Charles Rappleye

The military base at Guantanamo Bay provides U.S. jailers safe harbor from interference by American courts, meaning the Bush administration can have its way in the treatment of foreign prisoners, a federal judge decided in Los Angeles last week. ”No federal court“ can review the government‘s conduct at the tin-and-wire......

The continuing limbo of accused terrorists at the American military base in Guantánamo Bay has sparked a global debate, with officials in the White House fielding barbs from Arab capitals, from the European Commission, even from the offices of the State Department at Foggy Bottom. But the only formal legal......

1.Get the Lead Out. Within weeks of taking office in September 1997, LAPD Chief Bernard Parks eliminates the Senior Lead Officers, a popular program in which a single officer served as community liaison for each police station. The decision prompts immediate and enduring outcry. 2. Drive, She Said. Parks stays......

When police officers raided the home of rogue cop Rafael Perez in August 1998, they found in a hallway closet a cardboard box sealed with strapping tape and marked ”CRASH,“ ”secret“ and ”confidential.“ Inside were clothing, a gas grenade and a stash of a half-dozen guns, all of them disabled,......

At a court hearing last week on the status of more than 90 Rampart police-misconduct cases now pending before him, District Court Judge Gary Feess ordered the city to make broad disclosure of all relevant police documents generated during the course of the scandal — documents expected to shed new......

It was among the bloodiest confrontations to arise in the LAPD Rampart Division’s War on Crime -- a Halloween 1996 shooting that left one young Latino man dead and put another in a wheelchair. The injured survivor always maintained his innocence, but after spending 20 months in jail -- much......

A strange front-page story published last Friday served notice that the L.A. Times still has trouble talking about scoops served up by reporters other than its own. But aside from poor editorial etiquette, the story suggests that during a conflict that finds the media operating under highly restrictive protocols, the......

Our current military misadventure in the hostile environs of Afghanistan is bogging down on the eve of the holiest days of the Muslim calendar. The timing is sheer accident, but we can turn it to our advantage. The U.S. should seize the high ground and stop the bombing for Ramadan......

It’s a loaded question in America right now: Did our foreign policy -- past or present -- play a role in provoking the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.? Just to raise the possibility is to invite invective, as demonstrated by broadsides published in organs as disparate as Newsweek,......

Within days of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, warehouses were packed to the rafters and emergency-response agencies were turning away donations. Within a week, the Red Cross said it had all the blood it could use. Now, while few are ready to say so publicly,......