Sources

"There is an inherent risk of theft, misuse, and loss of drugs," reports the General Accounting Office in a November report, "Seized Drugs and Weapons" (available online at www.gao.gov/new.items/ai00017.pdf), that looks at how poorly the Drug Enforcement Administration, which seized more than 275,000 kilograms of illegal drugs in fiscal year 1998, kept track of such evidence. The report suggests that some runny noses at the DEA may not simply be due to the common cold. "Weaknesses related to DEA's accountability over drug… evidence…included (1) incomplete and missing drug evidence documentation, including chain of custody documentation, (2) inaccurate recordkeeping of…evidence, and (3) improper accounting for drug weights, including unverified and unexplained weight differences in drug exhibits."

"You may think you can write whatever you wish today. You may boast about your action because you defamed this or that person, but when we are dead and buried in our graves, we shall be together again."

--Ayatollah Mohammad Emami-Kashani, warning dissident Iranian journalists during a September sermon, quoted in Volume 3, No. 4 of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (available online at www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa/meria/)