The awards go to ... B1
MORE THAN
The Beavs’ hero, of Redmond • D1
100
$
IN COUPONS INSIDE
OCTOBER 9, 2011
SUNDAY $1.50
Serving Central Oregon since 1903 www.bendbulletin.com
Authorized in secret, the death of a citizen By Charlie Savage New York Times News Service
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s secret legal memorandum that opened the door to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born radical Muslim cleric hiding in Yemen, found that it would be lawful Al-Awlaki only if it were not feasible to take him alive, according to people who have read the document. The memo, written last year, came after months of interagency deliberations and offers a glimpse into the legal debate that led to one of the most significant decisions made by President Barack Obama — to move ahead with the killing of a U.S. citizen without trial. The secret document provided the justification for acting despite an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections of the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war, according to people familiar with the analysis. The memo, however, was narrowly drawn to the specifics of this case. See Killing / A3
Cuts target military pensions
Paid trip gets city worker in trouble • Unspecified discipline seems an about-face for Bend By Nick Grube The Bulletin
A Bend public works employee was disciplined after a city investigation found he went on a hunting trip that was paid for by a private company with
an interest in municipal business. The investigation, which began in February and cost nearly $14,000, stemmed from an anonymous complaint that was emailed that month to city councilors under the pseudonym
own contracting firm, the employee began funneling work to the new business. City Manager Eric King acknowledged in an Oct. 3 email to The Bulletin that the employee was disciplined last summer for going on a hunting trip that was “paid for by a company with an administrative or legislative interest in the City.” See Disciplined / A7
SHADOW LAKE FIRE
Letting a fire burn to 10,000 acres • Documents and officials reconstruct the strategy to fight one of 2011’s largest timber blazes
• Also often questioned: dead trees and other fire fuels By Dylan J. Darling The Bulletin
Ryan Brennecke / The Bulletin
Snow begins to collect Wednesday morning on downed trees burned during the Shadow Lake Fire last month in the Mount Washington Wilderness — exactly the kind of wintry weather fire managers were counting on to help put out the blaze. The fire, which is holding at about 10,000 acres, likely won’t spread farther. Early after the fire sparked late in August, officials planned on snow or rain extinguishing it. By Dylan J. Darling
By Chris Vaughn
The Bulletin
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
n Aug. 28, days after a lightning storm crossed over Central Oregon, an observer in the Black Butte lookout tower noticed the first sign of what would become the Shadow Lake Fire. Burning in thick Mount Washington Wilderness timber, the fire, spotted at 2:30 p.m., put off smoke indicative of about a 10acre blaze. Federal fire managers weighed the benefits of stopping the fire immediately against the risks involved in doing so. They decided to have firefighters build a fire line outside of the wilderness and wait for the fire to come to them.
FORT WORTH, Texas — “I don’t know anyone in the business world who has gone to the funerals of 35 people they worked with and knew personally, who looked all those men’s children in the eye and knew they’d grow up without a father,” said Mant Hawkins, who before becoming CEO of Bell Industry in Dallas was a Marine officer and fighter pilot. This kind of conversation has been common lately among those associated with the allvolunteer military as ideas and proposals are debated in Washington, D.C., to reform the pension package for those who serve a minimum of 20 years. Why? Like everything else, it’s driven by the need to cut the defense budget by $450 billion in the next decade. See Military / A7
“Tom Jefferson.” Among other things, Jefferson claimed a salesman from a local business took a newly hired city supervisor on an all-expenses-paid birdhunting trip and fixed poker games in an attempt to “curry favor.” Jefferson, who wanted to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, further alleged that when the salesman started his
O
The ensuing conflagration, at 10,000 acres, was one of the biggest timber fires in Oregon this year. And though it caused no major injuries, destroyed no structures and burned no private land, it did force the evacuation of a youth camp, close trails, blanket the region with smoke and back up traffic along heavily used highways. While the fire burned more acres and cost more to fight than fire managers originally expected, Bill Anthony, Sisters District ranger for the Deschutes National Forest, said it was fought properly. “I would make the same type of decisions today that I did in late August,” he said last week. The top U.S. Forest Service official in
the district where the fire started, Anthony made the early decisions that defined the fire. He didn’t make them by himself, though. Documents obtained by The Bulletin detail the maps, models and weather forecasts Anthony considered when deciding how to fight the fire. As the blaze grew, its management was transferred from the district to a national-level management team, whose decisions were based on a fresh report created by a team of fire experts from around Oregon and Washington. These reports describe the natural resources, lives and property the fire threatened to endanger if allowed to spread. See Shadow Lake / A6
Although the Shadow Lake Fire prompted the evacuation of the Big Lake Youth Camp, its manager doesn’t question how it was managed. “The forest was unhealthy,” said Bob Palmer, camp ranger at the youth camp south of U.S. Highway 20. “It definitely needed to burn.” But the fire does make Palmer question why the woods around the lake were allowed to become clogged with dead and downed trees. “The bigger issue is, how come they don’t reduce fuels?” he said. In forest terms, fuels are anything in the woods that can burn, from groundcovering grasses to tall pines. Chewing through fuels, wildfire has blackened thousands of acres of forests near Sisters during the past decade. Thinning those fuels could reduce the size and intensity of those fires, said Bill Anthony, ranger for the Sisters District of the Deschutes National Forest. See Fires / A6
Inside • Timeline: Mapping the fire’s spread to 10,000 acres over two weeks • Estimating the costs, A6
Online poker: A push to legalize, regulate — and collect By Janet Morrissey New York Times News Service
Jesus Ferguson and Howard Lederer (“the Professor”) did not invent online poker. They just took it to new heights — and, according to the authorities, new depths — as their company, Full Tilt Poker, became a gambling
palace of the Web. The poker press routinely described the two pro players as grand masters and endlessly parsed their styles. Ferguson, whose official first name is Christopher, was the mathematically minded Ph.D.; Lederer, the strategic Kasparov of Texas Hold ’Em.
As the years went by, Full Tilt became a powerhouse in the cultish world of Internet poker. By 2010, Americans were gambling $16 billion a year through such sites, according to PokerScout.com. But on April 15, players in the U.S. went to www.fulltiltpoker.
com and found this message: “This domain name has been seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Now, louder than ever, a debate stretching from the tables of Las Vegas to the halls of Congress is summed up with this question: Why? See Poker / A5
New York Times illustration
SUNDAY
We use recycled newsprint
U|xaIICGHy02330rzu
The Bulletin An Independent Newspaper
Vol. 108, No. 282, 50 pages, 7 sections
INDEX Business Books Classified
G1-6 F4-6 E1-6
Community C1-8 Crosswords C7, E2 Horoscope
C3
Local News B1-8 Milestones C6 Obituaries B6
TODAY’S WEATHER Opinion F1-3 Sports D1-8 TV & Movies C2
Partly cloudy High 66, Low 39 Page B8
TOP NEWS OCCUPY: A leftist tea party? A2 SYRIA: Death flames unrest, A3