Cities in U.S. and Europe increase security at synagogues following France school shooting

Police departments across the nation and around the world have beefed up security at synagogues following shootings at Jewish sites in France.

Washington, D.C.; San Francisco and New York dispatched extra patrols to locations where Jews may gather, though law enforcement officials stressed there were no specific threats. New York had security details at more than 50 locations following the killings of four people at a school in Toulouse, France. Those shootings were done by a gunman on a motor scooter, and came after a similar assailant killed three French soldiers in the region.

We have to be concerned about what happens overseas. We have a significant Jewish population in this city, and we have to take that into account,” NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said on Monday.

“We know that we’re the top of the terrorist target list, so we’re concerned about the so-called copycat syndrome, where someone might see the events unfolding in Toulouse and take it upon themselves to act out,” he added.

The NYPD has primarily sent out an increased uniform presence to houses of worship and other locations such as the Jewish Museum and the 92nd Street Y, both in Manhattan.

Security was ramped up in the nation's capital, though officials declined to give details.

“As always, we maintain a heightened sense of alert," a spokeswoman for the DC Metropolitan Police Department told FoxNews.com. "We have directed that additional attention be provided to schools and religious institutions. We cannot disclose operational tactics.”

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement released yesterday that it is monitoring potential threats to the American Jewish community on an ongoing basis.

“Currently we are aware of no specific threat to locations within the United States,” a spokesman said.

Other cities in Europe have taken precautions as well.

In London, officials have sent out “security reminders” to Jewish communities within the city.

The notice urges people to “ensure that staff and visitors DO NOT congregate outside your building, especially upon arrival and departure" and advises that "external security patrols (outer circles of security) should be implemented and/or increased especially at arrival and departure times."

The notice also points out that threat levels in the UK remain unchanged.

NY Times accused of Catholic bashing, double standard on religion

The New York Times published this ad March 9, calling for Catholics to leave their church.

The New York Times is being accused of having a double standard when it comes to questioning religion, after it ran an ad calling on Catholics to leave their church, but nixed an ad making the same plea to Muslims.

The newspaper published an ad from Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation on March 9 which asked Catholics, “why send your children to parochial schools to be indoctrinated into the next generation of obedient donors and voters?” The ad went on to call loyalty to the faith misplaced “after two decades of sex scandals involving preying priests, church complicity, collusion and cover-up going all the way to the top.”

But in a story first reported by The Daily Caller, when Pamela Geller, a blogger and executive director of Stop Islamization of America, offered the same $39,000 for the Old Gray Lady to run an ad making a similar appeal to Muslims, the newspaper passed.

"This shows the hypocrisy of The New York Times, the "gold standard" in journalism, and its willingness to kowtow to violent Islamic supremacist intimidation," Geller told FoxNews.com.

Geller said her anti-Shariah ad was designed to mimic the anti-Catholic one. In calling on Muslims to quit their religion, the ad asked “Why put up with an institution that dehumanizes women and non-Muslims … [do] you keep identifying with the ideology that threatens liberty for women and menaces freedom by slaughtering, oppressing and subjugating non-Muslims… Join those of us who put humanity above the vengeful, hateful and violent teachings of Islam’s ‘prophet.’”

“The fallout from running this ad now could put U.S. troops and/or civilians in the [Afghan] region in danger,” Times officials told Geller in a letter dated March 13. The letter said the Times would consider publishing the ad in a few months, and said “we publish this type of advertising, even those we disagree with, because we believe in the First Amendment.”

Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League, called the first ad “vile.” But he said running it was a “judgment call.” However, the decision not to run Geller’s ad shows an agenda, he told FoxNews.com.

“It shows the disparate treatment and the duplicity of The New York Times,” Donohue said. “You can trash some religions, like Roman Catholicism, with impunity, but you cannot trash Islam?”

Robert Christie, the Times’ senior vice-president for corporate communications, did not return a call for comment.

Alan Dershowitz: Media Matters Hurts Obama

It’s the kind of anti-Jewish hate speech you’d expect to find on a neo Nazi website or in a Patrick Buchanan column: American Jews who support current Israeli policies are accused of dual loyalty and called “Israel Firsters” because they place their loyalty to Israel above their loyalty to the United States.

AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) fares even worse:

“saying AIPAC is guilty of dual loyalty is giving it credit for one more loyalty that it holds.”

In other words, this widely respected American organization, and the hundreds of thousands of Jews (and Christians) who support it, including senators, congressmen and other elected officials, have absolutely no loyalty to our nation; their sole loyalty is to the foreign nation of Israel.

This false accusation of disloyalty to their own country finds its roots in the Biblical villains Pharaoh and Hamen who accused the Jews of Egypt and Persia of disloyalty. It was a central tenet of Nazism, Stalinism and other anti-Semitic regimes that made the Jews pay lethal consequences for their alleged dual loyalty. Today, it is the mantra of David Duke, Patrick Buchanan, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and Jew haters of every race, religion, and national origin.

In fact I first came across some of these hateful quotes about “Israel firsters” and “dual loyalty” on an actual neo-Nazi website called Reporters Notebook, which features Holocaust denial claptrap and anything that demonizes Israel and those who support the Jewish state.

Surprisingly, however, the quotes were attributed, not to the usual suspects, but to a spokesman for Media Matters, a hard left Democratic media attack and watchdog group, with close connections to the Obama White House, that started out as an antidote to Fox News, but has now turned much of its attention to Israel.

The author of these hateful quotes is MJ Rosenberg, who is the Senior Foreign Policy Fellow of Media Matters and its official voice on issues relating to the Middle East and Israel. Speaking at a symposium (with Stephen Walt, the author of The Israel Lobby), Rosenberg explained why Media Matters hired him:

“Until I got there [Media Matters] had nothing on foreign policy. They hired me specifically to be involved with this issue, with the Palestinian issue, with [the issue of] stopping the war with Iran.

And Rosenberg has become involved with a vengeance, using as his primary weapon the poisonous charge of “Israel firsters” and dual loyalty.

Let there be no doubt that Rosenberg’s accusation of dual or singular loyalty to a foreign country is an anti-Semitic canard historically reserved for Jews.

Rosenberg doesn’t accuse Arab Americans who support Hamas and Hezbollah—America’s sworn enemies– of being “Palestinian Firsters”. Nor did he accuse Irish Americans who supported the Sinn Fein of being “Irish Firsters”. And the bad old days when observant Catholics were accused of dual loyalty with regard to the Vatican are, thankfully, long past. But Rosenberg defends his charges of disloyalty to America against those who sincerely believe that it is in America’s interest to support Israel against threats from Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other enemies of both nations. Indeed, he boasts of having “popularized” the term “Israel Firsters.

By Alan M. Dershowitz

Media Matters Boss' $850G 'Blackmail' Settlement

Media Matters CEO David Brock

Media Matters chief David Brock paid a former domestic partner $850,000 after being threatened with damaging information involving the organization’s donors and the IRS – a deal that Brock later characterized as a blackmail payment, according to legal documents obtained by FoxNews.com.

In an acrimonious lawsuit settled at the end of last year, Brock accused William Grey of making repeated threats to expose him to the "scorn or ridicule of his employees, donors and the press in demanding money and property." Brock claimed in legal papers that he sold a Rehoboth Beach, Del., home he once shared with Grey in order to meet Grey’s demands, which he called "blackmail" in the lawsuit.

Brock, 49, heads the non-profit Media Matters for America, which bills itself as a watchdog of the conservative media but has recently come under fire for allegedly coordinating with Democrats in what could be a violation of its tax-exempt status.

Brock’s bitter legal battle with Grey, who is described in a Sept. 14, 2010, police report obtained by FoxNews.com as his domestic partner of more than 10 years, began after Brock began dating Washington, D.C., restaurant impresario James Alefantis about five years ago. For the next three years, Brock and Grey traded angry accusations, which were documented in the police report and were the foundation of a pitched legal battle replete with charges of blackmail, theft and financial malfeasance.

Alefantis was also named as a defendant in Grey's lawsuit.

In his response to Brock's lawsuit, Grey "denies that he committed any "acts of blackmail."

Grey threatened to go public about Brock and Media Matters' finances after he accused Brock in a civil suit filed in Washington of taking $170,000 in possessions, including an $8,000 Louis Vuitton suit bag, paintings, a rug, a chandelier, a painted bust of a Roman soldier and a pair of carved wooden chairs upholstered with purple fabric. Those possessions were displayed in the Washington townhouse where the couple entertained liberal movers and shakers in happier times.

Brock took Grey’s threats seriously and called police in 2010. In the police report, filed by Metropolitan Police as a stalking incident, Brock accused Grey, also 49, of attempting to blackmail him with a series of emails threatening to "release specific derogatory information about [Brock] and his organization to the press and donors that would be embarrassing to him and cause harm to the organization …"

Some of those emails came out as the lawsuit, filed by Grey on Jan. 28, 2011, wound its way through Superior Court of the District of Columbia last year.

"Please finish this today so I don’t have to waste my time emailing anyone – Biden, Coulter, Carlson, Huffington, Drudge, Ingraham," Grey wrote in a 2008 email.

Nearly two years later, Grey accused Brock of "financial malfeasance" and threatened to undermine Brock’s fundraising efforts.

"Next step is I contact all your donors and the IRS," Grey wrote in an email dated May 19, 2010. "This is going to stink for you if you do not resolve this now."

Brock said in court papers that he paid Grey "under duress."

On March 8, 2011, Brock filed his own suit against Grey for more than $4 million, demanding Grey return the $850,000, plus pay millions more in punitive damages. The two settled two months ago under terms that remain confidential.

Paying off Grey may not have been easy for Brock, even with his salary of nearly $300,000 at Media Matters. Records show Brock had pulled massive amounts of equity from the six-bedroom Rehoboth Beach house as its value skyrocketed during the real estate bubble.

Sussex County property records show he took out a $273,000 mortgage to buy the pale yellow colonial and carriage house for $606,666 in 1995. As the converted inn, built in 1793, continued to rise in value, Brock refinanced his loan on at least two occasions. Records show he had a $1.44 million mortgage on the property, as well as two more loans against the home totaling just over $500,000.

Brock received $1,587,500 for the home on May 25, 2010, in a sale to McLean, Va.-based Vardell Realty Investments. It could not be determined how much Brock still owed on the $1.44 million mortgage, or how much he netted from the sale, if any.

Records indicate that Brock had paid off the two smaller loans at the time of the sale.

Within a year of selling the house, Brock apparently had second thoughts about paying off Grey. In the civil suit, Brock accused Grey of three counts of blackmail, citing a statute that defines blackmail as threatening "to expose a secret or publicize a fact, whether true or false, tending to subject any person to hatred, contempt, or ridicule, to impair the reputation of any person."

He countersued to get his $850,000 back, plus $500,000 for each of three counts of alleged blackmail, and another $2 million in compensatory damages based in part on what Brock’s lawyers called abuse of the judicial system and legal fees.

Grey, who relocated to Massachusetts, declined to comment when contacted by FoxNews.com. Brock and Alefantis remain in Washington, where Brock has released a new book attacking Fox News. He is also under scrutiny from several members of Congress amid reports Media Matters for America is in possible violation of IRS laws governing nonprofits.

The Rehoboth Beach home was torn down months after Brock sold it, amid much community opposition, so the buyer could divide the parcel and build two homes. It remains a vacant lot.

FBI arrest man heading to US Capitol for suicide mission

Authorities have arrested a man on his way to the U.S. Capitol for what he thought would be a suicide attack on one of the nation's most symbolic landmarks, Fox News has learned exclusively.

The man, in his 30s and of Moroccan descent, was nabbed following a lengthy investigation by the FBI, initiated after he expressed interest in conducting an attack. It's unclear how the FBI learned of his aspirations.

The man thought undercover FBI agents assisting him in his plot were associates of Al Qaeda.

When he was arrested Friday in Washington, he was carrying with him a vest supposedly packed with explosives, but the material inside was not actually dangerous, Fox News was told.

A short time earlier, he had been praying at a mosque in the Washington area. His destination was Capitol Hill.

The public was never in danger, as he had been under constant surveillance for some time.

An arrest usually indicates charges have been filed in some form, but it's unclear when or how charges would have been filed in this case. It's also unclear if the suspect will be appearing in court Friday. In similar past cases, suspects have made their initial court appearance within hours of their arrest.

Sites in Washington have long been a target for terrorists, especially self-radicalized extremists caught in FBI stings.

In September, a Massachusetts man was arrested for allegedly plotting to fly bomb-laden model planes into the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol. FBI agents claiming to be associates of Al Qaeda provided 26-year-old Rezwan Ferdaus with what he thought was explosive material for the remote-controlled planes.

Nearly a year earlier, a Virginia man was arrested for trying to help Al Qaeda plan multiple bombings against Washington's Metrorail system. For months, 34-year-old Farooque Ahmed of Ashburn, Va., had been meeting and discussing "jihad" with individuals he thought were affiliated with Al Qaeda, but in fact he was meeting with FBI agents.

In the past year alone, at least 20 people have been arrested in the United States on terrorism-related charges, according to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

"Most of the arrests" have involved "lone wolves," radicalized online and able to use the Internet to build bombs, FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate committee last month.

At the time of Ahmed's arrest in October 2010, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Neil MacBride, said the case showcases "our ability to find those seeking to harm U.S. citizens and neutralize them before they can act.

FBI to track suspicious social media posts,

The FBI is getting in on the law enforcement app game on the heels of a controversial data mining project by the Homeland Security Department.

Documents recently posted on line seek industry input to develop the equivalent of a web alert system.

I think what you are looking at is a Google news feed specifically targeted for law enforcement, focusing on their specific needs,” Frank Ciluffo, who leads George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute, told Fox News..“We're on our mobile phones and we're on our various iPhones, BlackBerrys and the like that transmits data that locates individuals.”

The 12-page document, called "FBI Social Media Application," provides a detailed picture of the bureau’s specifications. The program must have the ability "to rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence ... to quickly vet, identify, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents and emerging threats."

Ciluffo, who was also a former adviser in the George W. Bush White House, said tracking social media is the tip of the spear for national security investigations and it raises privacy questions, over whether law enforcement officers are allowed to monitor public social media posts.

“If you’re in law enforcement's shoes, and certainly if you've got a counterterrorism organization, I wouldn't see why they should feel that anyone else can monitor but they can't,” he said.

Ciluffo said technology is running way of ahead, and the government is about to meet the new social network. “We’ve got to figure what is the right balance between privacy and security. And I'm not sure we, as a country, have addressed that question. When you're dealing with known foreign terrorist organizations and sympathizers and known terrorists, to me that's a cut-and-dry kind of case.”

According to the ACLU, who reviewed the FBI documents for Fox News, information pulled from sites like Facebook, Twitter and blogs could be cross referenced with other databases to identify potential threats. Mike German, a former FBI agent who runs the National Security section of the civil liberties group, says the data could be used to increase video surveillance in a neighborhood. German argues fundamental issues are not being addressed.

“Even where you're talking about published information, information people intentionally put out there on the Internet, we still have a right not to have that monitored by the government. The government really doesn't have any interest in tracking someone's Twitter account if they're not doing something wrong or suspected of doing something wrong.”

And German says the information can lead, in some cases, to questioning by federal officers, and getting rid of the “cloud of suspicion” can become virtually impossible. “Part of what we want to protect is the freedom to speak your mind, to criticize government policies without fear that the government will take it the wrong way and start treating you as if you're a threat.”

The FBI told Fox News in a statement that the project was in the research stage, and if it goes ahead, it “will not focus on specific persons or protected groups, but on words that relate to “events” and “crisis” and activities constituting violations of federal criminal law or threats to national security. Examples of these words will include lockdown, bomb, suspicious package, white powder, active shoot, school lock down, etc.”

Fox News asked Facebook and Twitter for comment in an effort to learn whether they would support the FBI program or opt out. Facebook thanked Fox News for the opportunity but had nothing to add. Twitter did not immediately respond.

Sex offender eyed in cold case disappearances of 2 women in S.C.

17-year-old Brittanee Drexel,

convicted child rapist is being eyed by South Carolina cops in the disappearances of two young women, including a New York teenager who disappeared while on spring break in Myrtle Beach almost three years ago, FoxNews.com has learned.

Detectives say Raymond Moody is the primary “person of interest” in the 2009 disappearance of 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel, who was last seen on surveillance video leaving a popular Myrtle Beach hotel along Ocean Boulevard in a case that sparked widespread media coverage. Moody, who served 21 years in prison for abducting and raping a California girl in 1983, is also being looked at in connection with another missing woman, 28-year-old Crystal Soles, law enforcement sources told FoxNews.com.

Both women are presumed dead, though exhaustive searches in the rugged terrain between Myrtle Beach and Moody's home some 50 miles south of the popular destination have been fruitless. Authorities have classified Drexel's disappearance a "cold case," meaning they renew their probe whenever they receive credible, new information. Myrtle Beach investigators have received such information within the last week, though they declined to elaborate.

Drexel, a high school junior from the Rochester area, went with friends and without her mom's permission to Myrtle Beach on April 23, 2009. A video camera at the Blue Water Resort captured her leaving the hotel on April 25 close to 9 p.m., police said. The footage is the last known sighting of her.

Investigator Phillip Hanna of the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office said a signal from Drexel’s cellphone was detected about 50 miles south of Myrtle Beach later that night – in a remote boat landing area near the South Santee River and roughly 8 miles from the Sunset Lodge apartments in Georgetown County where Moody had been living at the time.

Detectives revealed to FoxNews.com that Moody, a registered Level 3 sex offender, was in the Myrtle Beach area the same weekend Drexel disappeared. Capt. Joe Vella of the Myrtle Beach Police Department said Moody was issued a speeding ticket in Surfside on April 26, a day after the teenager was last seen.

Police said Drexel, a petite blonde and avid soccer player, had left a group of male friends from Rochester at the Blue Water Resort to walk back to the Bar Harbor Hotel, where she was staying with other girls.

After leaving the Blue Water hotel, Drexel texted her boyfriend back home to say she was headed for her hotel, but security video confirmed she never made it, police said.

Myrtle Beach detectives said they believe Drexel was abducted as she walked the one-mile stretch of Ocean Boulevard between the two hotels. She may have been snatched off the street, Vella said, or willingly accepted a ride “from the wrong person.”

They also said Drexel was likely alive and with her phone when it gave off its last signal in Georgetown County. No activity was detected on her bank account since her disappearance and Vella said, “We don’t think it was a robbery.”

Moody served 21 years of a 40-year prison sentence after he abducted a girl from a California playground and sexually assaulted her in 1983. His convictions include three counts of rape with force and violence; two counts of lewd behavior on a child under the age of 14; and one count of assault with intent to commit mayhem, according to a state sex offender database on the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division's website.

Moody relocated to Georgetown, S.C., where his parents live following his release from the California State Prison in Solano in 2004. Moody, who police say works as a cabinet maker, could not be reached for comment.

Vella said Moody has refused to speak with authorities. Last August, police searched the unit at the Sunset Lodge apartments, where Moody moved into the day before Drexel disappeared. Investigators have not yet disclosed what clues, if any, they uncovered at the apartment.

“We cannot eliminate him as a person of interest,” said Vella. He also noted that “one, possibly two” other individuals from coastal South Carolina are also “persons of interest,” though he and other law enforcement sources indicated that Moody remains the primary focus.

Detectives with the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said they are also investigating a possible connection between Drexel’s case and the 2005 disappearance of Crystal Soles. Soles, 28, was last seen Jan. 24, 2005, in Andrews, S.C., and is believed to have been abducted as she walked home in the dark.

“We are checking for any similarities to see if there are any connections between the two [cases],” detective Phillip Hanna told FoxNews.com.

For Drexel’s mother, Dawn, the anguish over her oldest child is as painful now as it was nearly three years ago.

“Every day is a nightmare,” the single mother told FoxNews.com. “I miss her so much.”

Dawn Drexel said she learned that her daughter, a junior at Gates Chili High School, had traveled to Myrtle Beach when she received a phone call April 25 saying the girl was missing.

“Panic set in,” said Drexel. She said she spoke to her daughter earlier that day, believing she was still in Rochester and staying at a friend’s house near Lake Ontario.

“I was buying her soccer cleats,” Drexel said as she recalled their final phone conversation. “I said 'I love you’ and she said ‘I love you, too, I’ll see you tomorrow.’”

Drexel said her daughter, whom she described as “very outgoing,” had aspirations to become a pediatric nurse.

“She just loved children,” Drexel said. “She had a smile that would light up a room.”

State Department Error Releases Mexican Fugitive From Texas Jail

Hector Hernandez Javier Villarreal

former Mexican government official wanted for embezzling millions was arrested in Texas this month, then promptly ordered released by the State Department in a case that has one lawmaker demanding answers.

A day after pulling rank on Smith County law enforcement officials, the State Department rescinded the order. But Hector Hernandez Javier Villarreal was gone by then. Now Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) is calling for congressional hearings to find out what happened.

“That’s the question: What are the federal officials thinking? The State Department is screwing up by ordering locals to release these fugitives,” Gohmert said. “I don’t know if it’s corruption or incompetence, but it’s one or the other and in my experience with federal government, I’m guessing it’s incompetence.”

Villarreal, the former secretary executive of the Tax Administration Service of Coahulia, Mexico, was arrested in November there on charges relating to an alleged scheme involving embezzling millions of dollars from the Mexican government. He posted $1 million cash bond, got himself a U.S. visa and then skipped town.

Villarreal surfaced in Tyler, Texas, on Feb. 1, when he, his wife Maria Teresita Botello and another man were pulled over for a routine stop. The couple’s two children were also in the car and turned over to child protective services.

All we did was make a traffic stop; they didn’t have a front license plate,” Smith County Sheriff J.B. Smith told FoxNews.com.

Police were given permission to search the vehicle and found $67,000 in cash and a shotgun, Smith said.

When we ran the check on the shotgun, then all of a sudden everyone in federal government became interested -- ATF, FBI, Homeland Security, Immigration [ICE] all showed up,” Smith said.

He said Homeland Security officials had told his department that Villarreal was a high-profile and wanted fugitive.

We placed them in jail on money-laundering charges, seized the vehicle and the money, ICE came and picked them up from our jail and took them to Dallas and that’s the last we’ve seen or heard of them,” Smith said.

Villarreal and Botello posted bond, and on Feb. 6 were released into the custody of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. They were taken to a Dallas detention center for deportation.

That’s when the State Department intervened, according to Smith. He said Homeland Security officials called to tell him the federal diplomatic agency had ordered Villarreal and his wife released. Neither State Department nor ICE officials responded to FoxNews.com’s request for comment.

Gohmert, who sits on the Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee, says he’ll be calling for congressional hearings to look into who exactly ordered the fugitive’s release.

He said he had been told that State Department officials released Villarreal because he entered the country on a valid U.S. visa, even though as an international fugitive, he should have been deported. Gohmert also wants to know why Villarreal was granted a visa days after posting $1 million bond following his arrest in Mexico. The visa Villarreal was granted was an EB-5, which is given to foreigners who invest at least $500,000 in a business venture.

One day after ordering Villarreal’s release, State Department officials referenced the Mexican warrant and asked for local authorities to re-arrest the couple. But by then, it was too late.

In addition to wanting to find out why State gave the conflicting orders, Gohmert wants to know why the federal authorities issued a visa to a man under arrest in Mexico.

We need to look at the visa program [EB-5] that allows foreigners to simply invest $500,000 in a venture and we give them a visa,” he said. “This is allowing wealthy foreigners to buy a visa.”

Hopefully we can pursue the matter and get some answers,” he said.

Smith said he was waiting to see what happens next. The suspects are supposed to appear at an as-yet unscheduled arraignment on the local charges. Although they have hired attorneys, Smith has his doubts that they will appear.

“If I was a betting man, I’d say no,” Smith said.