'This is a necessary evil,' suspected cop killer writes

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: LAPD board found Dorner was facing a bad review


• Chris Dorner filed a complaint against his training officer in 2007


• The LAPD cleared the officer and recommended that Dorner be dismissed


• "The attacks will stop when the department states the truth about my innocence," he wrote

(CNN) -- What authorities are calling Chris Dorner's campaign of guerrilla warfare against his former comrades in the Los Angeles Police Department has its roots in a hotel lobby in San Pedro, the city's port district.

In July 2007, the former Navy officer was an LAPD probationary officer, riding patrol with a veteran of the force, when they were dispatched to check out a report of a disturbance at the DoubleTree Hotel. A man had refused to leave the premises and was sitting on the bench outside the lobby when they arrived.

Christopher Gettler had "a glazed look in his eyes," court documents later recounted, and he refused to get up and speak with police. Dorner and his training officer, Teresa Evans, started to take him into custody, but he refused to comply and took a swing at them.

Gettler's family later told investigators he had a history of mental illness. Dorner wrestled with him, and the two tumbled into a planter in front of the DoubleTree. Evans readied a Taser and warned the man to stop. He submitted only after she shocked him with the electronic device.

That's where the stories start to differ. And those differences led to an investigation by the LAPD's internal affairs unit, Dorner's eventual dismissal from the force and a long court battle to clear his name -- a battle he was losing in California courts.

The LAPD now says Dorner is the subject of a massive manhunt. It accuses him of killing one police officer and wounding two others, as well as killing the daughter of his police union representative and her fiance on Sunday.

In a letter addressed to "America" and provided to CNN by an LAPD source, Dorner threatens to retaliate against officers involved in his case and their families.

"The attacks will stop when the department states the truth about my innocence," he wrote.

Two weeks after that encounter in San Pedro, Dorner went to a sergeant to report that Evans had kicked Gettler after he had given up. The LAPD investigated his complaint and ruled it "unfounded," based on accounts by three hotel employees, in May 2008.

Then the investigators' report turns to Dorner.

"The delay in reporting the alleged misconduct coupled with the witness' statements irreparably destroy Dorner's credibility, and bring into question his suitability for continued employment as a police officer," it states. The report found Dorner had made false statements to a superior while reporting the allegation that Evans had kicked the suspect and to internal affairs investigators looking into the claim.

The report recommended his dismissal, a process that was finalized after a hearing of the department's Board of Rights in January 2009. He sued to have the decision reversed, calling the process a "witch hunt," but lost at the trial court and in a state appellate court.

Dorner argued that the board had ignored evidence from both Gettler and his father, who recounted that his son said at the time that he'd been kicked.

But Gettler's father's statements conflicted with his son's, and Gettler's mental illness "affected his ability to give an accurate account of the incident," as the Court of Appeals of California put it in October 2011. Meanwhile, the board found that Dorner may have had a motive to make a bogus complaint: Evans testified that Dorner "was going to receive an unsatisfactory probationary rating if he did not improve his performance," and the kicks were reported the day after Dorner received an evaluation.

In his letter, Dorner lashes out against the LAPD's history of scandal, writing that things haven't changed "changed since the Rampart and Rodney King days. It has gotten worse."

"I know I will be villified by the LAPD and the media," he wrote. "Unfortunately, this is a necessary evil that I do not enjoy but must partake and complete for substantial change to occur within the LAPD and reclaim my name."

But LAPD Chief Charlie Beck told reporters Thursday afternoon that no apology and exoneration would be forthcoming: "It is not going to happen."

Dorner grew up in southern California and went to high school in the Los Angeles suburb of La Palma, where his mother still lives. A police officer told reporters gathered outside the tan stucco home Thursday afternoon that Dorner's mother had requested they stop knocking on her door.

Next-door neighbor Crystal Lancaster called him "a nice, friendly guy, easy to approach."

"It's a big shock when we heard it," she said. "We all couldn't believe it. We didn't know him that well, but he seemed like a really nice guy."

While in high school, he played football and was part of the police explorer program, said another neighbor, City Councilman Gerard Goedhart.

He went to college at Southern Utah University, where he was a running back on the school's football team and graduated with a degree in political science in 2001, Southern Utah athletic department spokesman Neil Gardner said.

"Chris Dorner is the last person I would ever think would do such," Gardner said Thursday. "He was a great kid."

College classmate James Usera said Dorner called him "out of the blue" four years ago, after not having spoken for several years after graduation. He complained about problems with the LAPD during the call, but Usera didn't recall the details.

"He did seem to be bothered by it or upset by it a bit, but certainly nothing that he said to me struck me as being a concern other than for concern for his employment," Usera told CNN.

He described Dorner as "a perfectly rational human being," "smart and insightful."

"Never anything that I experienced in a million years would lead me to conclude that this horrendous activity that he engaged in at this point was ever imminent or would ever be any type of concern," he added.

Dorner joined the Navy after college, receiving a commission as an ensign in July 2002. He trained in river-warfare units and and served a 2006-2007 stint in Iraq guarding oil platforms, according to Pentagon records. He held a commission as a lieutenant until February 1 and was rated as a rifle marksman and pistol expert, according to the records.

He enrolled in the LAPD Academy in February 2005 and spent four months on the streets as a trainee before being recalled to active duty for his stint in Iraq, police records state. In the end, the LAPD cost him not only his police job but his career in the Navy, he wrote.

"This is my last resort," he wrote. "The LAPD has suppressed the truth, and it has now led to deadly consequences."

CNN's Alan Duke, Mallory Simon and Barbara Starr contributed to this report.

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Despite adoption ban, N.J. couple brings home Russian tot

(CBS News) FREEHOLD, N.J. -- It's been about a month since Russian President Vladimir Putin banned Americans from adopting Russian children. It was widely seen as a retaliation for a new U.S. law targeting Russians who have violated human rights. At the time, 1,000 American families were in the middle of the adoption process.

CBS News first met Robert and Kim Summers a month ago. They were just weeks away from picking up their new son Preston from a Russian orphanage, when Putin announced the ban.

Foreign adoptions by Americans down 7 percent
U.S. family in limbo after Russia adoption ban

"I cannot put into words how my wife and I feel right now," Robert said at the time. "And we ask Putin, please, consider alternate means, but don't let these children suffer. Please. That's all we ask."

Despite the ban, the Summers decided to travel to Russia. They weren't sure whether they would return to the U.S. with their child.

"We did not know. We just prayed and kept the faith and just kept believing that, you know, all of our efforts would pay off," said Kim.

It was mid-January when they visited Preston in his orphanage outside Moscow. They finalized his paperwork and went to pick up his passport at a Russian government office.

U.S. family in limbo after Russia adoption ban
Russia seeks to reassure U.S. adoptive parents
Foreign adoptions by Americans down 7 percent

"She looked at it and she said in Russian, 'Americans? I thought there was a ban on Americans. How could we give them this passport?'" Kim recalled.

"We held our breath and I gasped for air and I said, oh no. Please, don't let us go through all this and we're going to have problems," Robert said.

Robert and Kim Summers.

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CBS News

The Summers returned the next day and found out the ban did not apply to them because a judge had already signed off on their adoption before the law was passed.

Five days later, they left Russia and brought Preston home.

"Robert and I looked at each other and we said, it's over, it's over. And I can't even tell you the relief. And how elated we are," said Kim. "I completely understand when a mother says that she takes one look at her newborn child and is instantly in love with that child. I'm in love with him. I'm in love with him, and I do believe he's in love with us, too."

The State Department estimates just 50 American families, whose adoptions have been approved by judges, will be allowed to leave Russia with their new children. The Summers consider themselves blessed to be among them.

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Alleged Cop-Killer Has Calif. Region on Edge

The truck owned and driven by suspected cop killer Christopher Dorner during his alleged rampage through the Los Angeles area was found deserted and in flames on the side of Bear Mountain, Calif., this afternoon.

Heavily armed SWAT team members descended onto Bear Mountain from a helicopter manned with snipers today to investigate the fire. The San Bernadino Sheriff's Department confirmed the car was Dorner's.

Dorner, a former Los Angeles police officer and Navy reservist, is believed to have killed one police officer and injured two others early this morning in Riverside, Calif. He is also accused of killing two civilians on Sunday after releasing a scathing "manifesto" alleging grievances committed by the police department while he worked for it and warning of coming violence toward cops.

Read More About Chris Dorner's Allegations Against the LAPD

Heavily armed officers spent much of Thursday searching for signs of Dorner, investigating multiple false leads into his whereabouts and broadcasting his license plate and vehicle description across the California Highway System.

Around 3:45 p.m. ET, police responded to Bear Mountain, where two fires were reported, and set up a staging area in the parking lot of a ski resort. They did not immediately investigate the fires, but sent a small team of heavily armed officers up in the helicopter to descend down the mountain toward the fire.

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The officers, carrying machine guns and searching the mountain for any sign of Dorner, eventually made it to the vehicle and identified it as belonging to Dorner. They have not yet found Dorner.

Late this afternoon, CNN announced that Dorner had sent a package containing his manifesto and a DVD to its offices.

PHOTOS: Former LAPD Officer Suspected in Shootings

Police officers across Southern California were on the defensive today, scaling back their public exposure, no longer responding to "barking-dog calls" and donning tactical gear outdoors.

Police departments have stationed officers in tactical gear outside police departments, stopped answering low-level calls and pulled motorcycle patrols off the road in order to protect officers who might be targets of Dorner's alleged rampage.

"We've made certain modifications of our deployments, our deviations today, and I want to leave it at that, and also to our responses," said Chief Sergio Diaz of the police department in Riverside, Calif., where the officers were shot. "We are concentrating on calls for service that are of a high priority, threats to public safety, we're not going to go on barking dog calls today."

Sgt. Rudy Lopez of the Los Angeles Police Department said Dorner is "believed to be armed and extremely dangerous."

Early Thursday morning, before they believe he shot at any police officers, Dorner allegedly went to a yacht club near San Diego, where police say he attempted to steal a boat and flee to Mexico.

He aborted the attempted theft when the boat's propeller became entangled in a rope, law enforcement officials said. It was then that he is believed to have headed to Riverside, where he allegedly shot two police officers.

"He pointed a handgun at the victim [at the yacht club] and demanded the boat," said Lt. David Rohowits of the San Diego Police Department.

Police say the rifle marksman shot at four officers in two incidents overnight, hitting three of them: one in Corona, Calif., and the two in Riverside, Calif.

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Today on New Scientist: 6 February 2013

Open Richard III DNA evidence for peer review

A good case has been made that a skeleton unearthed from a car park is that of the last Plantagenet king of England - it's time to share the data

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Musical brains smash audio algorithm limits

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Qantas chief backs troubled Dreamliner

SYDNEY: Qantas chief Alan Joyce has thrown his support behind Boeing and its troubled 787 Dreamliner, reinforcing his commitment to introducing the planes to the Australian flag-carrier's fleet.

The next generation plane suffered a series of glitches last month, prompting a global alert from the US Federal Aviation Administration that led to the worldwide grounding of all 50 operational 787s.

Qantas has 14 of the planes on order, with delivery due this year, and has retained options and purchase rights for 50 B787s of either -8 or -9 variants available for delivery from 2016.

Joyce said nothing had changed to alter the plans.

"We believe that Boeing are a great airline manufacturing company, they're a great engineering company and they will fix this problem eventually," broadcaster ABC quoted him as saying on its website on Thursday.

"They're still producing the aircraft, so the production line hasn't stopped. They have stopped delivering aircraft to customers.

"Our aircraft are due to arrive, the first one in August. We haven't been advised of any delay at this stage."

On Wednesday, the US National Transportation Safety Board said the results of its Dreamliner probe will likely not be known for weeks.

"We're probably weeks away from being able to tell people what happened and what needs to be changed," NTSB chief Deborah Hersman said in Washington.

Hersman said investigators were "proceeding with a lot of care" in investigating the cause of a January 7 lithium-ion battery fire on a Japan Airlines (JAL) 787 that occurred as the unoccupied plane sat on the tarmac at Boston's Logan airport.

The most concerning issues uncovered so far were short circuits and thermal runaway, a chemical reaction that produces uncontrollably rising temperatures, she said.

The battery problem, and another battery incident on an All Nippon Airways 787 on January 16, led to the global grounding of all Dreamliners in service until the issue is fixed.

- AFP/xq

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Shooter planned to smear victims with Chick-fil-A's

Floyd Lee Corkins was arrested at the shooting scene.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: The president of the FRC accuses the Southern Poverty Law Center of "inciting violence"


• Floyd Corkins, pleads guilty, says he wanted to intimidate those who oppose gay rights


• He faces up to 70 years in prison when sentenced April 29


• Building manager wrestled with Corkins and disarmed him after being shot in August incident

Washington (CNN) -- After years of thinking it over, Floyd Corkins finally had a plan.

He'd bought a gun and learned how to use it. He'd loaded three magazines. And he had stopped by Chick-fil-A to pick up 15 sandwiches, which he planned to smear in the dying faces of staffers he expected to kill at the Family Research Council in Washington.

It would be a statement, he said, "against the people who work in that building," according to documents filed in U.S. District Court, where Corkins pleaded guilty on Wednesday to three charges related to the August shooting at the conservative policy group.

Corkins told Judge Richard Roberts that he hoped to intimidate gay rights opponents.

The shooting came amid intense debate over remarks against gay marriage by an executive with the Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A restaurant chain and the company's support for groups considered hostile to gay rights.

The research council, a Christian group that focuses on family, anti-abortion and religious liberty issues and views homosexuality as harmful, backed Chick-fil-A in the ensuing controversy.

"They endorse Chick-fil-A and also Chick-fil-A came out against gay marriage, so I was going to use that as a statement," prosecutors quoted Corkins as telling investigators.

Corkins, 28, pleaded guilty to committing an act of terrorism while armed, interstate transportation of a firearm and ammunition, and assault with intent to kill while armed.

Prosecutors dropped seven other charges.

The charges carry sentences of up to 70 years in prison. However, the sentence could be shorter because Corkins has no prior criminal record.

Corkins will be sentenced April 29, prosecutors said.

The act of terrorism charge alleges that Corkins wanted to kill building manager Leo Johnson and other Family Research Council employees "with the intent to intimidate and coerce a significant portion of the civilian population of the District of Columbia and the United States."

It is a District of Columbia law passed in 2002 but never before used.

According to prosecutors' account of the attack filed on Wednesday, Corkins got into the Family Research Council's building by telling Johnson that he was there to interview for an internship.

After Johnson asked for identification, prosecutors say, Corkins reached into his backpack, retrieved a handgun and leveled it at Johnson's head.

Johnson ducked and lunged at Corkins before he could fire a shot, according to prosecutors.

As the two struggled, Corkins fired three times, hitting Johnson once in the arm, before the building manager was able to wrestle him to the ground, disarm him and hold him at gunpoint until police arrived.

As he lay on the ground, Corkins said something to the effect, "'It's not about you.' It's about the FRC and its policies," according to the prosecution account.

Corkins -- who had chosen the research council as his target after finding it listed as an anti-gay group on the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center -- had planned to stride into the building and open fire on the people inside in an effort to kill as many as possible, he told investigators, according to the court documents.

If he'd been successful and escaped, his plan was to go to another conservative group to continue the attack, prosecutors said. A handwritten list naming three other groups he planned to attack was found among his belongings, prosecutors said.

According to the documents, Corkins had thought about such an attack for years but "just never went through with it."

He purchased the gun used in the attack a week before at a Virginia gun store, where a French television crew taped him while doing a story about the widespread availability of guns in America, according to prosecutors.

He also went to the store the day before the attack for two hours of training.

U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen said Corkins' guilty plea "makes clear that using violence to terrorize political opponents will not be tolerated."

At the time of the shooting, Corkins lived with his parents in Herndon, Virginia, and volunteered at a Washington center for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

In August, FBI investigators said in an affidavit that investigators had interviewed Corkins' parents after the shooting, and they said their son "has strong opinions with respect to those he believes do not treat homosexuals in a fair manner."

The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed the Family Research Council as a hate group since 2010, pointing to what it describes as its anti-gay propaganda and legislative agenda.

On his nightly radio show on Wednesday, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins mentioned the plea deal and accused the Southern Poverty Law Center of playing a role in the shooting by inciting hatred and violence rather than fighting it -- a claim he has repeatedly made since the shooting.

"The Southern Poverty Law Center is dangerous. They are inciting hatred, and in this case a clear connection to violence," he said on the radio broadcast. "They need to be held accountable, and they need to be stopped before people are killed because of their reckless labeling and advocacy for homosexuality and their anti-Christian stance."

A spokeswoman for the center declined to comment on the plea deal or the research council's comments, but referred to a statement from the organization last year, standing by its designation of the Family Research Council as a "hate group."

"As people who care about human dignity, we have a moral obligation to call out the FRC for its demonizing lies and incendiary rhetoric about the LGBT community," the statement said. "The fact that we list the FRC as a hate group because of its demonizing propaganda does not make us the hateful one. Spreading demonizing lies is what is dangerous, not exposing them."

Carol Cratty reported from Washington; Michael Pearson wrote from Atlanta; CNN's Paul Courson also contributed to this report.

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Death toll rises in fiery pileup on Ga. interstate

MONTROSE, Ga. More than two dozen cars, pickup trucks and tractor-trailers collided Wednesday morning in a fiery pileup on a foggy Georgia interstate, killing at least four people and sending nine others to a hospital, officials said.

Work crews on Interstate 16 were still clearing charred and twisted wreckage from the crash scene, which covered nearly a quarter-mile of the roadway, nearly six hours after the chain of crashes occurred at about 8:10 a.m.

State troopers said there were four separate crashes involving 27 vehicles, CBS Savannah affiliate WTOC-TV reports.

The Georgia State Patrol was still trying to piece together what started the series of wrecks. Capt. Kirk McGlamery said even drivers who dodged to the side of cars crashing in front of them weren't safe from getting rear-ended off the highway's shoulder.

"It was just a chain-reaction," McGlamery said. "I talked to two individuals involved who had come to a stop and had pulled off, one was on the shoulder and the other was trying to get out of the way, when they were struck by vehicles coming up behind them."

Officials said poor visibility likely played a big part. Weather forecasts called for dense fog Wednesday morning, and McGlamery said motorists reported smoke across the highway. He said a controlled burn had been permitted nearby the day before, and troopers were trying to find out if burning continued into Wednesday.

The crash shut down I-16 in both directions for several hours, though a single eastbound lane had opened Wednesday afternoon. The highway covers only 170 miles between nearby Macon in central Georgia and Savannah on the coast. But it's heavily traveled by commercial trucks hauling goods between Atlanta and Savannah's busy seaport, and is often used by travelers as a route to Interstate 95 along the Eastern Seaboard.

McGlamery said seven tractor-trailers were involved in the pileup, including an empty fuel tanker that exploded and caught fire.

Joseph White, a soldier in the Army National Guard, told the The Courier Herald of Dublin he was heading to work when he drove into heavy traffic clouded by black smoke. He was rear-ended before he saw a fuel tanker hit an 18-wheeler.

"I'm looking back and the tanker exploded," said White, who ran from the scene after his car came to a halt. "Pieces of the tanker flew toward me on the freeway, barely missing me. A piece of the tanker landed like 10 feet behind me as I was running. It almost fell on my head."

Martha Strickland, who passed through the smoky scene shortly after the crashes, said she could see the tanker burning but not engulfed in flames.

"We had to creep by because, you know, it was just so much smoke and to keep us from getting in a wreck, and we were on eastbound and that was in westbound," Strickland said.

Laurens County EMS director Terry Cobb, who was among the first emergency officials at the scene, said at least six vehicles were still on fire when crews arrived. Emergency officials encountered fog on the way to the crash site, though it seemed to lift one they arrived, Cobb said.

Cobb and the State Patrol confirmed nine people were taken to a hospital in nearby Dublin, though none of the injuries appeared life-threatening. Jeff Bruton, a hospital administrator, said all were treated and released except for one patient who was transferred to a hospital in Macon.

The names of the four people who died in the crash were not immediately released.

The area was under a dense fog advisory at the time of the pileup, said Laura Belanger, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Peachtree City. In some areas, visibility was only a quarter-mile or less, Belanger said.

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NTSB to Challenge 787 Battery Tests

The National Transportation Safety Board will publicly question at a news conference planned for Thursday morning in Washington whether the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing adequately tested the lithium batteries that have caught fire on Dreamliners in the U.S. and Japan, ABC News has learned exclusively from a government source.

The NTSB will say its investigation into the fire on the 787 at Boston's Logan Field showed gaps between what happened with the battery in testing and what happened with the battery confiscated by the NTSB in Boston, a source told ABC News.

The NTSB investigation followed the mid-January announcement that the FAA ordered the grounding of all Boeing 787 Dreamliner jets until their U.S. operator proved that batteries on the planes are safe.

The pre-certification test results were found to be different than what happened during NTSB investigation, the source said. The agency, charged with investigating civil aviation accidents in the U.S., is expected to question whether the Boeing tests certified by the FAA were "robust enough."

The NTSB told ABC News that its investigation is looking at the battery failure and what caused it, as well as the certification processes, emphasizing that the FAA has been "very cooperative in allowing our investigators access to the certification review that they are undertaking on their own."

Akio Kon/Bloomberg/Getty Images

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Boeing 787 Dreamliner Deemed Safe Despite Mishaps Watch Video

Both the airplane maker and the FAA are responsible for the testing, the government source said.

This morning, the chairwoman of the NTSB, Deborah Hersman, told reporters at a breakfast briefing that the initial investigation into the batteries found "multiple cells where we saw uncontrolled chemical chain reaction," including short circuiting and thermal runaway, "and those features are not what we would have expected to see in a brand new battery, in a brand new airplane.

"We're evaluating assessments that were made, whether or not those assessments were accurate, whether they were complied with and whether more needs to be done," Hersman said. "We want to make sure the design is robust, that the oversight, the manufacturing process, that those are all adequate -- and so that will be a part of our continuing investigation to determine the failure modes, what may have caused it and what can mitigate against that in the future."

The lithium batteries, one power source for the 787, have never before been used in commercial airliners and were a source of concern from the beginning because of they operate at high temperature.

"I would not want to categorically say that these batteries are not safe," Hersman said. "Any new technology, any new design, there are going to be some inherent risks. ... I would say that, in the past, the NTSB have expressed concerns about the risks and recommended mitigation measures."

Hersman added that the fire seen on board the JAL Dreamliner in Boston in "shows us some risks that were not addressed."

In a statement to ABC News, Boeing said: "Lithium ion batteries were selected after a careful review of available alternatives because they best met the performance and design objectives of the 787. We've used them successfully in other applications, such as satellites, for nearly a decade, and they are used on other aircraft, spacecraft and naval vessels.

"With that said," Boeing added, "we constantly challenge our assumptions and decisions across all of our products when new information becomes available. Nothing we learned during the design of the 787 or since has led us to change our fundamental assessment of the technology. It merits emphasis that the 787 has extensive protections in place to ensure the ability for safe flight to continue even in the presence of a battery failure."

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Today on New Scientist: 5 February 2013

Engineering light: Pull an image from nowhere

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Baby boomers' health worse than their parents

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NASA spy telescopes won't be looking at Earth

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Nobel-winning US energy secretary steps down

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A life spent fighting fair about the roots of violence

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Challenge unscientific thinking, whatever its source

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Need an organ? Just print some stem cells in 3D

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Passion in US lower house immigration debate

WASHINGTON: US lawmakers debated plans on Tuesday to build a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants who remade their lives in America but found themselves at the heart of a fierce debate.

President Barack Obama and a group of Republican and Democratic senators have submitted plans for reform, but as the House of Representatives took up the issue, there were signs the bipartisan facade is coming under strain.

While from the Democratic side of the aisle, a rising Hispanic-American political star made an impassioned plea to fix a broken system, more senior Republicans warned against pushing too fast for change.

"Immigration is more than a political issue. It's who we are," said Julian Castro, the charismatic young mayor of San Antonio, Texas who had a star turn last year on the stage of the Democratic National Convention.

"Immigrants have made ours the greatest country in the world," he told a packed House Judiciary Committee hearing. "Doing nothing is not an option."

But Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the committee, warned against a "rush to judgment" -- despite concerns among his Republican colleagues that they have lost the support of a generation of Hispanic and Asian voters.

"I think we can all agree that our nation's immigration system is in desperate need of repair and it is not working as efficiently and fairly as it should be," he told the first of several hearings on the issue.

Goodlatte warned his panel "needs to take the time to learn from the past so our efforts to reform our immigration laws do not repeat the same mistakes."

The burst of activity on Capitol Hill marks the best chance in years to craft legislation to tighten border security, improve employment verification and bring some 11 million illegal immigrants out of limbo.

A 2007 effort spearheaded by then-president George W. Bush failed.

Obama and top Republicans are for once in agreement that political and demographic trends have suddenly shifted to offer the best chance for serious reform in a generation.

November's election saw Obama re-elected with 70 percent backing from Hispanic American voters -- many of whom have friends or relatives seeking papers.

It shook Republicans into realizing that their tough stance on immigration had driven Hispanics away from the party, and party luminaries like Senator Marco Rubio have come out strongly in favor of immigration reform.

But differences remain, particularly in the contentious issue of how to accommodate the millions who entered the country without permission, or who came in legally but overstayed their visas.

The issue bubbled over in the hearing room when about eight protesters stood up with fists raised, and chanted "undocumented and unafraid!" for about 30 seconds before walking out.

Castro said a pathway to citizenship, similar to the one proposed by the bipartisan group of senators last month, was crucial in order to bring 11 million undocumented immigrants "out of the shadows and into the full light of the American dream."

Republican Goodlatte pushed back, seeking to carve a possible compromise option short of full citizenship for those who entered illegally or stayed beyond their visa.

"Are there options that we should consider between the extremes of mass deportation and a pathway to citizenship for those not lawfully present in the United States?" Goodlatte asked.

Democratic congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a former immigration lawyer from California, conceded the system was dysfunctional, but that "partial legalization, as some are suggesting, is a dangerous path."

She argued that merely providing undocumented workers with legal status but no way to work towards full citizenship could create a "permanent underclass," while kicking the undocumented out en masse would trigger economic chaos.

With up to 90 percent of the estimated two million migrant farm workers in the country illegally, "you could do e-verify and find out they're not properly here and American agriculture would collapse."

Obama addressed the immigration issue Tuesday as well, hosting meetings with more than two dozen progressive leaders and business executives.

Steve Case, co-founder of America Online, said he was encouraged by the discussion at the White House.

"The president and his team listened to numerous proposals, outlined many of their own and expressed a desire to build a bipartisan consensus regarding comprehensive immigration reform," Case said.

-AFP/ac

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