Pregnant nurse: I was fired for refusing flu vaccine

(CNN) -- A pregnant nurse tells CNN she was fired from her job after she refused to get a flu shot for fear of miscarrying.

"I'm a healthy person. I take care of my body. For me, the potential risk was not worth it," Dreonna Breton told CNN Sunday. "I'm not gonna be the one percent of people that has a problem."

Breton, 29, worked as a nurse at Horizons Healthcare Services in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, when she was told that all employees were required to get a flu shot. The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention advises that all health care professionals get vaccinated annually.

She told her employers that she would not get the vaccine after she explained that there were very limited studies of the effects on pregnant women.

Breton came to the decision with her family after three miscarriages.

The mother of one submitted letters from her obstetrician and primary care doctor supporting her decision, but she was told that she would be fired on December 17 if she did not receive the vaccine before then.

Horizons Healthcare Services spokesman Alan Peterson told CNN affiliate WPVI that it's unconscionable for a health care worker not to be immunized and that pregnant women are more susceptible to the flu.

The CDC website states that getting a flu shot while pregnant is the best protection for pregnant women and their babies.

"I know that the CDC says to get it, and that's fine, but it was our choice to avoid the flu vaccine and the unknowns that come with that," Breton said.

Breton offered to wear a face mask at work, a practice that is used if employees are exempted for religious reasons. The hospital did not approve, according to Breton.

Breton has no interest in taking legal action, she said. She stated she only wants the company to reevaluate their policy on vaccines for pregnant employees and to continue working as a nurse.

Counterintelligence Awareness

The FBI vigilantly investigates cases of industrial espionage and theft of intellectual property, but the Bureau also places great emphasis on preventing such crimes by educating industry on ways to keep trade secrets safe. One such innovative program in North Carolina’s Research Triangle is a collaborative effort with other federal partners called RED DART.

	Learn More - Collaborative Approach Yields Intelligence Sharing- The Insider Threat: Two Cases

The threat to America’s trade secrets—and to our national security—is real, whether it comes in the form of international spies, hackers probing online security systems, or disgruntled employees out for revenge. RED DART seeks to mitigate the threat by raising counterintelligence awareness.
Through briefings to cleared defense contractors and others in technology-rich North Carolina, RED DART makes executives and employees aware of how counterintelligence works and how they can spot suspicious activity both inside and outside their companies.

	Protecting Your Business from Espionage Here are a few precautions business executives and employees can take to protect trade secrets: -  Recognize there is an insider and outsider threat to your company. -  Identify trade secrets and implement a plan for safeguarding them. -  Secure physical and electronic versions of your trade secrets. -  Confine intellectual knowledge to a need-to-know basis. -  Provide training to employees about your company’s intellectual property plan and security. -  Do not store private information vital to your company on any device that connects to the Internet. -  Use up-to-date software security tools. Many firewalls stop incoming threats but do not restrict outbound data. -  Educate employees on e-mail tactics such as spear phishing. Establish protocols for quarantining suspicious e-mail. -  Remind employees of security policies on a regular basis through active training and seminars. Use signs and computer banners to reinforce security policies. - Ask the FBI or other security professionals to provide additional awareness training.

“Everybody wants to emulate U.S. technology,” said Brent Underwood, a special agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service who helped create RED DART. “If countries can shortcut 10 or 20 years’ worth of research and development by stealing our technology, that puts them at an obvious advantage.”
Despite the occasional high-profile case where a spy accesses highly classified documents, the majority of stolen technology is unclassified, said FBI Special Agent Lou Velasco, who manages the program out of our Charlotte Division. “With the right amount of information,” he explained, “state actors can reverse-engineer our products or build them from scratch.”
When that happens, our adversaries can be more competitive on the battlefield as well as in the global marketplace. “A big part of our program is putting information out there about the threat so that people understand just how serious it is,” Velasco said. “When a company’s trade secrets are compromised, it can threaten national security, but it can also hurt that company’s bottom line and its ability to keep people employed.”
The threat from inside a company may be employees secretly sent by foreign countries to steal secrets. RED DART briefings help employees spot suspicious behavior, such as a staffer working odd hours, asking inappropriate questions, or making frequent trips overseas. Externally, foreign agents may pose as potential investors or customers to gain access to technical information that could compromise a company’s trade secrets. And weak online security is always an invitation to hackers.
Griff Kundahl, executive director of the Center of Innovation for Nanobiotechnology in North Carolina, a state-funded organization that fosters new technology in the region, has worked closely with the RED DART program to help educate the center’s members.
“Our core constituents are early-stage companies,” Kundahl said. “They developed a product that might treat cancer, for example. They are trying to raise money and get their product to market. They don’t have much time or the resources to consider security risks. If RED DART can get them to understand these risks, it helps everybody. When they realize that all their efforts could be for naught if their technology is stolen or compromised, it can be eye-opening for them.”
“Our challenge is to show how real the threat is,” Velasco said. “We arm people with tools so that they can make appropriate business decisions.”
Michelle Brody, a special agent with the Defense Security Service and a founding member of RED DART, added, “When RED DART helps a company protect itself a little better, it not only helps them, it helps our national security.”

North to Alaska Part 4: The Shot that Pierced the Alaska Pipeline

Located less than 200 miles from the Arctic Circle, our resident agency in Fairbanks is one of the FBI’s most remote offices—but its three investigators cover an expansive amount of territory and help safeguard some of the country’s most valuable infrastructure.
Within the office’s area of responsibility is the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, an 800-mile engineering marvel that has carried billions of gallons of crude oil from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez since it began pumping in 1977.
“For as long and as exposed as the pipeline is, it is definitely not a soft target on the ground or in the air,” said Special Agent Bruce Milne. That’s because the pipeline’s owner, Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, provides extensive security and maintains strong ties with local and federal law enforcement.

	FBI Agent and Dog Musher Special Agent Bruce Milne has spent 25 years in the FBI, and most of that time has been in Fairbanks—Alaska’s second largest city with about 32,000 residents. “Inside the city limits it’s like any other small town,” he said, “but go 10 minutes out of town and it’s just about complete wilderness.” Even though winter temperatures can plummet to 60-below zero and highway signs caution drivers to beware of moose, Milne is happy to be in Fairbanks because he has a passion for training and racing sled dogs. Alaskans call it “mushing,” and Milne has done more than his share. In 2007, the Boston native competed in the famous Iditarod—known as “the last great race”—and he has also raced multiple times in the equally grueling Yukon Quest. The Iditarod begins in Anchorage each year on the first day of March and ends more than 1,000 miles away in Nome. It is an extreme test of skill and endurance, pitting man and his dog team against the elements and the clock. “Being known in dog mushing circles has helped me as an FBI agent,” Milne said. “The residents here appreciate the fact that I am a member of their community, not just somebody who will leave after a few years.”

“We all take the security of the pipeline very seriously,” said Milne, a 25-year FBI veteran who was drawn to Alaska in part because of his interest in dog sledding (see sidebar). “Our Joint Terrorism Task Force coordinates closely with Alyeska and Alaska State Troopers to protect the pipeline,” he added.
One case that stands out for Milne occurred in October 2001, when a resident of Livengood—a town of less than two dozen people about 50 miles north of Fairbanks—shot a hole in the pipeline with a high-powered rifle.
A bullet would not ordinarily breach the pipeline’s exterior, which is constructed of thick steel and lined inside with several inches of high-density insulation. But the single shot from Daniel Lewis’ rifle somehow did penetrate the pipeline, and oil began streaming out with tremendous force. “If you would have put your hand in front of the leak,” Milne said, “the pressure would have taken it off.”
Lewis, described later in court as a career criminal, had been released from jail only weeks before the shooting incident. He was detained by troopers after he and his brother were spotted near the spill.
Milne and his colleague, Special Agent Mark Terra, were called in to investigate. They recovered the rifle—the scope had blood on it where it had recoiled against Lewis’ face—made plaster foot casts at the crime scene, and began interviewing people who knew the Lewis brothers. “Alyeska security and local troopers did a tremendous amount of work on this case as well,” Milne said.
Meanwhile, oil spewed from the pipeline for days before engineers could stop it. More than 285,000 gallons of crude were spilled as a result of that small bullet hole and—according to press reports at the time—the cleanup took many months and cost $13 million.

A stretch of the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

Lewis was charged with a range of federal and state crimes, from weapons offenses to oil pollution, criminal mischief, and driving while intoxicated. In 2002 he received a 10-year federal sentence; the following year in state court, he was sentenced to 16 years in prison. His sentences are running concurrently.
Coming less than a month after the 9/11 terror attacks, the pipeline shooting served as a reminder that protecting the country—whether from terrorists or other criminals—requires constant vigilance. “Everyone here recognizes that the stakes are as high in Alaska as anywhere else,” Milne said. “That’s why we work so closely with our partners to maintain the highest level of security.”

North to Alaska Part 3: A Domestic Terrorist With a Deadly Plan

By the time he moved to Alaska in 2006, Paul Rockwood, Jr. was an ardent follower of the American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who he met at a Virginia mosque in late 2001.
Shortly after he settled with his family in the small fishing village of King Salmon to work for the National Weather Service, our agents in Anchorage were aware that Rockwood had begun compiling a list of targets in the U.S. military he might assassinate in the name of jihad.
“If you were wearing a U.S. military uniform,” said Special Agent Doug Klein, who worked the case from Anchorage, “as far as Rockwood was concerned, you were a target.”
A military veteran himself, Rockwood believed it was his religious duty to kill those who desecrated Islam. In 2009, he began sharing his deadly plans with an individual he thought held similar views. But that person was actually an undercover operative employed by our Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in Anchorage.
For a time, JTTF personnel wondered how determined Rockwood was about his plans. “But one day when he was with our undercover in Anchorage he identified the building of a cleared defense contractor and said, ‘This is the kind of building I want to blow up,’ ” Klein said. “That’s when we knew he was a serious threat.”
Keeping track of Rockwood was difficult, however, because King Salmon is some 300 miles from Anchorage and only accessible by airplane. And with only a few hundred residents, outsiders would be immediately spotted, so attempts at surveillance were impractical. “We couldn’t use 90 percent of the traditional investigative techniques we use in the Lower 48,” Klein explained.
In addition, small, regional airlines in Alaska are not regulated by the Transportation Security Administration, so anyone can fly with weapons. On Rockwood’s frequent trips from King Salmon to Anchorage, Klein said, “he could have had a gun or a bomb and we never would have known.”
During those Anchorage visits, Rockwood met the undercover operative and discussed buying electronics and downloading schematics of cell phones to make bomb detonators. At one meeting, he said he was getting ready to relocate to the mainland and had plans to steal a cache of explosives in Boston—where he grew up—that would help him go operational.
By early 2010, Rockwood had formalized his hit list to include 15 specific targets—all outside Alaska—and he gave the list to his wife, Nadia, who was aware of his intentions.
Even with no overt acts of terrorism to charge him with, it was decided that for the sake of public safety, Rockwood and his wife could not be allowed to leave Alaska. In May 2010, JTTF agents questioned Rockwood and his wife as they attempted to fly out of Anchorage. Both denied any involvement with a hit list or terrorist plot.
The couple was charged with making false statements to the FBI in a domestic terrorism investigation, and in July, Rockwood was found guilty and sentenced to eight years in prison—the maximum sentence under the law. His wife was also found guilty and received five years of probation.
“We can never be sure if he would have acted,” Klein said, “but Rockwood was clearly a threat, not only to the individuals on his list but to the entire community.”

Remembering Lou Peters Selfless Actions Brought Down Mob Boss

In 1977, things were going well for Lou Peters—he was living the American dream with his wife and three daughters, running a successful Cadillac dealership in Lodi, California. And in June of that year, he got an offer he couldn’t refuse.
A man approached Peters expressing interest in buying the dealership. When told it wasn’t for sale, the man was insistent, telling Peters to “name any price.” Finally, Peters said he would sell it for $2 million—nearly twice what the business was worth. The man accepted—then told Peters that the buyer was none other than Joseph Bonnano, Sr., head of the Bonnano organized crime family, who wanted the dealership to launder the family’s illegal funds.

	Lou Peters, left, receives an award from FBI Director William Webster in 1980.

Initially taken aback upon learning of mafia involvement, Peters eventually agreed to the sale, recounting, “I didn’t understand why these people wanted to come into our county. And I wanted to find out.” He then went to a local police chief and told him what had happened. When the chief asked what he was going to do next, Peters replied, “Well, I’m going to the FBI.”
And to the FBI he went, telling all. The FBI saw an opportunity to take down Bonnano and asked Peters for help. He was on board. “I felt it was the right thing to do, and I just did it,” he said.
Over the next nearly two years, Peters played the part of a corrupt businessman, gaining remarkable access to the Bonnano family and even becoming a close companion of Joseph Bonnano, Sr. To gain his confidence, Peters recalled saying something to “the old man” along the lines of, “Well, this should really bring me into the family”—to which Bonnano replied, “Lou, you’re already in the family.”
Through it all, Peters never took his eye off the ball—gathering evidence, secretly recording conversations, and debriefing agents on what he had learned. And his efforts weren’t without personal sacrifice…besides the risk to his life, he had to obtain a (temporary) legal separation from his wife not only to protect his family but also to have a credible reason to move out of his house—and into an apartment that was being monitored by the FBI.

	“There’s a time, I believe, when you have to stand up and be counted for—and I agree that I probably went the extreme, but that’s my way of life. When I tackle something, I believe in going at it 100 percent.”
	- Lou Peters

In the end, Peters got what we needed. When he told Bonnano—during a recorded call—that he had been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury regarding his dealings with the family, the old man directed him to destroy any records that could be linked back to him and his associates. Peters took the tape to the FBI agent on the case. While listening to it, the agent jumped up and said, “You got him!”
Thanks to Lou Peters, Joseph Bonnano, Sr. was found guilty of obstructing justice and sentenced to five years in prison—the first felony conviction in the mob boss’ long life of crime.
To show its appreciation, in October 1980 the FBI presented Peters with an award for his selfless and valiant actions…an award that has been granted annually for the past 30 years as the Louis E. Peters Memorial Service Award, bestowed upon the citizen who best exemplifies the standards set by Peters in providing service to the FBI and the nation.
Shortly before his death in 1981, Peters said, “I was very proud of what I did for my country.” The country is very proud of him, too. Thanks, Lou Peters.

Living a Lie Identity Theft That Lasted Decades

When Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Richard Blanco—a member of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in Jacksonville—interviewed an individual suspected of driver’s license fraud in 2011, he wasn’t initially sure if the man was the victim or the perpetrator of identity theft.
That’s because the man—now imprisoned and officially known as John Doe—had a stack of government-issued identification acquired during the 22 years he had been using a living victim’s identity. That included a passport, driver’s license, birth certificate, Social Security card, and identification allowing him unescorted access to a port and military installation.

	Podcast: John Doe Sentenced

“He was extremely convincing that he was the victim,” said Blanco, a veteran trooper with more than 30 years on the force. “When you have 20 forms of identification and it’s in your possession,” Blanco explained, “it’s hard to not believe you are the person you say you are.”
But John Doe was indeed an imposter, and while he was living under another man’s name, the real victim was living a nightmare. It all started in 1989 when the victim’s car was broken into and his wallet was stolen. His identity had been compromised.
John Doe began using the victim’s name, even when he went to prison for aggravated battery. As a result, Blanco said, “if you run John Doe’s fingerprints, even today, they will come back with the victim’s name.”
When the victim, a Miami resident, applied to become a corrections officer, he had to explain why his records showed a felony conviction. He urged officials to compare his fingerprints to those of John Doe’s. When the victim applied for a passport, he was denied because the passport office claimed he already had one—the one that John Doe had applied for and received.
When Blanco was able to talk with the real victim, he heard two decades worth of frustration. The victim had filed a police report years before, but John Doe had never been caught or stopped. Blanco remembers the victim telling him, “This guy has been living my identity. He’s gotten my license suspended and he’s had kids in my name.”
When Blanco realized that he was dealing with a massive and long-running case of identity fraud, John Doe was arrested. The JTTF opened an investigation, and John Doe was eventually indicted federally on numerous counts of aggravated identity theft and fraud.
JTTF investigators had to rule out any threat to national security, because John Doe had access to the Mayport Naval Station as well as JaxPort, the Jacksonville Port Authority. Although he was just working at those locations, Special Agent Paxton Stelly, who supervises Jacksonville’s JTTF, pointed out that John Doe had passed the background checks required to gain access there. “He appears to have manipulated the system with ease,” Stelly said.
Last month a jury convicted John Doe—who continues to insist he is the real victim in the case—and sentenced him to 10 years in prison. Despite DNA testing and a thorough investigation, his real identity remains a mystery.
“It will continue to be a mystery unless he makes an admission to us,” Blanco said, adding, “I don’t know what he’s going to do when he gets out of prison, because the man doesn’t have an identity.”

North to Alaska Part 1: Smallest FBI Office Takes on Big Job

The FBI recently investigated a white powder letter incident in Alaska with the help of a partner law enforcement agency. “It took our partners two days to get to the place where the white powder letter was,” said Mary Frances Rook, special agent in charge of our Anchorage Field Office, “because they had to take a ferry and a plane and an all-terrain vehicle to get to the school where the letter had been sent.”
Welcome to the Anchorage Division—the FBI’s smallest field office—whose agents are responsible for covering the most territory of any office in the Bureau. That’s an area of more than 600,000 square miles, twice the size of Texas and packed with natural beauty and hard-to-reach places.

	An Opportunity for New Agents Of the FBI’s 56 field offices, Anchorage has the fewest personnel—but that turns out to be an opportunity for new agents assigned there fresh out of the FBI Academy. “It’s a huge benefit for a first-office agent to come to a place like Anchorage because you get to do so many things,” said Special Agent in Charge Mary Frances Rook. “You aren’t pigeonholed here. Some of our biggest cases have been made by first-office agents. That’s not an experience you are going to find in a larger office because those cases usually go to the more senior agents,” she explained. “Here everybody has the opportunity to develop a case and run with it and be successful.” Rick Sutherland, a former North Carolina police officer, joined the FBI in 2009 and his first office was Fairbanks, in our three-man resident agency. Shortly after his arrival, he was assigned a domestic terrorism case that recently ended with the subject’s lengthy trial and conviction. “Getting this case and this kind of experience so early in my FBI career was a great opportunity,” Sutherland said, “and it might not have happened had I been sent to a large office.”

Although the Anchorage Division investigates the same types of violent crime, public corruption, and national security matters as FBI offices in the Lower 48, “there is so much that is different here,” said Rook—and she’s not just referring to the bears and moose occasionally spotted on downtown Anchorage streets.
“If you’re in Anchorage, there are roads to Fairbanks and to the Kenai Peninsula, but other than that there are no roads,” Rook said. Getting to remote villages and towns requires a plane or a boat. Combine the geographical difficulties with extreme weather and one begins to understand how the 49th state can pose considerable challenges for the agents and support staff in Anchorage and our satellite locations in Fairbanks and Juneau.
Few FBI offices require snowmobiles to respond to crime scenes, but Anchorage keeps two on hand. The harsh Alaskan winters, where temperatures can plummet to more than 50 degrees below zero and the sun rises above the horizon for only a few hours each day, can make being outdoors seem almost otherworldly.
“It can be a challenging place to work,” Rook acknowledged. “But the flip side is that everybody knows it. So everybody works together. We work great with each other and with our local and federal law enforcement partners. Everybody’s got each other’s back, because you just can’t survive up here alone.”
Not surprisingly, it takes a certain kind of person to work for the FBI in Alaska. “The most successful Bureau people here are the ones who come with an idea that this is going to be a great adventure,” said Rook, whose assignment in Anchorage began in January 2011.
Special Agent Catherine Ruiz, who transferred to Anchorage with her husband last year from Chicago, agreed. “Every few days you will be driving home and you look up at the snowcapped mountains and say, ‘Wow, this is a beautiful place.’ ”
Bureau personnel who come to Alaska tend to be multi-talented as well. “We don’t have a lot of resources,” Rook said, “so everyone has to do a little bit of everything.” One of the office’s three pilots, for example, is also the polygraph examiner and a full-time counterintelligence agent. “That’s not unusual,” Rook noted.
“I originally thought I would come to Alaska for a few years,” said Special Agent Eric Gonzalez. That was 15 years ago. Gonzalez liked the place and the people—and so did his family. He added, “Most of the Bureau folks I know who worked here and left wished they would have stayed.”