Chinese security official elected Interpol chief

By James Griffiths, CNN



Updated 3:30 AM ET, Thu November 10, 2016






Story highlights

Meng Hongwei is first Chinese official to head Interpol

China seeking international cooperation in hunt for corrupt officials overseas



Hong Kong (CNN)A top Chinese security minister has been elected president of the international crime fighting and police cooperation organization Interpol.

Meng Hongwei, China's vice minister for public security and a former head of Interpol China, took the post Thursday at the organization's general assembly in Bali, Indonesia.

The move could bolster China's efforts to repatriate fugitive officials but critics have voiced concern that Beijing could use the crime-fighting body to track down dissidents based overseas.
He is the first Chinese official to become Interpol president, according to Xinhua.
Interpol's secretary general is responsible for overseeing the day-to-day work of the organization, currently Jurgen Stock.

Concerns

The election of a Chinese policeman to head the world's largest law enforcement agency is highly concerning, said Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International regional director for East Asia.

"(This is) someone who presides over a police force notorious for human rights abuses and is a tool for political enforcement of a one party system," he told CNN.

Bequelin also pointed to previous incidents where China has sought to use Interpol red notices -- which place people on global wanted lists -- against political dissidents.

According to Article 3 of Interpol's Constitution, "it is strictly forbidden for the organization to undertake any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character."

One Chinese dissident placed on an Interpol red notice by China is Dolkun Isa, despite his being granted political asylum by Germany, according to International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Isa is head of the World Uyghur Congress, which speaks on behalf of Uyghurs, a Turkic-speaking, largely Muslim minority living in China's Xinjiang province.

Western governments have long refused to enforce the notice against Isa, but in 2016, he was denied a visa to visit India due to his status. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei justified this on the grounds that Isa is "wanted for violent terrorist activities."


Foxhunt

As well as targeting dissidents, China has long pushed for international cooperation in seeking repatriation of corrupt officials who have fled overseas.

Operation Foxhunt has seen more than 2,000 "economic fugitives", including 342 former officials, returned to China since 2014, according to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
"Western countries can't become 'safe havens' for corrupt fugitives. No matter where they have escaped to, we will try every means to bring them back," Chinese President Xi Jinping said in 2014.

Bequelin said that "nobody is opposed to China exercising leadership roles in international organizations if it is done in a way that is in line with good practice."

"But there are many areas where China's own record is worrying in that respect and policing would definitely come at the top of this list," he added.
Interpol did not immediately respond to a request for comment.


Source

Interpol issues global security alert

 Katharine Lackey, USA TODAY 11:18 a.m. EDT August 3, 2013

The alert comes a day after the U.S. issued a global travel warning to Americans about a possible al-Qaeda attack.



Pakistani policemen stand guard outside the central prison after an overnight armed Taliban militant attack in Dera Ismail Khan, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on July 30.(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)


Interpol has issued a global security alert calling for increased vigilance for terrorist activity after suspected al-Qaeda involvement in prison escapes including those in Iraq, Libya and Pakistan.

The international police organization says prison breakouts have occurred in nine Interpol member countries in the past month alone and requests the agency's 190 member countries' assistance to figure out whether such events are linked, the group said in a statement on its website Saturday.

Interpol's alert comes a day after the State Department issued a global travel alert because of an al-Qaeda terrorist threat, saying the potential for terrorism is particularly strong in the Middle East and North Africa. That travel alert goes through Aug. 31.





The U.S. also announced this week that it would close more than a dozen embassies and consulates throughout the Muslim world on Sunday, and possible longer.

The full statement from Interpol's alert reads:


Following a series of prison escapes across nine INTERPOL member countries in the past month alone, including in Iraq, Libya and Pakistan, the INTERPOL General Secretariat headquarters has issued a global security alert advising increased vigilance.

With suspected Al Qaeda involvement in several of the breakouts which led to the escape of hundreds of terrorists and other criminals, the INTERPOL alert requests the Organization's 190 member countries' assistance in order to determine whether any of these recent events are coordinated or linked.

INTERPOL is asking its member countries to closely follow and swiftly process any information linked to these events and the escaped prisoners. They are also requested to alert the relevant member country and INTERPOL General Secretariat headquarters if any escaped terrorist is located or intelligence developed which could help prevent another terrorist attack.

Staff at INTERPOL's 24-hour Command and Coordination Centre and other specialized units are also prioritizing all information and intelligence in relation to the breakouts or terrorist plots in order to immediately inform relevant member countries of any updates.

August is the anniversary of violent terrorist incidents in Mumbai, India and Gluboky, Russia as well as in Jakarta, Indonesia. This week also marks the 15th anniversary of the US Embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in which more than 200 mostly African citizens were killed and 4,000 others injured.

In recent years, terrorist attacks focusing on diplomatic facilities in Afghanistan, Greece, India, Kenya, Libya, Pakistan, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tanzania, Turkey and Yemen have also resulted in hundreds of casualties of all nationalities.

The US State Department has also issued a global travel alert in response to credible intelligence suggesting that Al-Qaeda and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks between now and 31 August, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa. In addition to the US authorities announcing the one-day closure of more than 20 diplomatic missions on Sunday 4 August, the UK Foreign Office has also confirmed the closure of the British embassy in Yemen on 4 and 5 August.


Contributing: Natalie DiBlasio, USA TODAY; The Associated Press



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Interpol, United States National Central Bureau

CARYN E. NEUMANN


As the United States branch of Interpol, an international police organization, the National Central Bureau (NCB) in Washington, D.C., serves as a communications clearing-house for police seeking assistance in criminal investigations that cross international boundaries. Directed by the U.S. Attorney General and representing sixteen law enforcement agencies under the Department of Justice in conjunction with the Department of the Treasury, the USNCB focuses on fugitives, financial fraud, drug violations, terrorism, and violent crimes. It can refuse to respond to any of the 200,000 annual inquiries from other nations and, as required by Interpol bylaws, does not assist in the capture of people sought for political, racial, or ethnic reasons.

Although Interpol dates back to 1923, the USNCB did not come into existence until the 1960s because of a lukewarm American attitude toward the organization. Hesitant about the benefits of international policework, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the Department of Justice did not post wanted notices with Interpol until 1936. When J. Edgar Hoover (1895–1972), head of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, observed Interpol's success in apprehending criminals, his subsequent support of the police force prompted Congress to order the Attorney General to accept Interpol membership in 1938. Hoover became the permanent American representative to Interpol with only the FBI authorized to do business with the group. In 1950, Hoover pulled the FBI out of Interpol for reasons that remain unclear. The Treasury, however, continued to maintain informal contact with the organization and became the official U.S. representative in 1958. When the U.S. decided to establish an NCB in 1962 as part of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's fight against organized crime, the history of American involvement dictated a sharing of power between the two agencies, with Justice as the dominant partner.

The NCB became operational in 1969 with a staff of three and an annual caseload of 300. Agents are complemented by computer specialists, analysts, translators, and administrative and clerical support personnel drawn largely from the ranks of the Department of Justice. The agents operate in divisions dedicated to specific investigative areas while the analysts review case information to identify patterns and links. The law enforcement agencies represented at the USNCB include the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); the Environmental Protection Agency; the FBI; the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network; the Fish and Wildlife Service; the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS); Internal Revenue Service; U.S. Customs Service; the Department of Agriculture; the Department of Justice, Criminal Division; the Department of State; the U.S. Marshals Service; the U.S. Mint; the U.S. Postal Inspection Service; and the U.S. Secret Service. Additionally, each state, the District of Columbia, and New York City have established points of contact to receive international criminal reports from the NCB.

The USNCB operates by linking the Treasury Enforcement Computer System, the FBI's National Crime Information Center, the INS files, and the DEA records to Interpol. The international organization then funnels information from country to country. Classified information, including the vast majority of international terrorism cases, is not placed by the U.S. into Interpol channels because the flow of intelligence cannot be controlled and there are concerns that terrorists may tap into Interpol's intelligence system to plan strikes against the U.S. However, Interpol is utilized as a weapon against potential terrorists. The U.S. began accepting counter-terrorism cases in 1985. In 1990, the U.S. and Canadian governments established an Interpol Interface between the USNCB and the Canadian NCB in Ottawa. This link allows police to tap into law enforcement networks across the border to verify driver registrations and vehicle ownership.

The USNCB has grown considerably since its founding, responding to the increasing internationalization of crime as well as a jump in the numbers of foreign nationals entering the country. As these trends are likely to continue, the USNCB will likely see its crime fighting role increase in the future. 

 

 

FURTHER READING:
BOOKS:

Anderson, Malcolm. Policing the World: Interpol and the Politics of International Police Co-operation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.

Bresler, Fenton. Interpol. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992.

United States Department of Justice and United States Department of the Treasury. Interpol: The International Criminal Police Organization. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2002.



Source: http://www.faqs.org/espionage/In-Int/Interpol-United-States-National-Central-Bureau.html#ixzz2b76hMP34

 

 

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INTERPOL Secretary General Ronald K. Noble Visits INTERPOL Washington

April 11, 2013


On April 9-10, 2013, INTERPOL Secretary General Ronald Noble visited INTERPOL Washington, the United States National Central Bureau. Mr. Noble is the first United States citizen to hold the position of INTERPOL Secretary General and the youngest in the history of INTERPOL. Mr. Noble's visit signified the vital partnership between INTERPOL and the United States in the increasingly globalized effort to combat transnational crime. During Mr. Noble's visit, INTERPOL Washington Director Shawn Bray stated that "The fact that both INTERPOL President Ballestrazzi and Secretary General Noble took the initiative to visit our office during the past month was very significant for us. Mr. Noble was very supportive of the work that we do and even took the time to personally thank our staff individually."

In addition to Mr. Noble's visit to INTERPOL Washington, he also delivered the keynote address at the third annual International Engagement on Cyber conference at Georgetown University. Mr. Noble addressed the threat of cybercrime stating that it often "originates in one country, is aided in another, and felt in a third" which is "the reason why countries and their law enforcement have looked to INTERPOL." INTERPOL offers tools and resources, as well as a network of over 190 National Central Bureaus all over the world to put an end to transnational crime. Mr. Noble also noted INTERPOL's new International Global Complex for Innovation (IGCI) that recently broke ground in Singapore. The IGCI will expressly address cyber security issues and build capacity in combating digital crime. Attendees of the conference varied from military to academia, from members of the intelligence community to cyber technology leaders.

Following his keynote address, Mr. Noble also met with recently-elected INTERPOL Vice President of the Americas region, Alan Bersin. A U.S. citizen, Mr. Bersin serves as the Assistant Secretary of International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Pictured below is Secretary General Noble, Vice President of the Americas Region Bersin, and INTERPOL Washington Director Bray following the conference at Georgetown University.

Source: http://www.justice.gov/interpol-washington/news.html#apr1113a

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Interpol ~ New World Order Database ~ Bob Trefz

 

MrPioneerlight2011

Published on Jun 23, 2013


DECEMBER 16, 2009: OBAMA SIGNS AN EXECUTIVE ORDER: A DEADLY MODERN-DAY GESTAPO IS SET UP ON U.S. SOIL...INTERPOL OS THE INTERNATIONAL POLICE. FOUNDED IN 1923, THE SECOND LARGEST INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION IN THE WORLD, RUN BY THE GESTAPO AND NAZI SS...FLUSH WITH THE NAZIS FROM 1930'S-1970'S...A MAJOR STEP IN SETTING UP THE FINAL ROMAN INQUISITION TAKES PLACE...

IN THE DARK OF NIGHT, OBAMA SIGNED E.O. 13524, AMENDING E.O. 12425, GIVING INTERPOL IMMUNITY FROM SEARCH AND SEIZURE, GRANTING IMMUNITY FROM THE US CONSTITUTION. AMERICA IS NOW UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF INTERPOL, THE 21ST CENTURY GESTAPO, WHICH NOW STANDS ABOVE THE CONSTITUTION....
THE GREAT CONTROVERSY HAS GIVEN THE WARNING--A SNARE IS NOW BEING PLACED ON AMERICA--HER FORMER PERSECUTIONS WILL BE REPEATED. IT IS AN EFFECTIVE GLOBAL SYSTEM OF ARREST AND IMPRISONMENT--JUST WHAT THE POPE CALLED FOR. 100 SECRET PRISONS ARE NOW AWAITING THE EXTRAORDINARY RENDITIONS OF INTERPOL. EXTRADITION IS THE EXPERTISE OF INTERPOL. THE GULAG HAS BEEN SET UP, NOW THE GLOBAL GESTAPO HAS BEEN SET UP. WE SHALL SOON SEE AND FEEL WHAT THE ROMAN ELEMENT IS.

THE PROTECTION OF HUMAN LAWS ARE BEGINNING TO BE WITHDRAWN FROM THOSE DESIGNATED AS "ENEMY COMBATANTS." THE SHEKINAH GLORY WILL PROTECT HIS FAITHFUL ONES...THE TRIUMPH AND GLORY OF THE VICTORY CELEBRATION IN HEAVEN WILL BE TREMENDOUS OVER THE GREAT WHORE!
For More Information Please See Our Website: www.exposingdeceptions.org

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Under the Jackboot of an American Secretary General, INTERPOL Now Tracking Dissidents

February 1, 2012

Source: Indepth Africa

Welcome to the new INTERPOL – the International Criminal Police Organization — a carbon copy of the INTERPOL that was briefly headquartered in Berlin under the Nazi regime. Today, INTERPOL, an international law enforcement agency composed of 190 members nations, INTERPOL, headquartered in Lyon, France, is under the control of Secretary General Ron K. Noble, a former Undersecretary for Enforcement of the U.S. Treasury Department. Under Noble, INTERPOL is tracking political dissidents while leaving gangsters and other criminals, especially those wanted by Russia, remain at large.

Noble was the head of the Treasury Department’s “Waco Administrative Review Team,” which covered up the actions of his Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in their siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. That siege resulted in the deaths of 84 members of the separatist Seventh Day Adventist sect, including their leader David Koresh, and four of Noble’s BATF agents in a deadly shootout that was followed by the burning down of the sect’s compound.

In 2000, Noble was elected the first American Secretary General of INTERPOL. He is now in his third term. Perhaps it was fitting that Noble was re-elected INTERPOL Secretary General in 2005 at the INTERPOL General Assembly in Berlin. In 1942, INTERPOL headquarters were moved from Vienna to Berlin. From 1938, following the Austrian union with Nazi Germany, INTERPOL’s Secretaries General included four German SS generals: Otto Stenhausl, Gestapo and Sicherheitsdienst (SD) Security Service chief Reinhard Heydrich – assassinated in a Prague suburb by Czechoslovak agents in 1942, Arthur Nebe – head of the KRIPO criminal police and executed for his part to assassinated Adolf Hitler in 1944, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner – executed for war crimes after the Nuremburg trials.

During INTERPOL’s control by Nazi generals, the international law enforcement organization became a virtual arm of Nazi German intelligence. Today, the so-called international law enforcement organization is a subsidiary of not only American intelligence, but the intelligence and security services of its dictatorial member states.

Noble, an African-American, who, like his friend and fellow African-American, Attorney General Eric Holder, makes no effort to hide his reverence for police state tactics in the United States and abroad, has embarked on a tolerance for INTERPOL member states issuing arrest warrants for political dissidents. Noble, who is the son of an African-American father and a white German mother, represents a new cadre of police state-oriented mulatto U.S. leaders. This tendency among a new generation of African-American political leaders can also seen with Barack Obama, the son of a black African father and white American mother and Holder, the off-spring of light-skinned Barbadian parents hailing from a gentry descendant from wealthy sugar cane plantation owners and their slave hands. Noble has been mentioned as a strong candidate to replace Robert Mueller as the director of the FBI, thus continuing the grooming of “pass-for-white” security state promoters and defenders into positions of authority.

On December1, 2011, INTERPOL issued a Red Notice arrest warrant for West Papua independence leader Benny Wenda, the Oxford-educated leader of the Free West Papua who is now a citizen of the United Kingdom. Wenda heads the Free West Papua Campaign and lives in exile with his family in the United Kingdom. Wenda is fighting for the independence of his homeland from Indonesia, which annexed the former Dutch New Guinea after a dubious 1969 plebiscite organized by the United Nations. The Free Papua Movement (OPM), which Indonesia charges Wenda supports, has waged a campaign against Indonesian security forces, some of whom are in West Papua to protect the activities of the U.S. mining company Freeport McMoran, a company on whose board former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has served upon. West Papuan activists charge that Freeport McMoran has achieved a concordat with the Indonesian government to suppress the activities of the OPM and its allies, in order to protect the firm’s mining interests in the territory.

President Barack Obama’s Indonesian step-father, Lolo Soetoro, was in charge of an Indonesian army unit assigned to put down the rebellion in West Papua. In the late 1960s, Soetoro was assigned to a unit preventing West Papuans from receiving support from their Papuan comrades in Papua New Guinea, then an Australian colony.

Noble, by issuing the Red Notice, is essentially requiring the UK and any other nation where Wenda visits to arrest the activist with the provision that he be extradited to face trial in Indonesia where he is considered an “enemy of the state.” The Wenda case is not the only one in which Noble and his staff, which includes senior counsel Yoran Gottlieb appears more interested in protecting Israeli leaders wanted for war crimes and Russian Jewish oligarchs on the lam from Russian authorities than in applying the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights pursuant to Article 2 of INTERPOL’s constitution.

INTERPOL enjoys diplomatic immunity and extraterritorial rights in France and INTERPOL’s activities, including the amassing of huge data bases on people around the world, are exempt from French laws like the 1978 act governing the protection and use of personal data. Pursuant to a December 17, 2009, executive order issued by President Obama, INTERPOL was granted increased immunity when operating within the borders of the United States, including protection from law suits by American citizens and residents, including political refugees and asylum seekers, affected by INTERPOL’s arrest and surveillance orders.

U.S. citizens are barred from accessing files maintained on them by INTERPOL since subpoenas, Freedom of Information and Privacy Act requests, or even legal search warrants do not apply to the organization, thanks to Obama’s executive order.

The result of Obama’s executive order providing INTERPOL with such immunity is that INTERPOL agents operating in the United States, including FBI agents seconded to INTERPOL, enjoy virtual diplomatic immunity and operate above U.S. law. Current Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich pointed out the danger to American citizens arising from Obama’s executive order in asking, “Why would the President of the United States give that kind of extralegal protection to an international police force?”

The United States has routinely arrested individuals based on flimsy Red Notices issued by foreign dictatorships, most of which are clients of the United States. In the United States INTERPOL is represented by a National Central Bureau (NCB), which is operated by the FBI. The NCB has routinely ignored the political nature of INTERPOL Red Notices and Blue Notices – requests to closely track and conduct covert surveillance on wanted individuals – to arrest and deport Rwandan opposition political leaders arbitrarily fingered as “genocidists” by Rwandan dictator and U.S. ally Paul Kagame. On the other hand, Russian Red Notices for Russian-Israeli oligarchs like Leonid Nevzlin, wanted for murder by the Prosecutor General for Russia, go unheeded by Washington, which has granted Nevzlin a visa to travel between the United States and Israel at his convenience. The United States has also ignored INTERPOL Red Notices for the arrest of associates of the jailed Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. As with Nevzlin, the two wanted ex-Yukos oil and gas company businessmen, Mikhail Brudno, a resident of Israel and Lithuania, and Vladimir Dubov, who also lives in Israel, have been issued visas to travel to and from the United States at their leisure. INTERPOL fugitive and exiled Russian-Israeli tycoon Boris Berezovsky has also managed to avoid arrest thanks to protection from the United Kingdom and Israel.

It is more than apparent that Noble and Gottlieb sit in the massive INTERPOL headquarters in Lyon to protect the interests of members of the “club,” including the United States, Israel, Indonesia, Rwanda, China, Bahrain, Sweden, Maldives, and Sri Lanka. Usually, political dissidents are subject to Red Notice arrest warrants on trumped up charges that they have committed fraud or are engaged in money laundering. In some cases, businessmen and politicians are subject to a Red Notice for failing to pay a bribe to corrupt police officials to avoid a Red Notice.

The bottom line in dealing with Noble’s INTERPOL is if you are a political dissident like Benny Wenda wanted for seeking independence for your people, you face arrest. However, if you are a Russian-Israeli oligarch who has looted the Soviet and Russian Treasuries of billions of rubles, you are home free. Noble has certainly earned his points with the elites who run the planet.

There is no reason for an American, with his open and hidden agendas, to serve as Secretary General of INTERPOL. In his State of the Union address, President Obama declared that those who believed American is in decline “don’t know what they’re talking about.” To the contrary, Obama doesn’t know what he’s talking about. America is in decline as a superpower and it is high time that Americans no longer be granted automatic lordship over such institutions as the World Bank, INTERPOL, and the military command of NATO. In fact, all three institutions can do the proper thing and dissolve themselves or be prepared to be dissolved.

Source

Interpol issues arrest notice for Gaddafi

From: AAP      

 Interpol secretary-general Ronald Noble

September 09, 20117:03PM

WORLD police body Interpol has called for the arrest of fugitive former Libyan leader Mummar Gaddafi for his alleged crimes against humanity, following a request by the International Criminal Court (ICC).   

Interpol said it had issued a "red notice" for the arrest of Gaddafi, his son Seif al-Islam and his intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, one day after ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo asked for the agency's help.

The international police organisation asked its 188 member countries "to take all measures consistent with their national laws to help the ICC locate and apprehend Gaddafi".

The "request for Interpol 'red notices' will significantly restrict the ability of all three men to cross international borders and is a powerful tool to help in their location and arrest," Interpol secretary-general Ronald Noble said.

"Gaddafi is a fugitive whose country of nationality and the International Criminal Court want arrested and held accountable for the serious criminal charges that have been brought against him," Noble said.

A "red notice" by the international police co-operation agency, which is based in the central French city of Lyon, seeks the arrest for an extradition or surrender of a person to an international court based on an arrest warrant.

On June 27, ICC judges agreed to Moreno-Ocampo's request for arrest warrants against Gaddafi, 69, Seif al-Islam, 39, and Senussi, 62, for crimes against humanity committed by Libyan troops on their orders, using "lethal force" to quell the uprising against his regime. Interpol secretary-general Ronald Noble

Source

Who is Ronald K. Noble?

Photo (Source)http://wpcontent.answers.com/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ed/Ronald_K._Noble.jpg/300px-Ronald_K._Noble.jpg

Born in 1957; son of a cleaning-company owner; married a Spanish professor, c. 2001; children: one son
Education: University of New Hampshire, BA (cum laude), 1979; Stanford University School of Law, JD, 1982.

Career

Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, U. S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, law clerk, c. 1981; U. S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, assistant U.S. attorney, 1984-88; U.S. Department of Justice, attorney, 1988-93; New York University, associate professor, c. 1988-93, and professor, 1996-; U.S. Treasury Department, assistant secretary for enforcement, 1993-94; U.S. Treasury Department, Treasury Undersecretary for enforcement, 1994-96; Interpol, Lyon, France, secretary-general, October 2000-.

Life's Work

Ronald K. Noble is the first American citizen ever to head Interpol, the prestigious international law-enforcement agency. A former Clinton Administration appointee in the Treasury Department, he authored the official report on what went wrong in the 1993 Waco, Texas, conflagration between U.S. federal law-enforcement personnel and a well-armed doomsday cult. For a time in the 1990s, Noble was the highest-ranking African-American law-enforcement official in the United States.

Noble was born in 1957 and grew up in Fort Dix, New Jersey. He grew up in a mixed-race household; his German-born mother had met his father, a master sergeant in the U.S. Army, when he was stationed overseas. Back home, his father worked two jobs--one at the military base nearby, and another as the owner and principal employee of a janitorial services company. As a youngster, Noble sometimes accompanied his father to work on the latter shift. His father had high hopes for him, Noble recalled in an interview with the New York Times's Joyce Wadler. When they cleaned offices together, "my father would point at the degrees on the wall and say: 'Look. As soon as you have one of those, you will have someone like me working for you.'"

Dismayed by Job Offers

Noble and his brother attended local Roman Catholic schools. He went on to the University of New Hampshire, where he studied economics and business administration. After he graduated in 1979, he entered the Stanford University School of Law. Though he earned good grades and even served as the articles editor for the school's Law Review, job offers were scarce as he neared his 1982 graduation date. His father decided to take matters into his own hand, and went to the Philadelphia home of a prominent federal judge and respected civil-rights figure, A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. The elder Noble asked Higginbotham to hire his son as a clerk--a type of internship undertaken by law-school students around the time of graduation--and the judge agreed. Noble said that his father had promised the federal judge that his son was "going to make your career," as Noble recalled in the interview with Wadler. The son was mortified when he learned what his father had done, but Higginbotham agreed to hire him

The months that he spent working for Higginbotham certainly changed the direction of Noble's career. As his clerkship neared an end, Noble planned to enter private practice. Higginbotham recommended otherwise, advising Noble to enter public service. "My dream was to be able to pay the bills," Noble recalled in the New York Times interview. "I left Stanford with the idea of making as much money as I could make. The judge kept telling me, 'Ron, you do not want that kind of life.' I said, 'Yes, I do!'"

In the end, Noble acquiesced and took a job in the U. S. Attorney's office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He was a federal prosecuting attorney, and he quickly made his name with a famous drug-ring bust that was known as the "Yuppie Conspiracy," as he explained to American Banker writer Robyn Meredith. The bust involved several University of Pennsylvania dental students who began selling cocaine as a way to finance their own drug use. It evolved into a $50 million cartel that operated in 13 states. "We ended up indicting and convicting a number of dentists and lawyers and stockbrokers and pilots," Noble told Meredith by the time the case went to court. "It was a very wealthy, upper-class group who made tremendous amounts of money." Noble also prosecuted one of the largest public-corruption cases in history during his years as a federal prosecutor in Philadelphia, and earned high marks from his mentor. As Higginbotham told Jet a number of years later, Noble proved "a whiz. He's the smartest lawyer I've ever had in my courtroom."

Became Top Cop in United States

In 1988, Noble took a post with the U.S. Department of Justice, and also began teaching at New York University Law School. In 1993, newly elected President Bill Clinton nominated him to serve as assistant Treasury Secretary. It made him the highest-ranking law-enforcement official at the Treasury Department. Within a year, he was made Undersecretary of the Treasury, a newly created position. This gave him supervision of several agencies, including the Secret Service, Customs, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF). It also made him the highest-ranking African American in federal law enforcement.

President Clinton named Noble as the lead investigator of the disastrous BATF raid in Waco, Texas, that occurred in April of 1993. BATF agents had laid siege to a compound where a cult group known as the Branch Davidians lived. Noble had originally cautioned against storming it, but his advice was not heeded. His report on what went wrong cited several internal problems with the BATF and other law-enforcement agencies, and several resignations of Treasury Department officials followed.

Noble was an early advocate for investigating money-laundering trails in order to track down criminals, and headed a Financial Action Task Force within the Treasury Department to track down shadowy criminal groups via their bank transactions. He left the Treasury Department in 1996, returning to his teaching post at NYU. In 1999, Attorney General Janet Reno nominated him to head Interpol, an international agency dedicated to coordinating the law-enforcement efforts of different national agencies. He was officially elected secretary-general by its General Assembly and arrived on the job in the fall of 2000.

Headed Interpol

Interpol is an acronym for the "International Criminal Police Organization," a Lyon, France-based agency that dates back to 1923. Its original mission was to serve as a cooperative agency of police officials that would help track criminal rings that worked the casinos in Monte Carlo. In the years following World War II, its leadership had been dominated by French law-enforcement professionals. Noble was the first American to ever hold the post.

By the time Noble took over at Interpol, it had evolved into an international organization of some 181 member nations. Its internal mechanisms, however, were famously slow, and Noble believed that bureaucratic roadblocks kept it from reaching its full potential. He already had some experience with the ponderous bureaucracy for which Interpol had become somewhat infamous: back in 1998, he served on an executive committee for Interpol, where he authored a study that recommended its richer member-nations should pay added dues to offset the financial shortfalls when poorer countries could not meet their obligations. Some of this money would enable Interpol to provide the same advanced-technology tools used by countries like the United States to cash-strapped law enforcement agencies in other parts of the globe. The plan it was approved and implemented.

When he took over at Interpol in late 2000, Noble immediately began studying its remaining flaws and enacting changes. He recommended, for example, that the Interpol information clearinghouse become a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week office, instead of operating during standard business hours. He also instituted a practice whereby international alerts on suspected terrorists went out to law-enforcement personnel around the world within 24 hours. These new policies were scheduled to begin on September 17, 2001. Instead it began operating under the new plan in the hours immediately following the devastating September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon Building in Washington.

At the Forefront of Anti-Terrorism Battle

Four days after September 11, Noble wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times that outlined his goals as Interpol chief. "It's fine to talk about fighting terrorism, but the United States and other countries must invest more in law enforcement agencies outside their own countries," he wrote. "Investing in the world's police forces and Interpol is the only way to ensure that valuable intelligence can be gathered, analyzed, and shared internationally."

Noble also made Arabic one of the agency's official languages, along with English, French, and Spanish, and worked to rebut criticisms of Interpol. In 2002, Iraq and Libya belonged to the agency, and some critics argued that allowing rogue nations to participate was unconscionable. But Noble countered such talk by pointing out that it was an international cooperative agency, and the more members it had, the more effective it could be. He also noted that Libyan officials were the first to issue an Interpol red notice for Al Qaeda head Osama bin Laden back in 1998. "If you're looking for dangerous people," he explained to Fast Company writer Chuck Salter, "you don't care whether it's your enemy or your friend who tells you, as long as you find out."

In 2003, Noble sounded a warning about fake consumer goods after an Interpol investigation linked them to shadowy political organizations such as Al Qaeda. He called the illegal trade in counterfeit designer wear such as shoes and purses "the preferred method of funding for a number of terrorist groups," according to an International Herald Tribune article by David Johnston.

Thanks to his mother, German is one of the languages that Noble speaks fluently, which is crucial for an Interpol chief. In earlier interviews, he claimed that the 16-hour days he regularly put in at his job made having a steady personal relationship impossible, but after becoming Interpol head, he began dating the professor who had been assigned to improve his Spanish. They had become parents in 2002, by the time Salter interviewed him for Fast Company. He recalled the important advice his father gave him and his brother early in life. "My father used to tell us, 'You're going to meet people who are better off than you. You can't change that,'" he told the magazine. "'But you don't have to meet anybody who works harder than you.'" It's a lesson Noble lives out every day.

Awards

U.S. Department of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton Award, 1996.

Further Reading

Books

World of Criminal Justice, Gale, 2002.

Periodicals

American Banker, November 18, 1993, p. 6; June 21, 1994, p. 2.
Bond Buyer, April 29, 1993, p. 3.
Fast Company, October 2002, p. 96.
International Herald Tribune, July 18, 2003, p. 1.
Jet, May 31, 1993, p. 8; August 1, 1994, p. 36; January 8, 1996, p. 7; July 26, 1999, p. 4.
New York Times, July 13, 1999; September 15, 2001, p. A23.

— Carol Brennan

.Source: http://www.answers.com/topic/ronald-noble

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Interpol and U.N. Back ‘Global Policing Doctrine’

Photo (Courtesy)

http://www.un.int/wcm/webdav/site/portal/shared/iseek/images/2009/March/SG-Interpol-medium.jpg

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By DOREEN CARVAJAL

Published: October 11, 2009

PARIS — Interpol and the United Nations are poised to become partners in fighting crime by jointly grooming a global police force that would be deployed as peacekeepers among rogue nations riven by war and organized crime, officials from both organizations say.

On Monday, justice and foreign ministers from more than 60 countries, including the United States and China, are gathering in Singapore for a meeting hosted by the two international organizations.

It is the first step toward creating what Interpol calls a “global policing doctrine” that would enable Interpol and the United Nations to improve the skills of police peacekeepers, largely by sharing a secure communications network and a vast electronic trove of criminal information, including DNA records, fingerprints, photographs and fugitive notices.

“We have a visionary model,” said Ronald K. Noble, secretary general of Interpol and the first American to head the international police organization, which is based in Lyon. More than 187 member nations finance the organization.

“The police will be trained and equipped differently with resources,” Mr. Noble said. “When they stop someone, they will be consulting global databases to determine who they are stopping.”

Modern peacekeeping has evolved dramatically since the blue-helmeted U.N. military force won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1988. Since 2005, the number of police officers within the total force of 95,400 peacekeepers has more than doubled from about 6,000 to 12,200 in 17 countries.

U.N. police are already battling kidnappings and drug crime in Haiti and illicit lumber trading in Liberia. The aim of the joint effort is to increase the ability to track the movement of criminals around the world by sharing resources and common standards, according to Mr. Noble. He is also pressing ahead with plans for special electronic passports for the agency’s staff of more than 600 Interpol investigators to speed border crossings.

The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is contributing more than $2 million to finance the development of international global policing standards, according to Andrew Hughes, an Australian who currently heads the U.N.’s force of police officers.

The ambition is to create a series of networks to counter borderless organized criminal operations, Mr. Hughes said. Women, in particular, are being recruited, with a goal of reaching 20 percent of the U.N. force and the development of all-female units like the group of 140 peacekeepers from Bangladesh that is about to be deployed.

“We’re working with refugees,” Mr. Hughes said. “Many of the victims of atrocities are women, and they’ve had enough of men with guns and uniforms.”

He said that among the most critical tasks for a global police force were combating illegal arms and drug trafficking. His own officers in West Africa have watched the growth of cocaine smuggling by Colombian and Venezuelan drug cartels through weakened countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia to the lucrative consumer markets in Europe.

The United States remains the biggest market for cocaine, according to the U.N.’s annual report on drugs and crime. But in the past three years, South American cartels have moved more drugs to Europe using transit points like Guinea Bissau, where the president and the head of the military were killed in sophisticated bombing attacks in March. Each year, at least 50 tons of cocaine from Andean countries passes through West Africa to the streets of Europe, where the drugs are worth almost $2 billion, according to the U.N. report.

“Organized crime is a business that looks for opportunity to expand their market enterprise,” Mr. Hughes said. “When you have a breakdown in police and courts and corrections, organized crime is ripe. We also see the toxic effect of corruption, because they are able to corrupt officials, which makes it difficult to build a functioning society.”

In Afghanistan, where heroin and hashish trafficking is also a thorny issue, NATO announced plans this month to start training the local police — a move it has avoided in the past to concentrate on military responsibilities.

But Mr. Noble of Interpol says he takes a dim view of transforming warriors into beat cops, because the mind-sets are so different.

“We caution on making the delegation of civil police development tasks to military structures,” Mr. Noble said, citing the example of an attack that freed hundreds of Taliban from a prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan, last year. Although Interpol immediately asked for information about the missing prisoners, he said, “we were really shocked and dismayed to learn there were no fingerprints and photographs despite billions spent to train police there.”

With the meeting of justice ministers on Monday, which coincides with a general assembly of Interpol police members, the group is expected to debate the global police issue and to craft a declaration that would lead to an action plan for international police peacekeeping within 12 months.

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/world/europe/12iht-interpol.html

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Order on Interpol Work Inside U.S. Irks Conservatives

U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, and President Barack H. Obama
http://tomroeser.com/blog/img/f25044/eric-holder-barack-obama.jpg


Interpol's secretary general, Ronald K. Noble
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://justgetthere.us/blog/uploads/interpol-general-Noble.jpg&imgrefurl=http://justgetthere.us/blog/plugin/tag/police%2Bstate&usg=__zCkIFYTAkffSBm4MhgupZmTrurQ=&h=288&w=460&sz=27&hl=en&start=3&sig2=wI9Kh7_ypVOLYcdsACnPVw&tbnid=F4N5PYhfrKZLRM:&tbnh=80&tbnw=128&prev=/images%3Fq%3DInterpol%2Ron%2BNoble%26hl%3Den%26ie%3DUTF-8&ei=iFc8S--pCab_lAfs1byACQ By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: December 30, 2009

WASHINGTON — Conservative bloggers and opinion outlets in recent days have expressed mounting alarm about an executive order by President Obama that extended certain privileges and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization, better known as Interpol.

Bloggers have accused Mr. Obama of ceding American sovereignty, painting a portrait of an international police force operating on United States soil without legal restraints. They have also argued that the order is part of a plot to allow international courts to arrest and prosecute American officials for war crimes.

That theme is making its way from the blogosphere to more mainstream news outlets.
In a Web post for the conservative National Review last week, the commentator Andrew C. McCarthy declared that an “international police force” could now operate inside the United States “unrestrained by the U.S. Constitution and American law.” He also suggested that the order created in the Justice Department “a repository for stashing government files” beyond the reach of Congress and the public.

And an editorial in The Washington Examiner this week declared that “this new directive from Obama may be the most destructive blow ever struck against American constitutional civil liberties.”

Obama administration and Interpol officials say the fears and accusations are based on ignorance about how Interpol works and about the context and impact of the order, which was issued on Dec. 17 without any statement.

“There is nothing newsworthy here,” said Christina Reynolds, a White House spokeswoman.
Contrary to its portrayal in some movies, Interpol has no police force that conducts investigations and makes arrests. Rather, it serves its 188 member countries by working as a clearinghouse for police departments in different nations to share law enforcement information — like files on wanted criminals and terrorists, stolen cars and passports, and notices that a law enforcement agency has issued an arrest warrant for a fugitive.

In the United States, a bureau at the Justice Department staffed by American officials transmits information between law enforcement agencies and Interpol. If a foreign country issues an arrest warrant for a person inside the United States, it is up to the United States government, based on its own laws, to decide whether to apprehend the suspect.

“We don’t send officers into the field to arrest people; we don’t have agents that go investigate crimes,” said Rachel Billington, an Interpol spokeswoman. “This is always done by the national police in the member country under their national laws.”

When public international organizations are operating on United States soil, a law allows the president to grant them certain rights and immunities, just as foreign embassies receive privileges. More than 70 organizations — including the International Committee of the Red Cross, the World Bank and the International Pacific Halibut Commission — receive those rights.

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan extended some rights — including immunity from lawsuits or prosecution for official acts — to Interpol, which was holding its annual meeting in the United States. But Mr. Reagan’s order did not include other standard privileges — like immunity from certain tax requirements and from having its property or records subject to search and seizure — because at the time, Interpol had no permanent office or employees on United States soil.

That changed in 2004, when Interpol opened a liaison office at the United Nations in New York City. The office consists of five staff members, Ms. Billington said, and they have access to law enforcement information submitted by other countries with restrictions on who may receive it.

“When the office opened in 2004, we said look, we’d like to have the Interpol staff working in the office in New York afforded the same immunities as other international organizations,” Ms. Billington said. “It’s only for the New York office.”

The State Department recommended approving the request, but the Bush White House did not complete the matter before its term ended, and so it rolled over.

The White House said it put out no statement with Mr. Obama’s order because it viewed the matter as uninteresting.

LaTonya Miller, the spokeswoman for the Justice Department’s Interpol bureau, said the order would have no effect on the bureau. It routinely receives and responds to Freedom of Information Act requests, she said, and will continue to do so.

“Nothing has changed,” she said. “We’ve been really concerned about all the misinformation that has been out there on the blogs.”


Related
Times Topics: Interpol (International Criminal Police Organization)

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/world/31interpol.html
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Vatican's security force to join Interpol

GENDARME-INTERPOL Sep-29-2008 (290 words) xxxi

By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- After setting up two new anti-terrorism units this year that work closely with international police, the Vatican's security force has plans to join Interpol.

Vatican Radio reported Sept. 28 that the Vatican's security force will join the international police organization sometime before Oct. 10 in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The announcement of the alliance was made during a Sept. 27 celebration at the papal summer villa in Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome. Pope Benedict XVI briefly appeared at the celebration and gave his "sincere thanks for the competence and dedication" of the security force, or gendarme corps. The feast day of St. Michael the Archangel, the corps' patron saint, is Sept. 29.

The corps' director, Domenico Giani, said the force also is looking into forging an "agreement of cooperation with the Italian police," reported Vatican Radio.

The Vatican and Pope Benedict have been named as potential targets by extremist groups in recent years. Although the Vatican has downplayed the threats, it also has beefed up security, adding metal detectors for all visitors to St. Peter's Basilica and attendees at papal events. The gendarme corps also has been deployed at Vatican territories outside Vatican City, in particular at Rome's patriarchal basilicas.

The gendarme corps, which has about 130 members, works in close collaboration with the Swiss Guard, especially during events involving the pope.

Earlier this year the gendarme corps started working more closely with Interpol, and in June Giani told reporters that the arrangement marked a big step forward for Vatican security. The collaboration gives the Vatican access to a large data bank of suspects, the latest information on criminal or subversive organizations, and information on the latest anti-terrorism operational procedures.

END

Source: http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0804930.htm