By Jim Miklaszewski, NBC News chief Pentagon correspondent

Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a name synonymous with military medicine, took one step closer Wednesday to shutting its doors for good.  In a bittersweet "casing of the colors" ceremony, Army officers packed up their unit flags, never to be flown again over Walter Reed.

For more than 100 years, from World War I to Iraq and Afghanistan, Walter Reed provided medical care for hundreds of thousands of US military wounded.

"All the warriors have passed through here," Walter Reed's commander, Col. Norvell Coots, told NBC News.  "This has been a healing place for all of them."

AP

Maj. Walter Reed, circa 1875. for whom the medical center was named.

Dedicated in 1909, the Army hospital was named for Maj. Walter Reed, who discovered that mosquitoes were the source of yellow fever, which plagued American military forces in Cuba following the Spanish-American war.  Reed himself died of an infection from appendicitis seven years before the hospital was built.

With an original capacity of only 80 beds, Walter Reed was expanded to a sprawling 113 acres, now providing care for 700,000 patients per year.

Walter Reed is also an invaluable piece of American history. World War I Gen. John "Blackjack" Pershing lived in a three-room suite in the main hospital building for seven years before he died in 1948. Historian Dr. John Pierce said that although Pershing retired, he was often sought out for military advice. "Two-star Gen. George S. Patton came here to this room, got down on his knees, and General Pershing blessed him before he went off to World War II," according to Pierce.

President Dwight Eisenhower had his own suite in Ward 8, a high-security section of the main hospital.  Eisenhower was confined to the hospital for 11 months before he died in 1969.

See a slideshow of images from Walter Reed's long history

During the Civil War, the ground on which the hospital was later built was actually an encampment for the Confederate Army on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. Col. Coots recounts that in 1864, a rebel sharpshooter climbed to the top of a tulip tree and fired off a round at President Lincoln standing in a parapet at a Union Army base nearby. The shot missed, but a young lieutenant pulled Lincoln down and, as history tells it, shouted, "Get down, you damned fool. The country can't afford to lose a president."

In the past 10 years, 18,000 service members wounded in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan flooded Walter Reed. Advances in battlefield medicine had dramatically improved survivability rates. The former chief of Walter Reed's critical care nursing, Col. Rosemary Edinger, told NBC News, "During Vietnam, the soldiers we get back today would not have survived the battlefield."  But she also acknowledged, "The nature of the wounds, the amputees, is truly staggering at times."

The stress on Walter Reed's medical services also was staggering.  In 2007 a scandal broke over substandard housing conditions for Walter Reed outpatients.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired Army Secretary Francis Harvey over the scandal. Outpatient care was ultimately improved Army-wide.

Jim Watson / AFP/Getty Images

Marine Cpl. Chris Santiago, center, waits in the fitting clinic at Walter Reed. He was injured in Iraq.

Five years ago, a Pentagon commission determined that the aging Walter Reed should be closed to cut costs. The remaining 150 of the most seriously wounded patients will be transferred in August to a new expanded facility at the Bethesda Naval Hospital to be named the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. 

The 113-acre Walter Reed campus, on the western outskirts of the nation's capital is prime real estate. The city will claim most of it for commercial development and housing. The State Department will take over the rest to provide offices and housing for visiting diplomats.

Pierce fears that in the handover, much of Walter Reed's history will be lost. "It's a big loss, it really is. I guess I just have to accept it – grudgingly."

But Col. Coots is confident of the medical center's legacy.

"Once you've been at Walter Reed, you can't get Walter Reed out of you," he said. "It's a part of your spirit forever."   

Charlie Neibergall / AP

Kulsoom Abdullah, of Atlanta, competes during the national weightlifting championships on Friday in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Kulsoom Abdullah headed into Friday's USA National Weightlifting Competition with modest expectations, but even before she stepped up to the barbell she had won a major victory.

Until two weeks ago Abdullah didn’t expect to compete because internationally sanctioned events didn’t allow her to compete with her arms and legs covered — and doing so without the covering ran counter to her Islamic faith and the modesty that she practices. So she went to the top — and persuaded the International Weightlifting Federation to change its rules.

“I am going to do my best though I will only have had two weeks of preparation since registering,” Abdullah, 35, said prior to the competition. She’s in the 48 kg (105 lbs.) senior women’s weight class. (The Associated Press reported that Abdullah cleared a snatch of 41 kilograms, or just over 90 pounds, and 57 kilograms in the clean and jerk. That earned her a fifth-place finish out of six competitors in her weight class.)

As we reported on June 27, Abdullah only learned she couldn’t compete at the national level when she managed to qualify last fall. USA Weightlifting officials denied her request for alternative dress, because the international body sets rules for competitions that ultimately can lead lifters to Olympic competition.

She didn’t attend the December competition at Cincinnati, but neither did she take no for a final answer. Instead, with the help of a lawyer, she put together a 44-page appeal laying out her argument and detailing several long-sleeved, long-legged garments that would meet both modesty requirements and competitive needs.

Her goal was to illustrate sports gear that would allow judges see if the knees and elbows were in the “locked” position, in order to declare whether the lift was successful.  

Abdullah, bolstered by activist women and Muslims, then persuaded the US Olympic Committee to present her case at the International Weightlifting Federation annual meeting in Penang, Malaysia.

Lo and behold, on June 29, the IW agreed with her and announced it would allow a close-fitting “unitard” with long legs and arms under the standard singlet that most competitors wear.

“Weightlifting is an Olympic Sport open for all athletes to participate without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, or national origin," stated Tamas Ajan, IWF President. "... This rule modification has been considered in the spirit of fairness, equality and inclusion."

For Abdullah, getting to take part in high level competitions will allow her to focus her training, but she has greater hopes for her triumph over the old dress code:

“It will help increase female participation in weightlifting, and possibly increase the participation in other sports, regardless of faith,” she said. “I hope to continue and be able to help others in similar situations,” she said.

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By Kerry Sanders, NBC News

Her name remains a secret. She’s known simply as juror number 12. And while she has a certificate from Florida’s 9th Circuit, embossed with calligraphy thanking her for her duty as a member of the Casey Anthony jury, her life since being released from that duty has been one of cat and mouse.

A red-haired woman in her 60s who moved to Florida from Michigan, she told the court she worked at a Publix Grocery when she was questioned as a potential juror.

Now, she’s in hiding.

Juror number 12 left Florida. Her husband, fighting back tears, tells NBC News he’s not sure when she’ll return to her home in Florida.

Why? He says she fears half of her co-workers want her head on a platter.

The others may understand what she did, but she didn’t want to face them.

She was due to retire in the fall, but Juror number 12, after being released from sequestration, chose to call her boss to announce she couldn’t come to work. She didn’t feel safe.

She retired over the phone.

The husband, who sat with two NBC News producers, glanced repeatedly at his blood pressure monitor on the coffee table and the Bible next to it.

This God-fearing family describes the after-effects of the Anthony verdict as traumatic.

First, for 44-days, he was separated from his wife.

And she was separated from the quiet life they once shared. And now he remains concerned about her health.

And now, they both face vitriol from those who are unwilling to accept a jury of peers reached a fair verdict based on the evidence presented.

In a back room, the husband has a manila envelope filled with letters.

Each is a request from a different news organization asking Juror number 12 for an interview.

Her husband had packed his own bag and says he’s ready to leave if and when the court releases his wife’s name. For now, the court record of all the jurors’ names remains sealed.

Her husband says, before she left the state to escape, she told him, “I’d rather go to jail than sit on a jury like this again.”

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-- Eliana Salzhauer and Debbie Huntting of NBC News contributed to this report

By Becky Bratu, msnbc.com

 
NEW YORK – A tense silence came over the wood-paneled courtroom as about 160 naturalization petitioners and their guests awaited the arrival of federal District Judge Barbara S. Jones.

They were all minutes away from becoming U.S. citizens, the culmination of an immigration process that can take several years.

Sitting in the front row and wearing the red, white and blue dress uniform of the U.S. Marine Corps, 23-year-old David Wen Riccardi-Zhu watched the door that led to the judge’s quarters. Half-Chinese, half-Italian, he was about to be the first one in his family to become a U.S. citizen. Born in Naples, Italy, Riccardi-Zhu moved to New York with his parents and brother 16 years ago.

“I’ve been waiting for this for so long,” he said, adding that he was particularly excited about voting for the first time. 

The crowd stood as Judge Jones entered the room. Right hands were raised and a chorus of voices began reciting the Oath of Allegiance.

From a war-torn land
A week ago, 32-year-old Nazia Hadle was one of these voices.

Born in Afghanistan, Hadle became an American citizen, joining thousands naturalized all over the country this week, ahead of Independence Day.

“Finally, I made it,” she said.

For Hadle there is no looking back to her life in war-torn Afghanistan. While her homeland is still reeling from the terrorist attack this week on a hotel in Kabul, she is looking forward to bringing her children, Sarah, 7, and Yusef, 1, to see the Independence Day fireworks in Manhattan.

In 1999, Hadle fled her town in northern Afghanistan, where she taught English, to escape the war she had known her whole life. She was granted asylum in the U.S., and in 2006 she became a permanent resident. 

That was two years after she learned her father had died in Afghanistan, and her remaining relatives had moved to Canada.

“Now I got nothing (in Afghanistan),” Hadle said. “And there’s always war.”

Long haul to citizenship
According to federal statistics, more than 675,000 citizens were naturalized in fiscal year 2010. U.S. citizenship law requires foreign nationals to live in the U.S. legally for five years, pass an interview, a citizenship test and a background check to become Americans.

With help from her daughter and an immigration counselor at Brooklyn’s Catholic Migration Office, Hadle submitted her application in December.

“I love the freedom here,” she said, “although I don’t get 100 percent freedom.” Since 9/11, Hadle said, she’s noticed people are more likely to have a negative reaction when they hear she’s an Afghan.

And Frederik Stefani, the immigration counselor who assisted Hadle with her case, said the security clearance for naturalization applications submitted by Afghans as well as citizens of various Middle Eastern nations tends to take longer than for other foreign nationals.

Now, as her Afghan husband prepares his own citizenship application, Hadle hopes her new status will help. The new American wants to one day resume her teaching career.

'Waited a long time for this day'
“I know that many of you have waited a long time for this day,” Judge Jones told the newly minted citizens standing in the lower Manhattan courthouse on Friday. “You are the new blood that strengthens and invigorates this country.”

The right hands were raised again, this time to the heart, as the chorus recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Standing to the right of Riccardi-Zhu, a Russian-born woman who’s lived in the U.S. for 15 years wiped a tear from the corner of her right eye.

The ceremony over, each new citizen walked to the front of the courtroom to receive a certificate confirming their new status. An elderly man stopped to read the paper and smiled. As people exited the courtroom, a courthouse employee congratulated them in various languages. Even the ladies’ restroom was abuzz with excitement, as a bathroom attendant congratulated a woman.

“I got my citizenship 32 years ago,” the attendant said in Spanish. “Citizenship is a very good thing.”

Eric Grigorian / Polaris

More than 8,000 people take the oath this week in Los Angeles to become new U.S. citizens.