THE DALLAS OBSERVER

Paper Trails

Morning News waits and waits to acknowledge CBS-11's scoop of an ethically challenged state rep

November 17, 2005

On November 3, CBS-11 broke what is arguably the most important story about the FBI investigation into alleged corruption in local government since federal agents swarmed Dallas City Hall. State Representative Terri Hodge had been receiving $700 a month in rent subsidies for nearly four years from developer Brian Potashnik, who just happened to garner her support for several of his polarizing housing projects. Her attorney Mike Snipes did not dispute the station's reporting, explaining rather that his client thought she qualified for the sweetheart lease. With Channel 11's scoop not in doubt, the beaten Dallas Morning News had three options: READ THE OBSERVER STORY

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State Rep. Accepts Thousands In Free Rent

By Todd Bensman

Investigative Producer

KTVT, CBS-11 News

For the past three and a half years, Texas State Rep. Terri Hodge accepted rent breaks worth at least $700 a month from a low-income housing developer for whom she helped gain state approval to build at least a half dozen lucrative apartment projects, CBS 11 has learned from interviews and internal company records. READ MORE

Feds To Focus On Hodge's Rent Arrangement

By Todd Bensman and Robert Riggs

The Investigators

CBS 11 News

The U.S. Attorney's office in Dallas and the FBI will investigate whether any federal crimes occurred when Dallas State Rep. Terri Hodge accepted at least $32,000 in unreported rent and utilities from a developer and then provided her political support to his projects, two sources have told CBS 11 News. READ MORE

Rep. Terri Hodge Helped Inmates Win Parole

By Todd Bensman and Robert Riggs

Investigative Unit

CBS 11 News

During the past several years, Dallas State Rep. Terri Hodge has solicited and accepted campaign contributions from the families of violent Texas prison inmates, then applied the influence of her state office to obtain sentence-shaving results and other coveted benefits from the prison and parole bureaucracies, a CBS 11 News investigation has found. A two-month news investigation revealed that Hodge has for years used her legislative influence within the prison and parole systems while developing a paying political constituency from a closed-knit community of inmate families desperate to help their loved ones inside. READ MORE

State Rep Hodge Aided Murderer

(CBS 11 News) By Todd Bensman and Robert Riggs

Investigative Unit

PALESTINE — Larry Casey is one of Texas' original mass murderers. In 1973, the Houston Post newspaper carrier grabbed a .22-caliber rifle and embarked on a chillingly calm and deliberate shooting spree that lasted one hour. When it was over, three 10-year-old girls walking home from school, a 5-year-old girl riding her bicycle in her driveway and an 86-year-old grandmother standing in her driveway lay bleeding where Casey had shot them down. Casey's bullets did more than kill three of the children and the grandmother; those who survived that day have suffered debilitating health problems ever since.

Today, Casey is serving hard time in the Michael Maximum Security prison on the outskirts of this east Texas town. In his troubled life behind bars, the confessed mass murderer has found an unlikely, but unstinting friend and advocate in high places: Dallas Rep. Terri Hodge. For more than two years, Hodge tried to use her legislative position to help Casey stay on schedule for an early release from prison on good behavior, set for February 2006. Casey called Hodge for help early last year because he found his scheduled release suddenly jeopardized. READ MORE

State legislator indicted in Dallas public corruption case

Terri Hodge among 14 charged in alleged public housing scheme involving bribery, extortion, kickbacks; two others named in separate case.

AUSTIN AMERICAN STATESMAN

October 02, 2007

DALLAS — Federal authorities unsealed indictments Monday alleging a bribery and extortion scheme within Dallas City Hall involving state Rep. Terri Hodge, numerous past and present city officials and a prominent real estate developer. Federal prosecutors allege that Hodge, D-Dallas, used her office to help clear red tape for a Dallas development firm that was secretly paying her rent: $32,000 in five years. She was charged with eight counts of bribery, five counts of fraud and false statements in connection with federal income tax returns, and one count of conspiracy to commit bribery. In the past five years, she was investigated for allegations that she had assisted inmates and their families in exchange for campaign contributions and that she had lobbied parole board members for favorable decisions in some cases. No charges were filed.

FBI Sent Wiretapped Developer To Officials With Bribery Offers

July 8, 2005 9:00 pm US/Central
By Todd Bensman

Investigative Producer

CBS-11 News

This past May, three businessmen approached prominent Dallas business leader Comer Cottrell in his office with an offer they hoped he wouldn’t refuse. As CBS-11 first reported last week, one of the three men asked Cottrell to pass along a bribe to Dallas City Councilmember Don Hill as incentive to push through a mired affordable housing project in Hill’s district. Cottrell says he was offered a slice of the bribe to pass it to Hill. It was probably a good thing for the 73-year-old multi-millionaire and black business icon that, according to him, he turned down the offer. One of the three men was wearing a wire for the FBI. The meeting of the three men with Cottrell, it turns out, was set up by the FBI as part of an elaborate federal bribery sting that CBS-11 confirms has furnished tens of thousands of dollars in phony bribe money, undercover informants and wiretaps of staff at City Hall as part of an ongoing investigation involving government subsidized affordable housing. READ MORE

Mayor Pro-Tem Don Hill Allegedly Involved in Pay for Play Bribe Scheme

By Todd Bensman and Robert Riggs

CBS-11 News

A Dallas lawyer and two local contractors claimed to be working closely with Mayor Pro-Tem Don Hill this Spring when a developer paid them a $50,000 down payment on a deal in which Hill would stop stalling a south Dallas project and get it approved, say two independent sources familiar with covert tape recordings of the negotiations. Dallas attorney John Jerome Lewis, a longtime professional acquaintance of Hill, also an attorney, is heard on the FBI audio tapes negotiating the financial terms to clear Hill's political obstruction of the development, the two sources told CBS-11 News. READ MORE

City Plan Commissioner Allegedly Was Paid $5,000 for Project He Voted To Approve

By Todd Bensman

Investigative Producer

CBS-11 News

Dallas Plan Commission member D'Angelo Lee, who is a subject of a wide-ranging FBI corruption investigation of City Hall, approved a zoning permit for an affordable housing project from which he reaped a $5,000 consulting fee, CBS-11 has learned. READ MORE

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DART Rails Bedeviled By Rampaging Juveniles

By Todd Bensman

Investigative Producer

CBS-11 News

May 19, 2005

    The DART mass transit rail lines have become a battle ground for

roving gangs of youths who intimidate and assault passengers, disturb

the peace and sometimes commit heinous crimes. The kids savage rail

cars with rocks and fists, fight turf wars on moving trains and

terrorize the elderly, sick and weak. READ MORE

'Kickstand Scandal" Embroils DART Police In Expensive Sexual

Misconduct Investigation

DART has spent more than $101,000 in tax money for a Dallas law firm

to conduct a "sexual harassment" investigation. Six motorcycle squad

officers were placed on paid administrative leave for five months,

costing at least $102,000 in salary. The scandal stretched the

shorthanded agency's ability to patrol. To date, DART has fired two officers. A third resigned under investigation, and two others have been disciplined. DART has successfully kept the whole affair quiet, until now. READ MORE

Chemical Weapon Prompts Most Extensive Domestic Terror Investigation Since OKC Bombing

By Todd Bensman

CBS-11

Federal authorities this year mounted one of the most extensive investigations of domestic terrorism since the Oklahoma City bombing, CBS 11 has learned. Three people linked to white supremacist and anti-government groups are in custody. At least one weapon of mass destruction - a sodium cyanide bomb capable of delivering a deadly gas cloud - has been seized in the Tyler area.

Investigators have seized at least 100 other bombs, bomb components, machine guns, 500,000 rounds of ammunition and chemical agents. But the government also found some chilling personal documents indicating that unknown co-conspirators may still be free to carry out what appeared to be an advanced plot. And, authorities familiar with the case say more potentially deadly cyanide bombs may be in circulation. READ MORE

FBI Launches Counter-terrorism Probe After East Texas Arrest

May 10, 2004 9:10 pm US/Central
By Todd Bensman
Investigative Producer

TYLER, TX. -- A virtually unnoticed federal arrest here this Spring of a well-educated Pakistani man caught trying to buy illegal silencers, firearms and C-4 explosives has set off a nationwide FBI counterterrorism investigation, CBS-11 has learned. The investigation centers on whether Osama Haroon Satti, 35, came to Tyler on behalf of a terrorist cell hoping to arm for a plot to rob and murder wealthy Jews and other non-Muslims on the West Coast, sources familiar with the FBI investigation tell CBS-11. Satti is currently in federal custody on charges of buying an illegal silencer and handgun. READ MORE

U.S. Authorities Ignoring Terror

Finance Source, Narcotic Plant Khat

Feb 28, 2005 10 p.m.

By Todd Bensman

Investigative Producer

CBS-11 News

LONDON – Inside the beverage cooler of a neighborhood grocery store, next to the mundane staples of daily life like Snapple, Coca-Cola and orange juice, a foreign-looking product doesn’t seem to fit in. Bundles of evenly cut plant stems, tightly bound together, poke out from green banana leaf wrappings.The banana leaf bundles look as though they are straight out of Africa, and they are. This is the chewable narcotic stimulant known as “khat” or “chat.” The cultivated shrub, with its chewable leaves, is imported from places like Yemen, Kenya and Somalia into Great Britain at the rate of some 30 tons per month. It is sold legally throughout Great Britain, mostly in neighborhoods densely populated by North African Muslim immigrants to whom khat chewing at home is as common as coffee drinking in America. But concern is on the rise among some counter-terrorism specialists that huge, largely ignored, increases in Khat smuggling from Great Britain into major U.S. cities, including Dallas, may be funding international terrorist groups. Khat is as illegal in the United States as cocaine and heroin but smuggling cases are only rarely prosecuted. READ MORE

Dallas Server Company Carries Zarqawi Death Videos, Terrorist Websites

Nov 14, 2004

By Todd Bensman and Robert Riggs

CBS-11 News

CARBONDALE, ILL. -- The grainy Internet movie file flashes a title: “Al Qaeda Movement in the Land of the Two Rivers. An Operation Against the British Troops Near Baghdad.” The streaming online video clip shows a car as it motors slowly up a single-lane road, away from the cameraman who shakily zooms in as it gathers speed toward a British checkpoint. A caption appears, reading "Here goes the brave lion to tear up his prey and to win paradise." The cameraman is speaking in Arabic, his voice rising with “God is Great, God is Great” as the car at center screen arrives at the British checkpoint and a soldier standing in the road. Suddenly, a massive fireball of orange and black lashes upward and outward, instantly slaughtering him and wounding two other British soldiers of the Black Watch Regiment, along with the suicide bomber, according to later press reports. The Jihadists responsible are then filmed at the scene kicking a dismembered arm left behind by a recovery tank squad.

This is a movie clip put up just last week by notorious terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s organization within a few days of the actual Nov. 7 attack. Sometime over the weekend, as CBS-11 aired promotions for this story, it disappeared with others of its ilk on an Internet server owned by an up-and-coming Dallas web site hosting company called The Planet. In downtown Dallas. Glorifying the slaughter of American soldiers and their allies in Iraq. Helping to enhance the global street credentials of Zarqawi among any like-minded person with access to a computer. READ MORE

Feds Uncover Palestinian Plot to Assassinate Ft. Worth Cop, Federal Agent

May 11, 2005
By Todd Bensman
CBS-11 News
FORT WORTH -- At home and off duty, Fort Worth Police Detective Scott Campbell never lets two semi-automatic Glock .45s stray far from his shooting hand. He sleeps with one, and while awake, he eats and watches television with both weapons close by. Det. Campbell's wife keeps a loaded gun close at hand too, even though she is a stay-at-home mom who cares for the couple's two young children, ages 4 and 1. Det. Campbell and his wife go to these extraordinary lengths because they and their children have been marked for assassination. A ruthless criminal crime family he spent years investigating and helped break up in 2003 wants them dead. Federal authorities confirm that the Palestinian gang known as the "Ghali crime family," which ran one of the nation's most prolific retail theft rings from Fort Worth, has hatched what one top official called a "credible" plot from behind bars. READ MORE

Intelligence Breach Revealed In Dallas Terror Case

By Todd Bensman

CBS 11 News

The U.S. government's signature domestic terrorism case – against the North Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development – was delayed by more than five months last year because federal prosecutors "inadvertently" released volumes of highly classified intelligence materials to defense attorneys, newly unsealed records show. According to the records, government prosecutors arguing for the return of the intelligence material wrote that "its disclosure and dissemination could have profound national security and foreign policy implications" and that the private defense attorneys who viewed it did not have the legally required security clearances. READ MORE

Violence-Preaching Web Magazine Linked To N. Texas Brothers

Feb 7, 2005 9:00 pm US/Central

By Todd Bensman and Robert Riggs

The Investigators CBS-11 News (KTVT, Dallas)

BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND - A radical Islamist web magazine published here, which has encouraged suicide attacks against American forces in Iraq, is hosted by a North Texas Internet company linked to three Palestinian brothers about to be tried on federal terrorism charges in Dallas, CBS-11 News has learned. READ MORE

Texas Muslims Host Ayatollah Khomeini Tribute Attended by “Mainstream” Muslim Leaders

Dec 17, 2004

By Todd Bensman

CBS-11 News

IRVING, TX. -- A North Texas Muslim organization last week staged a "Tribute" conference honoring the life and works of the "Great Islamic Visionary" Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The late Iranian leader's legacy includes the 1979 American hostage crisis, the first large-scale terrorist bombings against Americans, and a strict Islamist government accused by President George Bush of making up part of an international "Axis of Evil."

Last Saturday's all-day conference in Irving was sponsored by the Metroplex Organization of Muslims in North Texas (MOMIN) and was attended by a number of prominent North Texas Muslim leaders and activists who were invited to speak. READ MORE

Republic of Texas Separatists Reappear in Small Texas Town

By Todd Bensman
Investigative Producer
CBS-11 News
Six quiet years have passed since anti-government Republic of Texas separatists made headlines during a violent weeklong standoff with police. The 1997 siege in the Davis Mountains of West Texas left one separatist dead, a hostage wounded and, with the imprisonment of self-styled Ambassador Richard McLaren, seemed to dampen the group’s rallying cry that Texas was a fully independent country.
But now a newly revived wing of the Republic of Texas is attempting to stage a visible comeback. The group has planted an 1836 Independence flag and declared the unassuming East Texas rail town of Overton their provisional capitol. READ MORE