Cultural Differences Complicate a Georgia Drug Sting Operation

ROME, Ga., July 29 - When they charged 49 convenience store clerks and owners in rural northwest Georgia with selling materials used to make methamphetamine, federal prosecutors declared that they had conclusive evidence. Hidden microphones and cameras, they said, had caught the workers acknowledging that the products would be used to make the drug. But weeks of court motions have produced many questions. Forty-four of the defendants are Indian immigrants - 32, mostly unrelated, are named Patel - and many spoke little more than the kind of transactional English mocked in sitcoms. So when a government informant told store clerks that he needed the cold medicine, matches and camping fuel to "finish up a cook," some of them said they figured he must have meant something about barbecue.

Malvika Patel, left, and her husband, Chirag, in Ringgold, Ga. Ms. Patel spent three days in jail in a drug case before being cleared. The authorities had accused her of selling a medicine used to make methamphetamine.

The case of Operation Meth Merchant illustrates another difficulty for law enforcement officials fighting methamphetamine, a highly addictive drug that can be made with ordinary grocery store items.

Many states, including Georgia, have recently enacted laws restricting the sale of common cold medicines like Sudafed, and nationwide, the police are telling merchants to be suspicious of sales of charcoal, coffee filters, aluminum foil and Kitty Litter. Walgreens agreed this week to pay $1.3 million for failing to monitor the sale of over-the-counter cold medicine that was bought by a methamphetamine dealer in Texas.

But the case here is also complicated by culture. Prosecutors have had to drop charges against one defendant they misidentified, presuming that the Indian woman inside the store must be the same Indian woman whose name appeared on the registration for a van parked outside, and lawyers have gathered evidence arguing that another defendant is the wrong Patel.

The biggest problem, defense lawyers say, is the language barrier between an immigrant store clerk and the undercover informants who used drug slang or quick asides to convey that they were planning to make methamphetamine.

"They're not really paying attention to what they're being told," said Steve Sadow, one of the lawyers. "Their business is: I ring it up, you leave, I've done my job. Call it language or idiom or culture, I'm not sure you're able to show they know there's anything wrong with what they're doing."

For the Indians, their lives largely limited to store and home, it is as if they have fallen through a looking glass into a world they were content to keep on the other side of the cash register.

"This is the first time I heard this - I don't know how to pronounce - this meta-meta something," said Hajira Ahmed, whose husband is in jail pending charges that he sold cold medicine and antifreeze at their convenience store on a winding road near the Tennessee border.

But David Nahmias, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, said the evidence showed that the clerks knew that the informants posing as customers planned to make drugs. Federal law makes it illegal to sell products knowing, or with reason to believe, that they will be used to produce drugs. In these cases, lawyers say, defendants face up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

In one instance, Mr. Nahmias said, a store owner in Whitfield County pulled out a business card from a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent and told the informant that he was supposed to contact the agent if someone requested large amounts of the materials. When the informant asked if he would call, Mr. Nahmias said, the owner replied, "No, you are my customer."

"It's not that they should have known," Mr. Nahmias said. "In virtually or maybe all of the cases, they did know."

Like many prosecutors, Mr. Nahmias describes methamphetamine, a highly potent drug that can be injected, ingested or inhaled, as the biggest drug problem in his district. While only about a third of the meth here is made in small labs - the majority of the drug used in this country comes from so-called superlabs in Mexico - those small labs can be highly explosive, posing a danger to children, the environment and the police departments that are forced to clean them up. Their sources, he said, are local convenience stores.

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Former U.S. Detainee in Iraq Recalls Torment

American guards arrived at the man’s cell periodically over the next several days, shackled his hands and feet, blindfolded him and took him to a padded room for interrogation, the detainee said. After an hour or two, he was returned to his cell, fatigued but unable to sleep.

The fluorescent lights in his cell were never turned off, he said. At most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He said he was rousted at random times without explanation and made to stand in his cell. Even lying down, he said, he was kept from covering his face to block out the light, noise and cold. And when he was released after 97 days he was exhausted, depressed and scared.

Detainee 200343 was among thousands of people who have been held and released by the American military in Iraq, and his account of his ordeal has provided one of the few detailed views of the Pentagon’s detention operations since the abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib. Yet in many respects his case is unusual.

The detainee was Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor. He wound up as a whistle-blower, passing information to the F.B.I. about suspicious activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he said was possible illegal weapons trading.

But when American soldiers raided the company at his urging, Mr. Vance and another American who worked there were detained as suspects by the military, which was unaware that Mr. Vance was an informer, according to officials and military documents.

At Camp Cropper, he took notes on his imprisonment and smuggled them out in a Bible.

“Sick, very. Vomited,” he wrote July 3. The next day: “Told no more phone calls til leave.”

Nathan Ertel, the American held with Mr. Vance, brought away military records that shed further light on the detention camp and its secretive tribunals. Those records include a legal memorandum explicitly denying detainees the right to a lawyer at detention hearings to determine whether they should be released or held indefinitely, perhaps for prosecution.

The story told through those records and interviews illuminates the haphazard system of detention and prosecution that has evolved in Iraq, where detainees are often held for long periods without charges or legal representation, and where the authorities struggle to sort through the endless stream of detainees to identify those who pose real threats.

“Even Saddam Hussein had more legal counsel than I ever had,” said Mr. Vance, who said he planned to sue the former defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, on grounds that his constitutional rights had been violated. “While we were detained, we wrote a letter to the camp commandant stating that the same democratic ideals we are trying to instill in the fledgling democratic country of Iraq, from simple due process to the Magna Carta, we are absolutely, positively refusing to follow ourselves.”

A spokeswoman for the Pentagon’s detention operations in Iraq, First Lt. Lea Ann Fracasso, said in written answers to questions that the men had been “treated fair and humanely,” and that there was no record of either man complaining about their treatment.

Held as ‘a Threat’

She said officials did not reach Mr. Vance’s contact at the F.B.I. until he had been in custody for three weeks. Even so, she said, officials determined that he “posed a threat” and decided to continue holding him. He was released two months later, Lieutenant Fracasso said, based on a “subsequent re-examination of his case,” and his stated plans to leave Iraq.

Mr. Ertel, 30, a contract manager who knew Mr. Vance from an earlier job in Iraq, was released more quickly.

Mr. Vance went to Iraq in 2004, first to work for a Washington-based company. He later joined a small Baghdad-based security company where, he said, “things started looking weird to me.” He said that the company, which was protecting American reconstruction organizations, had hired guards from a sheik in Basra and that many of them turned out to be members of militias whom the clients did not want around.

Mr. Vance said the company had a growing cache of weapons it was selling to suspicious customers, including a steady flow of officials from the Iraqi Interior Ministry. The ministry had ties to violent militias and death squads. He said he had also witnessed another employee giving American soldiers liquor in exchange for bullets and weapon repairs.

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Do you know what 'inalienable rights' are?

If you can't, bang go your hopes of living the American dream. You will never become a US citizen.

At least, you are going to find it harder to do so, since Thursday. Those three brainteasers appear on a new list of 144 sample questions put out by the federal government that will form the basis of a revised test for anyone seeking to turn themselves into naturalised Americans.

It is the culmination of a five-year struggle to update the citizenship test, which was laid down in 1986 and has remained virtually untouched since. That exam contains 96 questions, mostly of a more amenable nature, such as: What are the colours of our flag? Who was Martin Luther King Jnr? When was the Declaration of Independence adopted?

The new list has provoked a heated debate about the nature of citizenship exams and what they are seeking to achieve. Immigrants' rights groups fear that by adding a raft of about 80 new questions, including sections on geography (What is the longest river in the US?), more probing questions on key historical periods (Name one war fought by the US in the 1800s) and highly conceptual queries (What is the rule of law?), will merely erect a new barrier to participation.

Daunting
About 600 000 people become naturalised US citizens every year, but the worry is that many could be put off by the new questions. "Our main concern is that the test does not become even more daunting an obstacle to citizenship than it is right now," said Fred Tsao, of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

Tsao pointed out that in addition to the stress of having to pass the exam, there is the financial hurdle: naturalisation currently costs $400 to complete, and may rise to $800 under current proposals.

His group and other immigration organisations like it have taken to calling the citizenship test "the second wall". The first wall is the physical structure being erected along 1 120km of Mexican border, to keep out illegal immigrants. This second wall, the groups contend, is a barrier to full participation by legal immigrants who have lived and worked in the US for at least five years.

But the phrase is disputed by the US citizenship and immigration service. "I absolutely hate that term," said Chris Ratigan, an official within the service. "We are trying to build a wider bridge to citizenship. When someone decides to become an American citizen -- and what a wonderful decision that is -- we want them to feel that after they raise their hand and take the oath to America they are fully ready to participate in this country."

Under the old test, Ratigan said, there was great inequality about how it was administered. One state might ask only easy questions such as "Who is the president of the US today?", while other states would set the harder ones such as "Who said, 'Give me liberty or give me death?'" (Answer: Patrick Henry in 1775.) The pass rate -- running at present at 84% on the first sitting of the test and 95% in second and third sittings -- would show large local fluctuations as a result.

Under the new system, questions will be weighted according to their difficulty, so that no matter where in the country one is taking the test, one's chances of success would be equal.

So how will the new test go down? It will be piloted next year on 5 000 volunteers going for citizenship in 10 states across the country, to reflect the range of likely applicants. After feedback, the list will be whittled down to the best 100. Applicants will have to answer correctly six out of 10 randomly selected questions.

On the streets of New York, the pilot questions received a varied response. Josh, a businessman, found several questions easy. He knew the president has to be older than 35, that the tallest mountain is Mount McKinley, that the Mississippi is the longest river and that the early 19th-century war was the Spanish-American war of 1812. However, he was stumped by the question "What group of essays supported passage of the US Constitution?" (Answer: the Federalist papers.)

Edwin, a security guard from Puerto Rico, was stumped by several questions. Asked "What does 'We the people' mean in the Constitution?", he replied: "You got me, man. We never learnt that stuff in school."

If Edwin is remotely representative of the nation -- and he was just one man plucked from a New York street -- then the immigration service appears to be pitching its exam beyond its reach. However, he did get one question almost right. Asked "Who is the speaker-elect of the House of Representatives?", he said: "I know somebody was elected from California. Can't remember her name, but I know Bush ain't too happy about it."

The questions and help for those who need it

The questions
1. What does "we the people" mean in the Constitution?
2. Name one example of checks and balances.
3. How old must a president be?
4. What territory did the US buy from France in 1803?
5. Name one thing only the federal government can do.
6. What is the current minimum wage in the US?
7. Who is the Attorney General now?
8. Who governs the people in a self-governed country?
9. What is the "rule of law"?
10. What are "inalienable rights"?
11. Name one responsibility that is only for US citizens.
12. When is the last day you can send in federal income-tax forms?
13. Name one thing Benjamin Franklin is famous for.
14. Name one famous battle from the Revolutionary War.
15. Name one of the writers of the Federalist papers.
16. What group of essays supported the passage of the US Constitution?
17. What did Susan B Anthony do?
18. Who was president during World War I?
19. Where is the Grand Canyon?
20. What is the tallest mountain in the US?

Acceptable answers
1. The power of government comes from the people.
2. The president vetoes a Bill; Congress can confirm or not confirm a president's nomination; Congress approves the president's budget; the Supreme Court strikes down a law.
3. 35.
4. West of the Mississippi; the western US; the Louisiana territory.
5. Print money; declare war; create an army; make treaties.
6. $5.15.
7. Alberto Gonzales.
8. The people govern themselves; the government elected by the people.
9. Everyone must obey the law; leaders must obey the law; the government must obey the law.
10. Individual rights with which people are born.
11. Vote; serve on a jury.
12. By April 15 of every year; by April 15; April 15.
13. US diplomat; oldest member of the Constitutional Convention; first Postmaster General of the United States; writer of Poor Richard's Almanac.
14. Lexington and Concord; Trenton; Princeton; Saratoga; Cowpens; Yorktown; Bunker Hill.
15. James Madison; Alexander Hamilton; John Jay.
16. The Federalist papers
17. She fought for women's rights.
18. Woodrow Wilson.
19 Arizona; the Southwest; along on the Colorado River.
20. Mount McKinley or Denali

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