Saturday, December 18, 2004
December 18, 2004
Long Silent, Oldest Profession Gets Vocal and OrganizedBy MIREYA NAVARRO
helby Aesthetic, a landscaper and writer in Huntsville, Ala., said she worked as a prostitute throughout her teenage years but never knew of a "sex workers movement" until last year, when she caught a performance of a touring art show where prostitutes performed and read short stories and poetry.
"I had done sex work for years and I had never talked to anyone about it," Ms. Aesthetic, 25, said. "I didn't know there was anything out there."
As often happens, a cultural interest opened doors to a social movement, this one involving "sex workers" and their supporters. In a new wave of activism, many prostitutes are organizing, staging public events and coming out publicly to demand greater acceptance and protection, giving a louder voice to a business that has thrived in silence.
In Huntsville, Ms. Aesthetic - who says that is her real name - recently formed a chapter of the Sex Workers Outreach Project, a California group that itself was created from an organization in Australia last year, and is collecting statistics on prostitution arrests.
At the Center for Sex and Culture in the hip South of Market area in San Francisco, prostitutes meet in support groups, hold fund-raisers and plot their next political move after having lost a ballot initiative in November that would have eased police enforcement of prostitution laws in Berkeley, Calif.
In New York, they are readying the first issue of a magazine for people in the sex industry for spring publication. And on the Internet, prostitutes have found a way not only to find customers but to find one another. They have formed online communities and have connected with groups in other countries.
Despite the country's conservative climate, the ultimate goal for some in the movement is decriminalization, a move opposed by other former prostitutes who see the business as inherently exploitive and degrading.
For now, though, the activists see ways to push ahead on goals shy of decriminalization, like stopping violence, improving working conditions, learning from foreign efforts to legitimize their work and taking some of the stigma off their trade.
"We call ourselves the rebirth," said Robyn Few, a former prostitute who heads the Sex Workers Outreach Project USA (SWOP) and led the ballot effort in Berkeley, said of the current incarnation of the prostitutes' rights movement.
Such a movement has long existed in liberal urban centers like New York and San Francisco, where there is an infirmary for prostitutes named for Margo St. James, the founder in the 1970's of one of the best-known prostitute groups, Coyote (for Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics). But the Internet, coupled with a younger generation of women willing to speak out as current or former prostitutes and tougher federal law enforcement are giving momentum to a more broadly based movement, some of the women said.
Ms. Aesthetic was among organizers of the second national Day of Remembrance yesterday to honor murdered prostitutes. In New York, former and current prostitutes gathered outside Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square Park to read the names of the dead. After each speaker read her segment, the crowd of about 20 people, some holding candles, said "whores' lives are human lives."
Prostitutes and their advocates say the illegal nature of their business makes them a target of violence because a majority of them do not report crimes for fear of being arrested or because they are ignored.
"There are safe ways to work," says Carol Leigh, a longtime advocate for prostitutes' rights. "It's only a risk when it's illegal."
Those who study prostitution say there is a wide range in types, from streetwalkers to high-priced call girls, and in the working conditions they face.
"Some people are doing very well," said Juhu Thukral, a lawyer and director of the Urban Justice Center's Sex Workers Project in New York City, which offers legal representation to the women and researches the field. "Others are really doing it out of desperation."
Advocates of prostitute rights contend that it is a viable source of income for many women and that sexual activity between adults for money should be treated as any other form of legal labor. Ms. Few, 46, who is on probation for conspiring to promote prostitution, and others say their ultimate goal is to remove prostitution altogether from criminal codes, rather than confining it to legal brothels, as in Nevada.
But opposition to that agenda is just as strong among many other prostitutes. Norma Hotaling, a former prostitute and founder of one of the best known groups working to help prostitutes leave sex work, the SAGE Project in San Francisco, said that while giving prostitutes legal rights might help some women "build a business and make money," it would also feed into the worse consequences of commercial sex.
Ms. Hotaling said that there was a connection between those who hired prostitutes and those who sexually exploited children and that there was damage to the spirit of women who had no other options for a livelihood.
"It's not just women's rights," she said. "We really haven't talked about what it means to increase the demand and legitimize the buying and selling of human beings."
But some of those working to help prostitutes leave their business see allies in those speaking out for sex workers. Celia Williamson, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Toledo in Ohio, said common ground could be found on calling public attention to the violence and lack of social services faced by streetwalkers, the most vulnerable of prostitutes.
Ms. Williamson says her research shows that most of these women are victims of "sadistic and predatory" violence by customers, and scores suffer from drug addiction and mental illness. Last September, Ms. Williamson organized a conference to help spur a national strategy to deal with the problems.
"Mostly we're sick and tired," said the social worker, who is chairwoman of the advisory board to an outreach program for prostitutes in Toledo. "Prostitution is like domestic violence 20 years ago. Nobody wants to talk about it. Police officers have a lot of discretion. There's no institutional support."
Few people predict that prostitutes are anywhere near obtaining legal rights, but some experts note that there are gains to be had if the movement perseveres.
Ronald Weitzer, a professor of sociology at George Washington University and the author of "Sex for Sale: Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry," said realistic goals included training police officers to respond properly to prostitutes' complaints. The police could also steer resources from revolving-door arrests to referrals to social service programs, he said.
"There's some discretion," Mr. Weitzer said.
In the meantime, some of the women continue their political work.
At the St. James Infirmary in San Francisco, Alexandra Lutnick, 26, a research coordinator for the program, said the infirmary not only offered health services but also collected data "to inform policy."
"We can be discounted and ignored as sex workers," said Ms. Lutnick, who has worked in the trade, "but if you go into it as an organization that's seen 500 participants in the last year and 70 percent of them are saying they're being harassed by police, then it's harder to dismiss."
Ms. Few said her ballot measure was just the beginning. "We're not quiet," she said. "We're moving forward. We're not just prostitutes around here."
Janon Fisher contributed reporting from New York for this article.
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December 19, 2004
Pentagon Seeks to Expand Role in Intelligence-CollectingBy DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT
ASHINGTON, Dec. 18 - The Pentagon is drawing up a plan that would give the military a more prominent role in intelligence-collection operations that have traditionally been the province of the Central Intelligence Agency, including missions aimed at terrorist groups and those involved in weapons proliferation, Defense Department officials say.
The proposal is being described by some intelligence officials as an effort by the Pentagon to expand its role in intelligence gathering at a time when legislation signed by President Bush on Friday sets in motion sweeping changes in the intelligence community, including the creation of a national intelligence director. The main purpose of that overhaul is to improve coordination among the country's 15 intelligence agencies, including those controlled by the Pentagon.
The details of the plan remain secret and are evolving, but indications of its scope and significance have begun to emerge in recent weeks. One part of the overall proposal is being drafted by a team led by Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, a deputy under secretary of defense.
Among the ideas cited by Defense Department officials is the idea of "fighting for intelligence," or commencing combat operations chiefly to obtain intelligence.
The proposal also calls for a major expansion of human intelligence, which is information gathered by spies rather than by technological means, both within the military services and the Defense Intelligence Agency, including more missions aimed at acquiring specific information sought by policy makers.
The proposal is the latest chapter in the fierce and long-running rivalry between the Pentagon and the C.I.A. for dominance over intelligence collection.
White House officials are monitoring the Pentagon's planning, as is the C.I.A. The proposal has not yet won White House approval, according to administration officials. It is unclear to what extent American military forces have already been given additional authority to carry out intelligence-gathering missions.
Until now, intelligence operations run by the Pentagon have focused primarily on gathering information about enemy forces. But the overarching proposal being drafted in the Pentagon, which encompasses General Boykin's efforts, would focus military intelligence operations increasingly on counterterrorism and counterproliferation, areas in which the C.I.A. has played the leading role.
"Right now, we're looking at providing Special Operations forces some of the flexibility the C.I.A. has had for years," said a Defense Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plan has not yet been approved. "It would be used judiciously, and with all appropriate oversight controls."
General Boykin's proposal would revamp military commands to ensure that senior officers planning and fighting wars work more closely with the intelligence analysts tracking threats like terrorists and insurgency cells. Another part of the Pentagon's plan was articulated in a recent directive by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that instructed regional commanders to expand the military's role in intelligence gathering, particularly in tracking terrorist and insurgent leaders.
While declining to comment directly on the recent directive, a Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said, "Regional commanders are looking at ways to maximize the use of their resources to contribute to the overall intelligence picture."
In public allusions to the plan, both General Boykin and Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, have stuck to generalities. It is still unclear how many additional personnel may be assigned to intelligence gathering or when and where such operations may take place. But some intelligence officials say they believe those remarks open the way to more clandestine military operations intended to gather intelligence on terrorists and weapons proliferators.
One former intelligence official questioned the utility of the military's putting more resources into intelligence collection at a time when it is already stretched thin in dealing with the counterinsurgency in Iraq and addressing threats elsewhere.
"If you're a shooter, go do that job," said the former intelligence official, who has opposed efforts by the Pentagon to expand its intelligence-gathering role. "But don't put the shooter in a pinstripe suit and send him to Beirut to chase bad guys."
Still, a current intelligence official who works outside the Pentagon described the relationship between the Pentagon and the C.I.A. as "closer than ever," but he added that "cooperation is strongest in the places where it counts most, like Iraq and Afghanistan." The official said, "There's a real sense that there's plenty of work for everyone."
General Boykin was traveling abroad and not available for comment this week. Over the last two weeks, he and his top aides have declined repeated interview requests on this subject.
The general provided an overview of the plan in an address in October to the Association of the United States Army, a nonprofit educational organization. Copies of his briefing slides are posted on the group's Web site.
A synopsis of General Boykin's plan was provided by Defense Department officials, as were remarks prepared for delivery in a Nov. 15 address by Admiral Jacoby at a conference on military intelligence.
"Our present intelligence collection architecture - optimized to identify and track large conventional forces - is inadequate to warn against these new challenges for terrorists, provide sufficient information on insurgent groups, determine the status of discrete W.M.D. production capabilities, learn the intentions of leaderships from rogue states, or determine friend from foe when intermingled in a foreign country," Admiral Jacoby said in that speech.
General Boykin, who attracted controversy last year for saying in remarks to Christian groups that Muslims worship "an idol" and describing the battle against Muslim radicals as a fight against Satan, has been the prime architect of the proposal, which has been under review at the Pentagon since January 2004. The general reports to Stephen A. Cambone, who since 2003 has used his newly created post as under secretary of intelligence to assert a role in which he has competed with George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, and his successors for influence over American intelligence agencies.
Among the proposals described by Defense Department officials is a plan to create a Joint Intelligence Operational Command within the Pentagon, which would elevate intelligence to much more power and prominence and possibly replace the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Maj. Gen. Charles W. Thomas, a retired senior Army intelligence officer who has worked as a consultant for General Boykin on his project, said he broadly supported the general's goals. But he warned that one possible danger in bringing battle commanders and intelligence officials so close together to fight a common enemy was the risk that the intelligence could be skewed to fit the commander's war plan and not the reality on the ground.
A spokesman for the Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., Col. Samuel Taylor, said on Friday that the command had been briefed on an early draft of General Boykin's remodeling initiative, but that staff officers and senior commanders had not yet reviewed it in depth.
President Bush last month ordered the C.I.A. and the Defense Department to review a plan that could expand the Pentagon's role in covert operations, perhaps replacing the C.I.A. in providing paramilitary forces for such missions.
The idea of transferring paramilitary authority from the intelligence agency to the military's Special Operations Forces was among several prominent recommendations made by the Sept. 11 commission.
The proposal remains under review. But in public testimony in August, Mr. Rumsfeld and John E. McLaughlin, who was then the acting intelligence chief, expressed reservations about the idea, and it was not included in the measure Mr. Bush approved on Friday.
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December 19, 2004
How Dubious Evidence Spurred Relentless Guantánamo Spy HuntBy TIM GOLDEN
apt. Theodore C. Polet Sr., an Army counterintelligence officer at the detention camp for terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had just begun investigating a report of suspicious behavior by a Muslim chaplain at the prison last year when he received what he thought was alarming new information.
The F.B.I. had found that a car belonging to the chaplain, Capt. James J. Yee, had been spotted twice outside the home of a Muslim activist in the Seattle area who, years earlier, had been a host for a visit from Omar Abdel Rahman, the militant Egyptian cleric convicted in a 1993 plot to blow up various New York landmarks.
Although it was unclear what the activist had done or whether Captain Yee even knew him, Captain Polet took the report to the Guantánamo commander, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, and laid it out in stark terms.
"I said we had found something that connected Yee with a known terrorist supporter in Washington State, and at that point, he got very upset," Captain Polet said, noting that General Miller's ears turned red with anger. "This became far more serious than a basic security violation. The case was going to get bigger."
In fact, documents and interviews show that the case grew much bigger than has been publicly disclosed, spinning into a web of counterintelligence investigations that eventually involved more than a dozen suspects, a handful of military and civilian agencies and numerous agents in the United States and overseas.
Within less than a year, however, the investigations into espionage and aiding the enemy grew into a major source of embarrassment for the Pentagon, as the prosecutions of Captain Yee and another Muslim serviceman at the base, Airman Ahmad I. Al Halabi, unraveled dramatically.
Even now, Defense Department officials refuse to explain in detail how the investigations originated and what drove them forward in the face of questions about much of the evidence. Military officials involved in the case have defended their actions, emphasizing that some of the inquiries continue.
But confidential government documents, court files and interviews show that the investigations drew significantly on questionable evidence and disparate bits of information that, like the car report, linked Captain Yee tenuously to people suspected of being Muslim militants in the United States and abroad.
Officials familiar with the inquiries said they also fed on petty personal conflicts: antipathy between some Muslim and non-Muslim troops at Guantánamo, rivalries between Christian and Muslim translators, even the complaint of an old boss who saw Airman Al Halabi as a shirker.
The military's aggressive approach to the investigation was established at the outset by General Miller, the hard-charging Guantánamo commander. Along the way, some investigators and prosecutors suggested that the job of ferreting out spies at the base had put them, too, on the front lines of the fight against terrorism.
Perhaps the most aggressive was the lead Air Force investigator in the case of Airman Al Halabi, Lance R. Wega, a probationary agent who took over the inquiry after barely a month on the job. While he was later commended by superiors and rewarded with a $1,986 bonus, testimony showed that Agent Wega had mishandled important evidence.
Ultimately, Air Force prosecutors could not substantiate a vast majority of the charges they brought against Airman Al Halabi, a translator at Guantánamo, who had faced the death penalty. He pleaded guilty in September to four relatively minor charges of mishandling classified documents, taking two forbidden photographs of a guard tower and lying to investigators about the snapshots. He was sentenced to the 10 months imprisonment he had already served, and is appealing a bad-conduct discharge.
Captain Yee, 36, a West Point graduate from Springfield, N.J., was held for 76 days in solitary confinement, charged with six criminal counts of mishandling classified information and suspected of leading a ring of subversive Muslim servicemen. He was found guilty only of noncriminal charges of adultery and downloading Internet pornography. That conviction was set aside in April, and his punishment was waived.
Another Guantánamo interpreter, and sometime interrogator, Ahmed F. Mehalba, has been jailed since September 2003 on federal charges that he lied to investigators who found that at least two classified documents on a compact disc he had taken with him on a trip to visit relatives in Egypt. He has pleaded not guilty.
Coloring much of the episode, interviews and documents indicate, were simmering tensions over the military's treatment of the roughly 660 foreign men who were then held at Guantánamo without charge.
"Lots of the guards saw us as some sort of sympathizers with the detainees," Airman Al Halabi recalled in one of several interviews. "We heard it many times: 'detainee-lovers,' or 'sympathizers.' They called us 'sand niggers.' "
Airman Al Halabi, who came to the United States at 16 after growing up in poverty in his native Syria, has emphasized his loyalty as a naturalized American citizen. While insisting that he was careful not to share his views with anyone but close friends at Guantánamo, he said he was one of many servicemen and translators there who were uncomfortable with the way the detainees were treated.
"I did disagree with what was going on," he said. "These people had been there forever and were blocked from the legal system. This country stands for justice and human rights, and there we were at Guantánamo doing none of that."
Chaplains Under Scrutiny
The conflicts between Muslim and non-Muslim servicemen and the suspicions of improper relationships with the detainees by Muslim chaplains had taken root at Guantánamo well before Captain Yee arrived there in November 2002, officials said.
"Every one of the chaplains was accused of something while I was there," said Brig. Gen. Rick Baccus, a former military police commander at the base, dismissing the suspicions as unfounded.
"They were always under suspicion by the interrogators, because they were interacting with the detainees and giving them Korans," General Baccus said in an interview. "The M.P.'s suspected them all the time, too. They just didn't like the chaplains going around talking to the detainees."
One chaplain who served under General Baccus, Lt. Abuhena Saiful Islam of the Navy, was accused by interrogators of sending messages from several detainees back to their families overseas. The allegations prompted a formal investigation by the Naval Criminal Intelligence Service.
According to three officials familiar with the inquiry, it turned up no evidence of any wrongdoing by the chaplain. Rather, they said, the case reflected the depth of suspicion among the guards and the need for a clearer understanding of the chaplains' role in dealing with the detainees. (A spokeswoman for the Norfolk Naval Station, where Lieutenant Saiful Islam is now based, said the chaplain had no comment.)
General Miller, who assumed command on Nov. 4, 2002, placed a premium on clarifying the responsibilities of those serving beneath him.
Captain Yee, a Muslim convert who had studied Islam in Syria in the late 1990's, arrived a short time later. He was assigned to advise senior officers on religious questions regarding the detainees, provide detainees with Korans and prayer beads and oversee the distribution of reading materials as part of an effort to limit the radicalization of the prisoners. Officers said Captain Yee was shunned as a traitor by some of the detainees, but cultivated relationships with others in what he described as an attempt to reduce tensions.
Soon, however, the chaplain's presence became a source of discomfort for some of his colleagues, most notably Capt. Jason B. Orlich, a 33-year-old former schoolteacher who had taken over as the intelligence officer for the guard force at Camp Delta, the main Guantánamo detention center.
In one of several sworn statements of his filed in the Al Halabi investigation, Captain Orlich complained that Muslim soldiers and contract linguists would come into the building where he worked each day to pray, often loudly, "while non-Muslims were performing their duties."
"They were fervent in their beliefs and encouraged other Muslims to participate in their religious activities," he said in another statement, referring to Captain Yee, Airman Al Halabi and two of their friends, Capt. Tariq O. Hashim and Petty Officer Samir Hejab. "A lot of their religious beliefs mirrored those of the detainees."
The tensions reached a climax in late March or early April 2003, several officers said, after Captain Yee questioned assertions made by Captain Orlich during a briefing for interrogators and others about the behavior of the Camp Delta prisoners.
According to one investigator involved in the case, Captain Orlich filed a sworn statement to the counterintelligence group on what he considered the chaplain's improper participation at the briefing. Based on Captain Orlich's complaint, officers said, Captain Yee was barred from attending further intelligence briefings. The half-dozen officers of the counterintelligence group also began to more closely scrutinize the chaplain's activities and take note of the grumbling against him.
"I was very methodical in making sure this was not just a personality conflict," Captain Polet said in an interview. "From a counterintelligence standpoint, there was nothing to act on. But we made a conscious decision to monitor it."
According to investigators and prosecutors, some of the primary accusations against Captain Yee echoed those that had been made earlier against Lieutenant Saiful Islam: that he spent an inordinate amount of time speaking with the detainees, took frequent notes during those conversations and seemed to some guards overly sympathetic with the prisoners' plight.
There was also an argument - often made by Captain Orlich - that Captain Yee and some members of his small Muslim prayer group at Guantánamo constituted a suspicious fellowship of servicemen who appeared to sympathize with the detainees and question some of the government's counterterrorism policies.
"There was a concern that there was, like, a clique of people who would go off and spend time away from the unit and were not as supportive of the mission as they ought to be," said the chief Air Force prosecutor in the Al Halabi case, Lt. Col. Bryan T. Wheeler. "If people want to have a prayer group, that's great. If, on the other hand, you have people complaining about the treatment people are receiving, there are ways to do that. Subverting the mission is not the way to do it."
Over the course of 2002, the handling of the Guantánamo detainees had been criticized in briefings and memorandums by many of those who served there: General Baccus, his counterpart for intelligence, Maj. Gen. Michael E. Dunlavey, a chief of the C.I.A. field group on the base, the military's criminal investigators, senior F.B.I. agents and others.
But according to many officers, General Miller ran a tighter operation. Morale improved, they said, but with that came an atmosphere in which criticism of the detainees' treatment was tacitly discouraged.
"People were definitely careful about expressing their opinions," said one Guantánamo veteran who knew Captain Yee and Airman Al Halabi. "But a lot of us felt some sympathy for some of the detainees. A lot of those guys were low-level or no-level. They were not terrorists."
Developing a Case
The case against Captain Yee turned, several officers said, after Captain Orlich returned to the counterintelligence office at the base in April 2003 with one of the contract Arabic interpreters who had what several people described as a frosty relationship with Captain Yee and his friends.
The officers said the interpreter reported overhearing the chaplain speaking in Arabic to a detainee at the base hospital, mocking a psychological-operations posters intended to encourage the detainees' cooperation with interrogators.
This time, the counterintelligence unit responded more quickly, filing a basic report of suspected espionage or subversion to the 470th Military Intelligence Group in Puerto Rico.
The intelligence officials in Puerto Rico responded in early May, two officers said, dismissing the allegation and instructing the Guantánamo office to drop the matter. But Captain Polet, then the head of Guantánamo's counterintelligence unit, remained concerned. He rewrote what was basically the same report, officials said, and forwarded it to a higher-level authority, the Army Central Control Office.
While Captain Polet's unit awaited a response, one of its agents sent the Social Security numbers for Captains Yee and Hashim, Airman Al Halabi and Petty Officer Hejab to a friend at the F.B.I., two military officers said. The friend called back to report that a computer search turned up the report of the chaplain's car having been observed at the home of the activist in the Seattle area - once while Captain Yee was at Guantánamo, and once while he was believed to be stationed at Fort Lewis, just south of Tacoma.
By the time the Army control office authorized a preliminary investigation, General Miller had been briefed on the F.B.I. information and had ordered Captain Polet to investigate thoroughly. "Exonerate this man or bring him to justice," two officers quoted him as saying of Captain Yee. "Whatever support you need to conduct this investigation, you will have." A spokesman said General Miller would not comment.
In mid-June, General Miller was also briefed on the Al Halabi case by Agent Wega, who had been sent to Guantánamo from Travis Air Force Base in northern California to investigate.
As with Captain Yee, the initial conduit for accusations of wrongdoing was Captain Orlich. He had discovered the disposable camera with which Airman Al Halabi had photographed the guard tower, and he learned that Airman Al Halabi had come under investigation at Travis for supposedly plugging his laptop into a government network. Captain Orlich had also sent two subordinates to confiscate a box of photocopied documents from the library where Airman Al Halabi worked under Captain Yee, on the suspicion that the two men were distributing radical literature to the detainees.
"Who's to say what it was," Second Lt. Victor Ray Wheeler, one of the people who retrieved the documents, said in an interview. "But it could have been reinforcing fanatical beliefs of the detainees."
The concerns about the documents later proved unfounded. But two searches of Airman Al Halabi's Guantánamo dorm room by Agent Wega turned up some the letters from detainees that the airman routinely translated in his primary job as a linguist. Agent Wega also surreptitiously copied the hard drive of Airman Al Halabi's laptop, and later found a letter from the Syrian Embassy authorizing him to enter the country.
For months, Airman Al Halabi had been telling co-workers he was preparing to travel to Damascus to marry his Syrian fiancée, a family friend. But the investigators suspected something more ominous.
When Agent Wega detained Airman Al Halabi as he returned from Guantánamo on July 23, 2003, he found computer files containing 186 detainee letters he had translated - all of which, he said, Captain Orlich had told him were classified. Rather than keep him at Travis while the investigation continued, Air Force commanders ordered Airman Al Halabi's immediate arrest and Air Force prosecutors got to work.
Airman Al Halabi soon faced 30 different charges, including attempted espionage, aiding the enemy and bank fraud. But many of the accusations began to dissolve almost as quickly.
The Prosecution Unravels
One charge of aiding the enemy was based on the second-hand claim that Airman Al Halabi had boasted of distributing baklava pastries to the detainees. It was soon determined, however, that he had been on a mission in Afghanistan when the sweets arrived at Guantánamo by mail, and that they had been consumed by other translators before he returned.
Another accusation, that he distributed radical literature to the detainees, was based on an erroneous translation of an Islamic symbol in Ottoman-style calligraphy. The bank-fraud charge collapsed after the government found that bank and credit card companies had simply misspelled Airman Al Halabi's name on some of his cards.
But defense lawyers also protested that the prosecutors withheld some crucial evidence that undermined their case.
One of the prosecutors' most important assertions was that a computer analysis showed that some detainee letters had been e-mailed from Airman Al Halabi's laptop, possibly overseas. Months after that claim was quietly dropped, the defense learned that early on, a computer expert had told the government that it was not clear the documents had been e-mailed at all.
Airman Al Halabi's lawyers also made a charge of misconduct after a government translator contacted them to say that one of the prosecutors, Capt. Dennis Kaw, had discouraged her from alerting the court when she found a mistake in her translation of the Syrian government's letter. Captain Kaw had insisted, rather improbably, that the Syrian government had given Airman Al Halabi permission in the letter to travel not only to Syria but also to Qatar; instead, the relevant word meant "the homeland."
The translator, Staff Sgt. Suzan Sultan, also disclosed that Agent Wega and other investigators had celebrated with beer as they examined a package that Airman Al Halabi had sent home with the documents later used to convict him on minor charges. The agents later taped up the box, put on gloves and photographed their steps as they reopened it, she testified.
"This is not the way our system of justice is set up," said one of the defense lawyers, Maj. James E. Key III. "You are supposed to investigate, and then charge. The system is premised on the idea that men and women who serve should not be subjected to these kinds of baseless allegations."
In the case of Captain Yee, Army investigators also operated on the mistaken belief that the names and identity numbers of Guantánamo detainees, which were found in notebooks that the chaplain carried with him when he went on leave, were classified.
But their suspicions were also raised by information from the F.B.I. and other sources that suggested possible connections between Captain Yee and Islamic militants.
A Dec. 30, 2003, memo by the F.B.I. counterterrorism analysis section asserted that the Abu Nour Institute in Syria, where Captain Yee had studied Islam, "may be an international center of Islamic terrorism," according to a document reviewed by The New York Times.
But the memorandum based that claim primarily on the activities of a few unrelated persons and it noted that "the exact nature of terrorist activity or training" at the center was "currently unclear." (Officials of the institute, which is known for teaching a moderate brand of Sufi Islam and is affiliated with the Syrian government, have denied that it supports terrorism.)
According to another F.B.I. document, a search of Captain Yee's home in Seattle also turned up notations linking him to two men already in the bureau's sights: the assistant imam of an Islamic center in Baltimore and another Baltimore man Captain Yee knew who belonged to the Nation of Islam. Military investigators said the F.B.I. also raised questions about some Muslims whom Captain Yee had met in Germany around the time he converted to Islam in 1991.
One F.B.I. official familiar with the Yee and Al Halabi cases suggested that the agency had merely assisted military investigators but had not endorsed their approach. But two military investigators said that the F.B.I. played a far greater role, and that information it provided had bolstered the notion that the two servicemen might be involved in subversive activities.
A lawyer for Captain Yee, Eugene R. Fidell, had no comment on the F.B.I. information. But he sharply criticized the prosecution of his client.
"What happened to Chaplain Yee was a grave miscarriage of justice," he said. "The career and personal life of a loyal American officer has been turned inside out, and he's not the only victim. This case has proven to be a self-inflicted wound for the military justice system."
Captain Yee declined a request to be interviewed. He is to leave the military on Jan. 7, with an honorable discharge.
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News Home - Help
Father United with Baby Cut from Slain Mother
Sat Dec 18, 2:20 PM ET
By Susan Kelly
CHICAGO (Reuters) - The father of a baby girl snatched from the womb of her strangled mother greeted the infant as a miracle as the two were united after a grisly murder that gripped the United States, a Kansas hospital said on Saturday.
AP Photo
Slideshow: Baby Taken from Slain Mother's Body
Stolen Baby Reunited with Father (AP Video)
The girl, Victoria Jo Stinnett, was healthy and "a miracle," the Stormont-Vail hospital in Topeka, Kansas, quoted the girl's father, Zebulon Stinnett, as saying after the two were united late on Friday.
The girl's mother, Bobbie Jo Stinnett, 23, had been found strangled in her Missouri home on Thursday with her abdomen sliced open, the baby gone and the umbilical cord cut.
The woman was eight-months pregnant when discovered in a pool of blood by her mother, Becky Harper. Investigators said Harper "noted it appeared as though her daughter's stomach had exploded."
A nationwide "Amber Alert" for the missing baby drew intense attention. It was credited with helping authorities find the girl alive and in the possession of Lisa Montgomery, 36, of Kansas, who was arrested on Friday on murder and kidnap charges.
Montgomery confessed to killing Stinnett and taking the baby, according to a federal criminal complaint. Based on the statement, the authorities united the baby girl and her father, although DNA tests are pending, Nodaway County, Missouri, Sheriff Ben Espey said through a spokeswoman.
"I want to thank family, friends, Amber Alert and law enforcement officials for their support at this time," Zebulon Stinnett said in the hospital statement.
Stinnett, of Skidmore, Missouri, and other family members had traveled to Topeka to be with the baby, who was listed in good condition.
COMPUTER SLEUTHS
Montgomery probably will appear in court on Monday in either Kansas or Missouri, authorities said.
Authorities desperately trying to find the prematurely born baby had honed in on Montgomery with the help of a tip and FBI (news - web sites) computer sleuths tracing Internet communications. They tracked the baby to the town of Melvern, in eastern Kansas, where she was found at Montgomery's home.
Bobbie Jo Stinnett bred and sold rat-terrier dogs, and had been in communication on her computer with someone who asked for directions to her home to make a purchase, according to an affidavit released by the U.S. Attorney in Kansas City.
Stinnett's mother also told the authorities her daughter had said in a phone conversation that she was expecting someone to come and look at her dogs and then said, "Oh, they're here, I've got to go."
Marks on Stinnett's throat indicated she had been strangled from behind, and blond hair was found clenched in both of her hands.
The motive for the crime remained unknown, investigators said. Local media in Kansas City reported that Montgomery had suffered an earlier miscarriage.
Agents who made the arrest said Montgomery had told her husband, Kevin, that she had unexpectedly given birth.
"She had ... called her husband, we allege in the complaint, and told him that she had a baby in Topeka," Todd Graves, U.S. District Attorney for Western Missouri, told ABC's "Good Morning America.
"She was at Long John Silver's (restaurant) in Topeka, he should come and meet her. He went to meet her; there was a baby; they took it home."
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Posted on Sat, Dec. 18, 2004
Springsteen benefit tickets on eBayColumnist Name Column Title
A benefit concert by the Boss is bringing out big bids on eBay.
But some people offering tickets at several times their face value for an intimate performance in Asbury Park, N.J., by Bruce Springsteen may be running afoul of anti-scalping laws. The face value of the tickets is $100 each.
Three pairs and one single ticket to the sold-out shows were listed recently at prices ranging from $750 to $2,000 for the pairs and $780 for the single seat.
Under state law, a licensed ticket broker cannot resell tickets, even for a charity event, for more than 50 percent of the face value, said Jeff Lamm, a spokesman for the state Division of Consumer Affairs. Individuals reselling a ticket may not get more than 20 percent above the face value.
However, eBay spokesman Hani Durzy said different regulations apply if the seller lives outside New Jersey. That contention was disputed by the Consumer Affairs Division.
Lamm wouldn't comment on whether the agency was investigating.
Show organizer Tony Pellagrosi said measures were taken to reduce scalping: A person could buy only two tickets, and the tickets could only be obtained at the venue, Harry's Roadhouse, before showtime, he said. Once the tickets were picked up, holders would be brought inside to prevent sidewalk scalping, he said.
The two concerts Sunday at the restaurant, for just 500 people each, are to benefit charities in Asbury Park, where the Jersey-born rocker rose to fame.
Prior holiday benefits have been at a 3,000-seat oceanside venue.
Rock 'n' roll auction to bring in big bucks
A Gibson guitar once owned by Beatle George Harrison and a guitar played by Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones were among the highlights of a rock 'n' roll auction.
Christie's of New York, was offering more than 400 items of rock 'n' roll and entertainment memorabilia at Friday's auction, which was expected to bring in about $3 million.
''Some articles are being offered for sale by collectors, and others by the celebrities themselves or their families,'' said Darren Julien of Julien's, a Hollywood, based entertainment auction house, a co-sponsor of the auction.
He said 90 percent of the items were fresh to the market. The sellers' identities were being kept confidential at their request.
Other items included Elvis Presley's Army trench coat, an album cover signed by Bob Dylan and Britney Spears' grade school book report.
Harrison's rare SG Standard guitar was worth $200,000,'' Julien said. Its value increases, he said, because it was owned by Harrison and once played by Beatle John Lennon. Its pre-sale estimate was $600,000.
Richards' guitar, a 1959 Gibson, was valued at about $400,000. The pre-sale estimate for Presley's trench coat was $15,000.
The Britney Spears book report was expected to sell for under $1,000. The handwritten report includes a teacher's annotation: ''proof read, messy.''
--Herald wire services
Natasha Gregson Wagner to spend Christmas with family
Natasha Gregson Wagner is planning to spend a warm and sunny Southern California Christmas with her family in Los Angeles.
The holiday is one Wagner's favorites, so she jumped at the chance to star in the Christmas-themed movie ''Angel in the Family,'' airing Saturday on the Hallmark Channel. She co-stars with Meredith Baxter and Ronny Cox.
Wagner, 34, and her husband, screenwriter D.V. DeVincentis (''High Fidelity'' and ''Grosse Pointe Blank''), will join her father, Robert Wagner; his wife, Jill St. John; and her sisters Katie and Courtney.
''My nanny Willie Mae-South, who still lives at my dad's house, prepares her famous orange-stuffed yams and my dad still writes a letter from Santa Claus asking if I've been naughty or nice,'' she said.
Wagner was 11 when her mother, actress Natalie Wood, drowned off California's Santa Catalina Island a few days after Thanksgiving 1981.
''It left a huge hole in my heart,'' she said. ''But with a lot of therapy and the support of my two dads and my sisters and my brother, I discovered how resilient the human heart can be.''
Wagner's father is Richard Gregson, who was Wood's second husband. She was later adopted by Wagner, who married Wood twice.
--Herald wire services
© 2004 Monterey County Herald and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.http://www.montereyherald.com
Pittsburgh 33, NY Giants 30
Preview - Box Score - Recap
By TOM CANAVAN, AP Sports WriterDecember 18, 2004
AP - Dec 18, 6:30 pm ESTMore PhotosEAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) -- The main thing separating Ben Roethlisberger and Eli Manning on Saturday was the Pittsburgh Steelers' rookie quarterback made his biggest plays with the game on the line.
Roethlisberger threw for a season-high 316 yards and hit four straight passes to set up Jerome Bettis' game-winning 1-yard run with 4:57 to go, leading the Pittsburgh Steelers to a 33-30 win over the New York Giants.
``I am amazed, but he is an awesome quarterback,'' receiver Antwaan Randle said after Roethlisberger led the Steelers (13-1) to a team-record 12th straight win and handed the Giants (5-9) a seventh straight loss.
``He might have a long way to go, but he has this great poise,'' said Randle El, who caught five passes for 149 yards and a TD and also threw his first career TD. ``You can have all the ability in the world but if you don't have to the poise to do it, it won't happen.''
Roethlisberger, who has not lost in 25 straight college and pro starts, showed his poise in moving the Steelers from their 33 to the New York 8 after a Tiki Barber 1-yard run had given New York a 30-26 lead.
``He has been making good decisions with games on the line,'' coach Bill Cowher said of the 11th pick in the NFL draft. ``In the fourth quarter, he has a feel for the game and an understanding of the game and he manages it well.''
ADVERTISEMENT
document.onLoad=write_script(DL_randnum)
Until Saturday, Manning has struggled in losing his first four starts. The No. 1 pick in the draft was horrible in his last two games and seemingly had lost his confidence.
Using a game plan filled with plays he liked, Manning found himself against the NFL's top-ranked defense. He threw two touchdown passes and set up Barber's go-ahead touchdown with three completions of 15 yards or more.
``I had fun because we were getting some stuff done,'' said Manning, who completed 16 of 23 for 182 yards. ``We were making plays, running the ball, the line was protecting, receivers were making catching. We got in a rhythm and it was back to playing football again. It was a good feeling.''
Roethlisberger hit five passes of 34 or more yards in a much-hyped matchup with Manning, who only had one over 20 yards.
The two talked before the game and they congratulated each other after it was over.
``I don't ever want to remember what it is like to lose,'' said Roethlisberger, who also threw two interceptions.
Randle El caught a 35-yard touchdown pass and threw a 10-yard shovel pass to Verron Haynes for a touchdown. Jeff Reed kicked four field goals, Hines Ward had nine catches for 134 yards despite finishing the game with a hip pointer and Bettis ran for 140 yards for the Steelers.
AP - Dec 18, 6:05 pm ESTMore PhotosManning threw touchdown passes of 2 yards to Jeremy Shockey and 1 yard to Marcellus Rivers. He also hit Amani Toomer with two 17-yard passes and he added a 15-yarder to Ike Hilliard to set up Barber's go-ahead TD run.
Manning was sacked on a 2-point conversion attempt.
Roethlisberger then sandwiched passes of 9 and 11 yards to Ward around a dump off to Bettis before hitting Randle El for 36 yards to the Giants 8. Three straight runs by Bettis got the ball in the end zone.
Willie Williams picked off a deep throw to a tripped Toomer on the next series and the Steelers ran out the clock.
Giants receiver Willie Ponder took the opening kickoff 91 yards for a score. It was the Giants' first game-opening kickoff return for a touchdown in a regular-season home game in their 80-year history.
The Steelers used trickery to tie the game with Randle El making the shovel pass after taking a lateral from Roethlisberger.
Manning, who had led the Giants to only one touchdown in 45 possessions since replacing Kurt Warner at quarterback, hit Shockey for a TD on the next series.
Manning gave New York a 24-23 lead with his TD pass to Rivers.
Reed put Pittsburgh ahead 26-24 with is 28-yarder early in the fourth quarter.
NOTES
Steelers RB Duce Staley and WR Plaxico Burress missed the game with hamstring injuries. ...Bettis set a Steelers' record with his 48th 100-yard rushing game, one more than Franco Harris and fifth best in NFL history. ... After New York went six games without an interception, Frank Walker and former Steeler Brent Alexander had picks for the Giants. ... The last time the Giants returned an opening kickoff for a TD in a regular-season game was Dec. 4, 1966, a 90-yard score by Clarence Childs at Cleveland. It was the Giants' second kickoff return for TD in three games. Derrick Ward had one vs. Washington. ... Toomer has catches in 97 straight games.
Preview - Box Score - Recap
By TOM CANAVAN, AP Sports WriterDecember 18, 2004
AP - Dec 18, 6:30 pm ESTMore PhotosEAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) -- The main thing separating Ben Roethlisberger and Eli Manning on Saturday was the Pittsburgh Steelers' rookie quarterback made his biggest plays with the game on the line.
Roethlisberger threw for a season-high 316 yards and hit four straight passes to set up Jerome Bettis' game-winning 1-yard run with 4:57 to go, leading the Pittsburgh Steelers to a 33-30 win over the New York Giants.
``I am amazed, but he is an awesome quarterback,'' receiver Antwaan Randle said after Roethlisberger led the Steelers (13-1) to a team-record 12th straight win and handed the Giants (5-9) a seventh straight loss.
``He might have a long way to go, but he has this great poise,'' said Randle El, who caught five passes for 149 yards and a TD and also threw his first career TD. ``You can have all the ability in the world but if you don't have to the poise to do it, it won't happen.''
Roethlisberger, who has not lost in 25 straight college and pro starts, showed his poise in moving the Steelers from their 33 to the New York 8 after a Tiki Barber 1-yard run had given New York a 30-26 lead.
``He has been making good decisions with games on the line,'' coach Bill Cowher said of the 11th pick in the NFL draft. ``In the fourth quarter, he has a feel for the game and an understanding of the game and he manages it well.''
ADVERTISEMENT
document.onLoad=write_script(DL_randnum)
Until Saturday, Manning has struggled in losing his first four starts. The No. 1 pick in the draft was horrible in his last two games and seemingly had lost his confidence.
Using a game plan filled with plays he liked, Manning found himself against the NFL's top-ranked defense. He threw two touchdown passes and set up Barber's go-ahead touchdown with three completions of 15 yards or more.
``I had fun because we were getting some stuff done,'' said Manning, who completed 16 of 23 for 182 yards. ``We were making plays, running the ball, the line was protecting, receivers were making catching. We got in a rhythm and it was back to playing football again. It was a good feeling.''
Roethlisberger hit five passes of 34 or more yards in a much-hyped matchup with Manning, who only had one over 20 yards.
The two talked before the game and they congratulated each other after it was over.
``I don't ever want to remember what it is like to lose,'' said Roethlisberger, who also threw two interceptions.
Randle El caught a 35-yard touchdown pass and threw a 10-yard shovel pass to Verron Haynes for a touchdown. Jeff Reed kicked four field goals, Hines Ward had nine catches for 134 yards despite finishing the game with a hip pointer and Bettis ran for 140 yards for the Steelers.
AP - Dec 18, 6:05 pm ESTMore PhotosManning threw touchdown passes of 2 yards to Jeremy Shockey and 1 yard to Marcellus Rivers. He also hit Amani Toomer with two 17-yard passes and he added a 15-yarder to Ike Hilliard to set up Barber's go-ahead TD run.
Manning was sacked on a 2-point conversion attempt.
Roethlisberger then sandwiched passes of 9 and 11 yards to Ward around a dump off to Bettis before hitting Randle El for 36 yards to the Giants 8. Three straight runs by Bettis got the ball in the end zone.
Willie Williams picked off a deep throw to a tripped Toomer on the next series and the Steelers ran out the clock.
Giants receiver Willie Ponder took the opening kickoff 91 yards for a score. It was the Giants' first game-opening kickoff return for a touchdown in a regular-season home game in their 80-year history.
The Steelers used trickery to tie the game with Randle El making the shovel pass after taking a lateral from Roethlisberger.
Manning, who had led the Giants to only one touchdown in 45 possessions since replacing Kurt Warner at quarterback, hit Shockey for a TD on the next series.
Manning gave New York a 24-23 lead with his TD pass to Rivers.
Reed put Pittsburgh ahead 26-24 with is 28-yarder early in the fourth quarter.
NOTES
Steelers RB Duce Staley and WR Plaxico Burress missed the game with hamstring injuries. ...Bettis set a Steelers' record with his 48th 100-yard rushing game, one more than Franco Harris and fifth best in NFL history. ... After New York went six games without an interception, Frank Walker and former Steeler Brent Alexander had picks for the Giants. ... The last time the Giants returned an opening kickoff for a TD in a regular-season game was Dec. 4, 1966, a 90-yard score by Clarence Childs at Cleveland. It was the Giants' second kickoff return for TD in three games. Derrick Ward had one vs. Washington. ... Toomer has catches in 97 straight games.
A Trip Through China's Twilight Zone One Woman's Quest for Truth In the Authoritarian Maze
By Philip P. PanWashington Post Foreign ServiceSaturday, December 18, 2004; Page A01
BEIJING -- On the Web, she called herself the Stainless Steel Rat, after the swashbuckling hero of a series of American science fiction novels. But climbing the dimly lit stairs of a decaying apartment block on this city's run-down south side, Liu Di seemed more like a nervous mouse.
"I think this is it," the small woman with oval glasses whispered, stopping before an iron door with the number 407 on it. "I think this is it, but I can't be sure."
It had been two years since police arrested Liu, 24, on charges of subversion, and a year since international appeals and an outpouring of support from China's Internet users prompted the government to release her. At the time, Liu was a college senior, and her many fans believed she had been jailed for writing essays that poked fun at the ruling Communist Party and posting them on the Web.
But Liu wasn't so sure. Two questions gnawed at her: Could one of her friends have been an informer for the government? Had he set her up?
For months, she investigated the circumstances of her arrest, proceeding slowly, afraid what the authorities might do if she dug too deep. At times, she worried she was being paranoid. Other times, she was convinced she had been deceived. But hard evidence was elusive, and the friend seemed to have disappeared.
Now she was outside his apartment. The corridor was dark and quiet, and dusk cast flitting shadows on the concrete walls. Liu rapped lightly on the door. No one answered.
"What else can I do?" she asked during the slow drive home through the city's evening traffic. She was running out of leads, nearing the end of a long search in the shadows of the government's sophisticated security apparatus, but no closer to the truth than when she started.
More than a quarter-century after the death of Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist Party has built one of the most successful authoritarian governments in the world, delivering rapid economic growth while maintaining its monopoly on power. At times, it operates with brutal simplicity: A dissident crosses a clear line and ends up in prison.
But just as often, an encounter with the Chinese state can be arbitrary, irrational and as surreally incomprehensible as something out of "The Twilight Zone." This is especially true now, as the party struggles to adapt its old methods of social control to the challenge of maintaining authority over a society seeking and winning greater freedoms.
For individuals like Liu -- caught in the grip of this system in flux -- trying to make sense of what has happened to them can be like navigating a huge and terrible labyrinth, with suspicion and fear around every corner. This is the story of one young woman's brush with authoritarianism and her attempt to confront the mysteries it left behind.A Shy Bookworm Finds Liberation Through the Net
Liu first logged on to the Internet as a sophomore in college, and it immediately drew her in. She was a bookworm and sci-fi geek, short and somewhat dowdy, with a hunched posture that reinforced her shy demeanor. Growing up in Beijing, she often felt like a misfit. But in cyberspace, she felt liberated.
Searching for a name to use online, she recalled a series of novels she had read in middle school about a con man recruited to save the universe, the Stainless Steel Rat. The rebel in her liked one line in particular: "We are the rats in the wainscoting of society -- we operate outside of their barriers and outside of their rules."
Exploring the Internet, Liu was drawn to sites with material outside the party's rules. She had always been interested in politics, perhaps because her grandmother was a reporter for the People's Daily, the party's flagship newspaper. Her favorite novels, "1984" and "A Clockwork Orange," explored the perversities of totalitarianism. But it was on the Web that Liu threw herself into the writings of liberal critics of China's own political system.
Before long, she was immersed in Internet discussions about political reform and other subjects the party considers taboo. At first, she read only what others wrote, but then she started posting her own writing and quickly developed a reputation for funny satires about the absurdities of life under Communist rule.
In one essay, she spoke out on behalf of a webmaster jailed because of the political messages posted on his site, and suggested that Internet users turn themselves in to the police en masse. To ensure a "splendid triumph" for the authorities, she added, "those who have not yet posted subversive writings on the Internet should be persuaded to post them."
Liu said she was nervous about being punished for her writing but was also encouraged by the warm reception it received online. She spent hours in the campus computer lab, talking to fans and making new friends in Internet chat rooms. She hung out with her Web friends in the real world, too.
"Relatively speaking, I had more friends from the Internet" than college, she said. "Of course, I also knew people from school, but there weren't many I could have deep conversations with."
In April 2002, during her junior year at Beijing Normal University, where she studied psychology, Liu received a message from an Internet user who called himself Spring Snow. He said he knew one of her Web friends, a heating company employee in the northeast whose name was Jiang Lijun, and Liu recalled that Jiang had mentioned him once.
Over the following weeks, Liu chatted regularly with Spring Snow, who told her his name was Li Yibing and claimed to work for an investment firm in Beijing. He said he admired Liu's essays, and they discussed politics and traded jokes. Several times, he said he wanted to meet Liu in person. Eventually, she agreed.An Oddly Insistent Friend With Some Dangerous Ideas
They met outside Liu's university on a cool morning in May. He arrived first, carrying a newspaper as they had agreed online, and she spotted him right away: a tall, skinny fellow in his late twenties or early thirties, with relatively long hair and a face marked with acne.
"I thought with a name like Spring Snow, he should have been a handsome guy," Liu recalled. "But actually, he wasn't anything special. He was like a bamboo pole."
They talked over Coke and fries at a KFC, then had lunch at a Chinese restaurant. Li mentioned that he enjoyed hiking and brought up his friendship with Jiang again. But Liu said she did most of the talking because he was so quiet.
Li did say he wanted to meet some of her other Internet friends. He seemed nice enough, Liu recalled, so she introduced him to several of them in the following weeks. Over time, she came to consider him a friend, too.
He seemed to share her views about the need for political change in China; if anything, he presented himself as more of a radical, she said. Once, he suggested trying to blow something up. Another time he spoke of starting an underground political party.
Liu said she considered his ideas dangerous, and told him so, but didn't take him too seriously. He seemed like someone who talked big but could never get anything done. "He came across as a person with wild ambitions but without any abilities," she recalled. "He may have been serious, but I thought it was stupid and laughable, and I told him several times."
When he showed her a party platform he had drafted, she dismissed it as poorly written. But then Li began pestering her to help him edit it. Liu was reluctant, but he kept asking and she felt it would be impolite to continue refusing a friend. Twice that summer, she recalled, she visited Li in his office on the weekend and helped edit the document on his computer.
Then one rainy night in September, Li took Liu and another of her Internet friends, Wu Yiran, to his apartment. He talked about starting an underground political party again, Liu recalled, mentioning that their mutual friend Jiang supported the idea. He also proposed issuing a prank bomb threat during an upcoming meeting of the Communist leadership. Liu said she and Wu laughed about it, but warned Li not to do it.
She had nearly forgotten about the conversation when two months later an official at her school summoned her to the campus security office. About a dozen plainclothes agents were waiting for her.Questions and Arrests And a Cyberspace Petition
The men did not identify themselves, but Liu surmised they were from the secretive Ministry of State Security. For three hours, they asked politely about her essays and her Internet friends. She was nervous, and tried to buy time with long, rambling answers.
But as the questioning continued, Liu realized they were mainly interested in Li. They didn't seem to know much about him. They asked her to take them to him, but she couldn't remember his address. Then they thanked her and let her go.
Relieved, Liu returned to her dorm. But the nightmare was just beginning. The next morning, the college summoned her to the security office again. This time, uniformed Beijing police officers were waiting. They told her only that she was suspected of a crime and took her to Qincheng Prison, a notorious facility for political prisoners.
Liu was terrified -- and confused. Why had the State Security agents released her the night before? Why were their rivals in the police department now involved? The mystery deepened when the police began interrogating her. Unlike the agents, they seemed to know all about Li. They knew about his plan to start a party, the platform she had edited for him and even the conversation about the bomb threat, Liu recalled. But to her surprise, they attributed all of Li's ideas to Jiang, the heating company employee.
The officers interrogated Liu seven or eight times over the first several weeks, and they implied that Li, Wu and Jiang had been arrested, too.
At one point during the questioning, Liu had to explain that an essay she wrote about "the Persimmon Oil Party" was only satire and that no such organization existed. But the officers didn't spend much time on her writings, and one investigator even told her there was nothing wrong with them, she recalled.
Instead, they pressed her to incriminate Jiang. Liu had met him in person only once. But frightened and under pressure, she agreed with the officers as they described him as an extremist willing to use violence to overthrow the government. "The police wrote it down, and I signed," Liu said, her voice trailing off. "I didn't dare not to."
As the months passed, sitting in a small cell with three other women, one of them a convicted murderer, Liu struggled to make sense of her situation. Her family was not allowed to visit, and a lawyer told her she faced a 10-year sentence if convicted of subversion. College and the Internet seemed far away.
But outside prison, news of her arrest was spreading. Her friends in cyberspace launched a petition drive, which attracted thousands of signatures. Some Internet users began adding "Stainless Steel" to their online names in a gesture of defiance. Human rights groups and foreign governments lobbied for her release.
On Nov. 28, 2003, days before a visit to the United States by Premier Wen Jiabao and more than a year after they were detained, the government released Liu and Wu. The same day, a court convicted Jiang, 38, of subversion and sentenced him to four years in prison.
Announcing the news, a human rights group in Hong Kong said a friend of Li's had contacted them and told them he had been freed, too. But Liu heard something different from the prosecutor handling her case. He told her Li was still in prison and couldn't possibly be released given the charges against him.Looking for a Ghost In a Shadowy World
Liu was bewildered by the conflicting information. Over a quiet dinner one night, her father proposed a theory: Li might have been an informer for the police.
He pointed out that prosecutors described Wu and Jiang as her co-defendants in court papers but had chosen to handle Li in a separate, unidentified case. He also noted that the families of each of the defendants had come forward and pressed for their release from prison -- except Li's.
Liu calmly accepted the suggestion that her friend might have been a police spy. But her mind raced through the possibilities: Was that why he wanted her to introduce him to others on the Internet? Was that why he kept asking her to edit the party platform? Did he set Jiang up, too?
Liu studied a copy of the judge's opinion convicting Jiang, who had pleaded innocent, and noticed something strange.
The inventory of physical evidence listed a photograph of her and Li inside his office, and another one of her, Wu and Li inside his apartment. But, she said, they hadn't taken any photos. Someone must have been watching them and taking pictures with a hidden camera. Did Li know?
It was a chilling discovery, and Liu worried what the authorities might do if she kept asking questions. But she was also furious. "If all this was manufactured by him, then he had framed us all," she said. She also felt guilty about cooperating with police and helping them convict Jiang. "I let him down," she said. "The least I can do is find Li and figure out what this was all about."
And so the Stainless Steel Rat started digging. She left messages for Li on the Internet, but he never answered. Then she voiced her suspicions online and asked for help.
At times, it felt like looking for a ghost. A friend in the police department ran a search of the city's records but found no one with Li's name among Beijing's registered residents. Others combed Li's old Web postings for clues, but discovered that he had always forwarded other people's essays and never written any himself.
There was one tantalizing lead. An Internet user named xifenggudao -- a phrase from classical Chinese poetry -- had posted two essays urging the government to release Li. He had also later sent a letter to a magazine in Hong Kong reporting that Li had been released in late November, and that he had seen him.
The writer described himself as a friend of Li's, and Liu's father had exchanged e-mail with him while she was in prison. Now Liu tried to reach him. When he didn't reply, she wondered whether xifenggudao might be Li himself.
Then, one evening in early May, Liu's cell phone rang. It was Li. Stunned, she asked him what had happened to him. He replied that he had been released in January and now was looking for a job in Beijing. He also said he had been implicated in two cases and planned to post an explanatory note on the Web.
He suggested they meet in person to discuss it, Liu recalled. She agreed, and he told her to send a text message to his cell phone later.
But he disappeared as abruptly as he had appeared. Liu's messages went unanswered. She tried his cell phone repeatedly, but the line seemed to have been disconnected. Li never posted the promised explanation, either.
Liu tried going to Li's office, only to find the building had been demolished. She tracked down the company listed on Li's business card. The manager denied that Li had been an employee and said he had just rented an office from the firm.
Finally, Liu mustered the courage to return to Li's apartment. She found the address in a court document. It was in a building that housed employees of the city's prison system.
When no one answered his door, she tried asking his neighbors for help. None of them recognized Li's name or her description of him.
But Liu left a note, and a few days later the owner of the apartment called. He didn't recognize Li's name, either. Told that the address was listed on a court document, he said there must be a mistake. His family had moved into the apartment in 2001. They began renting it out in May 2003, but never to anyone who matched Li's description, he said. In any case, Liu had visited Li in September 2002.
Jiang's lawyer, Mo Shaoping, expressed surprise that Li had been released, noting police had described him in one document as "one of the prime culprits in a criminal gang involved in a violent terrorist activity case."
"If he was released, it's very strange," Mo said. "If he was released, Jiang should be released, too."
Liu said she has not given up on finding Li. But she is resigned to living with the mystery a long time. "Sooner or later, there will be a day when the government's files are opened," she said. "Maybe only then will we know the truth."
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
'
By Philip P. PanWashington Post Foreign ServiceSaturday, December 18, 2004; Page A01
BEIJING -- On the Web, she called herself the Stainless Steel Rat, after the swashbuckling hero of a series of American science fiction novels. But climbing the dimly lit stairs of a decaying apartment block on this city's run-down south side, Liu Di seemed more like a nervous mouse.
"I think this is it," the small woman with oval glasses whispered, stopping before an iron door with the number 407 on it. "I think this is it, but I can't be sure."
It had been two years since police arrested Liu, 24, on charges of subversion, and a year since international appeals and an outpouring of support from China's Internet users prompted the government to release her. At the time, Liu was a college senior, and her many fans believed she had been jailed for writing essays that poked fun at the ruling Communist Party and posting them on the Web.
But Liu wasn't so sure. Two questions gnawed at her: Could one of her friends have been an informer for the government? Had he set her up?
For months, she investigated the circumstances of her arrest, proceeding slowly, afraid what the authorities might do if she dug too deep. At times, she worried she was being paranoid. Other times, she was convinced she had been deceived. But hard evidence was elusive, and the friend seemed to have disappeared.
Now she was outside his apartment. The corridor was dark and quiet, and dusk cast flitting shadows on the concrete walls. Liu rapped lightly on the door. No one answered.
"What else can I do?" she asked during the slow drive home through the city's evening traffic. She was running out of leads, nearing the end of a long search in the shadows of the government's sophisticated security apparatus, but no closer to the truth than when she started.
More than a quarter-century after the death of Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist Party has built one of the most successful authoritarian governments in the world, delivering rapid economic growth while maintaining its monopoly on power. At times, it operates with brutal simplicity: A dissident crosses a clear line and ends up in prison.
But just as often, an encounter with the Chinese state can be arbitrary, irrational and as surreally incomprehensible as something out of "The Twilight Zone." This is especially true now, as the party struggles to adapt its old methods of social control to the challenge of maintaining authority over a society seeking and winning greater freedoms.
For individuals like Liu -- caught in the grip of this system in flux -- trying to make sense of what has happened to them can be like navigating a huge and terrible labyrinth, with suspicion and fear around every corner. This is the story of one young woman's brush with authoritarianism and her attempt to confront the mysteries it left behind.A Shy Bookworm Finds Liberation Through the Net
Liu first logged on to the Internet as a sophomore in college, and it immediately drew her in. She was a bookworm and sci-fi geek, short and somewhat dowdy, with a hunched posture that reinforced her shy demeanor. Growing up in Beijing, she often felt like a misfit. But in cyberspace, she felt liberated.
Searching for a name to use online, she recalled a series of novels she had read in middle school about a con man recruited to save the universe, the Stainless Steel Rat. The rebel in her liked one line in particular: "We are the rats in the wainscoting of society -- we operate outside of their barriers and outside of their rules."
Exploring the Internet, Liu was drawn to sites with material outside the party's rules. She had always been interested in politics, perhaps because her grandmother was a reporter for the People's Daily, the party's flagship newspaper. Her favorite novels, "1984" and "A Clockwork Orange," explored the perversities of totalitarianism. But it was on the Web that Liu threw herself into the writings of liberal critics of China's own political system.
Before long, she was immersed in Internet discussions about political reform and other subjects the party considers taboo. At first, she read only what others wrote, but then she started posting her own writing and quickly developed a reputation for funny satires about the absurdities of life under Communist rule.
In one essay, she spoke out on behalf of a webmaster jailed because of the political messages posted on his site, and suggested that Internet users turn themselves in to the police en masse. To ensure a "splendid triumph" for the authorities, she added, "those who have not yet posted subversive writings on the Internet should be persuaded to post them."
Liu said she was nervous about being punished for her writing but was also encouraged by the warm reception it received online. She spent hours in the campus computer lab, talking to fans and making new friends in Internet chat rooms. She hung out with her Web friends in the real world, too.
"Relatively speaking, I had more friends from the Internet" than college, she said. "Of course, I also knew people from school, but there weren't many I could have deep conversations with."
In April 2002, during her junior year at Beijing Normal University, where she studied psychology, Liu received a message from an Internet user who called himself Spring Snow. He said he knew one of her Web friends, a heating company employee in the northeast whose name was Jiang Lijun, and Liu recalled that Jiang had mentioned him once.
Over the following weeks, Liu chatted regularly with Spring Snow, who told her his name was Li Yibing and claimed to work for an investment firm in Beijing. He said he admired Liu's essays, and they discussed politics and traded jokes. Several times, he said he wanted to meet Liu in person. Eventually, she agreed.An Oddly Insistent Friend With Some Dangerous Ideas
They met outside Liu's university on a cool morning in May. He arrived first, carrying a newspaper as they had agreed online, and she spotted him right away: a tall, skinny fellow in his late twenties or early thirties, with relatively long hair and a face marked with acne.
"I thought with a name like Spring Snow, he should have been a handsome guy," Liu recalled. "But actually, he wasn't anything special. He was like a bamboo pole."
They talked over Coke and fries at a KFC, then had lunch at a Chinese restaurant. Li mentioned that he enjoyed hiking and brought up his friendship with Jiang again. But Liu said she did most of the talking because he was so quiet.
Li did say he wanted to meet some of her other Internet friends. He seemed nice enough, Liu recalled, so she introduced him to several of them in the following weeks. Over time, she came to consider him a friend, too.
He seemed to share her views about the need for political change in China; if anything, he presented himself as more of a radical, she said. Once, he suggested trying to blow something up. Another time he spoke of starting an underground political party.
Liu said she considered his ideas dangerous, and told him so, but didn't take him too seriously. He seemed like someone who talked big but could never get anything done. "He came across as a person with wild ambitions but without any abilities," she recalled. "He may have been serious, but I thought it was stupid and laughable, and I told him several times."
When he showed her a party platform he had drafted, she dismissed it as poorly written. But then Li began pestering her to help him edit it. Liu was reluctant, but he kept asking and she felt it would be impolite to continue refusing a friend. Twice that summer, she recalled, she visited Li in his office on the weekend and helped edit the document on his computer.
Then one rainy night in September, Li took Liu and another of her Internet friends, Wu Yiran, to his apartment. He talked about starting an underground political party again, Liu recalled, mentioning that their mutual friend Jiang supported the idea. He also proposed issuing a prank bomb threat during an upcoming meeting of the Communist leadership. Liu said she and Wu laughed about it, but warned Li not to do it.
She had nearly forgotten about the conversation when two months later an official at her school summoned her to the campus security office. About a dozen plainclothes agents were waiting for her.Questions and Arrests And a Cyberspace Petition
The men did not identify themselves, but Liu surmised they were from the secretive Ministry of State Security. For three hours, they asked politely about her essays and her Internet friends. She was nervous, and tried to buy time with long, rambling answers.
But as the questioning continued, Liu realized they were mainly interested in Li. They didn't seem to know much about him. They asked her to take them to him, but she couldn't remember his address. Then they thanked her and let her go.
Relieved, Liu returned to her dorm. But the nightmare was just beginning. The next morning, the college summoned her to the security office again. This time, uniformed Beijing police officers were waiting. They told her only that she was suspected of a crime and took her to Qincheng Prison, a notorious facility for political prisoners.
Liu was terrified -- and confused. Why had the State Security agents released her the night before? Why were their rivals in the police department now involved? The mystery deepened when the police began interrogating her. Unlike the agents, they seemed to know all about Li. They knew about his plan to start a party, the platform she had edited for him and even the conversation about the bomb threat, Liu recalled. But to her surprise, they attributed all of Li's ideas to Jiang, the heating company employee.
The officers interrogated Liu seven or eight times over the first several weeks, and they implied that Li, Wu and Jiang had been arrested, too.
At one point during the questioning, Liu had to explain that an essay she wrote about "the Persimmon Oil Party" was only satire and that no such organization existed. But the officers didn't spend much time on her writings, and one investigator even told her there was nothing wrong with them, she recalled.
Instead, they pressed her to incriminate Jiang. Liu had met him in person only once. But frightened and under pressure, she agreed with the officers as they described him as an extremist willing to use violence to overthrow the government. "The police wrote it down, and I signed," Liu said, her voice trailing off. "I didn't dare not to."
As the months passed, sitting in a small cell with three other women, one of them a convicted murderer, Liu struggled to make sense of her situation. Her family was not allowed to visit, and a lawyer told her she faced a 10-year sentence if convicted of subversion. College and the Internet seemed far away.
But outside prison, news of her arrest was spreading. Her friends in cyberspace launched a petition drive, which attracted thousands of signatures. Some Internet users began adding "Stainless Steel" to their online names in a gesture of defiance. Human rights groups and foreign governments lobbied for her release.
On Nov. 28, 2003, days before a visit to the United States by Premier Wen Jiabao and more than a year after they were detained, the government released Liu and Wu. The same day, a court convicted Jiang, 38, of subversion and sentenced him to four years in prison.
Announcing the news, a human rights group in Hong Kong said a friend of Li's had contacted them and told them he had been freed, too. But Liu heard something different from the prosecutor handling her case. He told her Li was still in prison and couldn't possibly be released given the charges against him.Looking for a Ghost In a Shadowy World
Liu was bewildered by the conflicting information. Over a quiet dinner one night, her father proposed a theory: Li might have been an informer for the police.
He pointed out that prosecutors described Wu and Jiang as her co-defendants in court papers but had chosen to handle Li in a separate, unidentified case. He also noted that the families of each of the defendants had come forward and pressed for their release from prison -- except Li's.
Liu calmly accepted the suggestion that her friend might have been a police spy. But her mind raced through the possibilities: Was that why he wanted her to introduce him to others on the Internet? Was that why he kept asking her to edit the party platform? Did he set Jiang up, too?
Liu studied a copy of the judge's opinion convicting Jiang, who had pleaded innocent, and noticed something strange.
The inventory of physical evidence listed a photograph of her and Li inside his office, and another one of her, Wu and Li inside his apartment. But, she said, they hadn't taken any photos. Someone must have been watching them and taking pictures with a hidden camera. Did Li know?
It was a chilling discovery, and Liu worried what the authorities might do if she kept asking questions. But she was also furious. "If all this was manufactured by him, then he had framed us all," she said. She also felt guilty about cooperating with police and helping them convict Jiang. "I let him down," she said. "The least I can do is find Li and figure out what this was all about."
And so the Stainless Steel Rat started digging. She left messages for Li on the Internet, but he never answered. Then she voiced her suspicions online and asked for help.
At times, it felt like looking for a ghost. A friend in the police department ran a search of the city's records but found no one with Li's name among Beijing's registered residents. Others combed Li's old Web postings for clues, but discovered that he had always forwarded other people's essays and never written any himself.
There was one tantalizing lead. An Internet user named xifenggudao -- a phrase from classical Chinese poetry -- had posted two essays urging the government to release Li. He had also later sent a letter to a magazine in Hong Kong reporting that Li had been released in late November, and that he had seen him.
The writer described himself as a friend of Li's, and Liu's father had exchanged e-mail with him while she was in prison. Now Liu tried to reach him. When he didn't reply, she wondered whether xifenggudao might be Li himself.
Then, one evening in early May, Liu's cell phone rang. It was Li. Stunned, she asked him what had happened to him. He replied that he had been released in January and now was looking for a job in Beijing. He also said he had been implicated in two cases and planned to post an explanatory note on the Web.
He suggested they meet in person to discuss it, Liu recalled. She agreed, and he told her to send a text message to his cell phone later.
But he disappeared as abruptly as he had appeared. Liu's messages went unanswered. She tried his cell phone repeatedly, but the line seemed to have been disconnected. Li never posted the promised explanation, either.
Liu tried going to Li's office, only to find the building had been demolished. She tracked down the company listed on Li's business card. The manager denied that Li had been an employee and said he had just rented an office from the firm.
Finally, Liu mustered the courage to return to Li's apartment. She found the address in a court document. It was in a building that housed employees of the city's prison system.
When no one answered his door, she tried asking his neighbors for help. None of them recognized Li's name or her description of him.
But Liu left a note, and a few days later the owner of the apartment called. He didn't recognize Li's name, either. Told that the address was listed on a court document, he said there must be a mistake. His family had moved into the apartment in 2001. They began renting it out in May 2003, but never to anyone who matched Li's description, he said. In any case, Liu had visited Li in September 2002.
Jiang's lawyer, Mo Shaoping, expressed surprise that Li had been released, noting police had described him in one document as "one of the prime culprits in a criminal gang involved in a violent terrorist activity case."
"If he was released, it's very strange," Mo said. "If he was released, Jiang should be released, too."
Liu said she has not given up on finding Li. But she is resigned to living with the mystery a long time. "Sooner or later, there will be a day when the government's files are opened," she said. "Maybe only then will we know the truth."
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
'
explainerHow To Avenge a Shark AttackFirst, find your shark.By Brendan I. KoernerPosted Friday, Dec. 17, 2004, at 2:22 PM PT
Australian wildlife officials are hunting for a great white shark that killed an 18-year-old surfer near Adelaide on Thursday. How common is the practice of killing sharks believed responsible for fatal attacks?
Not very, in large part because it's incredibly difficult to find the guilty party. Sharks can swim over 40 miles a day and often bolt from the scene of an attack soon after the incident. "The high mobility of individual sharks … indicates that fishing for a 'culprit' after an attack is unlikely to be effective," concluded members of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology's Shark Research Group in a 1999 paper. Heeding that advice, wildlife officials around the world rarely send fishermen on search-and-destroy missions after a fatal strike.
There also seems to be little scientific basis for hunting down a particular shark. Despite what you might have seen in Jaws, there is no such thing as a "rogue shark" that develops a taste for human flesh. In fact, a shark that attacks a human is unlikely to do so again—we are by no means their preferred prey.
Would-be avengers also face legal barriers, especially when a great white shark is the suspect. In Australia, South Africa, and California, three of the epicenters of the great white's activity, the infamous species is protected by law. Before an individual can be hunted, wildlife authorities must grant special permission—as occurred in the current case. Even then, the odds of locating the appropriate shark are slim. When the Australian government granted permission for a shark hunt in 2000, after a similarly lethal attack, fishermen came up empty despite weeks of effort.
Less restraint was shown in bygone days, when shark attacks sometimes inspired mass waves of indiscriminate killing. In 1916, for example, when several attacks occurred around New Jersey's Matawan Creek, locals peppered the waterway with dynamite and gunfire, killing untold thousands of fish. (A "Matawan Man-eater" whose belly contained human flesh was eventually killed, though many historians now theorize that attacks were the work of multiple sharks.) And in the late 1950s, after a Hawaiian surfer was killed by a tiger shark, the state launched an eradication program that ended up destroying thousands of sharks. No one knows, however, whether the true killer was among the victims.
Next question?Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a fellow at the New America Foundation.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2111208/
Australian wildlife officials are hunting for a great white shark that killed an 18-year-old surfer near Adelaide on Thursday. How common is the practice of killing sharks believed responsible for fatal attacks?
Not very, in large part because it's incredibly difficult to find the guilty party. Sharks can swim over 40 miles a day and often bolt from the scene of an attack soon after the incident. "The high mobility of individual sharks … indicates that fishing for a 'culprit' after an attack is unlikely to be effective," concluded members of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology's Shark Research Group in a 1999 paper. Heeding that advice, wildlife officials around the world rarely send fishermen on search-and-destroy missions after a fatal strike.
There also seems to be little scientific basis for hunting down a particular shark. Despite what you might have seen in Jaws, there is no such thing as a "rogue shark" that develops a taste for human flesh. In fact, a shark that attacks a human is unlikely to do so again—we are by no means their preferred prey.
Would-be avengers also face legal barriers, especially when a great white shark is the suspect. In Australia, South Africa, and California, three of the epicenters of the great white's activity, the infamous species is protected by law. Before an individual can be hunted, wildlife authorities must grant special permission—as occurred in the current case. Even then, the odds of locating the appropriate shark are slim. When the Australian government granted permission for a shark hunt in 2000, after a similarly lethal attack, fishermen came up empty despite weeks of effort.
Less restraint was shown in bygone days, when shark attacks sometimes inspired mass waves of indiscriminate killing. In 1916, for example, when several attacks occurred around New Jersey's Matawan Creek, locals peppered the waterway with dynamite and gunfire, killing untold thousands of fish. (A "Matawan Man-eater" whose belly contained human flesh was eventually killed, though many historians now theorize that attacks were the work of multiple sharks.) And in the late 1950s, after a Hawaiian surfer was killed by a tiger shark, the state launched an eradication program that ended up destroying thousands of sharks. No one knows, however, whether the true killer was among the victims.
Next question?Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a fellow at the New America Foundation.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2111208/
today's papersFlaw in the OintmentBy Jay DixitPosted Saturday, Dec. 18, 2004, at 4:50 AM PT
Everyone leads with news that Celebrex, Pfizer's blockbuster painkilling drug, triples the risk of heart attack, stroke, and death, according to a recent study. The FDA has advised people to stop taking it, and may soon require a warning or block the drug's sale. Pfizer's stock plunged, while some in Congress demanded a shakeup at the FDA, complaining that the drug assessment process is flawed.
The Washington Post points out the irony of the situation: after Merck pulled Vioxx (a drug in the same class) due to similar concerns three months ago, Pfizer encouraged people to switch to Celebrex, claiming it didn't have the same health risks. The New York Times points out that many drug dangers could be uncovered if the FDA would simply crunch the numbers from HMO patient databases. But so far, the FDA has lacked the funds to do so. The Los Angeles Times predicts a "race to the courthouse" as lawyers prepare a class-action lawsuit. All three papers quote Pfizer reps saying that multiple previous studies show that Celebrex is safe without specifying which studies those are. The only study mentioned was sponsored by Pfizer itself.
The NYT fronts a separate piece of news analysis noting that the drug industry in general is in trouble. Companies are spending billions on R&D but producing few winning new drugs. Meanwhile, patents are expiring and governments may force companies to cut prices.
The WP and the LAT front, but the NYT skips news that President Bush finally signed into law the long-awaited intelligence reform bill (though the NYT continuous news desk covers it). The President has yet to name the new national intelligence director, but CIA chief Porter Goss is out of the running. The bill's sponsors emphasized that the legislation is just a first step. Many 9/11 Commission recommendations remain unfulfilled, including doing more to prevent WMD proliferation, improving diplomacy in the Muslim world, and rethinking U.S.-Saudi relations.
The NYT and LAT front a story that the WP reported Thursday: Congolese women have accused U.N. peacekeepers of sexually assaulting them. According to the accounts, U.N. soldiers used milk and cookies to entice 12- and 13-year old girls before raping them. The U.N. has uncovered more than 150 allegations of sexual abuse. Kofi Annan promises reform, but a report says the abuse is "significant, widespread and ongoing." Nearly all the U.N. contingents in Congo are implicated. The LAT mentions a French staffer who photographed underage girls and says that if the photos get out, it could become "the U.N.'s Abu Ghraib," but fails to attribute the quote to any source, named or unnamed.
The NYT fronts word that the ACLU collects information about its members and donors, including their wealth, stock holdings, and other philanthropic interests, as a way of targeting its fundraising. The revelation is ironic given the ACLU's frequent criticism of corporations that collect personal information for marketing purposes. "It's not illegal, but it is a violation of our values," said one board member. "It is hypocrisy." New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is on the case, investigating whether the group violated its privacy promises.
The NYT fronts, the LAT teases, and the WP stuffs word that the E.U. will begin talks about the possibility of adding Turkey to the Union. Including Turkey will be tough. Its economy still has a long way to go and public opposition is strong, particularly in the European countries with the largest Muslim communities—namely Germany, the Netherlands, and France. As a result, the negotiations are expected to drag on for ten years. But as Turkey booster Tony Blair put it, the decision proves that "those who believe there is some fundamental clash in civilizations between Christian and Muslim are actually wrong."
The NYT goes below the fold with word that California plans to build a second death row next to the existing one in San Quentin. A new building is needed not only because so many people get sentenced to death in California, but also because so few inmates are actually executed: The leading cause of death on death row is old age. The glacial pace of executions seems inefficient, but some believe that's a good thing. "It may function to give us exactly what we want," says one law professor. "A death penalty without executions."
Making a blacklist, checking it twice … The Los Angeles Times reports that in North Carolina and elsewhere, conservative Christians are putting their money where their mouths are, launching campaigns to boycott stores that greet shoppers with "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." "It is apartheid in reverse—the majority is being bullied by the minority," says the pastor who organized the boycott. "If they want the gold, frankincense and myrrh, they should acknowledge the birth of the child." One store owner was glad to be given permission to say "Merry Christmas" again. "Christians are out of the closet," he said.Jay Dixit is a writer in New York. He has written for the New York Times and Rolling Stone.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2111235/
Everyone leads with news that Celebrex, Pfizer's blockbuster painkilling drug, triples the risk of heart attack, stroke, and death, according to a recent study. The FDA has advised people to stop taking it, and may soon require a warning or block the drug's sale. Pfizer's stock plunged, while some in Congress demanded a shakeup at the FDA, complaining that the drug assessment process is flawed.
The Washington Post points out the irony of the situation: after Merck pulled Vioxx (a drug in the same class) due to similar concerns three months ago, Pfizer encouraged people to switch to Celebrex, claiming it didn't have the same health risks. The New York Times points out that many drug dangers could be uncovered if the FDA would simply crunch the numbers from HMO patient databases. But so far, the FDA has lacked the funds to do so. The Los Angeles Times predicts a "race to the courthouse" as lawyers prepare a class-action lawsuit. All three papers quote Pfizer reps saying that multiple previous studies show that Celebrex is safe without specifying which studies those are. The only study mentioned was sponsored by Pfizer itself.
The NYT fronts a separate piece of news analysis noting that the drug industry in general is in trouble. Companies are spending billions on R&D but producing few winning new drugs. Meanwhile, patents are expiring and governments may force companies to cut prices.
The WP and the LAT front, but the NYT skips news that President Bush finally signed into law the long-awaited intelligence reform bill (though the NYT continuous news desk covers it). The President has yet to name the new national intelligence director, but CIA chief Porter Goss is out of the running. The bill's sponsors emphasized that the legislation is just a first step. Many 9/11 Commission recommendations remain unfulfilled, including doing more to prevent WMD proliferation, improving diplomacy in the Muslim world, and rethinking U.S.-Saudi relations.
The NYT and LAT front a story that the WP reported Thursday: Congolese women have accused U.N. peacekeepers of sexually assaulting them. According to the accounts, U.N. soldiers used milk and cookies to entice 12- and 13-year old girls before raping them. The U.N. has uncovered more than 150 allegations of sexual abuse. Kofi Annan promises reform, but a report says the abuse is "significant, widespread and ongoing." Nearly all the U.N. contingents in Congo are implicated. The LAT mentions a French staffer who photographed underage girls and says that if the photos get out, it could become "the U.N.'s Abu Ghraib," but fails to attribute the quote to any source, named or unnamed.
The NYT fronts word that the ACLU collects information about its members and donors, including their wealth, stock holdings, and other philanthropic interests, as a way of targeting its fundraising. The revelation is ironic given the ACLU's frequent criticism of corporations that collect personal information for marketing purposes. "It's not illegal, but it is a violation of our values," said one board member. "It is hypocrisy." New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is on the case, investigating whether the group violated its privacy promises.
The NYT fronts, the LAT teases, and the WP stuffs word that the E.U. will begin talks about the possibility of adding Turkey to the Union. Including Turkey will be tough. Its economy still has a long way to go and public opposition is strong, particularly in the European countries with the largest Muslim communities—namely Germany, the Netherlands, and France. As a result, the negotiations are expected to drag on for ten years. But as Turkey booster Tony Blair put it, the decision proves that "those who believe there is some fundamental clash in civilizations between Christian and Muslim are actually wrong."
The NYT goes below the fold with word that California plans to build a second death row next to the existing one in San Quentin. A new building is needed not only because so many people get sentenced to death in California, but also because so few inmates are actually executed: The leading cause of death on death row is old age. The glacial pace of executions seems inefficient, but some believe that's a good thing. "It may function to give us exactly what we want," says one law professor. "A death penalty without executions."
Making a blacklist, checking it twice … The Los Angeles Times reports that in North Carolina and elsewhere, conservative Christians are putting their money where their mouths are, launching campaigns to boycott stores that greet shoppers with "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." "It is apartheid in reverse—the majority is being bullied by the minority," says the pastor who organized the boycott. "If they want the gold, frankincense and myrrh, they should acknowledge the birth of the child." One store owner was glad to be given permission to say "Merry Christmas" again. "Christians are out of the closet," he said.Jay Dixit is a writer in New York. He has written for the New York Times and Rolling Stone.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2111235/
