VA Assigns Officer To Verify Claims Involving Secret Missions

MacDill Air Force Base, Florida – Afflicted with injuries both physical and psychological, a trooper long since home from the war turns in a claim to the Department of Veterans Affairs for service connection.

The claim is denied. There are no records of his involvement in any such mission.

Where was he and when was he there?

The information is classified. There is no way of verifying his claim.

Case dismissed.

Not true. At least, not now. Things have changed.

The VA just came up with a remedy for the decades-long problem experienced by many who served in sensitive theaters of the war, places like Cambodia, Laos, Central America, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, or Iraq – or anywhere else.

A special liaison officer at the Special Operations Command with direct access to classified files is now standing by to process VA claims that previously could not be verified, according to an “Army Times” story that appeared recently.

The program has been in place since December, 2009, according to the article, authorized by an agreeement between the Pentagon and the VA.

Though the liaison officer is not necessarily a veteran of the special ops teams of the Army, Navy, or Marines, he has the necessary security clearance to get the information that is needed to process claims for combat wounds, post-traumatic-stress disorder and diseases that are presumptive evidence of exposure to certain toxins such as Agent Orange.

“Claims from veterans who say they took part in an intelligence operation run by the Defense Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence Agency or other government organization also can be researched by the VA liaison officer if a classified mission is involved,” according to the article written by Rick Maze of “Army Times.”

Catholic Bishops Looking For A Few Good Exorcists

Discretion is the key to identifying diabolical possession over mental illness

Baltimore – When they adjourned here last weekend, the nation's Catholic Bishops agreed they need more qualified exorcists.

More than 50 bishops and 60 priests attended a two-day conference to review the policies and procedures laid down in a revised manual that deals with the ancient rite of exorcism.

Written in Latin, “De Exorcismis et Supplicationibus Quibusdam” (Of Exorcisms and Supplications) was approved at the Vatican in 1999.

The guidelines include a caveat not to mistake diabolic possession with mental illness. There is a shortage of qualified priests to perform this ceremony, all agreed, including Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, archbishop of Galveston-Houston, priest-assistant to New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan.

“Learning the liturgical rite is not difficult,” he said. “The problem is the discernment that the exorcist needs before he would ever attempt the rite.”

Guidelines require a thorough evaluation through the diocese, consultation with physicians both psychiatric and internal, and a determination that the ill behavior priests seek to cure is not caused by any disease, but by a spiritual malady.

With deep roots in Christianity, the Bible is filled with examples of Jesus casting out demons and diabolical influences from troubled persons told in the stories of the New Testament. Symptoms include abnormal strength and speaking in languages unknown to the afflicted person.

The exorcism ceremony includes reading Psalms, giving prayers and sprinkling holy water on the diabolically possessed person. It is always performed in private. The renewed emphasis on the rite highlights the divine element of the church and underscores the belief that evil is real, according to the organizers of the training session.

Many priests are reporting that people turn to the church after dabbling in the occult, needful of their services in a return to a Christian faith.

Said Cardinal DiNardo, “For the longest time, we in the United States may not have been as much attuned to some of the spiritual aspects of evil because we have become so much attached to what would be either physical or psychological explanation for certain phenomena. We may have forgotten that there is a spiritual dimension to people.”

A more general conference continues this week among the church's American hierarchy in this city.

More than 14 million viewers have watched this brief clip of an actual exorcism. It is not a pleasant experience.

Matricula Consular - Carte Blanche For Illegal Immigration?

North Carolina city council votes on whether to accept Mexican ID's in traffic stops

BULLETIN: Durham's city council voted 5-2 Monday night to tell city employees to treat the Mexican matricula consular on par with other official ID.

Nearly 400 cities in the U.S. have decided to allow police to give recognition to the identification card issued by Mexican consulates to Mexican nationals traveling in the U.S. without a passport.

The first city to do so was Austin in 2000. Since then, many cities have wrestled with the issue of whether libraries, banks, police officers and others officials should trust the bearer to be who the identification card says he is.

Even the federal government has been involved. Congress voted down a resolution in September, 2004, that would have precluded financial institutions from accepting the ID cards for transactions. The FDIC estimates that Mexican citizens wire about $18 billion to Mexico each year.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge labeled the matricula consular as a prime tool for money laundering and illegals looking to make an end run around American security forces. He was talking about drug smugglers, illegal aliens, potential terrorists and criminals on the run.

Most federal department heads deplore the lack of verification required by the Mexican consulates to confirm the identification of applicants. They have found the addresses on the documents are simply not current in most cases. For instance, Food Stamps are not issued on the strength of that form of ID.

The ongoing debate included a move by Representative Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, to allow federal officers to accept the identification cards to authorize access to the federal buildings in her home town. The measure failed, even thought the San Francisco City and County Board of Supervisors had earlier authorized the use of the cards for identification purposes in most dealings with the authorities.

Now the cities of the North Carolina Research Triangle, Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, are in a heated debate about the matter.

Propounders say the matter is just common sense, an aid to getting to the bottom of any investigation or establishing the basis for an official transaction. Those who contradict say the matricula consular offers a carte blanche for illegal immigration.

The area of controversy appears to have become a matter of foregone conclusion awaiting the official stamp of approval in this affluent Piedmont neighborhood filled with corporate campuses and numerous university scientific research complexes.

Some members of the Durham City Council says it's just a matter of acknowledging what already happens in traffic stops when police need to identify the occupants of vehicles. They want to give the matter official sanction and be done with it.

Prominent Hispanic members of the community agree.

“It's more meaningful to have that official recognition,” said the Rev. Ricardo Correa, associate pastor of Ministerio Guerrero de Jesucristo. “The Hispanic community can have trust in the council saying, “We recognize this document.”

Typically, Durham police will issue a ticket for driving without a license instead of jailing the perpetrator, as long as they have some other form of identification.

Not everyone is similarly thrilled with the arrangement.

“Police departments will look at any document someone may have because it could shed some kind of light, but why do we need to bless that with official holy water?” asked Ron Woodard of NC Listen, a group that advocates stronger enforcement of immigration laws.

That faction insists that the official Mexican government ID cards may confuse employers and make them think it's okay to hire illegal aliens, an act that is a violation of federal law in itself.

Though the council was slated to vote on the matter Monday, no official word has reached The Legendary, as yet.

Come Meet Sam - In The Magic And Dust of History, He Was Buried Here 11,200 Years Ago In A Small Cave On The River

You might not know Sam – yet. Soon, the rest of the world will know all about he and the small girl buried by his side 11,200 years in the past.

The world has beaten a path to his burial place. Clifton will no doubt join the pantheon of paleontological designations for stone-age tools such as the “Clovis points” of the Buffalo hunters' spears, or the pottery of the Anasazzi, the “ancient ones” who built the Pueblos at Four Corners.

The Horn Shelter, located at an undisclosed place on the Bosque River, is one of only 3 Paleo-American sites in North America, according to the curators of the Bosque Memorial Museum, located at 301 S. Ave. Q.

Paleo American is a classification term given to the first peoples who entered, and subsequently inhabited, the American continent during the final glacial episodes of the late Pleistocene period. The prefix "paleo" comes from the Greek adjective palaios (παλαιός) meaning "old." The term Paleo-Indians applies specifically to the lithic period in the Western Hemisphere. The exact time period during their in migration is a matter of ongoing debate among archaelogists and paleontologists. It is believed to have taken place some time around 14,000 B.C. when ice free corridors developed along the Pacific Coast and herbivorous animals traveled south into the interior of the continent. Humans followed.

Dated with nuclear Carbon 14 radioisotope processes, the funereal remains of Sam and his companion are proof that the earliest occupants of El Bosque. DNA testing shows they were not Native Americans; they were nomadic tribesmen from the North Manchurian peninsula, Mongolia or China, according to physical anthropologists affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution.

“Don't ask me how they proved all this,” Clifton Mayor Fred Volcansek told members of the Public Utilities Commission of Texas last Wednesday. “Somehow, they proved it.”

In the items buried with Sam, there are turtle shells, deer antler tools, bird and animal claws, coyote teeth, and bird shells. He must have been an revered member of the community.

The national museum will soon announce plans to extend the dig area by two miles on each side of the Horn Shelter along the river banks in an effort to obtain a more complete study of the village where Sam met his demise.

That is only the beginning, according to Mayor Volcansek.

There is a future in the plan and it's very buttoned-down, to say the least.

Between November and June, more than 100 million viewers will see a video presentation produced by London Broadcasting that will feature Sam's burial site, the museum, and locations such as the Cliftex Theater, the city's numerous art galleries and sculptures, wineries, restaurants, and 26 of the Bosque area's prominent and world-famous western and cowboy artists – people such as George Hallmark and Melvin Warren.

It's all being done with funds obtained through a grant from the Texas Arts Commission.

Numerous billboards, each with its own worldwide website that can be reached by cell phone, will be put in place on major highways that lead to the area. Passersby will be able to find information about the area, maps, ads and numbers to call for reservations. The reason for the separate websites for each advertising billboard is to track the location and traffic pattern of travelers making inquiries.

Ten local stations will air 300 30-second spots pointing the way to Clifton and its cultural attractions, along with satellite and cable outlets.

These promotions are valued at $500,000, according to Mr. Volcansek.

The potential return on the investment – priceless, to say the least.

Saturday – A Trip To Town – Wine, Art, Architecture

Bosque art afficionados celebrate galleries, sculpture, one another in harvest season

Clifton – Mayor Fred Volcansek tried his best to explain to the three stone-faced political appointees on the Public Utilities Commission last week.

“We've got a half million dollars of promotion on the line,” he said.

People are welcome; here is a destination worthy of a weekend jaunt. "You're trying to turn us into an industrial area," he said.

There is something new and different in a Victorian-era ranching town on the river – in the woods – el Bosque. It's not the buildings, the people or the art. It's the attitude.

Art galleries in restored native stone buildings, people coming to town to the picture show, sitting watching each other promenade in a leisurely passagiata with wine glasses in their hands praising and appraising works of art, artfully restored buildings, an ambience worthy of the $25 entry fee that buys a bottomless glass of local wine, finger food, conversation.

On a Saturday night in the 80's – the eighties of the nineteenth century – one would have seen a similar sight, throngs come to town, strolling the sidewalks, meeting, greeting one another, window shopping.


The greatest victory, Save Our Spaces organizer Walt Human told his dejected troops following the undesirable decision about routing a transmission line through highly prized scenic territory instead of down the path of an existing high wire array, is that the people came out of their houses and perceived themselves as members of a group of neighborhoods strewn across a fabulous landscape in the valley of the woods, the Bosque.

That was on Wednesday. On Saturday, they held a little reunion on Clifton's Avenue D and meandered in and out of art galleries and the store fronts of local wineries and restaurants.

Private Roads A Disappointment At Lake Whitney

Their access to the lake blocked, residents say Bosque County officials will not help

Cedron Creek Ranch, Bosque County – Two home owners at Lake Whitney say they are operating at a disadvantage in an information-poor situation when it comes to the status of the private roads that lead to the shores of this massive lake.

According to Lake Manager Brady Dempsey of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, property owners requested the fences and gates and gates that block their access to the “Corps Road,” a primitive thoroughfare that circles the perimeter of the lake.

But Brent Farrens and Dan Lehnhoff disagree.

When they located at the development, they were told they would have access to the lakeshore directly from the private roads they pay $10 per month to have maintained as members of the Cedron Creek Ranch Property Owners Association.

“We were never asked to vote on that,” said Mr. Farrens, who weekends at his property on the lake in eastern Bosque County.

According to his neighbor Dan Lehnhoff, the association has declared the roads private property in conflict with the word he and others have received from Bosque County Sheriff's officers, who have told he and other residents that the roads are privately maintained, but offer public access.

It's all a matter of interpretation of the association's by-laws, Mr. Lehnhoff says. But there is a major complication in that area.

He has never been allowed to read a copy of the by-laws.

“They're very secretive about it,” he said, adding an observation about the ruling association officers handed down on a requirement to build a house before erecting a barn on properties within the development.

“Then they said if you build a barn first, you have a year to build the house.” He shrugged, adding, “It's in the by-laws, they say, but they won't let you read them.”

When the fences and gates went up along with admonishments that there is no parking allowed on the cul de sacs that abut the Corps lakeside property, he said he could get no information as to why the changes were made.

County officials were of no help. Mr. Lehnhoff paid a visit to the Bosque County Commissioners' Court meeting where County Judge Cole Word told him, “I will do nothing to help you.”

That is what helped him make up his mind to run for the office of County Judge in the year 2014, he said.

Asked if he would run as a Democrat or a Republican, he said, “Well, I'm not a communist, so I guess I'll have to run as a Republican.”

Mr. Lehnhoff served in Southeast Asia as a member of a Navy Seabee detachment during the Vietnam War, then began to operate with special ops teams. He was wounded in combat and lost a limb. Following his convalescence, he worked for more than three decades for Northrup Aviation at Palmdale, California, before retiring at Lake Whitney.

He and Mr. Farrens estimated that about 30 families are affected by the new private road strictures that block their ready access to the perimeter of the lake.

“They aren't going to do White Bluff. Why is that?” Mr. Lehnhoff asked. “That's private property and those are private roads.”

Road Closed – Fences And Gates Sprout As Population Grows

Lake Whitney - The fences started to go up during a mid-term budget crunch in mid-decade of the new millenium.

As federal funds to police and maintain lakeside parks at Army Corps of Engineers projects nationwide dried up, managers were asked to target certain problem areas where they could get by with less than complete access by the public.

Places where people fought and bled, drank to excess and trespassed on adjacent private properties, or littered and made themselves obnoxious while blowing off weekend steam were suddenly barricaded, gates thrown up and padlocked. Law enforcement types federal, state and local became intractable and adamantine, where before they had been tolerant and understanding, easy to talk out of an expensive federal summons to U.S. Magistrate's Court, or willing to let offenders go with a warning and some gentle admonishment to cool it, hit the road. Go home.

Prosecution for drunk driving and other objectionable behavior became routine. Some of the more recalcitrant found themselves potentially penitentiary-bound while others sat out long and expensive periods on probation.

Suddenly, folks were reminded that the big rivers and major creek systems dammed and managed by the Army's hydrologists are actually an integral part of the nation's critical defense infrastructure.

The nation was at war and “Let's roll” was the watchword, something in which it was best to believe, a bright and shining concept with the hard luster of a diamond, a nation united to defend itself against all comers and bad actors. Drunks, brawlers, litter bugs and loud fools need not apply under the new doctrine.

Camping out for a weekend or as long as a week anywhere one chose to pitch a tent was as out of date as button hooks and churns.

Camping in designated areas defined by knee-high fences wrought with rusty old drill pipe became available by reservation only.

Some of the first gates went up here on the spectacular bluffs overlooking picturesque limestone cliffs and craggy coves affording expensive views to affluent property owners at Walling Bend Park on the Bosque side of the lake. It's a superb place for young men and women to prove themselves insouciant and possessed with nerves of steel by diving headlong into the deep waters below. Risky business, fueled by testosterone, adrenaline and alcohol, it became a real issue in a nation suddenly dispossessed of its previous sense of humor.

“We targeted that rowdy park,” said Mr. Brady Dempsey, Lake Manager for the Corps of Engineers. It takes a lot of resources to keep people safe and the park clean. He and his staff found a significant place to cut the budget by investing in the services of a welder and erecting a swinging knee-high gate and padlock.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease; however, in this case, the new lubrication didn't work to reduce the friction by much. The rowdies squawked and their message was received loud and clear - nationwide.

The sense of outrage was instantaneous and pronounced. People spoke up, made inquiries, voiced demands – raised hell.

At a town hall meeting going into those midterm elections so long in the past, incumbent 17th District Congressman Chet Edwards heard the complaints and took heed.

He was fresh from a brutal redistricting session of the newly-Republican Texas Legislature that left him without a major portion of his base – the Ft. Hood area of Bell County where he cut his political eye teeth as a staffer for the venerated Democrat, Representative Olin E. “Tiger” Teague.

It was a core experience that defined his career, his influence chiefly felt in veterans affairs and water resources management committee assignments where he has vast subject matter expertise and major seniority.

Thus gerrymandered, he was at pains to find needs and fill them in his newly defined and crisply altered district.

He was quick to propose meetings with Corps of Engineers law enforcement staff and management, coordination with DPS troopers and local law enforcement.

He and other Congressmen throughout the states west of the Mississippi, where water management is under the control of the Corps of Engineers, found the needed funds in the padding of a tighter budget, according to Mr. Dempsey.

The gates remained open, the parks policed and maintained by a staff of maintenance workers and rangers. People were satisfied to see that, though their access was newly defined and more tightly controlled, they could still enjoy their lake in ways similar to the ways they always had.

As population density has grown, there are still other key issues that have remained to rankle those concerned with a changing landscape as it affects their world.

It came back to haunt Chet Edwards in small ways at the polls, though, according to his campaign manager, Alex Youn, “Nothing much would have helped...” in the face of the massive conservative rejection of all Democratic candidates.

Conservative Republican businessman Bill Flores defeated by 10-term veteran of the Hill by a factor of 60/40%, the same as others throughout the state and the nation at large.

It was all part of an extreme reaction against the “Obama-Pelosi agenda,” code for an abhorrence of a perceived trend toward an increasingly restrictive nanny state tightly controlled by bureaucrats and police officers of all types.

Private property owners in more remote areas found new leverage in the tightened restrictions. Some were unsatisfied, chafing under the new restrictions, especially in the area of that all-important bastion, the ritual of the deer, dove and turkey hunt going into the harvest feast season of Thanksgiving.

Where four-wheelers had previously been allowed to have right of way on privately owned and maintained roads, then pass onto the Corps' property and drive on the primitive “Corps Road” that skirts the lake, their access was blocked. There is no driving allowed. What's more, there is no parking on privately owned access roads where the Corps cannot set aside an easement for a parking lot.

You can walk, but you can't leave your vehicle behind in many of the choice spots where hikers or hunters could previously stroll through gates or drive.

What about handicapped users? Disabled veterans missing limbs, crippled children or even wheelchair-bound people can go on supervised deer hunts each year for a couple of weeks prior to the regular season through the cooperation of fish and game wardens and Corps of Engineers Park Rangers.

“We even field dress the deer for them,” says Mr. Dempsey.