Still, occasionally the two library systems share resources and expertise.

BCPL has 19 branch locations. BCPL's Mobile Library Services operates 4 bookmobiles, with the two largest branches at Catonsville and North Point, while fulfilling environmental and sustainable goals. The branches are strategically located around Baltimore County. Baltimore County has no incorporated towns or communities. Yet the unincorporated areas have names and are considered communities by many residents despite having no clear-cut boundaries, meaning that many of these communities have a BCPL branch located within them.

BCPL offers a wide variety of services, with its branches offering a collection of current, high-demand print and non-print items, including books on compact discs, DVDs, and video games, as well as access to online research databases, downloadable audiobooks, ebooks, and much more. All branches provide public computer access, are Wi-Fi accessible, and offer free programs and activities for all ages. Librarians are available at each branch to respond to the information needs of customers who walk-in or phone-in with questions.

History

The BCPL System from the 1940s until the 1970s
In 1948, the BCPL system was established by combining "twelve independent libraries into one system," each of which was "started by a private association to meet public needs," with most of them organizing by the 1940s, but the current branches in Reistertown, Sparrows Point, founded with space provided by the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, Towson, and Relay, opened before 1936, with all the others opening sometime after 1940. This new library system had a board of trustees to consolidate these 12 independent libraries. By October of the same year, an administrative office had opened, at its temporary location sitting on Towson's 120 West Pennsylvania Avenue and a county librarian, Richard D. Minnich, was appointed. The following year, the Cockeysville Branch of the BCPL had moved to a space in the "former Zink residence" which was a "small house located near the Cockeysville School" and sitting on York Road.

By the 1950s, the BCPL system began to change. The Arbutus Branch of the BCPL moved itself into a larger space above an A&P supermarket," just like the branch in Pikesville, while the Parkville community, until 1952, continued to host an independent library which eventually moved to the basement of Saint Ursula's Church. When the Parkville Library closed its doors, the BCPL started to provide library services to the community using a bookmobile.

Jumping forward to the 1960s, the BCPL branches improved by leaps and bounds. In 1961, the Parkville Branch opened at rented quarters, the Cockeysville Branch opened in a "3,000 square feet building," and the Reistertown Branch, which occupies a building dating back to the 1820s when it was Franklin Academy, was created. In the following years there were more improvements. For one, in 1962, the Arbutus Branch moved to a "more modern building" on Sulphur Spring Road, and the year after that, the current Catonsville Branch was dedicated on what was formerly the site of Castle Thunder, home of English businessman Richard Caton and Polly Carroll," the latter who was the daughter of Charles Carroll, a singer of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The same year, the original Perry Hall Branch opened on Belair Road. Many years later, in January 1968, the Cockeysville Branch  "was expanded...to an 11,000 square foot facility."

In the 1970s, the BCPL system again expanded. In January 1971, the Parkville-Carney Branch opened at its current location, renamed from the Parkville Branch after "an appeal by residents of Carney to show that both communities were served by the facility. Years later, in May 1974, the current structure which comprises the Towson Branch was constructed, which is in a brutalist style.

The BCPL System in the 1980s and 1990s
In the 1980s the library system again changed with the times. In February 1982, the Cockeyville Branch opened at its current location, being one "of the first libraries in the nation featuring open-face bookstore display shelving and neon signage." In the same year, the Pikesville Branch opened on the Pikesville Community Center's first level, a building which currently "houses a senior center and a health center" as well. The following year, the PTA of Hereford High School initiated the idea for a library in the Northern part of Baltimore County. In later years, the Towson Branch would be recognized for its accomplishments. In 1985, the Baltimore City Paper would give the branch the "Best Library award" and the year after that the County Executive would recognize the branch for its "outstanding contributions" to the community. Two years later, in 1988, the Hereford Branch opened "on the first floor of the Hereford Center building" with Dennis Rasmussen, then County Executive and Dutch Ruppersberger, then a County Councilman, cutting the ribbon to open the facility. The same year the White Marsh Branch opened in "15,000 square-foot" facility, which is within the current White Marsh Town Center.

In the 1990s, there were further changes. The Towson Branch was expanded in 1990, becoming a "landmark building in the heart of Towson." The same year all branches of the BCPL were closed for Staff Day. In later years, the Reisterstown Branch was renovated, in 1995 with an expanded "parking lot and a 1,800 square foot addition," and the Heidelbach Memorial Garden, in the Catonsville Branch, was dedicated after a push by the Catonsville Garden Club.

The BCPL System in the 21st century
In the 2000s numerous BCPL branches were expanded. In 2001 the Towson Branch added a "medieval castle with arched windows, turrets and a majestic entrance" in the children's area of the library to, hopefully, "make more families decide to spend their together time at the library rather than at a mall." The following year, the Hereford Branch expanded "to 7,500 square feet" and extended operating hours 2006, with the Pikeville Branch expanded with a "$3.6 million expansion and renovation" and re-opened in July 2007. In 2009, the existing Perry Hall Branch "was replaced by the current 25,000 square foot green building" which currently sits on Honeygo Boulevard and the Cockeysville Branch was renovated.

In 2010, the Perry Hall Branch added a reading garden which includes "benches, sculptures...a picturesque view of the small nearby pond" and a walkway that is "made of recycled materials from the renovation of the North Point Branch plaza" the same year. Also that year, the Arbutus Branch moved to a new $11 million "library, community center and senior center" on Sulphur Spring Road, which is a 25,000 square foot space and is a certified LEED silver building. The following year, in 2011, The Baltimore Sun reported that an FBI agent, Kyra M. Dressler, "asked a federal judge to sign search warrants for computers and hard drives in the Baltimore County Public Library's branches in Woodlawn and Catonsville," where a Nicaraguan-born man named Antonio Martinez, who they suspected of being a "terrorist," had reportedly used the library's public computers.  The same year "a $30 million, six-story building" which houses the Owings Mills Branch and the "center for the Community College of Baltimore County" began to be constructed, and was completed in 2013.

In 2013, the BCPL recorded "nearly 5 million in-person visits, circulated nearly 10.6 million items, set a record of over 48,400 participants in our Summer Reading Club, and added nearly 20,000 new cardholders" in the previous years. The following year, the Hubert V. Simmons Museum of Negro Leagues Baseball was established at the new Owings Mills Branch, opened only the year before, a free museum which is "open during all library operating hours" and has exhibits and historical displays of "Maryland and U.S. Negro Leagues." In September of the same year Richard William Parsons, a librarian who had worked in the BCPL library system since 1962, died. Due to a large snowstorm in March 2014, all BCPL branches were closed.

Also in 2014, Kevin Kamenetz proposed a controversial plan for shifting IT positions within the BCPL system. His budget involved the transfer of 28 positions within the system "to the county's Office of Information Technology (OIT) starting July 1" with administration officials saying it would make the government "more efficient" with no cuts in jobs, but library advocates across the state worried that this did not follow due process and set a bad precedent.  Paula Miller, formerly the head of the Pikes Peak Library District in El Paso County, Colorado, was chosen as the new administrator of the BCPL library system. Not only was she "the first woman to serve in that role" but she was the fourth director of the system since 1948.

In 2015 and 2016, the Hereford Branch's renovation was sped up. In July 2015, a broken water pipe damaged the interior of the Branch, closing it for one year so it could "undergo the $3 million extensive renovation and expansion," and it was reopened in June 2016 with increased space for "books, computers and meeting areas," covering a total of 15,000 square feet, including "self-service kiosks for checking out books, several computers for public use, a bar with outlets for laptop use," among other aspects.

Unionization

In April 2021, several Maryland General Assembly legislators drafted and passed legislation, supported by workers and union officials, allowing Baltimore County Public Library staff to collectively bargain in April 2021. The bill gave the requirement that after union organizers collect signatures from 30% of a library systems employees, then at least 50% have to vote in favor of joining a union before negotiations with library administration begins. Prior to the bill's approval, libraries in Montgomery County and Prince George's County formed unions, while Baltimore County Public Library employees noted an intention to hold an election in September 2021.

On December 31, 2021, workers in Baltimore County Public Library (BCPL) system unionized with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, after a several-year-long union drive. The union vote passed with a 77% approval rating.

On May 1, 2022, 460 BCPL employees, from the library's administrative office and 19 library branches, ratified "their first union contract" with overwhelming support. The agreement includes pay increases and paid leave for employees. On September 13, 2022, the financial portions of the first contract were ratified after Baltimore County Council approved money to be allocated for this purpose.

Branches
The following BCPL branches are open to the public:
Arbutus Branch
Catonsville Branch
Cockeysville Branch
Essex Branch
Hereford Branch
Landsowne Branch
Loch Raven Mini Branch
North Point Branch
Owings Mills Branch
Parkville-Carney Branch
Perry Hall Branch
Pikesville Branch
Randallstown Branch
Reistertown Branch
Rosedale Branch
Sollers Point Branch
Towson Branch
White Marsh Branch
Woodlawn Branch

Mobile libraries are also available for both adults and children, which visit senior retirement homes, assisted living facilities, special needs schools, and other places.

Public services

The BCPL library system provides many public services. These include foreign language materials, local history resources, online databases,
showing of films within library branches, and much more, in an effort to generate community participation.

Foreign languages and local history
Numerous foreign language resources are available across the library system. At the Cockeysville, Parkville, and Towson branches, Korean fiction and non-fiction books for adults and children are available, while the Pikesville, and Randallstown branches, Russian materials for adults and children can be found. At all branches, Spanish children's books, mainly picture books, in Spanish and bi-lingual Spanish and English can be found, while at the Catonsville, Essex, North Point, and Towson branches Spanish collections of fiction and non-fiction for adults and older children can be requested. As of 2016, the Rosetta Stone program is "available for free" within BCPL branches.

Local history can be accessed across the library system. A collection of local historic photographs with annotations are included in Legacy Web, Baltimore County Public Library's online photo archive, with these photographs covering most aspects of life in Baltimore County for the last 130 years. In April 2010, the images in the Legacy Web were added to the Baltimore County Public Library online catalog. The Arbutus, Catonsville, and Reisterstown branches house historical archives on the local communities they serve. The local community history information may include rare and out-of-print books, newspaper clippings, and historical prints of local sites. These materials can be used within specific branches and are sometimes accessible with prior appointment at the appropriate BCPL branch.

Databases and movie showings
Many databases are available to patrons across the BCPL library system. A variety of online databases are available for use, which include information on health, business, homework topics, and test preparation. Most databases provide access to articles in magazines, newspapers, and encyclopedias and can be used for research, schoolwork or other needs since they can be accessed from a BCPL branch or from home, work or school through the official BCPL website with a BCPL card. Such services are accompanied by "public computers, free WiFi, laptop bars with charging stations...study rooms, a quiet reading room...single use and collaborative workspaces" at Randallstown and other BCPL branches. The BCPL has also partnered with the Baltimore County Bar Association to host a "Baltimore County Pro Bono Day" at BCPL's Owings Mills Branch to discuss legal problems with a volunteer attorney. Additionally, the BCPL had partnered with WBAL-TV to promote reading for the "2017 Baltimore County Public Library Reading Challenge."

Current Hollywood films, documentary and non-documentary, are sometimes shown within branches of the BCPL to the broader community. In March 2017, the Arbutus, Loch Raven, North Point, Pikesville, Reisterstown, Rosedale, Towson, and Woodlawn BCPL branches invited the public (and general community) to view, free-of-charge, Ava DuVernay's documentary 13TH, which explores "ties between slavery, the current mass incarceration of African Americans and the profits of the prison-industrial complex," which was followed by "a guided discussion."

Other community activities
The BCPL also engages in varying activities to engage the community. Over the years, branches have had interactive displays about outer space, held a behind-the-scenes open house for the library system's bookmobile, and hosted cartoonist Kevin Kallaugher (KAL), Other programs have included working with members of the cast of Annie who performed in White Marsh Mall to promote the BCPL's summer reading program, publishing a directory of "more than 3,500 nonprofit organizations in the county," and having a "presentation and discussion on recent research in reading and education."

Foundation for Baltimore County Public Library

The Foundation for Baltimore County Public Library provides "funding for projects that encourage children and young adults to cultivate enthusiasm for reading and learning" such as the Storyville, My First Library Card and Summer Reading Club programs, along with raising "funds for programs or projects that enhance systemwide library goals and objectives." In order to provide "additional resources to enrich the library's commitment to empower the citizens of Baltimore County" to learn, create, connect, and explore, it is registered 501(c)(3) organization.

In particular, the Storyville program, created with the funding of the Foundation, BCPL, State of Maryland, and private sources, has been a resounding success. Designed and created "to foster early literacy and school readiness skills," it serves as a place "where books and purposeful play come together to provide valuable experiences that nurture young children and support parents and caregivers." It is located at the Woodlawn and Rosedale Branches of the BCPL. Jim Fish, the longtime administrator of the BCPL, who retired in 2014, also counts "the library's work on early childhood services among his most important accomplishments" which includes the Storyville program.

In July 2010, the president of the Foundation, Jeffrey Smith, wrote a letter to the editors of The Baltimore Sun, stating that the addition the Cockeysville Branch would "allow for an increase in total public space in this library while also offering the chance to improve and maximize overall public accessibility" and that such improvements are only the "most recent in a series of investments in the system," and arguing that despite the fact that the times are "economically challenging," libraries are vital, and thanked residents of the county and local elected officials for having "the foresight to ensure sufficient funding to support this growth in use." He further argued that this meant that there was "recognition of the importance of libraries as an essential public service will allow BCPL to continue to effectively respond to the increasing needs of Baltimore County citizens."

In 2014, the vice president of the Baltimore County Chamber of Commerce, Christine Crawford, who had joined the Chamber of Commerce in July 2005 and represents the chamber in many capacities, became a board member of the foundation. At the time, the president of the Foundation, Jeffrey Smith, welcomed Crawford, saying that "it is truly an honor to welcome" her to the board and that he was "confident that her enthusiasm, extensive connections and civic-minded spirit will be invaluable assets as our organization continuously broadens its capacity to support the good works" of the BCPL library system.

See also

List of libraries
Baltimore County, Maryland
Maryland
Public library

References

External links

American Library Association
Maryland Library Association
Public Library Association

Education in Baltimore County, Maryland
Libraries established in 1948
Public libraries in Maryland
1948 establishments in Maryland

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


What follows is the most complete telling of the Able Danger story in print form: chapters from Peter Lance's 2006 book (updated in 2009) TRIPLE CROSS: How bin Laden's Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets and the FBI. For the first time, the book presents an explanation for why the Pentagon ordered destroyed 2.5 terabytes of al Qaeda related intelligence gathered by the Able Danger data miners.
If Ali Mohamed was Osama bin Laden's operational spy, a man who combined the double threats of intelligence officer and on-the-ground commando, one of the soldiers who embodied that same skill set for America was a Bronze Star winner named Anthony Shaffer.
Commissioned as an officer in the Ohio National Guard in 1983, Shaffer was selected early in his career to train at "the Farm," the CIA's legendary school for clandestine operatives at Camp Perry, Virginia. Over twenty-four years in the military, Tony Shaffer worked a series of active duty secret ops and task force assignments, alternating between roles as an intelligence officer with the Pentagon's J2 Directorate and as a clandestine operative with the J3. In September 1999, now a major, Tony Shaffer was running a top secret operation called Stratus Ivy, supporting various DOD "black" operations, when he was assigned to brief four-star general Pete Schoomaker, then head of SOCOM.
"With my unit's permission," says Shaffer, "I was able to brief General Schoomaker at a level that was beyond Top Secret. After the briefing he said to me, 'I need you for a special project.' He looked over at the STO Chief, the head of Special Technical Operations, and said, 'I want Shaffer read into the project ASAP.' The next day I was read into Able Danger.'" In the months that followed, Tony would serve as a liaison between the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Army and SOCOM.
Over the decades, among the thousands of code names chosen by the Pentagon to describe secret and open source military operations, the prefix "Able" had traditionally been used in conjunction with NATO and nuclear weapons-related exercises. The fact that it was now being affixed to a secret operation relating to terrorism, suggests how seriously the army and the DIA took the al Qaeda threat.
Shaffer says that Able Danger was "the military version of Alec Station," the CIA's unit tasked with collecting al Qaeda-related intelligence. The operation's data-mining center was located at the Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Known as "spook central," Fort Belvoir housed the Information Dominance Center—a building full of army intelligence "geeks," whose bullpen area was designed to look like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek.
The lead LIWA analyst running the data mine was Dr. Eileen Priesser, a double Ph.D. The operations officer was a decorated U.S. Navy captain named Scott Phillpott. Army Major Eric Kleinsmith was LIWA's intelligence chief. J.D. Smith and Jacob L. Boesen, working as a contract analysts from Orion Scientific, designed many of the link charts in which the "deep data points" connecting the key al Qaeda players were represented graphically.
Told to "Start with the words 'Al Qaeda' and go," the LIWA data crunchers began an initial harvest in December 1999. The data grew fast and exponentially, and before long it amounted to two terabytes—equal to about 9 percent of the books in the Library of Congress. "It was a mile wide and an inch deep," says Kleinsmith. "Naturally only a small percentage of the data related to terrorism," says Tony, "So we would have to neck it down —cull it — until we had some substantive hits." Within months, Operation Able Danger had uncovered some astonishing intelligence.
Examining Sheikh Rahman's Brooklyn cell—which operated out of Ali Mohamed's old stomping grounds, the al Farooq mosque—the LIWA analysts made another alarming discovery. "We identified lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, who flew UA 175 into the South Tower of the Trade Center, and two of the muscle hijackers aboard AA 77, which hit the Pentagon," says Shaffer. That linkage was made months before any of the other Big Five intelligence agencies would trip to their presence.
Coming as it did in early 2000, the identification of Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi was a crucial find for the SOCOM operation.
Of all the 9/11 hijackers, these two Saudis had the longest records of al Qaeda involvement, and beginning in January 2000, they soon became the most visible of the 19 operatives. In fact, the two failed pilots appeared on the radar of the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI so many times in the eighteen months before 9/11 that the U.S. intelligence community had multiple opportunities to thwart the plot.
Al-Midhar and Al-Hazmi were the poster boys who came to symbolize the "stovepiping" between U.S. agencies in their failure to share intelligence before 9/11.
But even if the FBI had received no help from any other agency, we've uncovered compelling evidence that the agents of Squad I-49 (the bin Laden Squad in the FBI's New York Office) should have tripped to the presence of the two hijackers in the U.S. months before they flew AA Flight 77 into the Pentagon.
After his capture following the Embassy bombings in 1998, Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-'Owali, the Saudi who drove the truck, gave FBI agents the number of a safe house in Sana'a Yemen maintained by Sameer Mohammed Ahmed al-Hada, the brother-in-law of Khalid al-Midhar.
The house was being used as an al Qaeda "logistics center" or "switchboard" in much the same way Khalid Dahab (Ali Mohamed's protegé) had used his one-room apartment in Santa Clara, California—to patch through phone calls from bin Laden operatives worldwide. In fact, it was later revealed that the Saudi billionaire himself called the Yemen house multiple times between 1996 and 1998.
As a result, the NSA and the CIA planted bugs inside the house, installed phone taps, and even went so far as to monitor visitors coming in and out of the dwelling using spy satellites.
"The NSA and the Agency were monitoring it for two years," says Cloonan.
When al-Midhar left the Yemeni safe house in early 2000, agents from eight CIA offices and six allied intelligence services were reportedly asked to track him. Officials in the United Arab Emirates even made copies of al-Midhar's passport when he traveled through Dubai, so that by the time he reached Kuala Lumpur, the CIA knew his full name and the fact that he was carrying a U.S. multiple entry visa.
By January 4th, a CIA operative made an extraordinary mistake that ignited one of the great interagency disputes on the road to 9/11. After receiving a copy of al-Midhar's picture, the Agency failed to add him to the Watch List. Worse yet, deliberate steps were taken to prevent the FBI from getting the information.
Later, the FBI would claim that their agents weren't informed of al-Midhar's al Qaeda ties until he was back in the U.S. and within weeks of boarding AA Flight 77. But back in January 2000, while the Malaysian meeting was still in progress, a CIA officer assigned to the FBI's Strategic Information Operations Center (SIOC) at the Bureau's Washington headquarters reportedly briefed two separate FBI agents on al-Midhar's activities.
The fact that a key CIA representative at the FBI felt that nothing observed at the Malaysian summit suggested "evidence of an impending attack" is stunning when one considers who was in attendance at the three-day session, which took place at a condominium overlooking a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course. The condo was owned by Yazid Sufaat, a Malaysian who traveled to Afghanistan in the summer of 2000 and later acknowledged his al Qaeda ties.
Participants in the January 2000 Malaysian meeting, in person or by phone.Top (left to right) Nawaf Al-Hazmi, Khalid Al-Midhar, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Khallad bin Atash. Bottom (left to right) Riduan Isamuddin (aka Hambali) Yazid Sufaat, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Fahad al-Quso.
Details of the Malaysian terror summit have been a matter of public record for some time, but of the eight attendees initially reported, the one most disputed by scholars and reporters is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who by then, was in the late stages of perfecting his nephew Ramzi Yousef's planes operation.
A number of mainstream media accounts, from CNN to the Los Angeles Times, initially put KSM at the summit. Singapore-based terror expert Ronan Gunarata later testified before the 9/11 Commission that he had seen interrogation reports in which KSM admitted running the summit, and in a 2003 study of radical Islam in Southeast Asia,Dr. Zachary Abuza, a U.S. terrorism scholar, reported that KSM was at the conference.
In any case, KSM's number-two in the planes-as-missiles plot, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, was there, along with Khallad bin Atash, a senior al Qaeda operative who played a key role in executing the African Embassy bombings. Atash, who lost a leg reportedly fighting in Afghanistan and now wore a metal prosthesis, would go on to mastermind the attack on the U.S.S. Cole later in 2000. One of his operatives from the Cole plot, Fahad al-Quso, was also present at the K.L. summit, along with Riduan Ismuddin, a.k.a. Hambali, the head of Jemaah Islamiya, the Indonesian wing of al Qaeda. It was Hambali who served with his wife on the board of Konsonjaya, the Malaysian front company that funded the Yousef-KSM Manila cell where the 9/11 plot was born.
"Arguably it was like the Commission meeting," ex-FBI agent Jack Cloonan concurs.
At the request of the CIA, the three-day meeting at Sufaat's condo was even photographed and videotaped by the Malaysian intelligence service, known as the Special Branch.
Attended by a who's-who of top al Qaeda operational killers, that meeting set the stage for not only the Cole bombing and the 9/11 attacks, but also the October 2002 Bali bombings, to which Hambali was later linked. Even if KSM wasn't there physically, the presence of his deputy bin al-Shibh, Hambali, and Khallad bin Atash should have set off flashing red lights throughout the U.S. intelligence community—especially at the CIA and the FBI, which was now investigating the African embassy bombings ex post facto.
We now know, from the testimony during the March 2006 penalty phase at the trial of accused "twentieth hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui, that the one-legged Khallad was also an operational leader of the embassy bombing plot. After his capture, Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-'Owali admitted that before the August 1998 bombing he was instructed to go to Pakistan. There he met bin Atash, who told him to prepare for a "martyrdom mission" in which he would drive a truck full of explosives into a target.
But whose fault was it that the line wasn't drawn? In his account Wright puts most of the blame on the CIA, but clearly in its investigation of the African Embassy bombings and what we now know to be their state of awareness of the importance of al-Midhar and that Sana'a (al Hada) safehouse, Squad I-49 of the FBI's NYO ought to be held equally accountable for not connecting the dots.
Remember, by now, after keeping his name secret for two years, the FBI was pressing a worldwide manhunt for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. The FBI had lost him twice, once at the Su Casa Guesthouse in Islamabad the day Yousef was busted in February 1995, and then in 1996 after Greg Scarpa Jr.'s patch-through at the M.C.C. had led the Feds to Doha, Qatar. But by 1999 KSM was in close contact with lead hijacker Mohammed Atta and two of the other 9/11 pilots: Marwan al-Shehhi (identified by the Able Danger operation) and Ziad Jarrah, who went on to commandeer the cockpit of UA Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania. They were all living in an apartment together at 54 Marienstrasse in Hamburg, Germany with KSM's number two Ramzi bin al-Shibh.
Described by the 9/11 Commission as the Hamburg "core group," Atta, bin al-Shibh, al-Shehhi, and Jarrah met with bin Laden and Mohamed Atef in Afghanistan in late 1999, and two of them (bin al-Shibh and Atta) linked up with KSM in Karachi within weeks of the Kuala Lumpur summit.
One of Stone's key sources was none other than retired FBI agent Jack Cloonan.
When I interviewed Cloonan, who learned the details of the meeting immediately after it ended, he got much more specific, noting that Steve Bongardt, a veteran of the FBI's TWA 800 investigation, had attended the meeting along with two other FBI agents.
But in our extensive interview on May 4, 2006, Cloonan gave me a stunning new piece of information that puts the alleged failure of the CIA to share the intelligence on the K.L. meeting in a whole new light. As it turns out, one of the key FBI agents in the FBI's squad I-49 had seen some of the Malaysian summit pictures months before.
But as Cloonan described it, "Frank doesn't know. He's working Khalid Shaikh Mohammed," and thus would not have recognized any of the faces.
When I suggested that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed may have been at the summit, Cloonan denied it, but then admitted that he wasn't sure. Still, keep in mind—even if KSM, the man the FBI calls the 9/11 "mastermind," did not attend this key planning session prior to the attacks, there was another significant al Qaeda face in the crowd that Pellegrino should have recognized immediately: Riduan Isamuddin, a.k.a. Hambali.
Pellegrino had arrived in Manila within weeks of the fire in the Yousef-KSM bomb factory on January 6th, 1995. He was present at Camp Crame for most of Col. Mendoza's interrogation of Abdul Hakim Murad, Yousef's oldest friend, a pilot trained in 4 U.S. flight schools, who was to be the lead pilot in "the planes operation." Mendoza and the PNP had documented Hambali's importance as a key member of the al Qaeda cutout Konsonjaya. How was it possible that Pellegrino, a a top FBI agent who was now in Patrick Fitzgerald's elite squad I-49 couldn't connect the dots on Hambali, even after seeing the photographs of the KL summit from the CIA?
I wanted to ask Pellegrino that question, but he too refused to talk to me.
In any case, one lesson that the FBI should have learned from the Malaysian summit was just how well coordinated al Qaeda was. Far from the "loosely organized group" of Sunni Muslims somehow disconnected from the World Trade Center bombing, as Patrick Fitzgerald suggested in 2005, al Qaeda was a tightly integrated network with directions coming from the top down directly via bin Laden and Dr. al-Zawahiri. It was an international network capable of staging a summit conference, with operatives from half a dozen countries working together to plan acts of terror on three continents.
In its data-mining initiative, the Able Danger team at Fort Belvoir was making that same kind of connection with many of the same players. Eventually they would identify Aden Yemen as a key al Qaeda "hotspot" within days of the Cole bombing. In harvesting what eventually grew to 2.5 terabytes of data, they found linkages that corroborated my findings precisely: namely, that the New York cell of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, trained by Ali Mohamed, was directly tied to al Qaeda's leadership. The Able Danger findings corroborated what I had laid out in my last two books: that both attacks on the WTC, the 1993 bombing and the September 11 planes-as-missiles operation, were designed, funded, and directly controlled by al Qaeda's leadership. In fact, the LIWA/DIA data miners went even further—putting Ali Mohamed and bin Laden's brother-in-law Mohammed-Jamal-Khalifa in the al Qaeda inner circle.
How do we know this? The connections were documented in a declassified link chart sent to me by Jacob L. Boesen who worked on many of the Able Danger charts. Declassified on March 21, 2000, the chart showed Ali Mohamed (with his photo from the Fort Bragg video) inside a box with bin Laden, Al-Zawahiri, Atef, Wadih El-Hage, and Mohammed Jamal Khalifa. That box linked to the Sheikh Rahman-Ramzi Yousef New York cell via the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines, which also linked to the Yousef-KSM-Murad-Wali Khan Manila cell responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
The chart not only vindicates my findings, but defies the conclusion later reached by Fitzgerald and Dietrich Snell, his SDNY colleague (a senior counsel on the 9/11 Commission) who determined the "origin of the plot" and pushed it forward two years to Afghanistan in 1996, removing Yousef from the plot and suggesting that at the time KSM was not even a member of al Qaeda—a conclusion that is almost comical in light of the documented evidence of al Qaeda's control of the suicide-hijack plot.
That March 21, 2000, link chart, reproduced below, is the smoking gun document proving that the government understood both Ramzi Yousef and Ali Mohamed were involved with the multiple acts of mass murder and terror perpetrated by bin Laden's network, from the killing of Rabbi Meier Kahane in 1990 forward. It's a graphic representation of the FBI's failures to contain all that horror, and it confirms my contention that Fitzgerald, Snell, Jamie Gorelick, and other key DOJ officials sought to hide the full truth behind the Justice Department's failures from the American public.
A link chart designed by Jacob L. Boesen, a contract employee of Orion Scientific who designed most of the Able Danger Link Charts. This one, dated March 21st, 2000, just a few weeks before the Able Danger data was destroyed, shows Ali Mohammed in the inner circle with Osama bin Laden in a photo taken from a Fort Bragg training video.
"The Ali Mohamed link chart opens a whole new series of questions that have to be answered," said former Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) one of the original backers of the LIWA unit at Fort Belvoir, and the man who first disclosed the story of the Able Danger operation to The New York Times in August, 2005.
Vice chairman of both the House Armed Services and the Homeland Security committees, Weldon said he was "blown away" by the data-mining capabilities of the Information Dominance Center as early as 1997, when he tapped the LIWA analysts for intelligence in preparation for a meeting in Vienna. At the height of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, Weldon had heard that a certain Serb named Dragomir Kric had a back-channel to Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic, who was then holding three U.S. pilots as POWs in Belgrade. Weldon was about to chair a congressional delegation (CODEL) of Democrats and Republicans who would fly to Austria and meet with Russian leaders to try and broker a way out of the crisis.
Weldon says that after he returned from meeting the Russians he got phone calls from both the FBI and the CIA. So many members of his congressional delegation had raved about the LIWA report on Kric that the Agency and the Bureau both asked where he was getting his intelligence.
Years later, when he heard that LIWA had been enlisted by the Special Operations Command to harvest intelligence on al Qaeda—and that they'd made the startling links to the blind Sheikh and the four 9/11 hijackers—Weldon said he wasn't surprised.
"This was intelligence that the Able Danger operation got in early 2000 that absolutely, if properly acted upon, could have stopped the 9/11 plot cold," he insisted.
Maj. Eric Kleinsmith, the former chief of intelligence at LIWA, seemed to agree. "We were able to collect an immense amount of data for analysis that allowed us to map al Qaeda as a worldwide threat with a surprisingly significant presence within the United States." he said at a 2005 Senate hearing.
But by April 2000, Kleinsmith and other LIWA personnel on the Able Danger project were told by DOD lawyers that this vast amount of open source data may have violated Executive Order 12333, an intelligence directive signed in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan after the Senate and House hearings into CIA domestic spying abuses in the 1970s.
"The EO," as it's known, was designed to prevent the Pentagon from storing data indefinitely on "U.S. persons," a term defined to include American citizens, U.S. corporations; even permanent resident aliens.
It's not particularly surprising that the Able Danger data sweep of open-source information would have picked up the soon-to-be muscle hijackers al-Midhar and al-Hazmi. Their visibility in the U.S. was so high in the eighteen months prior to their airborne assault on the Pentagon that the FBI's failure to detect them seems to border on gross negligence—even with the CIA's refusal to share the intel.
As early as 1999, while monitoring phone calls at the Sana'a Yemen safe house, the NSA picked up references to Khalid al-Midhar, Nawaf al-Hazmi and his brother Salem, who would also become one of the suicide hijackers on 9/11. The FBI knew about that safe house. In fact, the location was the result of a lead uncovered by their own criminal investigation of the Embassy bombings. And yet the Bureau seemed in no hurry to establish their own wiretaps on the Sana'a residence or to insist on copies of NSA or CIA intercepts—cooperation one would expect the FBI to demand in the investigation of 224 murders in East Africa.
That wiretap of the home of Khalid al-Midhar's brother-in-law led the CIA to monitor the summit in Kuala Lumpur, but even before that there is evidence that al-Midhar and al-Hazmi had entered the U.S.
In a Pulitzer Prize-winning story for the Washington Post in late September 2001, Amy Goldstein reported that the two hijackers actually showed up at the Parkwood Apartments, a townhouse complex in San Diego, in late 1999. This San Diego connection would prove key, because after the two hijackers returned to the U.S. and slipped past a Watch List in January 2000, they ended up living in rooms rented to them by a San Diego FBI informant.
Tracked to the K.L. summit, al-Midhar's passport was copied in Dubai and sent to the CIA's Alec Station (where the FBI had an agent in residence). He was later photographed at the K.L. summit by the Malaysian Special Branch. On January 8th, when the conference ended, al-Midhar flew with al-Hazmi to Bangkok, Thailand—both of them using their own names on the flight manifests. Sitting next to them in a three-seat configuration was Khallad bin Atash, the one-legged Saudi who had sent al-'Owali to his intended death in Nairobi. Atash had recently attempted to blow up the Aegis-class guided missile destroyer, the U.S.S. The Sullivans – a failed al Qaeda action that was a precursor to the Cole bombing.
At that point, the FBI was doing a full-court press on the Embassy bombing investigation. Al-'Owali's tip on the Sana'a safehouse had led to the discovery of bin Atash by the Malaysians. The fact that Special Agent Frank Pellegrino of Squad I-49 had seen pictures of the K.L. summit meant that the Bureau was in the loop. And yet following the January 8th flight, both the FBI and the CIA reportedly lost all three terrorists in the Thai capital. Worse, despite having identified al-Midhar as an al Qaeda associate, and realizing that he had a U.S. multi-entry visa, the CIA never added his name to the TIPOFF watch list of some 70,000 suspected terrorists.
As such, using their own names, al-Midhar and al-Hazmi jetted from Bangkok to Los Angeles on January 15th. There they were met by Omar al-Bayoumi a Saudi , suspected of being an intelligence officer, who had visited the Saudi consulate in L.A. the same day. After three weeks the two would-be hijackers moved to San Diego, where they lived openly for the next five months. During that period al-Bayoumi helped them get settled, finding them an apartment across from where he lived.
During their early months in San Diego, Al-Midhar and al-Hazmi proved to be the antithesis of low-profile sleepers. They took flight lessons at the Sorbi Flying Club, bought season passes to Sea World, played soccer in a local park, and interacted with many members of the Muslim community. Al-Midhar bought a 1998 Toyota Corolla for $3,000 and registered it with the California DMV. After moving into a two-story town home at 6401 Mount Ada Road, Al-Hazmi got a telephone. He even had his full name listed in the phone directory.
Throughout the spring and summer of 2000, the National Security Agency, which began monitoring al-Midhar's brother-in-law's home in Yemen in 1998, picked up multiple intercepts between San Diego and the safe house. As it turned out, al-Midhar's wife was about to give birth in the year 2000. But the NSA later claimed that it didn't know that the calls from al-Midhar originated in the U.S. It wasn't until after 9/11 that the Feds realized that Ramzi bin al-Shibh, KSM's number two on the entire planes-as-missiles operation, was al-Midhar's cousin.
On June 3, 2000, lead hijacker Mohammed Atta arrived in the U.S., and rented a room in Brooklyn, New York. He listed the same address in Hamburg, Germany: 54 Marienstrasse, where he'd been living with hijacker-pilots al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah. In San Diego, neighbors of al-Midhar and al-Hazmi claimed that Atta and Hani Hanjour, the pilot of AA 77, visited them. There was a report that Hanjour actually roomed with them for a time, but didn't stay.
While hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar live in the house of an FBI asset, Abdussattar Shaykh, the asset continues to have contact with his FBI handler. The handler, Steven Butler, later claims that during the summer Shaykh mentions the names "Nawaf" and "Khalid" in passing and that they are renting rooms from him. On one occasion, Shaykh tells Butler on the phone he cannot talk because Khalid is in the room. Shaykh tells Butler they are good, religious Muslims who are legally in the U.S. to visit and attend school.
Butler asks Shaykh for their last names, but Shaykh refuses to provide them. Butler is not told that they are pursuing flight training. Shaykh tells Butler that they are apolitical and have done nothing to arouse suspicion. However, according to the 9/11 Congressional Joint Inquiry, he later admits that al-Hazmi has "contacts with at least four individuals [he] knew were of interest to the FBI and about whom [he] had previously reported to the FBI." Three of these four people are being actively investigated at the time the hijackers are there. The report mentions Osama Mustafa as one, and Shaykh admits that suspected Saudi agent Omar al-Bayoumi was a friend. The FBI later concludes that Shaykh is not involved in the 9/11 plot, but they have serious doubts about his credibility.
After 9/11, when the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered Shaykh's identity and issued a subpoena for him to testify, Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to allow his agents to serve it. Sen. Bob Graham, the Democrat who co-chaired the Joint Inquiry, used the term "cover up" to describe the stonewalling by Justice in refusing to disclose the depth of Shaykh's apparent duplicity.
In the summer of 2000, there was another significant opportunity for the U.S. intelligence community to interdict Ramzi Yousef's suicide-hijacking plot. Although the Able Danger unit's initial data run was ordered destroyed, the Army's Special Operations Command set up a follow-up unit. Contracted out to Raytheon's Intelligence and Information Systems facility at Garland, Texas, several of the key LIWA data miners were brought over to do a new "harvest" of open-source material on al Qaeda. Among them were Dr. Ellen Preisser and Jacob L. "Jay" Boesen, who continued to produce link charts for the operation.
Again, this connect wasn't surprising, since the CIA had earlier tracked Khallad bin Atash, the one-legged Embassy bombing plotter with heavy Yemeni ties. Also, another attendee of the Malaysian summit, Fahad al-Quso, was based in Aden.
At this point, Shaffer, the DIA's liaison to the Able Danger operation, was asked by Special Operations Command to contact the FBI.
Shaffer says that three separate meetings with Bureau agents were scheduled between the summer and September 2000. But each meeting was cancelled "on the advice of SOCOM attorneys." The reason? "SOCOM lawyers would not permit the sharing of the 'U.S. person' information regarding terrorists located domestically, due to 'fear of potential blowback,' should the FBI do something with the information and something should go wrong." That's what Shaffer ultimately reported to a House committee investigating the Able Danger data destruction.
Until recently, both Shaffer and ex-Cong. Weldon believed that Pentagon officials had ordered the FBI meetings cancelled for the same reason they gave to explain the destruction of the 2.5 terabytes of data: concern that EO 12333 might have been violated. But in light of my discovery of J.L. Boesen's March 21, 2000 link chart showing Ali Mohamed in the al Qaeda inner circle, both Weldon and Shaffer have come to suspect another reason for the data destruction.
Weldon, a loyal conservative, came to believe that the suppression of intelligence on al Qaeda was a scandal that transcended political administrations, parties, and agencies.
The situation got so bad that at one point Tony Shaffer says he saw a series of link charts from the original LIWA data runs in which "yellow stickies" had been pasted over the pictures of key al Qaeda operatives like Mohammed Atta, on the orders of SOCOM lawyers.
Naturally, in assessing the JTTF's "next to perfect record," White avoided certain details, such as how the JTTF's boss, Carson Dunbar, had thwarted the FBI's best chance of stopping the first attack on the Twin Towers by alienating Emad Salem and failing to authorize the surveillance he pleaded for on two of Ali Mohamed's trained cell members Abouhalima and Salameh.
She left out the fact that her star prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and his elite Squad I-49 had advance warning of the African embassy bombings, including wiretaps on the key cell members, and the fact that Ali Mohamed, one of the cell's ring leaders, had worked as the FBI's own west coast informant. She skipped over the fact that Special Agent Frank Pellegrino had seen the surveillance photos of the 9/11 Malaysian summit and failed to recognize either Hambali or Khallad bin Atash, who was weeks away from wreaking bin Laden's next act of "havoc" for the jihad.
With the same arrogance Special Agent John Zent had shown in flashing his Bureau I.D. to intimidate those Fresno sheriff's detectives in 1992, White was trading on the myth—often stoked by the media—that "the best and the brightest" in the FBI's two bin Laden offices of origin would keep New Yorkers safe from Osama bin Laden's terror war. There was even a hint of irony in the location of the JTTF's anniversary party, the same place where Neal Herman's retirement party had been held on September 11, 1999: the spectacular 50,000 square foot restaurant Windows on the World, located on the top floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower.
As the Feds partied on, bin Laden's jihadis were working day and night from Afghanistan to San Diego to Brooklyn to bring those Towers down. None of the revelers seemed to remember Ramzi Yousef's 1993 warning, found on Nidal Ayyad's computer, that his "calculations were not very accurate" but that the Trade Center would again be a target. Or Murad's warning to SA Frank Pellegrino that: "Ramzi wanted to return to the U.S." to attack the Towers a second time. Or even Yousef's chilling warning during that late night flyby of the WTC in 1995 that the Trade Center might still be vulnerable.
Perhaps sensing how persistently U.S. intelligence agencies underestimated their resolve, the terrorists of al Qaeda were very good about telegraphing their moves. Within weeks of that JTTF party, SOCOM lawyers had cancelled Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer's last chance to share the Able Danger intelligence with the FBI. But while the Pentagon seemed unwilling to have the FBI connect the dots, Osama bin Laden himself was using the world media to call his next play.
On September 21st, 2000, he issued another fatwa, this one released to Al Jazeera, the Arabic television network, on videotape. As a hint of al Qaeda's next flash point, the Saudi terror leader brandished a jewel-encrusted Yemeni dagger. He also reminded the Feds of al Qaeda's loyalty to the spiritual leader of the New York cell—blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, whom the Able Danger data-miners had clearly linked to al Qaeda just months before.
Bin Laden's last major fatwa in 1998, the "Jihad against Jews and Crusaders, had been signed by Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu-Yasir Refai Taha, who had taken over for the jailed blind Sheikh as head of the al Gamma'a Islamiyah. Now, on this tape, bin Laden was flanked by Taha and al-Zawahiri again; and next to them sat Mohammed Abdel Rahman, one of the blind Sheikh's sons.
After a rambling speech, the younger Rahman urged their followers to "avenge your Sheikh" and "go to the spilling of blood." Then, almost as if to thumb his nose at the New York FBI, bin Laden himself told the faithful to remember El Sayyid Nosair. For those in the Bureau who continued to insist that there was no connection between the two attacks on the Trade Center, this video should have been proof positive that they were wrong. Osama bin Laden was personally invoking the name of the very al Qaeda operative—trained by Ali Mohamed—who had spilled the first al Qaeda blood on U.S. soil with the murder of Rabbi Kahane almost a decade earlier.
Yet a number of top U.S. intelligence analysts, including former CIA director James R. Woolsey, continued to insist that Saddam Hussein had been the primary force behind the 1993 World Trade Center attack, and that Ramzi Yousef had been an Iraqi agent. It was a completely specious theory, but one that many in the Bush administration would seize upon to help justify the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
On October 12th, al Qaeda suicide bombers, piloting a small inflatable dinghy, drove it into the side of the U.S.S. Cole, an advanced guided missile destroyer docked for refueling in Aden, Yemen. The blast blew a four-story hole in the ship and killed seventeen U.S. sailors.
Eight days after the Cole bombing, Ali Mohamed stood stoop-shouldered before Judge Leonard B. Sand in that Southern District courtroom. Patrick Fitzgerald stood at his side with four other assistant AUSAs, including Michael Garcia, who convicted Ramzi Yousef for the Bojinka plot, and Andrew McCarthy who had worked with Fitzgerald to put the blind Sheikh away. The record does not reflect whether Dietrich Snell, who co-prosecuted the Bojinka case, was also present, but Mary Jo White was on hand, along with Jack Cloonan, who now says that Ali finally confessed to the embassy bombings eighteen months after his arrest in September 1998.
Cloonan says that Mohamed then consulted with his lawyer, James Roth.
THE COURT: Your offer is to plead guilty to five counts charging you with conspiracy to kill nationals of the United States, conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim at places outside of the United States, conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to destroy buildings and property of the United States, and conspiracy to destroy national-defense utilities of the United States. Do you understand that pursuant to the relevant statutes, conviction on those five counts would subject you to a total maximum sentence of incarceration of life imprisonment plus any term of years. Do you understand that you would be subject to that potential sentence?
of supervised release of five years on Counts One, Two, Three and Five and three years' supervised release on Count Six? Do you understand that?
With Ali Mohamed's plea, the curtain fell on the career of one of world history's most audacious and accomplished spies. But the story was far from over. Having failed, before the fact, to extract from Mohamed the details of the embassy bombing plot he had planned and helped to supervise, Patrick Fitzgerald and his Southern District colleagues now had the potential of exposing hundreds of al Qaeda agents who had burrowed into the U.S.—many with Ali's own help.
In his 1999 confession to Egyptian authorities, Ali's Santa Clara protégé Khalid Dahab had admitted that he and Mohamed had recruited at least ten sleepers in Santa Clara alone. Now, after Ali's deal with the Feds, the question was just how many other al Qaeda agents there were in this country and when he would give them up.
So far, the evidence suggests that he hasn't.
As this investigation has revealed for the first time, almost six years after entering that guilty plea, Ali Mohamed has yet to be sentenced. His own wife, Linda Sanchez, told me that directly, and it was confirmed by Jack Cloonan (at right). Yet we can say for certain that even today, as he remains in witness protection somewhere in the New York area, Ali Mohamed has never fully betrayed Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden, or the jihad which he was willing to kill for.
How do we know this? Because if Ali had ever given the Feds the name or location of a single one of those sleepers, they would have been arrested or indicted by now.
But in the high-stakes poker game between captured terrorist and an FBI anxious for him to sell out in return for leniency, Ali Mohamed got much more than he was ever willing to give.
As the Embassy bombing trial approached, would Ali Mohamed, the Feds' star witness, take the stand? Some senior reporters who covered the Justice Department suggested he would. But, as always, Ali Mohamed possessed an infinite capacity for surprise.
We certainly know more of it now. The Ali Mohamed story offers a stunning illustration of how often the FBI and DOJ dropped the ball in underestimating the al Qaeda threat. The findings of the Able Danger team underscored the connections between al Qaeda's leadership and the Yousef/Rahman New York cell, and reinforced evidence disclosed by the Justice Department's own inspector general that the Feds should have had plenty of advance warning about the presence in the U.S. of key hijackers like al-Midhar and al-Hazmi in early 2000, more than a year and a half before the 9/11 attacks.
But on September 18, 2006, the inspector general for the Department of Defense decided to tell the Able Danger story another way. In a heavily redacted ninety-page report, the IG rejected claims by Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott, and former Cong. Curt Weldon that the Able Danger unit had tracked those two muscle hijackers, along with Marwan al-Shehhi and Mohammed Atta, prior to 9/11.
Though the names of most witness were redacted, it's clear that the DOD IG's office conducted multiple interviews with Shaffer, Phillpott, and Dr. Ellen Preisser, who worked on the Able Danger team at LIWA and Garland, Texas. While each of them repeatedly insisted they had seen Atta's photo and/or name in the early Able Danger data harvest, the IG's investigators seemed bent on impeaching their accounts.
Potentially the most damaging allegation, singled out in the coverage of the IG's report in the Washington Post, had to do with Phillpott's allegedly varying accounts of Atta's picture.
"If you read that Post story, it makes it seem like Scott lied," says Mike Kasper, a computer programmer who runs www.abledangerblog.com a website dedicated to the scandal. "But when you study the report, you can see that Capt. Phillpott never denied seeing Atta's picture.
It's also clear that, in attempting to impeach Capt. Phillpott, the IG relied heavily on the word of Dietrich Snell, the 9/11 Commission senior counsel, who found Phillpott's account of the Able Danger findings "not sufficiently reliable to warrant revision of the [Commission] report or further investigation." That was Snell's conclusion following a July 12,2004, meeting with Phillpott ten days before the Commission's "final report" was to go to press.
We considered Mr. Snell's negative assessment of Capt. Phillpott's claims particularly persuasive given Mr. Snell's knowledge and background in antiterrorist efforts involving al Qaeda. Mr. Snell considered Capt. Phillpott's recollection with respect to Able Danger's identification of Mohammed Atta inaccurate because it was 'one hundred per cent inconsistent with everything we knew about Mohammed Atta and his colleagues at the time.' Mr. Snell went on to describe his knowledge of Mohammed Atta's overseas travel and associations before 9/11 noting the "utter absence of any information suggesting any kind of a tie between Atta and anyone located in this country during the first half of the year 2000,' when Able Danger had allegedly identified him.
There's further evidence to assess the credibility of the IG's report.
It documents expenditure of upwards of $1 million to fund the Able Danger operation when it moved from LIWA at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, to Garland, Texas, in the summer of 2000. The first appropriation signed off on by SOCOM was for $750,000; then, that fall, General Pete Schoomaker, the chief of SOCOM, was encouraged enough by the hits the team was getting that he approved another quarter million for an additional month. Yet the IG's report characterizes the data mining operation as little more than "a proof of concept for data mining," lacking in any significant intelligence results.
Perhaps the most insidious aspect of the DOD Report was its characterization of Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer as "basically the delivery boy" for DIA on the Able Danger project. Shaffer was also described in the report as "minimally qualified" at HUMINT (human intelligence).
Yet a cursory examination of Shaffer's service record shows that he spent more than twenty-two years of his army career as a human intelligence officer. His decorations for HUMINT work include the Joint Commendation Medal, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, and the Bronze Star. From 1993 to 1995 Shaffer was actually the chief of army controlled HUMINT operations—in effect, the army's top human intelligence officer. In his civilian capacity Shaffer was selected as part of the Exceptional Intelligence Professional Program in 1998 for promotion to GS-14 by Lt. Gen. Patrick Huges, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Only ten intelligence operatives out of a pool of ten thousand were selected for this highly competitive program.
Another important measure of Shaffer's credibility is the fact that, in the midst of the Able Danger scandal, he was promoted from major to lieutenant colonel by the army; he remains on active duty today.
The inspector general's report also denied that anyone in the Pentagon took retaliatory action against Shaffer, but Weldon said, "The I.G. never interviewed Wolf Blitzer [of CNN] or Brian Bennett [of Time] who both called my staff and said that DOD officials were spreading personal rumors about Shaffer to discredit him." The report was supposed to include a full investigation of the three petty charges against Shaffer. But twenty-five pages on that issue, constituting more than one quarter of the report, have been entirely redacted or blacked out.
In support of Weldon's charge that the IG's investigators "cherry picked" evidence, the report seizes on a link chart entitled "The Al-Qaeda Network: Snapshots of Typical Operational Cells Associated with UBL," concluding that this was the chart that Shaffer and Phillpott had referred to as containing a picture of Mohammed Atta.
On that issue, the report also claims that the destruction of the 2.5 terabytes of data "was carried out to comply with the ninety day limit imposed by DOD 5240.1-R [the Pentagon's embodiment of Executive Order 12333]. But the report doesn't contain a word about the two key "U.S. Person" exceptions to EO 12333 for open source and terrorism-related data.
NOTE: these chapters are annotated with more than 100 end notes in the hardcover and paperback editions of TRIPLE CROSS.
Editorial post-script: If re-elected in 2006, Cong. Curt Weldon was in line to become the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. On October 13th, 2006, while facing the first serious challenge to his congressional seat in years, word leaked to the media that Cong. Weldon, a Republican, was being investigated by the Bush Justice Department probing whether Weldon had traded his political influence for lucrative lobbying and consulting contracts for his daughter Karen. Three days later, FBI agents raided Karen's home and five other locations of Weldon associates in Pennsylvania and Florida. Two days after that, the Washington Post reported that a grand jury had been impaneled as part of the investigation. In the November election, a few weeks later, Weldon was defeated by former navy Admiral Joe Sestak who is now running for the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate Seat of Arlen Specter whom Sestak defeated in the Democratic primary of 2010. On July 17, 2007, The Washington Post reported that, as of Spring 2007, federal investigators were continuing to examine Weldon's official actions taken on behalf of his daughter Karen's lobbying clients. The same article noted that Weldon had spent at least $30,000 in legal fees and related investigatory expenses as a result of the probe. In December 2007, a former Weldon aide pleaded guilty for failing to report $19,000 in income that his wife made for doing work for a nonprofit company tied to Weldon.


National Health Service (NHS) News This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.
'Bridging the gap' - a survey of medical GPs' awareness of child dental neglect as a marker of potential systemic child neglect - Colgan SM, Randall PG, Porter JDH.
Litigation in hand and wrist related injuries and surgery - Ajwani SH, Halai SM, Mohil RS.
NHS70: How Has Technology Changed Our Healthcare?


text:
Hippe is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
 Ivar Hippe, currently a political consultant and former Editor-in-Chief of Økonomisk Rapport.
 Michelle Hippe, Voice actress known for dubbing Larry Koopa since Mario kart 8.
 Jon Mathias Hippe, younger brother of Ivar Hippe and current leader of Fafo.
 Johannes Hippe, he is the son of Jon and best known for his handball activities.


text:
Hoppner ist

 der Name eines Flusses in Kanada (Hoppner River)
 der Name einer Einfahrt in die Foxe Basin, einem Becken nördlich der Hudson Bay in Kanada
 der Name einer Insel in der Georgsbucht, der Hoppner Island im kanadischen Ontario
 der Name eins Kaps, auf der kanadischen Insel Melville Island
 der Name einer Familie
 John Hoppner (1758–1810) war ein englischer Maler
 Richard Belgrave Hoppner (1786–1872) war ein englischer Maler
Henry Parkyns Hoppner (1795–1833) war britischer Seeoffizier und Arktisforscher


text:
Jeep unveils first official photos of the 2018 Wrangler
While no powertrain details have been announced, expect a handful of turbo-four and V6 engine options
snachevpostmedia
Jeep has officially announced the next-generation Wrangler, set to make its official debut at the Los Angeles Auto Show later this month.
Jeep kept all the engine and transmission specifications for themselves, but here's what we do know from the press release – the new Wrangler will feature more safety features and advanced, fuel-efficient powertrains. Aerodynamics will be improved and there will be "a convenient fold-down windshield for off-road purists, even more open-air freedom, and dozens of different door, top and windshield combinations."
In terms of powertrains, here's what has been rumoured so far – a 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder, a 3.6L Pentastar V6 engine, and down the road, a 3.0-litre turbodiesel V6. Beyond that, there is no official word on available transmissions for either engines, however a combination of manual and automatics are possible.
Pricing and delivery dates for both Canada and the U.S. will be announced later.


Confirmation is celebrated once a year, usually during the Easter Season. It is open to all youth who are seventh graders through eleventh grade, as well as any unconfirmed Catholic youth. Candidates in both public and parochial schools are required to complete a two-year Confirmation process under the direction of the Parish. Catholics who are beyond high school are prepared for this sacrament through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA).
High school students must to be baptized and have First Confession prior to confirmation.
Para más información, favor de llamar a la oficina parroquial (preparación en español) 707-963-1228.


text:
Blues Pest Improves His Skills
Nash Now Scoring Goals, Killing Penalties
Author: Norm Sanders
© Belleville News-Democrat, The (IL)
ST. LOUIS --- Like a new toy with batteries that never run low, Tyson Nash burst onto the NHL scene last season and managed to tick off nearly every team the St. Louis Blues played.
Whether he was delivering checks, one-liners or goading the opposition into penalties, Nash had his nose in the middle of something.
"There's still a lot of talk going on out there," Nash said with a grin, the same one that bedevils opponents. "Maybe not as much, but I still get the feeling that guys want to kill me --- and that's my job."
Nash, 25, earned an NHL job by sacrificing his body on every shift. Now that he's here, the winger has added offensive skills to his repertoire.
In 28 games, the 25-year-old Edmonton native has five goals and nine points. He had only four goals and 13 points in 66 games a year ago.
"He's getting more ice time now, and he's being rewarded for his play last year," Blues winger Scott Young said. "He still plays really hard and shows up every night. That's been his trademark, but now he's being put out there in important situations --- killing penalties and getting lots of ice time."
Nash enjoys the responsibilities of penalty-killing.
"It's been a lot of fun, and Craig Conroy has definitely helped me out in that department," Nash said. "The extra ice time has probably been the biggest factor. Last year, when I played six or seven minutes a game, it was tough to feel good or get any kind of momentum going."
Nash averages just under 12 minutes a game. A talk with Blues coach Joel Quenneville before the season began opened Nash's eyes to the possibilities of improving his skills.
"They told me instead of always looking for the big hit when you do get the puck, try to make a play with it," he said. "Take it to the net instead of just running around trying to hit everybody."
Not that he shies away from hitting --- or yapping at opponents, a few of which he continues to battle.
"Steve Yzerman and I didn't see eye-to-eye all year, so he was a fun guy to play against," said Nash, who a year ago termed Yzerman's punches as "throwing pillows at me."
"San Jose had a few guys like (Jeff) Norton and Owen Nolan. You try to do your job, but that's a part of my job I definitely enjoy."
Nash drew less penalties toward the end of last season and was watched closely by referees.
"You never want to embarrass a referee by diving, or making it so obvious that you're trying to get them to make a bad call," he said. "At the same time, you try to work hard and keep your legs moving. That's how you create penalties.
"My goal is to become a more complete player, someone that's put out there in key situations."
Quenneville said Nash is among the team's most consistent performers. The winger also has scaled back his penalty minutes after leading the team with 150 last season. He ranks third behind Reed Low (99) and Chris Pronger (53).
"His overall game has improved immensely, and I think his ice time speaks about what he's given us," said Quenneville, who believes that energy helped Nash land a spot on the penalty-kill unit. "There's a thought process there and some patience to his game. That's been a big plus for us, knowing he can coming in and kill penalties. He's not just one-dimensional."
Nash is popular with Blues fans, some of whom have donned his No. 9 sweater. He writes local restaurant reviews on the Blues' Web site and rarely passes up a chance to participate in the team's charity functions.
"It's hard to explain what kind of feeling it is when you see someone up in the stands wearing your jersey," he said. "It's a big thrill, and I'm glad to be part of a winning team and a great organization."
Some have compared Nash to Detroit's Pat Verbeek, who is referred to as the "Little Ball of Hate." But Quenneville thinks Nash may be something of a hybrid.
"He's tough to compare (people) to. I don't have a guy; I was asked that this summer, and I didn't have an answer."