One U.S. Prosecutor Behind Many Qaeda Convictions

Abstract: In March, the Justice Department released a lengthy list of its successful terrorism prosecutions since 9/11, part of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s response to Republican criticism that the Obama administration had mishandled several international cases by bringing them in the federal courts rather than before military commissions . But in the political tumult — which included charges that the administration had no stomach for the fight against terrorism and had squandered opportunities to collect valuable intelligence because it was too quick to read suspects their Miranda rights — one aspect of the list attracted little notice: Over the last two years, about one-third of the international terrorism convictions around the nation, and nearly all of those involving the post-9/11 activities of core operatives of Al Qaeda , were won by the United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn. And all of those cases were supervised, and in many instances handled in court, by one assistant United States attorney: Jeffrey Haworth Knox , a prosecutor who looks like an altar boy, grew up in the conservative environs of Orange County, Calif., and Dallas, and has described himself as a traditional law-and-order Republican. Indeed, by most accounts, some of the cases brought by Mr. Knox, who joined the office’s Violent Crime and Terrorism Unit in 2005 and has headed it since 2008, have made him a forceful advocate not only for the effectiveness of the criminal justice system in the fight against terrorism, but also for its importance as a tool to collect intelligence. And his track record would seem to bear him out. Last year, in a sealed courtroom in Brooklyn, he and a colleague stood before a United States District Court judge while a Qaeda operative who had received terrorism training, and had met some of the group’s senior leaders in the tribal areas of Pakistan, pleaded guilty to charges including conspiring to kill American citizens. The operative, Bryant Neal Vinas, 27, a convert to Islam, born in New York to an Argentine father and a Bolivian mother and raised and radicalized on Long Island, had already begun cooperating with the F.B.I. and prosecutors, court records show. His early statements led almost immediately to successful drone strikes in the tribal areas, several officials have said, and he later became one of the government’s most prized intelligence assets on Al Qaeda’s operations and leadership. His information, the officials said, was shared with and used by the United States military, and by intelligence and law enforcement agencies of the United States and its allies. This year, Mr. Knox, 37, and a different colleague from the 14-lawyer unit he leads were in court again with another young man, this one born in Afghanistan and raised in Pakistan and New York City, who had traveled from the United States to the tribal areas. He had played a central role in an suicide bomb plot directed by Al Qaeda in which he and two high school friends had made three New York City subway lines their planned targets. After months of denials, that man, Najibullah Zazi , who also received explosives training and met senior Qaeda leaders in the tribal areas, began to cooperate, providing valuable intelligence, people briefed on the case have said. In February, he pleaded guilty to conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction and to kill Americans overseas and other terrorism-related crimes, several of which carry a mandatory sentence of life in prison. Those cases were the culmination of some seven years of work for a prosecutor who, colleagues and combatants, judges and supervisors say, possesses a keen legal mind and an appetite for hard work. The son of a successful management consultant, Mr. Knox graduated from the University of Arizona and Northwestern University School of Law and in 1999 won a job as an associate at the prestigious law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York City, where he was living at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks. His superiors in the United States attorney’s office declined to make him available for an interview for this article. But friends said that after the American invasion of Afghanistan, reading about American soldiers fighting in caves while he was living a comfortable lifestyle made him, in the words of one friend, want to “be more a part of what was going on.” A senior lawyer he had worked with at the firm, Valerie Caproni, said she had encouraged him to become a federal prosecutor. Ms. Caproni, then the firm’s counsel and now general counsel to the F.B.I., had served as the chief of the criminal division in the United States attorney’s office until 2001, and had been responsible for hiring new prosecutors. “He was smart, he was creative, he had very good legal skills, good people skills, good writing skills and good judgment,” she said. “For a young lawyer to have that package of skills — he had exactly what they were looking for.” Ronald L. Kuby, once described as perhaps the last of the in-your-face leftist lawyers, is not known for saying nice things about federal prosecutors. And that did not seem to change in recent years when he started representing more and more defendants in terrorism cases. So he makes an unlikely advocate for Mr. Knox. But he slipped comfortably into that role recently while talking about a client who pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents in a case related to the prosecution of Mr. Zazi. “This was a sensitive case in a number of different areas, and Jeff dealt with me and the case with a tremendous amount of integrity and great honesty,” Mr. Kuby said. “One of the things Knox is good at,” he continued, “is he has a strategic depth in his understanding of people, and so he figures out how to get them to do something he needs them to do, whether it’s getting Zazi to cooperate or stalemating someone like me.” One of the reasons that the Brooklyn United States attorney’s office has been at the forefront of terrorism prosecutions, according to senior F.B.I. officials, agents and current and former prosecutors, is that agents bring their cases to the Violent Crimes and Terrorism Unit knowing that Mr. Knox has a reputation for getting things done. Whether it’s the care and feeding of cooperating witnesses — a sometimes complex, labor-intensive and arcane art — relocating their family members, or more routine tasks, agents say they feel he is easy to work with and focused on their cases. Some people who have worked with Mr. Knox are quick to point out that his easygoing personality and Boy Scout sincerity endear him to juries. But several contend that it is those qualities combined with his willingness to put in the time to master details, be they the particulars of a case, the niceties of an obscure statute or the history, philosophy and the players of a movement like Al Qaeda, that have made him so effective in court and in dealing with potential cooperators. Brian J. Murphy is a 13-year F.B.I. agent who has worked on terrorism cases since 9/11, including several with Mr. Knox. He said the prosecutor’s knowledge of the culture and roots of Islamic extremism gave him insight into the thinking of many of the witnesses and defendants he met and enabled him to treat them with an understanding and respect that often won them over. “He is truly a subject matter expert in the field of terrorism these days, and that is a rare gift,” Agent Murphy said. “I think a lot of people claim to be, but actually lack kind of the first-hand experience, where Jeff has talked to so many of these guys now and has got so much experience that he’s able to kind of cut through things.” This summer, Mr. Knox is leaving the Brooklyn office to work at the Justice Department in Washington, where he will join an elite unit that prosecutes violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a United States law that makes it illegal to bribe officials abroad. While he will continue to handle the cases involving Mr. Zazi and Mr. Vinas in Brooklyn, his new job will be working with a team of prosecutors responsible for investigating and trying what the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer, said are some of the biggest and most significant foreign corruption prosecutions the government can bring.

United States Attorneys
Brooklyn (NYC)
Terrorism
Al Qaeda
Vinas Bryant Neal
Zazi Najibullah
Knox Jeffrey Haworth


Neighborhood Numbers: Windsor Terrace

Abstract: AREA POPULATION 22,970 VOTING-AGE CITIZENS 16,280 REGISTERED VOTERS, 2012 14,264 2012 PRESIDENTIAL VOTE 9,154 (Obama, 7,676; Romney, 1,242) 2009 MAYORAL VOTE 4,824 (Bloomberg, 2,452; Thompson, 1,958) Source: CUNY, Center for Urban Research

Windsor Terrace Brooklyn
NYC
Mayoral races


Pakistani Militants Gun Down 7 Aid Workers

Abstract: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Continuing a militant campaign of violence against aid workers in Pakistan , gunmen on Tuesday shot dead seven Pakistani teachers and health workers, six of them women, police officials said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But the shooting, in the Swabi district of the northwestern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, fit a pattern of attacks against charity and aid workers across the country in recent weeks that officials have attributed to the Pakistani Taliban. The militant offensive has brought a wave of international outrage, particularly because it has focused on vaccination and health workers in a country where polio and measles have made troubling gains. The attack on Tuesday, near the village of Sher Afzal Banda, was conducted by two men on a motorcycle who followed a van taking the workers home and then opened fire on it with assault rifles, the police said. The victims worked for the private Pakistani aid group Support With Working Solution, which works in the health and education sectors. “They opened fire and killed six females and one male,” Javed Akhtar, the group’s executive director, said in a telephone interview. “One child, aged 7 to 8 years, miraculously survived.” The aid group was founded in 1991 and, in conjunction with other aid groups, has focused on Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province and on South Waziristan in the tribal region, both deeply affected by poverty and militancy. Five of the dead were young women who worked as teachers at a primary-level school the charity ran in the area, Mr. Akhtar said. The other two were health workers. While Mr. Akhtar said that his organization had received no prior warning or threat, he and other Pakistani officials said they believed that the attack was part of the broader Pakistani Taliban campaign against aid workers. Last month, at least nine Pakistani volunteers in an internationally supported polio vaccination drive were killed by militants across the country. Militant leaders have long accused such drives of being a cover for government and international espionage and have regularly threatened workers and officials involved in the effort, though never before to such deadly effect. The campaign of intimidation and violence has been devastating for health campaigns that rely on a backbone of low-paid volunteers who go door-to-door with vaccines in some of the most remote and dangerous parts of Pakistan. Pakistan is one of just three countries in the world in which polio remains endemic, and the country has also struggled with a resurgence of measles. Saghir Ahmed, the health minister for Sindh Province, fired five health department officials after six children were reported to have died of measles on Monday alone in upper parts of the province. At least 100 children died in December in the outbreak, Pakistani health officials say, and the World Health Organization said that more than 300 children died of the disease in Pakistan in 2012. In the city of Karachi, at least 4 people were killed and more than 40 wounded Tuesday in a bombing that appeared politically motivated, the police said. The bomb, planted on a motorcycle in a crowded neighborhood and detonated by remote control, ripped through several buses returning from a mammoth political rally for the political party MQM, the most dominant in Karachi, the police said. The rally was in support of Muhammad Tahir-ul Qadri, a crusading religious figure whose return to Pakistan after years of residence in Canada has thrown Pakistani politics into a tailspin. Mr. Qadri, who is a harsh critic of President Asif Ali Zardari and his governing Pakistan Peoples Party, held a huge rally in Lahore last month to criticize the government. He is threatening to hold an even larger one in Islamabad on Jan. 14 if his demands for reform are not met; he has likened the proposed rally to the Tahrir Square revolutionary demonstrations in Egypt. Leaders of both the Pakistan Peoples Party and opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz have accused Mr. Qadri of trying to delay the general elections, which are expected to be held in April or May. Karachi is regularly torn by savage factional violence. Pakistani officials estimate that at least 400 people were killed there in targeted political violence in 2012, and they say that the true number is most likely much higher.

Pakistan
Murders
Humanitarian aid
Taliban
Support With Working Solution
Vaccines Immunization
Pakistani Taliban


Kansas: High Court Strikes Law Cutting Its Power

Abstract: The State Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously struck down a law meant to reduce its administrative influence over lower courts, setting up a showdown with lawmakers who had threatened to defund the entire judiciary if the law were overturned. The high court ruled that the 2014 law changing how chief judges are selected was an “unconstitutional encroachment” by the Legislature on the Supreme Court’s authority. The law enacted by the Republican-dominated Legislature stripped the Supreme Court of power to appoint chief judges for trial courts in the state’s 31 judicial districts, giving it to the local judges. Lawmakers followed up by passing a law saying that if the administrative change were overturned, the court system’s entire budget through June 2017 would be void, although it is not due to take effect until March 15. Critics of the 2014 law view it as an attack on the court system’s independence and accuse the Legislature and Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican, of trying to intimidate the judiciary. The high court has been attacked by conservatives who say it is too liberal.

Kansas
State supreme court
Legislation
Sam Brownback


Spilling the Blood of Bulls to Preserve Zulu Tradition

Abstract: NONGOMA, South Africa — The bull was badly outnumbered, and while its muscular body, thick black hide and rock-hard horns offered significant advantages, this was not a brawl the animal was likely to win. Forty Zulu warriors were circling about, there to kill it with their bare hands. Penned up in the royal kraal, the bull trotted around for a while, looking nervously for an escape. Then it hesitated, and the warriors — all in their late teens or early twenties — moved in, their hands reaching for anything to grasp, the tail, the legs, those horns. The killing of the bull is part of Ukweshwama, an annual ceremony that celebrates a new harvest. It is a day of prayer when Zulus thank their creator and their ancestors. By tradition, a new regiment of young warriors is asked to confront a bull to prove its courage, inheriting the beast’s strength as it expires. It is believed this power then transfers to the Zulu king. Usually, the Ukweshwama is viewed by outsiders as little more than a curiosity. King Goodwill Zwelithini is largely a ceremonial figure these days, his monarchy more an emotional bond than a political reality. But this year, a South African animal rights group took up the cause of the doomed bull, assailing the slaying as unnecessarily cruel. Fissures were pried open in South African society, and the back-and-forth between the two sides became ugly. Critics of the ritual were condemned as neo-colonialists trying once again to stamp out African culture. “This is reminiscent of the arrival of European settlers on our shores who declared that our people were barbaric heathens who needed to be civilized,” wrote Zizi Kodwa , a spokesman for President Jacob Zuma, who is Zulu himself and a passionate defender of Zulu traditions. Leaders of Animal Rights Africa had never attended the Ukweshwama, but they said they had gathered anonymous accounts from some who had. The depiction quoted in the group’s news releases was a grisly portrayal. “For 40 minutes, dozens trampled the bellowing, groaning bull, wrenched its head around by the horns to try to break its neck, pulled its tongue out, stuffed sand in its mouth and even tried to tie its penis in a knot.” Many people were horrified. Shouldn’t traditions be revised to fit a modern view of the world, they asked. Otherwise, culture is used as an excuse for outrages like the forced circumcision of women and the killing of supposed witches. Fred Khumalo, a well-known journalist and commentator, said too many “negligible beliefs” were supported with the catchall defense of tradition. “I don’t understand the protracted debauchery of pulling a bull by its testicles and pulling its tongue out, seen in so many pictures recently,” he wrote . Actually, few photos of the ritual exist. Cameras are generally not allowed at the Ukweshwama when it comes time to kill the bull. So what actually goes on inside the kraal? Several experts on Zulu culture insisted that the critics were ill informed. Ndele Ntshangase, a lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said the technique used in killing the bull was to deftly grab its legs and horns and then pull it down. The animal was dispatched with a skillful twist of the neck. “There is no question of torture,” he said. “The duration of the killing may be longer than if a gun was used. But the intention is to kill the bull as fast as it can be done. It’s over in a few minutes.” Other defenders of the rite disparaged the animal rights activists as hypocrites. Why weren’t they campaigning against hunters who killed animals just to place a stuffed trophy on a wall — or sport fishermen who snared their catch with a painful hook only to release it back into the water? But Animal Rights Africa persisted and took the matter to court, where Judge Nic van der Reyden was implored to stop the ritual. He said it was a difficult decision to make . But killing the bull was an important Zulu tradition, he finally agreed , and Zulus were the biggest ethnic group in the country, numbering more than 10 million. Interfering with the ceremony would be like asking Catholics to stop taking communion, he said. The judge was further troubled by unforeseeable consequences: “If I rule that the bull should not be killed, it means that the power will not be transferred to the king,” he said, according to wire service reports. “Let’s say the king is struck by lightning after the ruling. People will say it is because I have interrupted their ritual.” Last Friday, Judge van der Reyden dismissed the request to stop the ceremony, and on Saturday, with clouds hanging low above the Enyokeni Palace, Zulu men turned off their cellphones and exchanged their everyday street clothes for leopard skins and sandals. They carried clubs and shields and danced along the road leading to the sliding metal gate of the royal homestead here in the hilly north of KwaZulu-Natal Province . Once inside the kraal, a circular palisade of intertwined timber, the men continued the chanting and dancing, taking slow steps back and forth, shaking their clubs toward the ground. The king himself eventually joined this group of warriors. The more important of the dignitaries wore elaborate headdresses with decorative feathers. The king’s was a striking nest of black with outward thrusts of orange. Late in the afternoon, a lectern was placed on the soggy ground and the king opened the leather binder that held a lengthy speech. President Zuma, arriving late and dressed in a business suit, stood respectfully behind him. The king’s remarks, delivered in Zulu, included a rebuke to anyone who questioned his people’s love of animals. He also berated traitors who had photographed the ceremony and handed the pictures to “enemies.” With that, journalists were ordered away from the kraal, left to observe the killing of the bull atop plastic chairs from a distance. Spectators inside did not see much anyway. The bull was down within minutes, its body concealed behind the long limbs of its many attackers. By the account of some participants, veteran warriors had to be recruited to properly snap the animal’s neck. The throng of men did not break up for about 20 minutes, and then the dancing and chanting began again. Several feet away, the bull, no longer the center of attention, lay motionless in the mud, its bulky head wrenched far past the limits of its natural swivel.

Zulus
Cattle
Ukweshwama
South Africa
Animals


Lieberman as the Eccentric Uncle in a Democratic Family Feud

Abstract: Given the surfeit of circus rings engaged under the political big top, there are only so many acts that can get much attention. See the Great Huckabee make a magic cross disappear before your very eyes! Watch the Flying Clintons once again juggle fire! Visit the Mormon tent where Jesus and the devil walk together as brothers! Thrill to Rudy the Magnificent as he cracks his whip and tames the wild beasts of the City of Sin! Given the competition, it was not entirely surprising that it was a minor sidelight when Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who came within a few hanging chads of being elected the vice president in 2000 and who was an early front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, endorsed a Republican, John McCain , for president on Monday. Even in Connecticut, this was viewed more as another episode of familial dysfunction — like a really bad holiday party featuring long-feuding in-laws — than a total shock. Still, as in all troubled families, the bad feelings tend to linger without therapy or some meeting of the minds, neither of which seems to be on the immediate horizon. When last we left Mr. Lieberman, he had pulled off something of a Houdini act of his own, coming back from the political dead last year after losing the Democratic Senate primary to Ned Lamont to run as an independent and win. Still, when campaigning for the nomination against Mr. Lamont, part of his argument went as follows: “I want Democrats to be back in the majority in Washington and to elect a Democratic president in 2008. This man and his supporters will frustrate and defeat our hopes of doing that.” You might think if your goal is to elect a Democratic president, you probably don’t endorse a Republican. But Mr. Lieberman said, no, the endorsement of Mr. McCain makes the same point about the ascendance of the Lamont/antiwar wing of the party and that “I worry as a Democrat, an independent Democrat, that these positions make it more difficult for the Democratic nominee to be elected by the voters in November.” Still, he figures that his differences with the party on foreign affairs are so well known that people have learned to live with them. As he told reporters: “There’s no question that at times I think some of the Democrats look at me sort of like the ... eccentric uncle, perhaps even the odd uncle at the family gatherings: ‘We like him, but every now and then he says things that make us wonder.’” Actually, the responses from many Connecticut Democrats don’t seem quite that understanding. On the blogosphere, where Mr. Lieberman was viewed as an apostate long ago, the reaction was apoplectic. The Connecticut Democratic Party was inundated with angry calls and e-mail messages. Not that there’s much they could do about it when Mr. Lieberman could give the Senate majority to the Republicans if he chose to caucus with them instead of the Democrats. “Joe described his role in the party as that of an eccentric uncle, but I think it’s more like having an uncle in the mob,” said Bill Curry, a former Democratic gubernatorial candidate who was once a political ally of Mr. Lieberman. “People are ashamed, but they’re also afraid. It’s not a happy thing for the family. His fellow senators are like volcano worshipers. They just know if he blows, then there’s really trouble.” What this means for Mr. McCain is not clear. The best-case scenario is that it helps draw in independents in New Hampshire. But when Mr. Lieberman was on the ticket in 2000, it was the only New England state to go for George W. Bush. And when Mr. Lieberman ran for president in 2004, he got all of 9 percent of the Democratic primary vote. As for what it means for Mr. Lieberman, that’s pretty uncertain, too. He says he is more interested in doing what’s right for the country than what’s right for the Democratic Party. People debate how much his endorsement has to do with personality; how much is principle; and how much is pique. Mr. Lieberman and Mr. McCain are longtime friends and colleagues; they share similar foreign policy views; and Mr. Lieberman is clearly frustrated with the reception he received from his party in 2004 and 2006. One theory is that by the time he is up for re-election in 2012, he may be ready to retire and move to the revenue-enhancement side of the post-Senate career. Five years is a long way off, but many people agree that endorsing a Republican for president at a time when, for starters, the Supreme Court could be one appointment away from a long-term conservative majority, is not something Democrats are likely to forget. But if this is a free shot by a guy who doesn’t have to worry about burning political bridges, he doesn’t sound like someone planning to retire. “I haven’t really thought about that yet,” said Mr. Lieberman, 65. “But I’ve always said it’s wise for people to assume that any incumbent will seek re-election until the day they see him actually closing the door behind him for the last time.”

Presidential Election of 2008
McCain John
Lieberman Joseph I


John M. Richman, Chief of Kraft Who Oversaw Merger With Philip Morris, Dies at 89

Abstract: John M. Richman, who as the chief executive and chairman of Kraft Inc. oversaw its $13.1 billion acquisition by the Philip Morris Companies in 1988, one of the largest mergers in United States history at the time, died on Monday in Weston, Fla. He was 89. The cause was complications of pneumonia, his daughter Catherine Richman Wallace said. On Oct. 17, 1988, Mr. Richman received an unexpected call from Hamish Maxwell, his counterpart at Philip Morris, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes and Miller beer. Mr. Richman was not happy about what Mr. Maxwell told him: The tobacco giant was making an $11.5 billion offer, or $90 per share, to take over Kraft. Mr. Richman felt that Philip Morris’s offer undervalued his company, Ms. Wallace said. Kraft, the maker of popular brands like Velveeta processed cheese and Philadelphia cream cheese, had reported sales of $10.5 billion in its previous fiscal year. “I have had more cordial conversations,” Mr. Richman said, recalling that first call with Mr. Maxwell. Mr. Richman quickly assembled a team of advisers and devised a strategy to head off the takeover. Kraft rejected Philip Morris’s bid and announced that it would offer its shareholders a dividend package valued at more than $110 per share, or $14 billion. In short order, Kraft shares soared to $92 on the New York Stock Exchange, surpassing Philip Morris’s offer. Mr. Maxwell flew to Chicago — Kraft’s headquarters were in nearby Glenview, Ill. — with Bruce Wasserstein, his investment banker. The negotiations with Mr. Richman took place in the Westin O’Hare Hotel. On Oct. 30, the two chief executives formally announced that Philip Morris had agreed to buy Kraft for $13.1 billion, or $106 per share. The deal would make Philip Morris the world’s largest consumer goods producer at the time. John Marshall Richman was born on Nov. 9, 1927, in Manhattan, into a family of artists. His father, Arthur, was a playwright whose screwball comedy “The Awful Truth” was made into a movie starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. His mother, Madeleine Marshall, was an actress who often performed in her husband’s plays. Mr. Richman grew up in New York City and attended the Browning School. He graduated from Yale University with a bachelor’s degree in English in 1949 and from Harvard Law School in 1952. While at Harvard, he met Priscilla Frary, a vocal performance student at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Mass. They married in 1951. In 1954, he joined the legal department of the National Dairy Products Corporation, a precursor of Kraft. He worked his way up the company ladder, becoming chairman and chief executive of Kraft in 1979. After Philip Morris and Kraft merged, Mr. Richman became vice chairman of the combined company and chief of its Kraft General Foods division. He oversaw the integration of Kraft with General Foods, the manufacturer of Jell-O and Maxwell House coffee, which Philip Morris acquired in 1985. Mr. Richman announced his retirement from Philip Morris in 1989. In 1990 he joined Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, a Manhattan law firm. He retired in 2005. Over the years, he also was a director of Bank of America, Exxon and other companies. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan appointed Mr. Richman to his Advisory Committee For Trade Negotiations. Mr. Richman was also chairman of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In addition to his wife and daughter, Mr. Richman is survived by another daughter, Diana H. Richman; and five grandchildren.

John M. Richman
Obituary
Mergers and Acquisitions
Kraft Foods Group
Philip Morris Companies


Cal Whipple Dies at 94; Won 1943 Fight to Print Photo of War Dead

Abstract: A. B. C. Whipple held high posts in the Time-Life publishing empire and wrote extensively about the sea. But he counted among his proudest achievements the role of tenacious young intermediary in a fight by Life magazine against the military censorship of a single photograph during World War II — a fight that went all the way to the White House. Mr. Whipple died of pneumonia on March 17 in Greenwich, Conn., his son, Christopher, said. He was 94 and lived in Old Greenwich, Conn. Image A. B. C. Whipple Credit Christopher Whipple The fight was over a picture taken in late 1942 or early 1943 by George Strock, a photographer for Life. It showed the bodies of three American soldiers who had been killed on Buna Beach in New Guinea. Though none of the men were recognizable, the photo was arresting in its stark depiction of the stillness of death, and then shocking when it became clear on second glance that maggots had claimed the body of one soldier, face down in the sand. The military censors refused Life’s request to publish the photo, as they refused to allow any pictures of American soldiers killed in combat. At the time, Mr. Whipple was a 25-year-old Washington correspondent for Life, assigned to the newly completed Pentagon. (He had failed his physical examination for military duty.) Important as his magazine job may have sounded, Mr. Whipple recalled in a 1986 oral history for the Time Inc. archives that it “consisted chiefly of getting photographers cleared to go wherever we wanted them to go” and, “more importantly, getting their pictures cleared when they brought them back.” He added, “I had to go over to the Pentagon and really beat on the censors.” Mr. Whipple and his colleagues at Life believed that Mr. Strock’s photograph would provide a badly needed dose of reality for those on the home front who were growing complacent about the war effort. “I went from Army captain to major to colonel to general,” he recalled in a memoir written for his family, “until I wound up in the office of an assistant secretary of the Air Corps, who decided, ‘This has to go to the White House.’ ” Image The photo by George Strock, a photographer for Life, which censors tried to prevent from being published. Credit George Strock/Time Life Pictures, via Getty Images In September 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the War Department and the director of the Office of War Information, Elmer Davis, decided — in the words of a Life editorial on Sept. 20 — “that the American people ought to be able to see their own boys as they fall in battle; to come directly and without words into the presence of their own dead.” Opposite the editorial, Mr. Strock’s photograph took up a full page of the magazine. Addison Beecher Colvin Whipple, known as Cal, was born on July 15, 1918, in Glens Falls, N.Y., to Frank and Adela Colvin Whipple. He graduated from Yale in 1940 and earned a master’s degree at Harvard before joining Time Inc. in 1941 as an office boy. His first wife, Jane Banks Whipple, died in 1993. His second wife, Sally Schilthuis Johnson, died in 2010. Besides his son, he is survived by a daughter, Ann Whipple Marr; five stepchildren; three grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. Six months after the Buna Beach photo was published, Mr. Whipple was transferred to New York as a writer for Life, where he worked until 1956. He was posted to the Spanish-language edition of the magazine, Life en Español, from 1956 to 1962, the last five months as senior editor. For the next eight years, he was editor of all the magazine’s international editions. In 1970, he was named executive editor of Time-Life Books. He stepped down from that job in 1973 and retired in 1975. Beginning with a trip to the Whaling Museum on Nantucket in 1944, Mr. Whipple immersed himself in maritime history. Among his books on the subject were “Yankee Whalers in the South Seas” (1954), “Vintage Nantucket” (1978), “The Whalers” (1979), “Restless Oceans” (1983) and “The Challenge” (1989), about clipper ships.

Addison Beecher Colvin Whipple
Life Magazine
Obituary
World War II
Freedom of the press
Photography


Planes Leaving Gates Collide at San Francisco Airport

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Two planes collided Sunday night at San Francisco International Airport as they were pushed away from adjacent gates, and federal investigators were studying evidence on Monday to try to determine why it happened. No one was injured in the accident, but the slow-moving collision of the two airplanes, a nearly empty United Airlines Boeing 757 and a Skywest commuter jet carrying 54 passengers, caused heavy damage to both tails. The collision occurred about 7:30 p.m. outside Terminal 3 between Gates 79 and 80, said a spokeswoman for United Airlines, the operator of both the 757 and the Skywest plane, a Canadian Regional Jet 700 and part of the United Express fleet. “We don’t know how it happened yet,” said the United spokeswoman, Robin Urbanski. “But whenever something like this happens, we consider it serious.” The planes were being pushed back from their gates by tow tugs under the direction of a Federal Aviation Administration air traffic controller. The 757, which arrived from Kennedy International Airport in New York earlier in the day, was being towed to a facility for maintenance. The 54 passengers on the Skywest flight, bound for Boise, Idaho, were put up at hotels and sent on their way Monday, Ms. Urbanski said. The planes were moving at no more than two miles an hour when the tail of the larger jet sheered the top of the smaller regional jet, Ms. Urbanski said, adding that one tail had a large gash and the other was severely damaged Ian Gregor, an F.A.A. spokesman, called the event “rare,” although Ms. Urbanski said the airline had a similar gate collision between two of its planes in 2007 at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. Mr. Gregor said San Francisco’s airport had an excellent safety record and a low incidence of planes coming too near one another. An F.A.A. study of 20 airports conducted from October 2006 to September 2007, concluded that San Francisco’s had had four incidents. The airport was included in the study, he said, because of an incident in May 2007 when two airplanes, one taking off and one landing, flew within 50 feet of one. The F.A.A. was in the process of inspecting the airplanes on Monday, reviewing audio tapes between the tower and the ground crew and interviewing witnesses to the collision. Investigations by airport and airline safety teams were also under way. Calling it an “unusual and obviously unfortunate incident,” Mr. Gregor also said the collision had nothing to do with runway safety. “There doesn’t appear to be any underlying safety issue here.”

Airlines and Airplanes
Accidents and Safety
Airports
San Francisco (Calif)
United Airlines
Boeing Co


The Rays Edge the Cubs Again

Abstract: ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Good pitching, solid defense and timely hitting is a winning combination the surprising Tampa Bay Rays rarely put together when they were managed by Lou Piniella. Andy Sonnanstine (8-3) allowed three runs in five-plus innings and Tampa Bay’s improved bullpen shut down Piniella’s Chicago Cubs for the second straight game in a 5-4 victory Wednesday night. B. J. Upton, Eric Hinske, Evan Longoria and Willy Aybar drove in runs off Carlos Zambrano during Tampa Bay’s four-run third inning, helping the Rays clinch their ninth consecutive series at home. Zambrano (8-3) allowed five runs and seven hits in six and two-third innings, departing after throwing 100 pitches. The Cubs later said he was replaced because of right shoulder discomfort. Troy Percival, who allowed a leadoff homer to Geovany Soto in the ninth, earned his 17th save in 19 opportunities to tie the Hall of Famer Rollie Fingers for ninth place on the career list with 341.


At Disney, Blu-ray Sales Team Is a Cast of Characters

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — The Walt Disney Company is dispatching Pinocchio, Snow White and a team of other characters in its effort to accelerate consumer adoption of next-generation DVD technology. Disney, like other media companies, is counting on high-definition Blu-ray discs — and companion technology that connects them to the Internet — to reinvigorate its highly profitable home entertainment business. But so far, Blu-ray players are selling more slowly than expected, apparently because people are not convinced they need a better DVD experience. So Disney is sending in the troops. The company will release five “platinum” titles from its library in the Blu-ray format over the next two years, hoping that classic animated movies will spur wider interest. The films are “Pinocchio,” “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Fantasia,” “Fantasia 2000” and “Beauty and the Beast.” The company had previously announced plans to introduce one such title, “Sleeping Beauty.” All the DVDs will include unusual features geared toward a generation that embraces interactivity and social networking. Viewers can watch a movie in tandem with friends in other locations, while they chat using a laptop or cellphone (the comments appear on the screen). Viewers will also be able to compete against others around the world at trivia or send what Disney is calling movie mail, video images of themselves that appear within the context of the movie. Such activities are possible because of a technology called BD Live that connects Blu-ray discs with the Internet. Bob Chapek, president of Disney’s home entertainment unit, said that his company hoped the animated favorites would help it “break past early adopters” to a wider group of consumers. “BD Live is not a niche product,” Mr. Chapek said. “We see mass adoption of the technology.” Mr. Chapek said that “Snow White,” last available in 2001, had helped start the market for traditional DVDs. “The power of these titles is incredible,” he said. Disney needs all the muscle it can find. Sales of Blu-ray players have been disappointing — although the industry has big hopes for the coming holiday season — and players compatible with BD Live just became available a few months ago. They are also expensive: Blu-ray players that function with BD Live are priced from $300 to $700, much more than regular Blu-ray machines. Making DVDs exciting is a trick that movie studios are desperate to pull off. After years of blistering growth, domestic DVD sales fell 3.2 percent last year, to $15.9 billion, the first annual drop in the medium’s history, according to Adams Media Research. Blu-ray sales are growing fast, but still represent a tiny part of the business. The industry estimate for sales of Blu-ray discs in 2008 is nearly $1 billion, up from $170 million last year.

Disney Walt Co
DVD (Digital Versatile Disc)
Sales
Blu-ray
Advertising and Marketing


Stephen Curry’s 13 3-Pointers: Shot for Shot

Abstract: Night after night, in good games and bad games, in wins and losses, Stephen Curry made 3s. Sometimes he made 10. Sometimes he made just two or three. Once he made a dozen. But from November 2014 to last Saturday, he always made at least one. His 157-game regular-season streak of 3-pointers is the N.B.A. record. (It is 196 games, if you include playoffs.) But on Saturday night against the Lakers, the steak ended. Curry fired up 10 3-pointers, but none went in, and the Warriors lost by 20. You might have expected Curry to bounce back in his next game. Did he ever. Not only did Curry make a 3-pointer against the New Orleans Pelicans to start another streak, he hit more 3s than any other player has in a single N.B.A. game, 13, breaking the record of 12 shared by Kobe Bryant, Donyell Marshall and Curry himself. He ended the game 13 for 17 on 3-point attempts, a .765 percentage, higher than any of the players who made 12. The Warriors won, 116-106. Last season, Curry made 402 3s, shattering his own record of 286 set the season before. Curry has four of the top seven 3-point-shooting seasons in N.B.A. history. Image Curry pumped his fist after making his record-breaking 13th 3-pointer of the game. Credit Ezra Shaw/Getty Images Here’s a look at the 13 record-setting 3s from Monday night: First quarter 1. Despite his struggles on Saturday, it did not take Curry long to fire up a 3. In transition, five minutes into the game, Kevin Durant passed to Curry at the 3-point line. Buddy Hield of the Pelicans was focused on getting back on defense, so Curry was open. A swish. 2. Behind the line, Curry faked a pass, then shot over Solomon Hill. 3. Curry got the ball near the baseline off a turnover, but Terrence Jones was in attendance. Curry let him jump past, then took a step to the right and hit the shot. Second quarter 4. Curry jumped on a fumbled pass and benefited from the confusion to grab an open shot. 5. Getting a pass from Draymond Green, who was acting as point guard, Curry had E’Twaun Moore’s hand in his face but made the shot anyway while falling backward off balance. 6. Curry dribbled between two defenders, Hield and Tim Frazier, then fired away while leaning forward. A seemingly low-percentage shot for a mortal was good for Curry. Third quarter 7. With Frazier’s hand in his face, Curry again calmly took a step to his left and hit. 8. Once again, Curry benefited from a dropped pass and fired quickly before Anthony Davis could get in the way. 9. A pick by Durant did not quite free Curry when Langston Galloway got up on him. It didn’t matter. Three more points. 10. Curry waited for Hield to jump up and past him, then sank it. Fourth quarter 11. The first of three rapid-fire 3s that broke the record. Andre Iguodala with the assist. 12. Thirty-nine seconds later, the record was tied despite Frazier’s hand in Curry’s face. 13. With 2 minutes 23 seconds left, 31 seconds later, the record-breaker, with both Hill and Moore defending. The shot also put the Warriors up by 12 in a game that had been fairly close most of the way. Curry smiled and pumped his fist after the 13th bucket. He took just one more shot in the game, a 2, and missed it. (His 2-point shooting on the night was 3 for 9.) The 3-point shot has been steadily increasing since it was introduced to the N.B.A. in 1979-80. That year, teams averaged 0.8 3s a game. This year so far, they have been averaging 8.7. “That’s a pretty cool record to have,” Curry told Agence France-Presse after the win. “It probably won’t last too long, the way guys shoot in this league. But to have the 3-point record is pretty special.”

Basketball
Stephen Curry
Golden State Warriors


A Look at Moving-In Day for the Formerly Homeless

Abstract: IN 1985, when Margaret Morton began teaching photography at Cooper Union in the East Village, she moved into an apartment on nearby Tompkins Square Park. At the time, a number of homeless people were living in the park in shelters built from scavenged materials. Ms. Morton began photographing these makeshift homes and their owners. In 1991, Mayor Dinkins ordered the park cleared, and the people living there scattered to other parts of Manhattan. Ms. Morton followed many of them, and over the next 15 years, she produced four books and an extensive archive of the city’s homeless communities. In the images in Ms. Morton’s books, people build homes on public land only to have those homes taken away. She is constantly asked, “Do you know people who have found permanent homes?” Her answer is yes, at Pathways to Housing. Founded in 1992, Pathways provides apartments and treatment services to more than 500 people with histories of chronic homelessness. Eighty-five percent have remained in the program on a long-term basis. Pathways emphasizes a philosophy of supporting without judging its clients. Linda Parrish, intake coordinator for the past 11 years, once struggled with homelessness herself. She helps new clients buy furniture and supplies for their apartments and introduces them to a wide variety of support services. James Fatal came to Pathways through its alternative-to-incarceration program and works full time for the agency as a case manager. Victoria Davidson is currently employed full time by a social service agency, and Daniel Pagan works as a messenger. Ms. Morton’s photographs focus on moving-in day, a turning point in the lives of Pathways’ clients.

Homeless Persons
Photography
Morton Margaret


Ukraine Striker Andriy Shevchenko Sees His Final Major Event as a Beginning

Abstract: KIEV, Ukraine — The end is near, so much so that Andriy Shevchenko cannot precisely remember the distant beginning of his brilliant soccer career. He is said to have begun kicking a ball before he could walk. “My whole life has been connected with this ball,” he said. The European Championships start Friday, co-hosted by Poland and Shevchenko’s native Ukraine. At 35, he is gearing up for his final major tournament before, he hopes, a stint with Major League Soccer . He is married to an American, Kristen Pazik, a former model, and they want to spend time with their two young sons in the United States. “I have several offers,” Shevchenko, who is known as Sheva, said in a telephone interview, speaking Russian through an interpreter. An M.L.S. official confirmed the league’s interest in Shevchenko, who said, “I asked everyone to wait until the end of this tournament so I can decide what to do.” He has had a great and curious career as a striker, with a shimmering ascent and a puzzling decline. At the pinnacle, Shevchenko won the European Champions League with A.C. Milan in 2003, scoring the decisive penalty kick in the final against Juventus. In 2004 he was named Europe’s player of the year and finished among the top three for world player of the year. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall , perhaps only Hristo Stoichkov of Bulgaria and Shevchenko have left the East to so thoroughly master the West. He is Ukraine’s leading career scorer, with 46 goals, and Milan’s second-leading career scorer, with 175. At his best, Shevchenko was full of speed and power, deft with both feet, able to score as a center forward or from both wings, a master at knowing when to lurk and when to pounce. “All my dreams came true,” Shevchenko said. “My best characteristic is that I made the most important goals in the most difficult games.” Of course, there were moments of regret. That is the drama of sports. Shevchenko missed the final, critical penalty kick in the 2005 Champions League final against Liverpool. His move to Chelsea of the English Premier League in 2006 became an expensive disappointment, amid much speculation that Roman Abramovich, Chelsea’s Russian owner, coveted Shevchenko more than José Mourinho, then its coach. “You saw this great trajectory, this explosion and potential, and then there was a moment that was never specified, when he began going downhill and petering out,” said Alexi Lalas, an ESPN commentator and former United States defender. “He had this great ability to do things alone on the field, to take it all on himself. You could target him but not be able to do anything about it.” Injury and age played their inevitable role in Shevchenko’s decline. A return to Milan in 2008-9 produced only two goals in 26 appearances. For the past three seasons, he has played for Dynamo Kiev, for whom he starred in the mid- and late 1990s in a career that almost ended just as it began with the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl on April 26, 1986. Now there is one final tournament to play, the Euro 2012. It will be difficult for Ukraine to emerge from a group that includes Sweden, France and England. Only two teams will advance, and among the 16 participating nations, only co-host Poland is ranked lower than Ukraine by FIFA, the sport’s international governing body. But the tournament will be played at home, and the crowds will be supportive. Shevchenko hopes for a magical send-off. “I’m 35; I don’t have a lot of time left,” he said. “I’ve prepared very seriously.” A month before the disaster at Chernobyl, Shevchenko, then age 9, signed with the youth team at Dynamo Kiev and entered a sports school. After school ended that spring, he and his classmates were evacuated for three months to southern Ukraine, near the Sea of Azov. Upon returning to Kiev, Shevchenko left the sports school and again began living at home. His father, a mechanic in a tank regiment, had wanted his son to prepare for a career in the military, not soccer. “My first coach came to my house and talked to my parents,” Shevchenko said. “I went back and started training seriously at Dynamo.” Five years later, the Soviet Union dissolved and Ukraine gained its independence. Over the past two decades its athletes have become the country’s most visible and recognizable faces: the Olympic champions in figure skating, Oksana Baiul and Viktor Petrenko; the Olympic champions and world record-holders in the pole vault, Sergey Bubka and Yelena Isinbayeva; the heavyweight boxing champions and brothers Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko. “We are a young country without much history,” Wladimir Klitschko said. “Sheva is an icon to millions. He represents the country in a positive way.” Euro 2012 was to be a hopeful moment for Ukraine, but the tournament approaches with a planned political boycott by some European countries and concerns among the English players that they may be subjected to racist behavior . Shevchenko said he believed the British news media was overstating the extent of racism in Ukraine. “They talk about Ukraine like we don’t have culture, like we don’t have nothing,” Shevchenko said in English. “Of course, we have a lot of problems, but people are nice. I don’t see this racism.” The political boycott stems from the imprisonment of a former prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, amid what Western leaders have called a backsliding on democracy by Ukraine’s president, Viktor F. Yanukovich. Shevchenko said he would not get involved. He learned a harsh lesson in the 2004 presidential campaign. At the time, Shevchenko publicly endorsed Yanukovich, who was criticized by some as a pawn for the Kremlin, against the reformist candidate, Viktor A. Yushchenko, in a race that observers said featured widespread fraud. Yushchenko won in a runoff but sustained dioxin poisoning and facial disfigurement in a mystery that has not been solved. This turbulent period in Ukraine became known as the Orange Revolution, and Shevchenko’s hero status took a hit. At one soccer match, according to The Guardian of London , fans held up a banner that read, “Your choice made the nation weep.” Yanukovich became Ukraine’s president in 2010. Ukrainian politics are again stormy. This time, Shevchenko said: “I’m not taking any side. I took sides long ago. Now, I represent Ukraine to the world. I have my own mission.” He said he saw no purpose in a political boycott. “If European leaders want to change something, they don’t have to use sports for it,” he said. Outside of soccer, Shevchenko has a foundation to support orphaned children. With Nike, his sponsor, he is building a soccer field for children. With his wife, he has started an e-commerce Web site called Ikkon.com , dedicated to men’s fashion and lifestyle. But his main interest remains soccer, Shevchenko said. After his playing career ends, he wants to coach. “This is the world I understand,” he said, “the world I want to stay in.”

Shevchenko Andriy
Soccer
UEFA European Football Championship
Ukraine
Major League Soccer
Milan (Soccer Team)


France Debates Its Identity, but Some Ask Why

Abstract: PARIS — France , a nation endlessly fascinated with itself since at least as far back as the Gauls, is again engaged in a bizarre and deeply political debate over its identity. Not for the first time, everything has been ordered from the top down, a project and campaign promise of President Nicolas Sarkozy . A man of the center-right, whose popularity is dropping halfway through his five-year term, Mr. Sarkozy wanted to change the political debate about what it means to be French now, especially before important regional elections next March. Having pulled a number of unhappy or disenchanted Socialists into his government, Mr. Sarkozy is facing serious unhappiness in his own party, the Union for a Popular Movement. So by raising issues of immigration , national identity and the Islamic veil, Mr. Sarkozy is trying to assuage his party’s concerns about a “globalized,” more racially and religiously diverse France, which can sometimes seem pretty far removed from Racine, if not from the farces of Molière. Mr. Sarkozy is also trying, some analysts say, to pull in support from the far right, the National Front supporters of Jean-Marie and Marine Le Pen. The man in charge of organizing the discussion is Éric Besson, 51, a former Socialist who is Mr. Sarkozy’s minister of immigration, integration, national identity and cooperative development. The Sarkozy-invented name for the ministry is telling enough; national identity, in the government’s mind at least, is connected to immigration and integration. In an interview, however, Mr. Besson denied any connection between immigration and the debate. Asked if it was a sign of anxiety or uncertainty about the current state of France, he insisted: “No, not at all. It’s neither out of worry nor out of naïve optimism. It’s the idea that there is a pleasure in discussing.” Asked how to judge any results or how they might be used, he had no answer, saying, “I believe in the virtue of the debate itself.” Some on the right find the debate odd, including former Prime Minister Alain Juppé, who called it “pointless.” Many on the left, including the former presidential candidate Ségolène Royal, think it is cynical. “It’s a diversionary operation and an operation of conquest of a certain voting bloc before the regional elections,” she said, but then equivocated, adding: “But I believe this debate is a real debate. Where do we want to go together?” The right, which champions assimilation, attacks the left for privileging cultural and ethnic differentiation. But Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a European deputy of the Left Party, born in Tangier, Morocco, said with exasperation: “To be French is to have a French identity card. And the rights that go with it. Period.” Prominent French Muslims have reacted with resentment. “They can’t ask us to sing the ‘Marseillaise’ when we’re young, then when we’re adults shut us out of positions of responsibility,” said Kamel Hamza, a local councilor for Mr. Sarkozy’s party. Yazid Sabeg, an Algerian-born businessman who is Mr. Sarkozy’s commissioner for diversity and equal opportunity, was ambivalent at best, seeing the residues of colonialism and racism. “The French nation is more united than one might think, the organic sense of being French does exist,” he wrote in the newspaper Le Monde. But he warned of “sorcerer’s apprentices who are stirring up the threat of communitarianism,” pleading: “Let’s stop linking questions of identity to the management of migrant flows while invoking the notion of integration, especially for populations already settled here for generations. One wonders into exactly what the visible minorities — French born in France to French parents — ought to integrate.” Mr. Besson said even the left was engaged. “If you look at just about all the politicians of the left who have expressed themselves to say the debate is unfortunate,” he said, “they all end up giving their own definition of the national identity, of values, etc. It’s perfect.” He himself was born in Morocco, son of a Lebanese mother and a French father. Mr. Besson came to France at 17 and did well in business and politics, defecting in a major scandal from Ms. Royal’s campaign in 2007, then joining Mr. Sarkozy’s government. Asked if the goal was to promote the integration of immigrants or traditional “Franco-French” values, Mr. Besson grew slightly upset. “I absolutely do not see myself in your question, you’re asking me if I would prefer to kill my father or my mother,” he said. “ ‘Franco-French,’ that doesn’t exist. There are no purebred French; there is no race.” But there is “a shared set of values,” he insisted. “There is a political construction: a people who decides to affirm its sovereignty, which kills its king and decides to give itself a form, which is the republic, and which further believes that a certain number of values it holds can be universal values.” And those values are? “Liberty, equality, fraternity. Secularism.” Then he added: “Many populations have difficulty understanding how deeply secularism is one of the keystones of the French worldview.” But in the end, Mr. Besson justified the debate as following orders. “It was a campaign promise of the president of the republic,” he said. “It’s a debate he asked me to organize as soon as I got here” in January. The debate can be followed, after a fashion, on www.debatidentitenationale.fr , the official Web site. Of course there were soon jokes, many of them aimed at Mr. Sarkozy, including the cover of the journal Charlie Hebdo with a Sarkozy caricature labeled: “The new French identity: Beret, Baguette, Rolex.” Even a sports scandal — when Thierry Henry helped the national soccer team qualify for the 32-team World Cup finals with an undetected hand ball — became a question of national identity: whether clever cheating is somehow French, as opposed to “Anglo-Saxon” fair play. Odder, still, since the victimized team was Ireland, which is not Anglo-Saxon at all. The French team itself, celebrated a decade ago as a model for national unity in diversity — “Black, blanc, beur” (black, white, North African French) — is now considered by some a little too monochromatic for comfort. Mr. Sarkozy, seeing the debate splinter, turned a scheduled speech on agriculture into a disquisition on national identity, which he put as the central and even unifying theme of his event-driven presidency. “This debate is a noble debate,” he said at a monument to the French resistance in World War II. “It has been conceived for women and men who love their country. Those who do not want this debate, it’s because they are frightened of it. If they are afraid of French national identity, it’s because they don’t know it. More reason to open a debate that will teach them, deeply, what is the French national identity.” He praised the great diversity of France as “a multitude of small countries, of terroirs.” Behind all the diversity and contradictions, he insisted, “there is a profound unity of our culture, and dare I say it, of our civilization.” He spoke of assimilation and integration and said, once again, that “France is a country where there is no place for the burka,” the full veil. The whole affair is so politicized that even Mr. Sarkozy’s effort to move the remains of the writer Albert Camus into the Panthéon, where many of France’s finest are buried, is being opposed because many feel the president is hijacking Camus to bolster the identity debate. Camus, who was born in Algeria and died 50 years ago in January, “does not need Sarkozy,” Olivier Todd, one of Camus’s biographers, told Le Monde. “Sarkozy needs a little intellectual glitter.”

France
Politics and Government
Sarkozy Nicolas


Even Dickey Can’t Stop Slide, as Mets Fall Again

Abstract: For all the Mets ’ faults, they could always count on a stopper, R. A. Dickey, to catch the buck before it passed. His record, with one blemish in 19 starts, had been a season-long standard of reliability. That is, until Tuesday, until the Washington Nationals knocked him around through six innings in a 5-2 loss. And the momentum of the Mets’ second-half swan dive continues to gather steam. Dickey lost for the first time since April 18, ending an 11-game winning streak that was the third longest in team history. Dickey, the Mets’ All-Star knuckleballer, could not rise to his most needed role: as a lid to the team’s losing streak, which has now reached five games. “It’s tough,” Dickey said. “When things are going on a downward spiral, the tendency is to say, ‘Woe is me, nothing goes right.’ In order to change, we have to stand up. I have to pitch better.” Dickey beat the Nationals last week for the Mets’ only win since the All-Star break. But Tuesday he allowed five runs (four earned) in the sixth inning after surrendering only three hits in the first five innings. The Mets have lost 11 of their past 12 games, and the team’s frustration with its performance was illustrated by a pregame shake-up. The Mets (47-50) demoted the struggling outfielder Lucas Duda, a young and sturdy slugger who was expected to be a pillar of the team’s production. He hit 10 home runs in his final 185 at-bats in 2011; in 2012, his slugging percentage had dipped below .400. The team’s difficulties, combined with the beating the bullpen had taken the past four games, magnified the need for a change. Duda was batting .190 over his last 29 games. The Mets could preach patience during Ike Davis’s early-season slump — while they were winning — but action came more swiftly in mid-July. “We’re not a bad team; we’re playing bad,” Manager Terry Collins said. “We’re not doing anything right right now.” The Mets have been desperate for offensive production from their outfielders all season. Jason Bay, when healthy, has yet to generate much, going 4 for 24 since returning from a concussion. Center fielders Andres Torres and Kirk Nieuwenhuis have 8 homers and 52 runs batted in combined. Certainly Jordany Valdespin will get more at-bats. He hit his fifth pinch-hit homer of the season — setting a team record — in the eighth. After wearing the bullpen thin the last four games — two of them in extra innings — Collins was counting on a strong outing from Dickey on Tuesday. But Dickey could not get past the sixth. “I should’ve pitched into the eighth,” Dickey said. “I had a good knuckleball, I was feeling it, I was controlling it. They were taking mediocre swings at it. I felt too good for that to happen.” He struck out the first two batters of the game on six pitches and looked pinpoint sharp with his knuckleball. But the Nationals got on the board with an R.B.I. double by Danny Espinosa in the fourth. Things fell apart with two outs in the sixth. Dickey allowed a two-run homer to Adam LaRoche, and then three consecutive hits. On Jesus Flores’s single to left field, one of two runs came around on a throwing error by Bay. Dickey, who has assumed the ace role in the absence of the injured Johan Santana, has a 5.36 earned run average in his last seven games (including one relief appearance). “There’s a lot on his shoulders right now,” Collins said. “With Johan being out, he’s the guy. That’s a big responsibility. He’s pitched so great all year long.” Washington’s starter, Gio Gonzalez, gave up six runs in three and a third innings against the Mets last week — his worst outing of the season. But he was back to his All-Star-caliber self Tuesday. “Just wanted to redeem myself from the last start,” Gonzalez said. “You always want to bounce back as a pitcher.” The Mets scored on a single by Ronny Cedeno in the third — the first time they had led in a game since Thursday — but that was the only hit Gonzalez would allow until a single by Davis in the seventh. The Mets would get only one more hit (the Valdespin homer) the rest of the game. And the beat goes on. “Nobody wants to perform like this and have a record like this,” Dickey said. “We’ve lost a lot of close games. But we’ve got to win some of them, too. It’s disappointing.” INSIDE PITCH Closer Frank Francisco complained of discomfort in his right knee late Monday night and received a cortisone shot. His rehabilitation appearance for Class A Brooklyn was pushed back from Tuesday, but Francisco said he should be ready to pitch Wednesday for Class AA Binghamton.

Baseball
New York Mets
Washington Nationals
Dickey R A


As Homeless Line Up for Food, Los Angeles Weighs Restrictions

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — They began showing up at dusk last week, wandering the streets, slumped in wheelchairs and sitting on sidewalks, paper plates perched on their knees. By 6:30 p.m., more than 100 homeless people had lined up at a barren corner in Hollywood, drawn by free meals handed out from the back of a truck every night by volunteers. But these days, 27 years after the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition began feeding people in a county that has one of the worst homeless problems in the nation, the charity is under fire, a flashpoint in the national debate over the homeless and the programs that serve them. Facing an uproar from homeowners, two members of the Los Angeles City Council have called for the city to follow the lead of dozens of other communities and ban the feeding of homeless people in public spaces. “If you give out free food on the street with no other services to deal with the collateral damage, you get hundreds of people beginning to squat,” said Alexander Polinsky, an actor who lives two blocks from the bread line. “They are living in my bushes and they are living in my next door neighbor’s crawl spaces. We have a neighborhood which now seems like a mental ward.” Should Los Angeles enact such an ordinance, it would join a roster of more than 30 cities, including Philadelphia, Raleigh, N.C., Seattle and Orlando, Fla., that have adopted or debated some form of legislation intended to restrict the public feeding of the homeless, according to the National Coalition of the Homeless . “Dozens of cities in recent years,” said Jerry Jones, the coalition’s executive director. “It’s a common but misguided tactic to drive homeless people out of downtown areas.” “This is an attempt to make difficult problems disappear,” he said, adding, “It’s both callous and ineffective.” The notion that Los Angeles might join this roster is striking given the breadth of the problem here. Encampments of homeless can be found from downtown to West Hollywood, from the streets of Brentwood to the beaches of Venice. The situation that has stirred no small amount of frustration and embarrassment among civic leaders, now amplified by fears of the hungry and mostly homeless people, who have come to count on these meals. “They are helping human beings,” said Debra Morris, seated in a wheelchair as she ate the evening’s offering of pasta with tomato sauce. “I can barely pay my own rent.” There are now about 57,735 homeless people in Los Angeles County, according to the 2013 Annual Homeless Assessment Report released by the Department of Housing and Urban Development last week, a 23.5 percent increase over last year. Only New York had a higher homeless population. The problem is particularly severe here because of the temperate climate that makes it easier to live outdoors, cuts in federal spending on the homeless, and a court-ordered effort by California to shrink its prison population, said Mike Arnold, the executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, an agency created by the city and county in 1993. All told, about $82 million in government funds is spent each year on helping homeless here, Mr. Arnold said. Tom LaBonge, one of the two City Council members who introduced the resolution (the other, also a Democrat, was Mitch O’Farrell), said food lines should be moved indoors, out of consideration to the homeless and neighborhoods. “There are well-intentioned people on both sides,” Mr. LaBonge said. Image The Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition has been serving free meals to the homeless in Los Angeles every night for more than 25 years. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times But, he added: “This has overwhelmed what is a residential neighborhood. When dinner is served, everybody comes and it’s kind of a free-for-all.” Ted Landreth, the founder of the food coalition, said his group had fought back community opposition before — it moved to this corner after being ordered out of Plummer Park in West Hollywood in 1990 because of similar complaints — and would do so again. “The people who want to get rid of us see dollar signs, property values, ahead of pretty much everything else,” he said. “We have stood our ground,” he added. “We are not breaking any law.” Communities that have sought to implement feeding restriction laws have faced strong resistance. In Philadelphia, advocates for the homeless won an injunction in federal court blocking a law there that would have banned food lines in public parks. Even before the court action, religious groups had moved in and began setting up indoor food lines. In many ways the agonies of the national battle over dealing with homelessness are etched into this four-block-square section of Hollywood, where industrial buildings, including the Cemex cement factory, film production facilities and the stately former headquarters of Howard Hughes’s enterprises, sit two blocks up North Sycamore Avenue away from a middle-class neighborhood of Spanish Mission homes. Construction in the area is bustling, reflecting the gentrification that is taking place across this city. The coalition’s truck, a Grumman Kurbmaster, arrives every night at 6:15, drawing as many as 200 people from across the region. The other night, men and women lined up for firsts and, if desired, seconds. Some were quiet and grateful, and a few were loud and agitated. “You all right?” Mr. Landreth asked one man who was shouting to himself. Just up the street, 75 people filled a living room, anxiously exchanging stories about what many described as a neighborhood under siege, and demanding help from local officials. “You guys have had your fill here — we know that,” Officer Dave Cordova of the Los Angeles Police Department told them. “And the food coalition doesn’t help. Where do all these guys go after they get something to eat?” Peter Nichols, the founder of the Melrose Action Neighborhood Watch , which helped organize the meeting, said there has been a steady increase in complaints about petty crime, loitering, public defecation and people sleeping on sidewalks. “While it sounds good in concept — I’m going to pull up to a curb, I’m going to feed people, I’m going to clean up and I’m going to leave — well, there are not restrooms,” he said. “Can these people get a place to sleep? To clean up? We want there to be after-care provided every day they do the program. But they don’t and they can’t.” What Mr. Landreth described as the most serious threat in its existence — a powerful combination of opposition from homeowners, businesses and city officials — is stirring deep concern among the people who come here to eat most nights. “I know because of the long lines, a lot of times we have trouble and confusion,” said Emerson Tenner, 46, as he waited for a meal. “But there are people here who really need this. A few people act a little crazy. Don’t mess it up for everyone else.” Aaron Lewis, who said he makes his home on the sidewalk by a 7-Eleven on Sunset Boulevard, chalked up opposition to what he described as rising callousness to people in need. “That’s how it is everywhere,” Mr. Lewis said. “People here — it’s their only way to eat. The community doesn’t help us eat.”

Los Angeles
Homelessness
Food
City council
California
National Coalition for the Homeless
Mitch O'Farrell
Tom LaBonge
Ted Landreth


Tally Ho! A Determined Crew Hunts for Fox Hunters

Abstract: LUXBOROUGH, England — Graham Floyd, an operative from the League Against Cruel Sports, had been on the hill for about an hour when he thought he heard something. “Everybody in!” he barked, conveying his hefty, camouflage-clothed person with surprising agility into a nearby thicket of brambles. He crouched low, whipped out his binoculars and scanned the valley for signs of the West Somerset Hunt, which local intelligence had suggested was in the vicinity. But it was a false alarm. All Mr. Floyd heard was the faint whine of a chain saw; all he saw was the sun-drenched Somerset countryside. It was frustrating, but not unusual. “Covert surveillance is all about spending days looking at absolutely nothing,” explained his colleague in the bushes, Tony R., a volunteer who asked that his full name not be used because he feared reprisals from his hunt-sympathizing neighbors. (As a paid employee in charge of the league’s land sanctuary, Mr. Floyd is already well known.) Finding actual hunters engaged in actual hunting is only the first of many hurdles the league’s hunt monitors, as they are known, face in their avowed mission: to catch and report people using dogs to hunt foxes, a practice that was outlawed in Britain four years ago. The 2004 Hunting Act, passed after a brutal fight in Parliament, was intended to address complaints that fox-hunting — a pursuit beloved by tens of thousands of people across rural Britain — was brutal and barbaric. But it was a dubious compromise. The law did not make it illegal to put on a fancy outfit and gallop around the countryside after a pack of hounds, as the country’s 300 or so organized hunts still do week after week; it merely said it was illegal for the hounds to intentionally chase foxes. Abiding by it, it seems, is easier said than done. “I can say I’ve been out once or twice a week every week since the ban came in, and they are hunting exactly the way they always did,” Tony R. said. For their part, the hunters argue that they have changed their ways and now make every effort to legally ride around after artificially laid scents, a practice that a pro-hunting member of Parliament once said was about as exciting as “kissing one’s sister.” Any chasing of foxes that may or may not occur, the hunters say, is entirely accidental. “We try to hunt within the law,” said Penny Hardy, secretary of the West Somerset Hunt. “But however hard you try, you’re always going to get instances where you’ve laid your trail for the hounds and a fox suddenly gets under their noses.” To gather evidence that the hunts are deliberately pursuing foxes, members of the anti-hunt movement conceal themselves for hours near known hunting locations, filming examples of shady behavior. But their work has failed to ignite the passions of the law-enforcement community. Sometimes, said Paul Tillsley, the anticruelty league’s operations manager, he can barely get his evidence past the police station front desk. “We practically give them PowerPoint presentations,” Mr. Tillsley said. “But the police have this attitude that we’re the great unwashed and the hunt supporters are pillars of the community.” Since the act took effect, only a handful of members of organized hunts have been convicted of violating it. Some judges have criticized the law as confusing and poorly written. In one case, an appellate panel said it was bewildered by “the question as to whether in any given situation ‘hunting’ is taking place.” In response, the monitors have tried to improve their sleuthing techniques and upgrade their technology. As proudly as Q in the James Bond stories, Mr. Tillsley displayed some of their devices, which include a movement-sensitive camera disguised as a stick, which blends in with piles of real sticks. There are also tiny cameras with built-in microphones that look like buttons and can be used when monitors infiltrate hunt supporters’ gatherings. “If someone attacks you, it’s always helpful to have it on film,” Mr. Tillsley said. He was not joking. Monitors have been beaten, kicked, whipped with riding crops, and driven into hedges by angry riders. Mr. Tillsley has been verbally abused, threatened and harassed. His tires have been slashed, his car followed and boxed in, and the windows of his house broken. He is not welcome in the local pub. “If I was the type who wanted a hectic social life, I couldn’t live in this area,” he said. On a recent morning, Tony R., who is 58 and used to be a telecommunications manager, was dressed in a multilayer ensemble of waterproof Gore-Tex camouflage in the D.P.M., or disruptive pattern material, that he said was worn by NATO forces in 1995. He was also wearing what he described as a “filled combat smock” and carrying a camouflage backpack containing batteries, a satellite navigation device, a map, a hacksaw, wire cutters and a ham sandwich. The plan was for him and Mr. Floyd to wait in the woods while Mr. Tillsley acted as a decoy in his car below, pushing the hunt toward the monitors. “He says a woman in a blue four-by-four is tailing him,” Mr. Floyd reported. Losing cellphone contact with Mr. Tillsley, they paused to reminisce about earlier forays, such as the day they hid so well that they were flushed out by a pack of hounds. Or the times they have seen adulterous members of the hunt ducking quickly into the bush for “some rumpy-pumpy,” as Mr. Floyd put it. Once, a colleague videotaping a hunt looked up in horror as a large woman dismounted and chose the spot directly in front for a bathroom break. She began to rearrange her clothing. “Ed just couldn’t stand it any more, so he got up and shouted, ‘Please, no!’ ” Mr. Floyd said. The day wore on and it was clear that the hunt had thwarted the monitors. The operatives prepared to return to headquarters. But Mr. Floyd, 49, said even days when the taping is poor or nonexistent can be worthwhile, because the mere hint that the hunters are being watched can deter them from lawlessness. His evidence has resulted in three convictions so far. Still, he said, the standards of proof required by the police are hard to meet. “It would really help if we could film the hunters carrying plaques saying, ‘I am illegally hunting,’ ” he said.

Great Britain
Hunting and Trapping
Foxes
Rural Areas


Officials Fear New Mumbai-Style Attack by Group

Abstract: KARACHI, Pakistan — Ten months after the devastating attacks in Mumbai by Pakistan-based militants, the group behind the assault remains largely intact and determined to strike India again, according to current and former members of the group, Lashkar-e-Taiba , and intelligence officials. Despite pledges from Pakistan to dismantle militant groups operating on its soil, and the arrest of a handful of operatives, Lashkar has persisted, even flourished, since 10 recruits killed 163 people in a rampage through Mumbai , India’s financial capital, last November. Indian and Pakistani dossiers on the Mumbai investigations, copies of which were obtained by The New York Times , offer a detailed picture of the operations of a Lashkar network that spans Pakistan. It included four houses and two training camps here in this sprawling southern port city that were used to prepare the attacks. Among the organizers, the Pakistani document says, was Hammad Amin Sadiq, a homeopathic pharmacist, who arranged bank accounts and secured supplies. He and six others begin their formal trial on Saturday in Pakistan, though Indian authorities say the prosecution stops well short of top Lashkar leaders. Indeed, Lashkar’s broader network endures, and can be mobilized quickly for elaborate attacks with relatively few resources, according to a dozen current and former Lashkar militants and intelligence officials from the United States , Europe , India and Pakistan. In interviews with The Times, they presented a troubling portrait of Lashkar’s capabilities, its popularity in Pakistan and the support it has received from former officials of Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment. Pakistan’s chief spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or ISI, helped create Lashkar two decades ago to challenge Indian control in Kashmir , the disputed territory that lies at the heart of the conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbors. Pakistani officials say that after Sept. 11, 2001, they broke their contacts with the group. No credible evidence has emerged of Pakistani government involvement in the Mumbai attacks, according to an American law enforcement official. But a senior American intelligence official said the ISI was believed to maintain ties with Lashkar. Four Lashkar members, interviewed individually, said only a thin distance separated Lashkar and the ISI, bridged by former ISI and military officials. One highly placed Lashkar militant said the Mumbai attackers were part of groups trained by former Pakistani military and intelligence officials at Lashkar camps. Others had direct knowledge that retired army and ISI officials trained Lashkar recruits as late as last year. “Some people of the ISI knew about the plan and closed their eyes,” said one senior Lashkar operative in Karachi who said he had met some of the gunmen before they left for the Mumbai assault, though he did not know what their mission would be. The intelligence officials interviewed insisted on anonymity while discussing classified information. The current and former Lashkar militants did not want their names used for fear of antagonizing others in the group or Pakistani authorities. But by all accounts Lashkar’s network, though dormant, remains alive, and the possibility that it could strike India again makes Lashkar a wild card in one of the most volatile regions of the world. India and Pakistan have fought three wars since they were created by the bloody partition of British India in 1947. Whether they begin again the long journey toward peace or find themselves eyeball to eyeball, nuclear arms at the ready, depends in no small measure on the actions of this shadowy group. A new attack could reverberate widely through the region and revive nagging questions about Pakistan’s commitment to stamp out the militant groups that use its territory. It could also dangerously complicate the Obama administration’s efforts in Afghanistan . Success there depends in part on avoiding open conflict between India and Pakistan, so that Pakistan’s military can focus on battling the Taliban insurgents who base themselves in Pakistan. Even so, American diplomatic efforts to improve India-Pakistan relations have been stillborn. So delicate is the Kashmir issue that Indian officials bridle at any hint of American mediation. Meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly , the two sides failed to restart talks last weekend, with India demanding greater steps by Pakistan to prosecute those responsible for the Mumbai attacks. The dossiers show that at the level of the police, the two countries can cooperate, and have exchanged DNA evidence , photographs and items found with the attackers to piece together a detailed portrait of the Mumbai plot. But the files are laced with barbs and recriminations, reflecting the increasingly acid tenor of their relations. Despite pledges to work together to fight terrorism, the Pakistani and Indian intelligence services are not on speaking terms, according to officials in both countries and the United States. The gaps heighten the risks of a new attack substantially, American officials fear. “The only cooperation we have with the Pakistanis is that they send us their terrorists, who kill our people, and we kill their terrorists,” a senior Indian intelligence official said in an interview. Asked how much his agency communicated with its Indian counterpart, a senior Pakistani intelligence official made an O with his thumb and forefinger. “Zero,” he replied. Brazen Planning The Pakistani investigation concludes “beyond any reasonable doubt” that it was Lashkar militants who carried out the Mumbai attacks, preying on their victims in a train station, two five-star hotels, a cafe and a Jewish center over three days starting last Nov. 26. According to testimony by the only surviving attacker, Ajmal Kasab , 22, Lashkar recruits were vetted and trained around the country, including at well-established camps in Muzaffarabad, in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, as well as in Mansehra, in North-West Frontier Province. A core group, the 10 chosen for the Mumbai assault, was eventually moved to Karachi and its suburbs, where the real drilling began and where Pakistani investigators later retraced the plotters’ steps. Beginning as early as May 2008, the group trained and planned brazenly while living in various neighborhoods in and around Karachi. They made scores of calls using cellphones, some with stolen numbers, starting in August. They set up voice lines over the Internet. At one water sports shop, they bought inflatable boats, air pumps, life jackets and engines. One of their training camps, with five thatched rooms and a three-room house, was located near a creek, where they conducted water drills in the open. The police later recovered an abundance of evidence: militant literature, pocket diaries, spent and live ammunition, empty gun magazines, life vests and receipts for supplies, including distributed weapons and explosives, the Pakistani dossier says. At the other camp, which they named Azizabad, the group and their trainers set up a classroom. Using handwritten manuals, the recruits were trained how to use cellphones to keep in contact with their handlers during the attack. They pored over detailed maps of the Indian coastline, plotting the course they would take to Mumbai. They learned how to use global positioning devices. Working from Millat Town, a dusty, middle-class Karachi suburb on the eastern edge of the city, Mr. Sadiq organized the cadre. Neighbors described him as quiet and pious, riding around the streets with his two young sons perched on his motorbike. The Pakistani dossier says he was a committed Lashkar militant. In an interview, his uncle, Lala Yasin, said the same thing, adding proudly that Mr. Sadiq was willing to do anything to liberate Kashmir from India’s grip. “Lashkar-e-Taiba does not kill people without reason,” Mr. Yasin said at his home in Karachi, a few blocks from where his nephew planned the Mumbai attacks. “It is the champion of jihad,” he explained. “Muslims are like a body and if one part of your body is aching, the entire body may be jeopardized.” A Limited Crackdown Pakistani authorities have arrested seven men linked to the Mumbai attack, including Mr. Sadiq and Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, a man well known as the chief of operations for Lashkar. They are searching for at least 13 other suspects. But their investigation has come up short of the founder of Lashkar, Hafiz Saeed, the man Indian and Western officials accuse of masterminding the attacks. In June, a Pakistani court freed Mr. Saeed from detention, declaring that it did not have enough evidence to hold him. Under continuing pressure, Pakistani authorities this month confined his movements once again. But they say they have no new evidence against him. Rehman Malik, Pakistan’s interior minister, said that there was simply not enough evidence to charge Mr. Saeed with a crime, and that all the evidence pointed to Mr. Lakhvi as the mastermind. “Lakhvi was the head, and that is why he has been taken into custody,” Mr. Malik said in an interview. “He has been charged and now they are all under trial.” Indian officials say they have sent Pakistan a six-page summary of evidence of Mr. Saeed’s complicity in the Mumbai attacks, a copy of which was given to The Times. The document, based on India’s own intelligence and testimony from Mr. Kasab, quotes Mr. Saeed giving detailed instructions to the group that carried out the attack. “One Hindustani boat has to be hijacked for going to Bombay from Karachi,” the document says, using Mumbai’s former name. Mr. Saeed also told the group that it should aim to begin the assault around 7:30 p.m. “At this hour there is considerable crowd at the places of our target,” the document quotes him as saying. Pakistani officials and legal experts say the evidence is not as clear-cut as India says. The case against Mr. Saeed rests almost entirely on the testimony of Mr. Kasab, the surviving attacker, and serious questions remain about the way the Indian police obtained his statements, they say. Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the organization Mr. Saeed now leads, bills itself as a charity and denies any links with Lashkar. Abdur Rahman Makki, Mr. Saeed’s deputy and brother-in-law, called any accusations against Mr. Saeed baseless. “I do not think that there is anything left to talk about after the High Court’s decision that Hafez Saeed has no link to the Mumbai incident,” he said in an interview. Yet he was not shy about admitting that Mr. Saeed, a fiery preacher, regularly exhorted young people to fight in Kashmir. “Hafiz Saeed always speaks and discusses about the jihad that is mentioned in the Holy Koran,” Mr. Makki said. “Not only Pakistanis, any Muslim has the duty to support the oppressed Kashmiris.” All parts of India where Muslims are a majority must be freed, he said. Meanwhile, despite promises to crack down on terrorists, Pakistan’s government has taken few concrete steps. The former director of Pakistan’s elite national investigative force was appointed to lead the country’s new counterterrorism body in January. But it took seven months to get any money to get the agency moving, and only now is it beginning to hire staff members and flesh out its mission, law enforcement officials said. Cracking down on Lashkar and other groups linked to the Kashmir struggle, and who do not explicitly seek to overthrow Pakistan’s government, was not urgent, they said. “I have many other things that are higher priority now,” said one senior police official in Punjab, the province where DNA tests pinpointed the families of the Mumbai attackers, according to the dossier. “Why would a case in Mumbai be so important when Pakistan is the front line of the war on terror?” Links to Intelligence Agencies For Pakistani authorities, the political problems posed by arresting Mr. Saeed, or undertaking a broader crackdown on Lashkar, may outstrip the legal ones. The organization and its cause — to “free” Kashmir — remain close to the hearts of the Pakistani public as well as the military and intelligence establishment. Since the Mumbai attacks, “our funds increased and more people wanted to join us,” a senior Lashkar operative in Karachi said in an interview. A midlevel ISI officer told The Times this year that Lashkar’s membership extended to 150,000 people. Despite official denials, Pakistan’s spy agency, the ISI, maintains links to Lashkar, though the current level of support remains murky, according to the senior American intelligence official interviewed by The Times, as well as Pakistani analysts, retired military officials and former Lashkar members. “Hafiz Saeed is the army’s man,” said Najam Sethi, an analyst and newspaper editor in Lahore, Pakistan. He and other analysts said the ISI was in no hurry to discard a group it helped create for a covert war against India. “They have not abandoned it altogether,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a military analyst in Lahore. “It is not a total reversal; it is a realization that this is not advisable at this time.” Senior ISI officials disputed the view. While acknowledging that the ISI had worked closely with Lashkar-e-Taiba in the past, they said things were different now. “Prior to 9/11, we had a very strong contact with L.E.T., even on the leadership level,” one senior Pakistani intelligence official said in an interview. “But after 9/11, we broke our contacts with not only L.E.T. but also the Taliban.” “Today we think that it would have been better if we had not cut our ties with them the way we did,” the official added, “so that we could control them more.” A senior Lashkar militant said the group was divided — with the operational wing, led by Mr. Lakhvi, chafing for more attacks on India, and the spiritual wing, led by Mr. Saeed, advocating a more cautious approach. The senior Pakistani intelligence official said that some within Lashkar might aspire to a more ambitious agenda, and suggested that parts of the group might have acted on their own. “Lashkar went rogue,” the Pakistani intelligence official said. “Perhaps L.E.T. or dissident factions wanted to emerge as a global player,” like Al Qaeda . New Attacks Expected Even as new details emerge about the Mumbai attacks, senior American military, intelligence and counterterrorism officials express grim certainty that Lashkar is plotting new attacks. The United States warned Indian officials this year about a Mumbai-style attack by Lashkar against multiple sites in India, according to a senior Defense Department official and a senior American counterterrorism official. The counterterrorism official said the information, gleaned from electronic intercepts and other sources, was not specific and apparently did not result in any arrests. But it was significant enough for American officials to alert their Indian counterparts. “There were indications of possible terrorist activity in the run-up to the Indian elections,” in May, “and that information was shared promptly with Indian officials,” said the counterterrorism official. Pakistani officials, however, say they have been kept in the dark. “We heard that the Americans have warned the Indians that something in Mumbai might happen, but no one informed us,” a senior Pakistani intelligence official said. If there is one thing on which intelligence agencies on both sides of the border agree, it is that the consequences of a new attack by Lashkar could be devastating. “We do fear that if something like Mumbai happens in India again, there might be a military reaction from the Indian side and it could trigger into a war,” said a senior intelligence official in Pakistan. “Right now we cannot guarantee that it will not happen again, because we do not have any control over it.”

Terrorism
Lashkar e Taiba
Pakistan
ISI
Mumbai,Bombay