Kerry pledges to answer Benghazi questions, laments 'misinformation'

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday pledged full cooperation with lawmakers' queries into last year's assault on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, while his spokesman dismissed reports that whistleblowers faced retaliation.

"We're prepared to work openly and accountably to answer any of those questions," Kerry told reporters.

"I'm determined that this will be an accountable and open State Department as it has been in the past and we will continue to provide answers," he said.

The assault on the U.S. mission in Benghazi last September 11, in which U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed, was a big headache for President Barack Obama's administration during the November elections.

Some Republicans continue to assail Obama over security lapses, but also over the administration's conflicting early accounts of what happened.

On Tuesday, two senior Republican senators, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona, reiterated their call for the Senate to set up a joint select committee to investigate the Obama administration's handling of the Benghazi attack.

"Revelations about witnesses being afraid to testify and military assets that could have been deployed in a timely fashion justify appointing a joint select committee," they said in a statement.

The senators were apparently referring to a Fox News report on Monday which quoted a former Justice Department lawyer, Victoria Toensing, as saying that one of her clients and other State Department officials had been threatened with career damage by unnamed Obama administration officials.

Asked about the report, Kerry said "there's been an enormous amount of misinformation out there."

While repeating a vow to cooperate with lawmakers, he added: "We have to demythologize this issue, and certainly depoliticize it."

Pressed on the allegation that would-be witnesses at the State Department faced threats, the department's deputy spokesman Patrick Ventrell said: "The State Department would never tolerate or sanction retaliation against whistleblowers on any issue, including this one."

(Reporting by Paul Eckert; Editing by David Brunnstrom)

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U.S. had more tips on Boston suspect; Congress asks questions

By Patricia Zengerle, Samuel P. Jacobs and Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON/CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence knew more about the movements of one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects than previously reported, U.S. officials said on Wednesday, raising more questions about the government's handling of the case and the sharing of information among agencies.

U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the FBI was alerted when Tamerlan Tsarnaev traveled to Russia last year. They also said Russia, which had tipped off the FBI about its concerns over Tsarnaev in early 2011, made a second, identical request to the CIA in late September 2011.

Police say the ethnic Chechens Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev planted and detonated two pressure-cooker bombs near the finish line of the marathon on April 15, killing three people and injuring 264.

A briefing by the FBI before the House Intelligence Committee revealed that the two brothers apparently became radicalized by anti-U.S. information on the Internet, members of Congress said.

"It looks like they built their bomb based on ‘Inspire' magazine and the article said how to build a bomb in mom's kitchen," said Representative Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

The online magazine "Inspire," circulated by Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, publishes English-language exhortations to would-be Western jihadists to carry out attacks with whatever means they have at hand. It recently published detailed instructions on how to build homemade devices.

"The younger bomber in whatever type of communication he's using said that's where they got the instruction to build the bomb," Ruppersberger said.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a shootout with police Friday and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was wounded, captured and charged with crimes that could result in the death penalty if he is convicted. Dzhokhar remained in fair condition in hospital on Wednesday, officials said.

Attention has focused on the elder brother as the driving force behind the bombings. U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, described a four month-long investigation of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 after Russia's intelligence service, known as the FSB, told the Americans that Tamerlan had become a follower of radical Islam.

As part of the FBI's probe, Tamerlan's name was entered into a U.S. Customs and Border Protection database known as TECS.

U.S. officials said when Tamerlan left the United States for a six-month stay in Russia in January 2012, the TECS database sent an alert to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, a multi-agency FBI-led body in Boston.

It remains unclear what investigators did with the information.

Several months after asking the FBI for help investigating Tsarnaev, the Russians contacted the CIA in September 2011 with the same information they had supplied to the FBI.

While in Russia, Tsarnaev traveled to Dagestan and authorities are investigating whether he became involved with or influenced by Chechen separatists or Islamic militants there.

Some of the elder brother's dissatisfaction may stem from the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ruppersberger said following the briefing in Washington.

Tsarnaev, an amateur boxer, also had wanted to box on the U.S. national team, but he could not because he was not a naturalized U.S. citizen and had a domestic violence complaint against him, he said.

A man who said he was Tamerlan Tsarnaev's uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, said a man he knew only as Misha had influenced his nephew's deepening interest in Islam.

Standing at the door of his home in Montgomery Village, Maryland, Tsarni said he first heard of Misha, whom he described as of Armenian descent, in 2009.

Misha was "working with Tamerlan, pulling him in to Islam, introducing him into Islam in such a way that the guy in a short time quit what he was doing," he said. "He quit boxing, he quit music."

"It seems like, what we heard, Tamerlan had been quite occupied with him," Tsarni said.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev's name also was listed on a separate U.S. government highly classified central database of people it views as potential threats, sources said. The list is vast, including about 500,000 people, preventing law enforcement from closely monitoring everyone on it.

Some on Capitol Hill questioned whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other U.S. security agencies failed to share information about him, even after reforms enacted to prevent information-hoarding following the September 11 hijacked plane attacks 12 years ago.

"That's something that we have to look at," said Senator Dan Coats, a Republican from Indiana also on the Intelligence Committee. "That's one of the key things that we have learned and need to work on to make sure it doesn't happen again, and that is simultaneous communication to all the relevant agencies when a warning is posted."

Members of Congress briefed by law enforcement and media reports citing unidentified sources indicate Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told investigators that he and his brother acted without assistance from any foreign or domestic militant groups.

"That basically seems to be the story, but I don't see how we can accept that," Representative Peter King, a New York Republican on House Homeland Security Committee, told CNN.

"It may end up being the truth but ... I don't see why he would be giving up any accomplices he may have or talking about any connections his brother may have had in Chechnya or Russia," King said on Wednesday.

The full Senate was scheduled to receive its own briefing on Thursday.

In Grozny, the capital of Russia's volatile Chechnya region, a member of the extended family said the brothers were victims of a Russian plot to portray them as Chechen terrorists operating on U.S. soil.

Among the remaining mysteries was how the bombers acquired the black powder used as explosives in the home-made pressure cooker bombs packed with nails and ball bearings. Tamerlan bought two large packages of fireworks in February from a store in Seabrook, New Hampshire, but the explosive powder they contained would not have been "anywhere near enough" to build the bombs, said William Weimer, vice president at Phantom Fireworks.

TRIBUTE TO FALLEN POLICE OFFICER

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and law enforcement agents from around the United States attended a memorial at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a university police officer who authorities say was shot dead by the Tsarnaev brothers on Thursday night.

Sean Collier, 26, was killed about five hours after the FBI released pictures of the two suspects, asking for the public's help in tracking them down.

Biden called the prestigious university a symbol of what Islamic extremists oppose.

"You are their worst nightmare," Biden said. "All of these things these perverted jihadis, self-made or organized, all the things they fear."

(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington and Ian Simpson in Montgomery Village, Maryland; Writing by Daniel Trotta and Ellen Wulfhorst; Editing by Grant McCool and Cynthia Osterman)

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Connecticut lawsuit questions origin of gun buy-back program

By Lisa Barron

(Reuters) - A social entrepreneur is accusing a Connecticut designer who worked with Newark, New Jersey police to melt illegal guns into jewelry of stealing his idea and business model, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court.

Peter Thum, a co-founder of an organization called Fonderie 47, claims he shared his idea with Jessica Mindich of Greenwich, Connecticut and her company, Jewelry for a Cause, who implemented it in Newark without his permission.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Connecticut last week, asks the court to prevent Mindich and her company from advertising themselves as the originators of the concept. It also seeks an undetermined amount of punitive damages.

Mindich told Reuters the lawsuit is without merit.

"Melting down guns and turning them into symbols of hope is something that has been practiced for many years," she said in an email on Monday.

In his lawsuit, Thum said he designed and implemented a program to buy AK-47 assault rifles from governments in Africa, make them into jewelry for sale and use part of the proceeds to fund more weapon buy-back programs.

Thum claims he shared his concept and business structure in detail with Mindich at a conference for social entrepreneurs in December 2011.

He said the conference, whose location was not disclosed in the lawsuit, was covered by written and implied confidentiality provisions.

The online registration portion of the invitation-only conference, called "The Weekend to be Named Later," says: "Poaching ideas isn't cool anywhere, but at the Weekend it's grounds for death by stoning."

In what his lawsuit referred to as the "social purpose business," success is linked to being the first to implement a program designed to solve a social problem, it said.

Mindich told Thum she wanted to do something similar in New Jersey but he said no, said Thum's attorney, Judd Burstein.

Mindich promised in writing to abandon her project but nevertheless used the idea in the gun buy-back program in Newark in January, according to the lawsuit.

The Newark program dubbed "Caliber Collection" featured steel bangles and cuffs made from illegal guns and brass pieces made from casings swept from city crime scenes.

The cuffs and bracelets, available with or without diamonds, ranged in price from $150 for a steel cuff to $375 for a brass bangle with diamonds, Jewelry for a Cause said on its website.

A portion of the proceeds was earmarked to fund gun buy-back amnesty programs in Newark, New Jersey's largest city which is plagued by gun violence.

So far, $60,000 in proceeds have gone back to Newark to fund the purchase of more illegal guns, said Mindich, who said the program grew out of a discussion she had with Newark Mayor Cory Booker in December 2011.

"Fonderie 47 chose not to participate in this effort," she said.

Mindich noted that in the 1980s, San Francisco Mayor Diane Feinstein had her own handgun and others melted down and made into a cross which was presented to Pope John Paul II.

In 2003, guns seized in Orange County, California were melted down into rebar, steel rods used in construction, while Britain's Guns to Goods melts weapons into an array of products and California-based Bullets 4 Peace makes jewelry out of bullet casings, she said.

"All of these approaches have their routes in the ancient biblical reference of turning swords into ploughshares," she said in her email.

Thum's lawsuit said the weapons were re-purposed as "Caliber Collection" jewelry to be promoted at the MTV Movie Awards on television.

"Mindich cynically rode the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy into a nationally publicized and, for her, lucrative partnership with MTV," it said.

"In order to accomplish this task, Mindich has brazenly lied about the source of her business, instead telling the media no less than four different stories about the supposed inspiration for a concept that, in reality, she simply pilfered," it said.

Last December, a gunman shot and killed 26 people at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, spurring demands nationwide for tougher gun control laws.

If he wins the case, Thum will donate all damages awarded, aside from court costs, to charities working to reduce gun violence, his attorney said.

(Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Eric Walsh)

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Victims raise legal questions about retired pope

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Attorneys who have tried unsuccessfully for years to sue the Vatican over failures to stop clergy sex abuse are looking into whether former Pope Benedict XVI is more legally vulnerable in retirement, especially if he travels beyond the Vatican walls.

A U.S. lawyer for the Vatican argues that, like any former head of state, Benedict retains legal immunity regardless of whether he is in or out of office. But advocates for victims say immunity in this case should be tested, since modern-day courts have never before dealt with an emeritus pope.

"So much of this is unprecedented," said Pamela Spees, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which is pressing the International Criminal Court to investigate the Vatican's response to abusive priests as a crime against humanity. "There's nothing set in stone about it."

Benedict stepped down last week, becoming the first pontiff in six centuries to do so. Before he became head of the Roman Catholic Church in 2005, he spent more than two decades in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that over the years gained authority to oversee abuse claims against clergy worldwide.

Still, his record on trying to end abuse stands above that of many other church officials.

Benedict spoke openly of ridding the church of "filth" and was the first pontiff to meet directly with victims, during a 2008 visit to the U.S.

He instructed the Rev. Marcial Maciel, founder of the conservative Legion of Christ religious order, who was favored by Pope John Paul II, to leave the ministry and lead a life of prayer and penance. Maciel had been accused for years of abusing young men.

Benedict also ordered bishops worldwide to craft guidelines on protecting children and keeping abusers out of the priesthood. Jeffrey Lena, a U.S. attorney for the Vatican, said that Benedict deserves "tremendous credit" for "recognizing the problem and helping to change the church's approach."

However, advocates for victims have criticized his reforms as half-steps.

As evidence, they point to the Maciel case. The pope never disclosed what the influential priest had done wrong. Only later was it confirmed that Maciel had molested seminarians and fathered at least three children. In Ireland, where church leaders had shielded guilty clerics from prosecution for decades, the Vatican during Benedict's pontificate refused or ignored repeated requests from state investigators for access to its case files.

Benedict's lengthy record dealing with the scandal before he was pope plays a part in the complaint against the church with the International Criminal Court. The court prosecutor, who can decide whether to open an inquiry, has not said whether he will act. Lena has called the effort, which was first filed in 2011, "ludicrous."

Spees said Benedict's resignation would play no role in the longshot case before the International Criminal Court. The world's only permanent war crimes tribunal, its prosecutor does not take into account traditional immunity claims.

However, she and others argue that at a minimum Benedict's resignation could help reduce resistance by prosecutors or other officials to take action against him.

Advocates point to how attitudes changed in the United States, where police and prosecutors once allowed local church officials to deal privately with priests' misconduct. After thousands of civil lawsuits revealed the scope of the abuse scandal, some American civil authorities began aggressively investigating whether Catholic leaders did enough to protect children.

And in staunchly Catholic Ireland, revelations by state investigators about abuse there led to an unprecedented dressing down of the Vatican in 2011 by Prime Minister Enda Kenny.

"They reframed the question," said Timothy Lytton, an Albany Law School professor and author of the book "Holding Bishops Accountable: How Lawsuits Helped the Catholic Church Confront Clergy Sex Abuse."

"Before 1984, nobody talked about it. Police wouldn't investigate it. Now, books are being written on the responsibility of the pope. All over Europe there are questions about the Vatican's role in all this and that is largely the results of lawsuits," he said.

Still, no lawsuit against the Vatican has come anywhere near a trial stage, and it's unclear whether Benedict will now be any easier to reach.

Of the thousands of abuse lawsuits filed against church officials, only a small number have named the Vatican as a defendant. They have come mostly from the United States, with a few from Ireland. In 2005, just months after the conclave that elected Benedict, a U.S. judge in Texas dismissed a lawsuit, ruling the pope had immunity as a head of state. The U.S. Justice Department had filed a motion arguing that allowing the suit to proceed would be "incompatible with the United States' foreign policy interests."

Many other lawsuits never got off the ground for a more mundane reason: No suit can proceed until the targeted person is officially notified.

Notes Lytton: "You can't hire a county sheriff to fly to Rome to knock on a door." Jeff Anderson, a Minnesota attorney who has represented thousands of clergy abuse victims over three decades, including in lawsuits against the Vatican, said in one case the Holy See returned the notification he sent stamped, "Do Not Want. Not Welcome."

Anderson says the lawsuits he has filed target the office of the papacy, not the man who served in it, so Benedict's resignation has no significance for any future U.S. civil suits.

Where the pope's novel status as a retiree could come into play, Anderson says, is if a government decides to take action against him.

Benedict has said he will retreat to a life of prayer in a monastery behind Vatican walls, leading victims groups to wonder whether preserving the former pope's legal immunity played a role in his choice of where to live out the rest of his days.

Lena insists immunity played no role in Benedict's decision. If the former pope does travel to another country, Lena said, he will be afforded the same dignities and protections given to any former high-ranking official. While the Vatican prepares the monastery for Benedict, he is staying in the town of Castel Gandolfo in the papal summer retreat which is technically part of the Holy See. The Vatican also has legal treaties that govern relations with Italy and many other countries and could provide additional protection from any legal action.

Still, some attorneys who fear Benedict will be targeted say they worry about the broad powers European magistrates hold to take legal action on behalf of their own citizens.

Nicholas Cafardi, a canon lawyer and professor at Duquesne Law School in Pittsburgh, who has worked with American bishops on abuse prevention, noted that in Europe, magistrates can, among other actions, arrest and detain officials before any trial. Next month, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which has been a leading critical voice against bishops in the United States, plans a conference in Dublin for victims of abuse worldwide.

"Americans don't appreciate the vast powers that investigating magistrates have in Europe," Cafardi said. "It only takes one who wants to make a name for him or herself to issue an arrest warrant for the former pope."

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