Lose to Dallas in Heartbreaking Fashion |  |  | | | Suzy Allman for The New York Times
The Giants stop Dallas Cowboys' Marion Barber during Sunday's game.
| |  Robert Caplin for The New York TImes Martin Gramatica celebrated after kicking a 46-yard field goal that gave the Cowboys a 23-20 victory over the Giants. December 3, 2006 Cowboys 23, Giants 20 Giants Lose to Dallas in Heartbreaking Fashion By JOHN BRANCH EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J., Dec. 3 — The Giants, in finding more heartbreaking ways to lose games and their grip on their playoff hopes, outdid themselves against the Dallas Cowboys today, losing on a 46-yard field goal by Martin Gramatica, who was signed by the Cowboys last week. The kick, with 1 second remaining, gave the Cowboys a 23-20 victory and sent the Giants to their fourth-straight loss. Now 6-6, the one-time championship contender is faced with at least one more week of uncomfortable speculation and scrutiny. The game of the season for the Giants became a match between the quarterbacks. And the one who spent more than three seasons on the bench, not in the spotlight, won. Tony Romo, the league's hottest quarterback, led the Cowboys on a 12-play, 66-yard touchdown drive late in the fourth quarter. Given a chance to respond, Giants quarterback Eli Manning, the first overall choice of the 2004 draft who has been ice-cold in recent weeks, led his team to the tying score, a 5-yard pass to Plaxico Burress, with 66 seconds left. That was plenty of time for Romo and the Cowboys. Romo lobbed a deep pass to tight end Jason Witten, who found a soft spot between linebacker Antonio Pierce and safety Will Demps for a 42-yard completion. Four plays later, the Cowboys (8-4) were running around the field in ecstasy and the Giants were in their familiar stun mode. The Giants, who had blown a 21-point fourth-quarter lead a week ago, had a difficult week of attempted recovery. Today, they continued their bungling ways, at least in spots. They assembled and displayed, at critical junctures, all the requisite parts of their three-game meltdown — unseemly personal fouls, questionable play calling, squandered drives and mysterious gaffes. A victory would have washed away the chaos of the prior three weeks, when the Giants lost three times and bickered with anyone who frequents Giants Stadium — coaches, other players and reporters included. Instead, the Giants take their reality show back on the road, against another struggling playoff contender, the Carolina Panthers, next Sunday. In the parity rife N.F.L., and particularly in the sagging National Football Conference, four consecutive losses in November and December do not end a team's playoff hopes. The Giants fell two games behind the Cowboys in the N.F.C. East. They likely need to win at least three of their final four games to make the postseason, probably as a wild-card team. A week ago, the Giants fell to the Tennessee Titans, 24-21. Star players continued a habit of making sharp critiques in the media — this time, injured defensive end Michael Strahan questioned the will of receiver Plaxico Burress. But the Giants vowed to rally around the growing legions of doubters who had witnessed a championship team seeming to implode in slow motion over the course of several weeks. And they appeared to get a boost from return of several defensive players, back from injuries: defensive end Osi Umenyiora, cornerback Sam Madison and linebacker Brandon Short. It helped create a competitive game, between teams that looked far more evenly matched than their recent performances predicted. Still, the Giants fought two opponents — the Cowboys, and themselves. The Giants eschewed a 41-yard field-goal attempt in the first half and, needed inches for a first down, lost 3 yards. They intercepted a pass, only to fumble it right back to the Cowboys, who marched on to score. They were penalized for a late hit and for head butting. They drove impressively to the Dallas 4-yard line twice in the second half, only to settle for the bitter taste of short field goals. The Giants' three-game losing streak had coincided with Manning's worst three games of the season — though the relationship is more than coincidental. He threw two touchdowns and six interceptions during losses to Chicago, Jacksonville and Tennessee. Against the Cowboys, the Giants put a governor on their passing plays, trying to get Manning into a mistake-free rhythm with a mix heavy on short passes and screens, often with the quarterback rolling out to avoid the pass rush. That lifted his sagging completion percentage and allowed the Giants to sustain drives, even as the Cowboys slowed Barber and the Giants' rushing attack. And when the team first needed a big play today, something more improvised and a little less restrained, Manning provided it with a 17-yard touchdown pass to tight end Jeremy Shockey in the first quarter. Manning dropped back, then slipped left to avoid the rush of linebacker Bradie James and flung the ball to Shockey in the left corner of the end zone. But Manning struggled to do anything out of the ordinary after that. The defense played well, and intercepted Romo twice in the first half. They did not convert either break into points. But the Cowboys did. The Cowboys earned their first touchdown on a drive — two, officially — that could only happen against the Giants, and to their rookie defensive end, Mathias Kiwanuka. The Cowboys were driving until Kiwanuka intercepted a deflected pass. But Kiwanuka, bitten by bad fortune for the second week in a row, fumbled the ball on the return without being nudged by anyone, as if stripped by a phantom. The Cowboys recovered to start a new drive, and scored three plays later, helped by a 26-yard pass interference penalty on middle linebacker Antonio Pierce. It signaled a return of the bumbling Giants. Fullback Jim Finn dropped a pass from Manning. After a false-start penalty, Manning threw a ball away. A third-down pass bounced off the chest of tight end Jeremy Shockey. On the next drive, the Giants drove across midfield, but were stopped after receiver Plaxico Burress drew an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty by taking a running start and blocking safety Keith Davis — long after Tiki Barber, the player with the ball, had been tackled. The Giants spoiled a long drive late in the second quarter with a pair of debatable decisions. On third-and-20, receiver David Tyree slid and caught a 19-yard pass from Manning. Had Tyree realized that no one had touched him, he could have rolled over before a defender touched him, and the Giants would have had a first down. On fourth-and-1 from the Dallas 24, with 1 minute 30 seconds left in the half, the Giants eschewed a 41-yard field-goal attempt. They handed the ball to linebacker-sized running back Brandon Jacobs, who tried to gain the yard around the left end. He was caught and dragged down for a 3-yard loss by linebacker DeMarcus Ware. The Cowboys took possession and, using eight plays and three timeouts, moved downfield for a 41-yard field goal by Martin Gramatica.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company | | | |
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 | U.C.L.A. Brings Down U.S.C., and Opens Door to Title Game  Stephen Dunn/Getty Images U.S.C.'s Dwayne Jarrett being tackled by U.C.L.A.'s Dennis Keyes. Jarrett had four catches for 66 yards, but the Trojans' offense never really got moving. More Photos > December 3, 2006 U.C.L.A. 13, No. 2 U.S.C. 9 U.C.L.A. Brings Down U.S.C., and Opens Door to Title Game PASADENA, Calif., Dec. 2 — As U.C.L.A. cornerback Alterraun Verner summed up the scene in the locker room after the Bruins' stunning 13-9 victory against No. 2 Southern California, he managed a fitting description for what the victory did to college football. "Chaos," he said, grinning. "Absolute chaos." U.C.L.A.'s improbable victory Saturday at the Rose Bowl led to a night of uncertainty in college football, as the Trojans' loss cleared a spot in the national championship game opposite top-ranked Ohio State for either No. 3 Michigan or No. 4 Florida. It also brought into sharp focus the Bowl Championship Series standings, the complicated system college football uses to determine who will play for its national title. Florida, which defeated No. 8 Arkansas, 38-28, in the Southeastern Conference title game Saturday, is expected to lead Michigan in the six computer rankings, which account for a third of the formula used by the Bowl Championship Series. The other two-thirds are polls, in which Michigan held an edge over Florida, but some votes are expected to flop the Gators' way after their impressive win against a highly ranked opponent. The only certainty heading into the announcement at 8 p.m. Eastern time Sunday is uncertainty. "You can't rule anything out at this point," Jerry Palm, the independent B.C.S. analyst, said in a telephone interview Saturday night. "I really don't know." One of the few sure things Saturday was that a mediocre U.C.L.A. team tilted the axis of the college football world. It did so by winning a defensive struggle that gave the Bruins their first victory against their crosstown rivals since 1998. "I really don't believe that anyone outside of this football program believed that we were going to win this game," Bruins tailback Chris Markey said. "I think some people's parents were skeptical." But U.C.L.A. (7-5, 5-4 Pacific-10) removed any doubt when Eric McNeal, a senior linebacker, intercepted U.S.C. quarterback John David Booty with 1 minute 10 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter and the Trojans driving toward a game-winning touchdown. McNeal tipped a third-down pass intended for Steve Smith, then caught the ball and fell to the ground at the Bruins' 20, sealing the biggest victory in Karl Dorrell's four seasons as the coach. And like U.S.C.'s loss to Texas here in January in the national championship game, this loss was costly for the Trojans. U.S.C. (10-2, 7-2) has won 55 of its past 59 games, and two of the losses have come at the Rose Bowl within the past year. Both derailed the Trojans' chances for a national title. They had been everything but anointed to play Ohio State until their offense got stuck in neutral Saturday, converting just 6 of 17 third downs. U.S.C.'s consolation prize will be a return trip to the Rose Bowl, where it is expected to play either Michigan (if Florida makes it to the title game) or Louisiana State. "Obviously, it's extremely disappointing to us," U.S.C. Coach Pete Carroll said. "We had a great opportunity here that we let get away." U.S.C. never established a running game, finishing with 55 yards and an average of 1.9 yards a carry. It also never put together a coherent passing game, as Booty finished 23 for 39 with no touchdowns, two sacks and the interception that sealed the game. Booty's play was mediocre and he did not receive much help from his offensive line, which allowed the Bruins to get consistent pressure and was flagged for four false-start penalties. U.C.L.A. defensive ends Bruce Davis and Justin Hickman seemingly spent the day in the Trojan backfield. The U.S.C. offensive line coach, Pat Ruel, searched for the right words after the game, and his analysis ranged from "out of synch" to "maybe a little tentative." The offensive line's struggles led to a poor day by Dwayne Jarrett, U.S.C.'s star receiver, who finished with just four catches for 68 yards. "They just did a great job in their defensive scheme of not giving Booty enough time to read down the field and look at the receivers," Jarrett said. "It was definitely the most pressure we've faced; there was no time at all." Fittingly, the Bruins defense provided one of the game's defining momentum shifts on the first play of the fourth quarter. Leading by 10-9, the Bruins stuffed the Trojans on a fourth-and-2. Verner met C. J. Gable in the backfield and flipped him to the ground for a 4-yard loss. U.C.L.A. took over on the its own 40, and quarterback Patrick Cowan led a drive that ended with Justin Medlock's second field goal of the half, this one from 31 yards. From there, U.C.L.A. held on, with the game not officially ending until a Booty heave to near midfield landed harmlessly on the turf. The Bruins won despite just 235 yards of total offense and they did not complete a pass of more than 21 yard. "I'm not going to sleep tonight," Markey said, smiling. "I'm not going to sleep for days." Much like folks in Ann Arbor, Mich., and Gainesville, Fla., but for very different reasons. |
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| Giants 20 - Cowboys 23Posted Dec 3rd 2006 7:35PM by Dan Benton
Filed under: NY Giants, NFC East  What can I say? It hurts but the Cowboys played a great game and the Giants shot themselves in the foot far too many times to overcome. On the bright side Eli Manning rebounded and looked fantastic. I truly believe the Giants would have won had it gone to overtime but Tom Coughlin's poor coaching abilities shined through. How can he leave the Cowboys 1:06 on the clock and not expect them to drive and score? That's the way the cookie crumbles I suppose but the Cowboys have far to good of an offense overlook like that. R.W. McQuarters played a fantastic game but the play that will stand out is when he let up on a potential sack allowing the Cowboys to get a first down which eventually led to a score. I don't understand what it is about these Giants having brain lapses. Whatever the case, they now they fall to .500 and will struggle mightily to make the playoffs. It was clear how much better the Giants played with their defensive starters back though. It's like night and day. Hopefully Michael Strahan can return next week and the Giants go on a run ending at 10-6 or at least 9-7. Anything less and the season is over. By the way, I realize my thoughts are random right now and I apologize for that. I am just extremely frustrated because this is the game the Giants could have and should have won. Far too many penalties and mistakes cost them first place. How many ways in English can you say "I hate Will Demps?" He must lead the NFL in missed tackles and blown coverage's. Why is this guy on the team? How did the Ravens defense perform so well when he was there? It's a mystery. Continuing with that same theme, how many ways in English can you say "I love Brandon Jacobs?" I am a huge Tiki Barber fan but I look forward to Jacobs carrying the load for the Giants. He makes everyone in his path look like chumps. He's truly a beast who has a bright future in this league. Cowboys win 23-20. |
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| Eye Black Used to Cut Glare, or Turn Up Spotlight 
Nick Laham/Getty Images Giants tight end Jeremy Shockey in eye black. Its use was documented in a 1942 photograph of the Washington Redskins' December 3, 2006 Eye Black Used to Cut Glare, or Turn Up Spotlight By JERÉ LONGMAN UPPER DARBY, Pa., Dec. 1 — As Upper Darby High played its annual Thanksgiving Day football game, a northeaster raked the Philadelphia suburbs, turning the field into a muddy pudding. The last thing any player needed was protection from the sun's glare. And because the game began in late morning, no one bothered turning on the stadium lights. Still, the dreariness did not keep many Upper Darby players from spreading eye black on their cheeks. Some dabbed a line of grease under the eyes. Some wore adhesive antiglare patches that resembled Morse code for the face. Others smeared the stuff like shaving cream. "It's just the look," Brandon Murray, an Upper Darby halfback, said after his team had been upset, 20-8, by its archrival, Haverford High. "Most kids think it's intimidating or it looks good. No one uses it to block out the light." That is not necessarily the case in the National Football League. Jerricho Cotchery described a scene in the Jets' locker room before a game last Sunday, when he and his fellow receiver Laveranues Coles applied eye black as if they were showgirls applying false eyelashes. They were carrying out a decades-old tradition. A Yale University study found evidence of eye black use dating at least to a 1942 photograph of a Washington Redskins player named Andy Farkas. The eye black origins in baseball are more obscure, the study said. Coles said that playing without eye-black grease was like "playing with no shoulder pads or no helmet." Although he grew up in sunny Florida, Coles said he never used eye black until he reached the N.F.L. and struggled with glare. "I don't know if it was one of those placebo effects, but it was one of those things that stuck with me," he said. But many athletes do not seem to care much about the intended use of eye black. Instead, those smudges and patches and decals have become popular fashion accessories, miniature billboards for personal messages and war-paint slatherings aimed at gaining a psychological advantage more than a visual edge. "I think it kind of lost its purpose," said Nick Ciccone, a safety at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania. "It's a fashion thing now. A lot of guys say, if you look good, you feel good, and if you feel good, you play good." Reggie Bush, the 2005 Heisman Trophy winner who is now a running back for the New Orleans Saints, inscribed the 619 area code for his hometown in San Diego County on his antiglare stickers while at the University of Southern California. Seizing the moment, Bush had plans to unveil a 619 cologne. Rutgers running back Ray Rice wears stickers that run cheek to cheek, across his nose. He writes a weekly eulogy to a deceased cousin: RIP 914 SUPE. Sometimes eye stickers are used for more frivolous purposes. In a game against Arkansas on Nov. 24, running back Keiland Williams of Louisiana State University wore an LSU patch under one eye only, looking like a kind of decal pirate. Rory Jones, a receiver at South Plaquemines High in Port Sulphur, La., said he had no idea what the eye-black stickers were intended for. "I use them for showboating," he said. Tim Heagy, a defensive end at Lycoming College in Pennsylvania, said he thought the smeared-cheek look might give him a slight edge over a larger opponent. "If he's a little bigger, maybe he thinks you're crazy because you have eye black on," Heagy said. Researchers wondered, too. In the past few years, they have begun to examine the accepted truth that eye black does indeed decrease glare reflecting off the skin. Recent studies have shown that eye black reduces glare somewhat, while improving contrast sensitivity. Yet it remains debatable among experts whether glare is diminished sufficiently to increase a kick returner's ability to field a ball out of the stadium lights or a shortstop's ability to pluck a pop fly out of the sun. Through the years, players have fashioned eye black from burnt cork and shoe polish. Today's commercially produced eye-black grease is made from such items as beeswax, paraffin and charcoal powder, while antiglare stickers are made of patented fabric with a dull, matte finish. The Yale study placed 46 students in the sun and tested their reactions using a sensitivity contrast chart. Some participants wore eye-black grease, while others wore adhesive stickers. A third group wore smudges of petroleum jelly as a placebo. The study found a small, but statistically significant, improvement in contrast sensitivity and glare reduction for participants who wore the eye grease, but not for those who wore antiglare stickers. The results were published in 2003 in Archives of Ophthalmology. "I thought we would find it to be like war paint and a psychological advantage more than anything else," Dr. Brian M. DeBroff, the lead author of the Yale study, said in a telephone interview. "We were surprised to find a benefit from the grease." Asked if the benefits were significant enough to enhance athletic performance, Dr. DeBroff said, "Certainly in football and baseball, where tracking a ball at high speed is an important aspect, any competitive advantage could be beneficial." He added: "Does it translate in terms of being able to pick up the ball if looking back into the sun? Possibly. Certainly, it would be interesting to do further study to determine the exact benefit." A study of eye-black grease at the University of New Hampshire also found a small improvement in contrast sensitivity. The findings, published last year in an undergraduate research journal, were considered preliminary, said Dr. Kenneth Fuld, chairman of the university's psychology department and the study's sponsor. Even so, Dr. Fuld, a former New Hampshire assistant baseball coach, said he was skeptical that the grease enhanced a player's performance. "I would be highly doubtful that it would have much of an effect, if any," Dr. Fuld said, noting that tennis players performed at high levels without eye black while constantly dealing with the sun's glare. Placing a brand name on adhesive strips in white letters, writing messages on stickers and adorning them with initials and logos appeared to defeat the antiglare purpose of the patches, Dr. Fuld said. Among the findings of the New Hampshire study were: Eye-black grease did not work as effectively with blue-eyed participants, who have less iris pigment to screen out unwanted light. And women had better results than men, although that might be explained by the smaller sample size of male participants (18) than female participants (28). While it may seem counterintuitive that all skin tones benefit from eye black, oiliness of the skin and sweating, not simply skin color, affect how much light is reflected into the eyes, said another researcher, Mike Maloney, president of Bjorksten Research Laboratories in Wisconsin. His company has done testing for Mueller Sports Medicine, a Wisconsin manufacturer of antiglare patches, which were judged ineffective in the Yale study. Brett Mueller, president of the company, said that Yale researchers tested "couch potatoes" rather than attempting to replicate on-field distractions an athlete encounters in his peripheral vision. The research commissioned by Mueller used a mannequin with a photo diode attached to the right eye. The findings indicated that antiglare stickers reduced the amount of light that entered the periphery of the eye to a greater extent than eye-black grease did. "But what I can't tell you is the amount of difference that will make in athletic performance," Mr. Maloney said. For elite athletes, the chance that eye black might provide even the slightest advantage can be convincing, said Jeremy Bloom, a kick returner and two-time Olympian who was formerly the world's top-ranked moguls skier. "It's very symbolic of football, whether science proves it works or not," said Bloom, who is on injured reserve with the Philadelphia Eagles. "If it works just a little, that's helpful. It can't hurt." On the high school level, though, the ostentatious use of eye black and facial decals has led to a backlash by some coaches. Brian Sipe, a former All-Pro quarterback now coaching Santa Fe Christian School near San Diego, said he limited his players to a thin smudge no wider than the eye. "It really serves no purpose other than adornment," Sipe said. In suburban Philadelphia, Haverford High prevailed over Upper Darby on Thanksgiving without any players wearing eye black. Coach Joe Gallagher had banned its use. "That's just frills," he said. "They were too concerned about how they looked." Karen Crouse contributed reporting from New York.
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| For the Giants, One Victory Can Undo the Damage 
Barton Silverman/The New York Times Quarterback Eli Manning's worst three games of the season have been his past three, all losses for the Giants. December 3, 2006 For the Giants, One Victory Can Undo the Damage By JOHN BRANCH EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J., Dec. 1 — During their 81-year history, the Giants have tried to build a reputation on integrity and decency, on consistency and the occasional championship. They hired Tom Coughlin as the coach less than three years ago to ensure that those traits were continued or, in some cases, restored. Then came the past three weeks. The Giants became a team bumbling toward buffoonery, on and off the field. A three-game losing streak was lowlighted by players carping at coaches, coaches carping at players, players carping at players and the news media filling the roles of diarist and villain. By recent accounts, some from the Giants, the franchise quarterback rattles, the leading receiver quits, the star defensive end rants, the top running back criticizes and the coach scrambles to hold the parts together. But the N.F.L. is not a complicated place. The Giants (6-5) are not Humpty Dumpty. There is a quick fix. A victory. "Last week never matters," center Shaun O'Hara said of life in the N.F.L. The Giants hope so, because last week was brutal. Sunday brought a blown lead of 21 points in the fourth quarter, the worst reversal of fortune in franchise history. The second worst might have been Wednesday, when Coughlin said that his mission was "to pull everybody together and encourage." Within an hour, defensive end Michael Strahan, his eyes bulging and his mouth filled with the final bites of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, railed against reporters for asking about his criticism of his teammate Plaxico Burress. The conversion was complete. The roster, which had seemed an embarrassment of riches, was instead richly embarrassing. The past week has been filled with endless clips of Sunday's collapse to the Tennessee Titans and Strahan's finger-pointing diatribe. Coughlin has been unable to instill the discipline he demands. His team has been undone by silly penalties, goofy plays, odd decisions and questionable effort. Off the field, like an exasperated Whac-a-Mole player, Coughlin has been one step behind his attention-grabbing players, unable to knock back their egos and personalities. But in a redemptive twist — or a twist of cruelty, depending on how it plays out — the Giants can reverse weeks of bungling with a winning three-hour performance Sunday against the visiting Dallas Cowboys (7-4), who lead the National Football Conference East. "We control our own destiny," linebacker Antonio Pierce said. "And I don't think everybody around here understands that." For the Giants, it will be their biggest regular-season game in years. A victory or a loss — but not a tie, which would seem oddly fitting in these head-shaking days — could be viewed as monumental and potentially franchise shifting. A loss would continue the team's spectacular free fall and would fuel more damning speculation about the future of Coughlin as the coach and the direction of the team in general. A victory against the Cowboys and Bill Parcells, the Giants' former coach — against whose legacy Coughlin and every other Giants head coach is measured — would repair the damage, at least for a week. A victory, as absurd as that possibility may seem, would lift the Giants back into first place in the division. They would hold the tie-breaking advantage against the Cowboys. "We know behind all of this, behind all of the rhetoric and talk and the commentaries and the columns, there is a huge opportunity for us, sitting at 6-5, one game behind the Cowboys, to jump right into the lead in our division and third place in the N.F.C.," running back Tiki Barber said. "And that is what is most important. I think that is what we shall be focusing on." The biggest mystery — other than determining the last time a professional football player used shall in a sentence — is exactly how things went so wrong, so quickly. The Giants had been humming along with a victory, then another, then three more. They were gaining credibility and being viewed as a potential Super Bowl contender. That credibility can be restored in one day. Turnarounds are a weekly event in the parity-rich N.F.L., where no team is out of the postseason picture until the mathematicians deem it so. The Atlanta Falcons, the Minnesota Vikings and the St. Louis Rams have had losing streaks of four games or more this season, and each remains in the playoff hunt. The Carolina Panthers have lost back-to-back games twice, and are tied with the Giants for a wild-card spot. For further inspiration, the Giants can look at the Cowboys. When the Giants beat them, 36-22, in Dallas on Oct. 23, the Cowboys were 3-3. They had benched the starting quarterback Drew Bledsoe at halftime, and the backup Tony Romo threw three interceptions. Receiver Terrell Owens was a one-man soap opera. Parcells looked weary on the sideline, like a man wondering why he was there. But Romo has been the hottest quarterback in the N.F.L. since. Owens has been quiet off the field and splendid on it. Parcells has begun kissing players in joy. And the Cowboys have won four of five games, passing the Giants. "As you've seen in the last month, a team's fortunes can change very quickly in this league," Parcells said in a conference call. That is a source of optimism for the Giants. This week, they compared themselves with the 2005 Pittsburgh Steelers — not the version that won the Super Bowl, but the one that was 7-5 in early December and the loser of three in a row. Those Steelers won their final four games, then swept through three road playoff games and won Super Bowl XL against the Seattle Seahawks. The analogy, linebacker Brandon Short said, "is dead on." There are some differences, of course. The Steelers did not have a quarterback struggling as mightily as Eli Manning. The Steelers did not have a Barber criticizing the play-calling, saying it is "not rocket science," after the Giants lost to the Jacksonville Jaguars and their losing streak reached two. Pittsburgh did not have a Coughlin telling reporters that the players are not to criticize the coaches or their teammates in the news media. They did not have a Strahan ignoring such a directive by suggesting on the radio Monday that Burress quit on his team on several recent plays. They did not have a Burress acknowledging that Strahan's words hurt, but suggesting that his occasional laissez-faire approach would not change. (Actually, the Steelers had him from 2000-4, and tired of his attitude.) But the Steelers began their surge a week after the biggest blown lead in the fourth quarter in franchise history, as the Giants want to do. The Titans were only the third team in N.F.L. history to win after trailing by 21 points with 10 or fewer minutes remaining. It was a loss, Coughlin said, that would be remembered "forever." Selective amnesia is possible. The N.F.L. is no place for teams with long memories. Last week never matters, but only if the Giants turn themselves inside out, again. EXTRA POINTS The Giants signed the veteran punter Sean Landeta because Jeff Feagles has a sore knee. Landeta was the Giants' punter from 1985-93, and last played in 2005 for the Philadelphia Eagles. He is second in league history, behind Feagles, in punts and punting yards. To make room on the roster, the Giants waived defensive tackle Lance Legree.
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| Fasion
Current mood:  busy Book Photograph by Tony Cenicola/The New York December 3, 2006 Fasion Review by CAROLINE WEBER Vogue is to our era what the idea of God was, in Voltaire's famous parlance, to his: if it didn't exist, we would have to invent it. Revered for its editorial excellence and its visual panache, the magazine has long functioned as a bible for anyone worshiping at the altar of luxury, celebrity and style. And while we perhaps take for granted the extent to which this trinity dominates consumer culture today, Vogue's role in catalyzing its rise to pre-eminence cannot be underestimated. To both celebrants and critics of the cult of modern fashion, Norberto Angeletti and Alberto Oliva's IN VOGUE: The Illustrated History of the World's Most Famous Fashion Magazine (Rizzoli, $75) is indispensable reading. As substantive as it is sumptuous, the incisively written, meticulously researched and gorgeously illustrated "In Vogue" chronicles how Vogue became the world's most influential fashion magazine. Founded in 1892 to chronicle the doings of New York's social elite, Vogue soon developed into an "active participant in the culture of fashion." Under the successive leadership of seven formidable editors in chief — all women — Vogue has pioneered a host of aesthetic, technological and commercial advances, virtually all of which inform the fashion media and industry as they exist today. Appropriately enough, for a publication that insistently juxtaposes surface with substance, many of these advances have been evident on its cover. In July 1932, Vogue became one of the first magazines to publish a cover with a color photograph. Besides innovating the look of Vogue (and, eventually, of magazines everywhere), this move had far-reaching financial implications, as it allowed for a more detailed presentation of a model's clothing. Now receiving fuller credit for their work, designers returned the favor by placing more advertisements in Vogue, whose revenues increased accordingly. The powerful symbiosis between journalism and advertising was born. In the latter decades of the 20th century, still more revolutions played themselves out on Vogue's covers. During the "youthquake" of the 1960s, Diana Vreeland replaced the curvaceous models of the previous decade with lanky, androgynous teenagers whose "undernourished" looks quickly "became the new standard." In 1974, Vreeland's successor, Grace Mirabella, published the first cover featuring an African-American model. And when Anna Wintour succeeded Mirabella in 1988, she too reshaped the era's stylistic ideals. Her inaugural cover, a three-quarter-length photograph of a model wearing a bejeweled Lacroix jacket and a pair of jeans, abandoned Vogue's by-then tired convention of representing a woman's face alone and assigned greater importance to both her clothing and her body. This image also promoted a new form of chic by combining jeans with haute couture. Wintour's debut cover brokered a class-mass rapprochement that informs modern fashion to this day. Yet the Vogue editors' ingenuity has always "extended to the inside of the magazine" as well — notably to its first-rate photography. Edward Steichen, Lee Miller, Cecil Beaton, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, Annie Leibovitz and Herb Ritts are just a few of the heavyweights whose work has appeared in Vogue. From Avedon's 1967 portrait of Twiggy (an adolescent waif in flower-child face paint) to Leibovitz's 2006 depiction of a pregnant Melania Trump (posed on the steps of a private jet in a skimpy gold bikini), Vogue's pictures — love them or loathe them — express the values of the culture from which they emerge. And they offer an exhaustive visual record of America's past, with its seismic shifts, its improbable whims, its insatiable aspirations. Indeed, like the religion of Voltaire's day, the Vogue of our era thrives on aspiration — on the hope that a better life lies just around the corner, in the arch of an eyebrow or the rustle of a new silk dress. Cynics might note that, with its inexorable cycles of planned obsolescence, fashion journalism exists purely to exploit this hope. There remains, however, something undeniably and viscerally appealing about a publication that honors our craving for fantasy, glamour and change. For more than a century, Vogue has met that need. |
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| Jets’ Playoff Hopes Brighten With Rout of Packers December 3, 2006 Jets 38, Packers 10 Jets' Playoff Hopes Brighten With Rout of Packers By PAT BORZI GREEN BAY, Wis., Dec. 3 — By the time Chad Pennington threw his first interception of the day, the Jets had such a huge lead — and Pennington had done so much to make it that way — that the turnover hardly mattered. With Pennington throwing for 241 of his 263 yards in the first half, the Jets scored 31 points on their first five possessions and went on to rout the Green Bay Packers, 38-10, at frigid Lambeau Field today. The victory brightened the 7-5 Jets' American Football Conference playoff hopes and essentially eliminated the Packers, who are 4-8 with three consecutive losses, from the National Football Conference race. Cedric Houston ran for two touchdowns, both in the first half. For the day, Pennington finished 25 of 35 for 263 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions, and wideout Jerricho Cotchery had nine catches for 99 yards and a score. Green Bay's Ahman Green ran for 102 yards, but quarterback Brett Favre was mostly ineffective, completing 24 of 47 passes for 214 yards, a touchdown and two interceptions. The Jets played a near-perfect first half while grabbing a 31-0 lead, outgaining the Packers, 340 yards to 100, forcing two turnovers and committing only one penalty, five yards for illegal motion. It was the most first-half points by the Jets since another 31-point effort against San Diego on Nov. 3, 2002, an eventual 44-13 victory. The game began in biting cold — 19 degrees with 2-degree wind chill, and light swirling snow. Though the elements suggested running the ball, the Jets peppered the Packers' shaky defense with short passes in building the big lead. Pennington completed six passes to six receivers in eight attempts on the opening drive for 58 yards. The Jets took a 24-yard field goal from Mike Nugent after Cotchery couldn't pull down a high pass in the back right corner of the end zone. It was the only drive in the half where the Jets had to settle for three. After the Jets forced a turnover — right end Bryan Thomas stripped the ball from Favre, and tackle Dewayne Robertson recovered — Pennington moved the Jets 51 yards in less than two and a half minutes. Cotchery ran away from safety Nick Collins over the middle for the 12-yard touchdown catch. Packer fans were already booing late in the first quarter as Pennington drove the Jets again, this time 83 yards in nine plays, the last Houston's three-yard run for the score with 12:40 left in the half. At that point Pennington was already 13 for 19 for 166 yards, and the Jets had outgained the Packers, 202-26. A 35-yard run by Ahman Green brought the Packers to the Jets' 26, but the drive stalled and Dave Rayner missed a 40-yard field goal. The Jets then mixed runs with passes, including wideout Brad Smith's 32-yard run down the right sideline on a reverse (the longest run by any Jet this season), in taking a 24-0 lead. Linebacker Nick Barnett interfered with Laveranues Coles in the end zone — Coles had screamed for interference on cornerback Al Harris on the play before — and it took Houston two tries to bull over from the one. Cornerback Andre Dyson intercepted Favre on a deep sideline for Donald Driver with five minutes left in the half, and the Jets used up all but nine seconds of the remaining time to move 77 yards for another touchdown. With no timeouts left, Pennington found tight end Chris Baker wide open in the end zone on a play-action pass. The Packers were resoundingly booed as the left the field. For the half, Pennington was 22-of-29 for 241 yards and two touchdowns. Rayner kicked a 34-yard field goal early in the third quarter for the Packers' first points, then made an even bigger play on the kickoff, preventing a touchdown by wrestling down Justin Miller after a 45-yard runback. Charles Woodson intercepted Pennington as the Packers stopped the Jets for the first time all day. Favre hit Driver for a 20-yard touchdown to make it 31-10, and Green Bay recovered an onside kick after a replay challenge, but then failed to gain any yardage on three plays and punted.
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| As Trucking Rules Are Eased, a Debate on Safety 
Dilip Vishwanat for The New York Times Interstate 70 in Kingdom City, Mo., where Dorris Edwards, 62, was killed in 2004 when an 18-wheeler hit her Jeep Cherokee December 3, 2006 As Trucking Rules Are Eased, a Debate on Safety WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 — As Dorris Edwards slowed for traffic near Kingdom City, Mo., on her way home from a Thanksgiving trip in 2004, an 18-wheeler slammed into her Jeep Cherokee. The truck crushed the sport-utility vehicle and shoved it down an embankment off Interstate 70. Ms. Edwards, 62, was killed. The truck driver accepted blame for the accident, and Ms. Edwards's family filed a lawsuit against the driver and the trucking company. In the course of pursuing its case, the family broached a larger issue: whether the Bush administration's decision to reject tighter industry regulation and instead reduce what officials viewed as cumbersome rules permitted a poorly trained trucker to stay behind the wheel, alone, instead of resting after a long day of driving. After intense lobbying by the politically powerful trucking industry, regulators a year earlier had rejected proposals to tighten drivers' hours and instead did the opposite, relaxing the rules on how long truckers could be on the road. That allowed the driver who hit Ms. Edwards to work in the cab nearly 12 hours, 8 of them driving nonstop, which he later acknowledged had tired him. Government officials had also turned down repeated requests from insurers and safety groups for more rigorous training for new drivers. The driver in the fatal accident was a rookie on his first cross-country trip; his instructor, a 22-year-old with just a year of trucking experience, had been sleeping in a berth behind the cab much of the way. Federal officials, while declining to comment about the Edwards accident, have dismissed the assertion that deregulation has reduced safety and have maintained that in fact it has helped, though the Edwards family and many other victims of accidents have come to the opposite conclusion. In loosening the standards, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration was fulfilling President Bush's broader pledge to free industry of what it considered cumbersome rules. In the last six years, the White House has embarked on the boldest strategy of deregulation in more than a generation. Largely unchecked by the Republican-led Congress, federal agencies, often led by former industry officials, have methodically reduced what they see as inefficient, outdated regulations and have delayed enforcement of others. The Bush administration says those efforts have produced huge savings for businesses and consumers. Those actions, though, have provoked fierce debate about their benefits and risks. The federal government's oversight of the trucking industry is a case study of deregulation, as well as the difficulty of determining an exact calculus of its consequences. Though Ms. Edwards's family and the industry disagree on whether the motor carrier agency's actions contributed to her death, her accident illuminates crucial issues in regulating America's most treacherous industry, as measured by overall deaths and injuries from truck accidents. The loosened standards, supporters say, have made it faster and cheaper to move goods across the country. They also say the changes promote safety; without longer work hours, the industry would be forced to put more drivers with little experience behind the wheel. Regulators and industry officials point out that the death toll of truck-related accidents — about 5,000 annually — has not increased, while the fatality rate, the number of deaths per miles traveled, has continued a long decline. The number of annual injuries has also been dropping slowly, falling to 114,000 last year. "This administration has done a good job, and the agency has done a good job, in advancing safety issues in a manner that takes into account all the important factors of our industry," said the top lobbyist for the American Trucking Associations, Timothy P. Lynch. But advocates of tighter rules say the administration's record of loosening standards endangers motorists. The fatality rate for truck-related accidents remains nearly double that involving only cars, safety and insurance groups say. They note that weakening the rules has reversed a course set by the Clinton administration and has resulted in the federal government repeatedly missing its own targets for reducing the death rate. "It is a frustrating disappointment that has led to a tragic era," said David F. Snyder, an assistant general counsel at the American Insurance Association who follows the trucking industry closely. "The losses continue to pile up at a high rate. There has been a huge missed opportunity." An Industry's Influence In decisions that had the support of the White House, the motor carrier agency has eased the rules on truckers' work hours, rejected proposals for electronic monitoring to combat widespread cheating on drivers' logs and resisted calls for more rigorous driver training. While applauded by the industry, those decisions have been subject to withering criticism by federal appeals court panels in Washington who say they ignore government safety studies and put the industry's economic interests ahead of public safety. To advance its agenda, the Bush administration has installed industry officials in influential posts. Before Mr. Bush entered the White House, he selected Duane W. Acklie, a leading political fund-raiser and chairman of the American Trucking Associations, and Walter B. McCormick Jr., the group's president, to serve on the Bush-Cheney transition team on transportation matters. Mr. Bush then appointed Michael P. Jackson, a former top official at the trucking associations, as deputy secretary of the Department of Transportation. To lead the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the president picked Joseph M. Clapp, the former chairman of Roadway, a trucking company, and the leader of an industry foundation that sponsored research claiming fatigue was not a factor in truck accidents, a conclusion at odds with government and academic studies. And David S. Addington, a former trucking industry official who led an earlier fight against tougher driving limits, became legal counsel and later chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, an advocate of easing government regulations. In addition to supplying prominent administration officials, the trucking industry has provided some of the Republican party's most important fund-raisers. From 2000 to 2006, the industry directed more than $14 million in campaign contributions to Republicans. Its donations and lobbying fees — about $37 million from 2000 to 2005 — led to rules that have saved what industry officials estimate are billions of dollars in expenses linked to tougher regulations. But to the families of accident victims, the motor carrier agency has failed to fulfill a promise to significantly reduce fatalities, exacting a tragic personal price. "They are not getting much done in Washington," said Daphne Izer of Maine, who founded Parents Against Tired Truckers in 1994 after a Wal-Mart driver fell asleep at the wheel of his rig, killing her son and three other teenagers in the car with him. "As a result, more people will continue to die." Federal regulators disagree with that assessment of their performance. "We have made significant progress, yet much work remains to achieve our vision," said David H. Hugel, the new deputy administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. "Our challenges also are increasing because our nation maintains the most extensive and complex transportation system in the world, and that system and number of people who use it continues to grow." The federal government began overseeing the trucking industry in the 1930s, setting rates, limiting competition and regulating safety practices. From the start, companies won important concessions from Washington, including exemptions from minimum wage and other labor laws. The industry also resisted efforts to impose tougher safety standards, saying it could police itself. In 1937, the first driving hour limits were set. Truckers were allowed drive up to 10 continuous hours but were required to rest for a minimum of 8 hours. The remaining six hours could be used for other work activities, like loading, or for breaks or meals. Truckers could drive up to 60 hours over 7 consecutive days, or 70 hours over 8 days. To enforce those rules, the government required drivers to keep logs. Repeated efforts over the years to tighten the rules were blocked, often as a result of vigorous industry lobbying. Trucking companies have long argued that tougher standards are not necessary to promote safety, and that they would cause devastating economic pressures. Profit margins in the industry are thin, particularly after economic deregulation in 1980 prompted competition. Long hours and low pay for drivers have led to high turnover, and carriers struggle to find replacements. Those conditions, safety experts say, have contributed to widespread safety problems. The practice of falsifying driver hours is an open secret in the industry; truckers routinely refer to their logs as "comic books." Fines are small. The federal motor carrier agency does not have the staff to monitor closely 700,000 businesses and almost eight million trucks. Timothy L. Unrine, a 41-year-old driver from Virginia, said in a recent interview that he was taught to conceal excessive driving hours during training last January by his former employer, Boyd Brothers Transportation of Birmingham, Ala. Mr. Unrine said his orientation instructor told his class that government inspectors were allowed to examine a monthly logbook if it was bound. But if the staples were removed, the log was considered "loose leaf" and inspectors could require an examination of only those pages from the most recent seven days, Mr. Unrine said the drivers were told. Company officials advised drivers to use fuel credit cards that recorded only the date, not the time, of the fuel stop, he said. Mr. Unrine added that the company pushed him to work longer hours than permitted, and that his logbooks were "adjusted" many times to make it appear he was within the limits. Several times, when he told a dispatcher he was too tired to make another trip, he said, he was ordered to do so after just a few hours' sleep. "I never felt safe driving under these conditions," said Mr. Unrine, who left Boyd last June because of a legal dispute over medical bills from a fall. "I talked to many drivers on the fuel islands, truck stops and rest areas. Logbooks are so fake; it scares me that there aren't more accidents on the road." Richard Bailey, the chief operating officer at Boyd Brothers, and Wayne Fiquett, the company's vice president for safety, disputed Mr. Unrine's claims. They said that drivers might have been instructed to keep only seven days of log entries, but denied that they were encouraged to violate the rules. "Nobody here will tell someone to do something unsafe," Mr. Fiquett said. "If a driver is tired or over his hours, the system will not allow that driver to continue driving." In 1995, Congress directed regulators to study truck driver fatigue and its safety consequences and to consider new rules. But the agency then charged with truck safety, the Federal Highway Administration, never did so. Two years later, the Clinton administration vowed to cut the annual death toll of truck-related accidents in half within a decade. In 1999, Congress created the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in response to what lawmakers considered ineffectual regulation and high casualties. A year later, the agency proposed tighter service hour rules. They would allow long-haul drivers to work a maximum of 12 hours a day, and require them to take 10-hour breaks between shifts. They also required installation of electronic devices to replace driver logs. Advocates of tighter standards said the rules did not go far enough, while the industry said cutting driver hours could raise costs by $19 billion over a decade, five times more than government estimates. Action stalled when trucking lobbyists inserted language into a spending bill that forced the motor carrier agency to delay action until after the presidential election that November. Rewriting the Rules Industry leaders overwhelmingly supported the candidacy of George W. Bush, confident that his administration would be friendlier than one led by his opponent, Al Gore. On the campaign trail, Mr. Bush accused his Democratic rival of wanting to expand government, while Mr. Bush repeatedly expressed his desire to reduce federal regulations. During the 2000 election cycle, trucking executives and political action committees gave more than $4.3 million in donations to the Republicans and less than $1 million to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research organization. In the months before and after the election, a leading industry figure in the campaign against tighter driving rules was Mr. Acklie, who became chairman of the American Trucking Associations in the fall of 2000. A longtime Bush family friend and Republican fund-raiser, he led one of nation's largest trucking companies, Crete Carrier, based in Nebraska. Mr. Acklie, who stepped down from the post about a year after his appointment, did not return telephone calls seeking comment. Another important advocate was Mr. Addington, then general counsel to the Trucking Associations. In August 2000, when two top transportation officials complained in a press release about the industry's "raw use of political power," he demanded that they be investigated for possibly violating a federal law that prohibits officials from lobbying and issuing propaganda. In January 2001, he joined Mr. Cheney's office, where he is now chief of staff. Lea Anne McBride, the vice president's spokeswoman, said Mr. Addington had not been involved in issues related to his trucking activities. Other industry officials also joined the administration. Mr. Jackson, a former colleague of Mr. Acklie and Mr. Addington at the trucking group, became the No. 2 official at the Transportation Department, which oversees the industry. Mr. Clapp, the former head of Roadway trucking, took over the motor carrier agency and soon became involved in rewriting the rules. The insurance industry and safety groups provided studies showing a high percentage of accidents were caused by tired truck drivers. But after the Trucking Associations produced a study concluding that only 2 percent of accidents were caused by fatigued truckers, while more than 80 percent were caused by passenger cars, the agency decided to loosen the hourly restrictions. In April 2003, the agency issued rules that increased the maximum driving hours to 77 from 60 over 7 consecutive days and to 88 hours from 70 over 8 consecutive days. It capped daily work hours at 14, which included driving as well as waiting for loading and unloading. The agency also decided not to require truck companies to install electronic monitoring devices. The agency said the new rules would modestly decrease the number of fatalities by increasing the required time off for drivers, to 10 hours from 8. A year later, the agency set training standards for new drivers: 10 hours of training, none of it on the road. Congress has provided little scrutiny of the trucking standards. "There has not been the kind of in-depth examination of these issues that should have occurred," said Representative James L. Oberstar of Minnesota, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Mr. Oberstar and others blamed the failure on the political muscle of the industry. From 2000 to 2004, the American Trucking Associations donated $2 million to lawmakers, mostly to Republicans who served on committees with jurisdiction over trucking issues. The courts have played a more significant role. In July 2004, a three-judge panel from the federal appeals court in Washington issued a harsh opinion in a lawsuit brought by several safety organizations over the trucking work rules. Judge David B. Sentelle, a conservative Republican appointed by President Ronald Reagan, wrote the opinion, faulting the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration for "ignoring its own evidence that fatigue causes many truck accidents." The opinion continued, "The agency admits that studies show that crash risk increases, in the agency's words, 'geometrically' after the eighth hour on duty." The judges said they could not understand why the agency had not estimated the benefits of electronic monitoring, saying the agency's "passive regulatory approach" probably did not comply with the law. The panel struck down the hour and service rules. But a year later, in August 2005, the agency issued virtually identical rules, which the safety groups and the Teamsters union are again challenging in court. Oral arguments are set for Monday before another three-judge federal appeals panel here. The agency had a similar legal setback on driver training. A three-member appeals court panel called the regulation "baffling" and criticized the agency for ignoring its own studies on the need for more comprehensive training. The agency has not responded to the court's decision by issuing any new rules. Meanwhile, the agency has failed, by growing margins, to meet its annual targets for lowering the death rate for truck-related accidents. Mr. Hugel, the agency's deputy administrator, blames increasing traffic for the agency's inability to meet its goals. "More trucks, combined with even more passenger vehicles," he said, "leads to more roadway congestion, increased risk and a larger number of fatalities." In a budget submission to Congress last February, though, the Transportation Department noted its repeated failure to cut the death rate and conceded that the agency "has difficulty demonstrating how its regulatory activities contribute to reaching its safety goal." Safety experts, for their part, say the numbers reflect the agency's failings. "The fatalities speak to the agency's lackluster performance," said Jacqueline S. Gillan, vice president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, an alliance of consumer, health and insurance organizations. "These truck crashes happen one at a time in communities across the country and get little attention," Ms. Gillan said. "Can you imagine what the outcry would be at the F.A.A. if we had 25 major airplane crashes a year, which is the equivalent of what is happening with trucks?" A Family's Lawsuit After Ms. Edwards's death, her only son, Steve, a professional musician in Chicago, sued the trucking company, Werner Enterprises of Omaha, and the driver involved in the accident, John L. McNeal, 36. Mr. McNeal was dismissed shortly after the accident. Mr. McNeal said in a sworn deposition that he had been tired from driving all day from Tennessee without a break. He had been in the cab for about 12 hours, including about 8 hours at the wheel. Because he had been driving trucks professionally for only a month, he was assigned a trainer, who had slept much of the trip. After Mr. McNeal acknowledged he was at fault, Werner Enterprises settled the lawsuit for $2.4 million. Werner's general counsel, Richard S. Reiser, said that the company had a strong safety record and that its training program far exceeded the federal requirements. Mr. Reiser said that Mr. McNeal was in compliance with both the old and new work hour rules but acknowledged he was unfamiliar with the proposals by safety groups that would have prevented the driver from working as long as he did that day. He also said that any driver who was tired should stop, regardless of how long he had been on the road. "The driver should be the one who says, 'If I'm tired, I should pull over,' " Mr. Reiser said. Mr. Edwards, though, thinks responsibility for safety goes beyond individual drivers, and links his mother's death to the Bush administration's decisions against imposing tighter driving limits. "These drivers are working hard every day on the road to make a living," he said. "They are overtired and underpaid." Mr. Edwards said his mother, who had worked at a Procter & Gamble Company factory before her weakened knees forced her to retire, had been looking forward to traveling, gardening and playing with her grandchildren. "If there is any silver lining, it is that he hit her so hard she never saw it coming," Mr. Edwards said of the accident. "She probably was happy that she was going to be home soon." Ron Nixon contributed reporting.
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| Russian Ex-Spy Lived in a World of Deceptions 
Sergei Kaptilkin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Alexander V. Litvinenko was jailed after he criticized Russia's spy agency publicly in 1998. A fellow dissident officer opted to conceal his face. December 3, 2006 Russian Ex-Spy Lived in a World of Deceptions LONDON, Dec. 2 — The tangled tale of Alexander V. Litvinenko, the maverick Russian K.G.B. agent turned dissident who died of radiation poisoning last week, has seized the headlines recently, but its roots can be traced to a late spring evening in Moscow in 1994. At just after 5 p.m. on June 7, Boris A. Berezovsky, one of Russia's most powerful oligarchs, was leaving the offices of his car dealership in a chauffeured Mercedes 600. According to Russian news accounts at the time, he and his bodyguard were sitting in the rear seat behind the driver. As the car drove by a parked vehicle, a remote-controlled bomb detonated, decapitating the driver but somehow leaving Mr. Berezovsky unscathed. As a high-ranking officer in the organized crime unit of the F.S.B., the successor to the K.G.B., Mr. Litvinenko "was the investigating officer of the assassination attempt," said Alex Goldfarb, a Berezovsky associate and a spokesman for the Litvinenko family, in an interview conducted, fittingly, in the rear seat of a parked Mercedes in central London with a heavyset driver at the wheel. "They became friends." It was a friendship that was to shape Mr. Litvinenko's career, which began in the roller-coaster politics and self-enrichment of post-Soviet Russia, spanned his desperate flight from Russia through Turkey and then on to Britain to seek asylum. It ended spectacularly and mysteriously, with the British police saying the only thing they knew for sure was that he was dead, poisoned after ingesting an obscure radioactive isotope called polonium 210. After Mr. Litvinenko's death, sketchy facts and abundant speculation unfolded like some lost chapter of the cold war. But unlike those days of East-West division and the half-light of shadowy, underground conflicts, this saga played out in the bright glare of newspaper headlines and 24-hour news channels. Although the precise circumstances of his death remain hidden, Mr. Litvinenko lived the last years of his life as a public critic of President Vladimir V. Putin and the Russian government. Assigned to investigate the assassination attempt on Mr. Berezovsky, he ended up accusing the F.S.B. of involvement in a later conspiracy, a charge that severed his ties with the agency. Once in exile in London, his contacts with Mr. Berezovsky and a circle of other Russian émigrés and former agents flourished, even as his criticism of Mr. Putin grew more vigorous. In the weeks before his death, he had begun looking into the shooting death in Moscow of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a fierce critic of Mr. Putin and his policies in Chechnya. Mr. Litvinenko began his lingering decline on Nov. 1, when he met an Italian academic, Mario Scaramella, in a sushi bar and linked up with former K.G.B. colleagues in a five-star hotel. Then he fell ill, wasting away over 22 excruciating days from a muscular, almost boyish figure to a gaunt shadow. Investigators followed a radioactive trail around London and, through British Airways planes found to have traces of radiation, to Moscow. British Airways said 221 flights, carrying 33,000 people, might have been affected. In a bizarre sideshow, a former Russian prime minister, Yegor Gaidar, a quiet critic of the Kremlin, fell ill with symptoms of poisoning. The episode left Britain's relations with Russia strained: no matter how much Mr. Putin denied it, British officials faced a barrage of newspaper speculation that a supposedly friendly power, or its disaffected agents, had reached onto the streets of London for nefarious purposes. From his deathbed, Mr. Litvinenko accused Mr. Putin of responsibility for his plight, but that conclusion was far from certain. One thing, though, was abundantly clear: Mr. Litvinenko's death matched his life in a world of conspiracy and betrayal as a former spy. Links to a Tycoon Mr. Litvinenko's role in the investigation of the assassination attempt against Mr. Berezovsky, who fled into exile in London in 2000, is not widely chronicled, although it was alluded to in an Associated Press report in 1998, which said the case was never solved. Nonetheless, it appears to have provided the starting point for an association between Mr. Berezovsky, then one of Russia's richest men and most influential power brokers, and Mr. Litvinenko, who was rapidly acquiring a reputation at the Russian spy agency as a rebel and whistleblower. Mr. Berezovsky declined to be interviewed for this article, saying through a spokesman that he was not prepared to offer further comment until after the police investigation of Mr. Litvinenko's death. But, in a statement five days after his friend died, Mr. Berzovsky said, "I credit him with saving my life, and he remained a close friend and ally ever since. I will remember him for his bravery, his determination and his honor." He was referring to another episode that would lead both men to flee Russia for asylum in Britain. In a book he published in 2004, "Lubyanka Criminal Group," Mr. Litvinenko referred to a turning point in his life as an agent. In December 1997, he said his superior in the F.S.B. called him into his office with staggering orders: "You, Litvinenko, you know Berezovsky? You have to liquidate him," he said his superior told him. That claim resurfaced sensationally in the public eye in November 1998, after Mr. Berezovsky accused the F.S.B. of plotting to assassinate him. Mr. Litvinenko and other disaffected agents called a news conference to confirm Mr. Berezovsky's allegations. It was a bizarre spectacle, even by the conspiratorial standards of the time: one dissident F.S.B. officer appeared in a ski mask, another in dark glasses. Mr. Litvinenko did not conceal his identity. Mr. Putin, who led the agency at the time, reacted angrily, threatening to dismiss Mr. Litvinenko and the other officers who had spoken out. According to a transcript published by the Kremlin International News Broadcast, Mr. Litvinenko began with a forthright attack on corruption within the agency. He said some of its units "have been used by certain officials not for constitutional purposes of state and personal security but for their own private political and material purposes, to settle accounts with undesirable persons, to carry out private political and criminal orders for a fee and sometimes simply as an instrument to earn money." The remarks led to Mr. Litvinenko's suspension from the F.S.B. and a series of criminal court cases on five counts of abuse of power and other charges. In 1999, he spent eight months in pretrial detention in Lefortovo Prison in Moscow. When charges were dropped in November 1999 for lack of evidence, he was rearrested the instant the acquittal was read out, according to an account in Izvestia in 2001. He was released again in December 1999 and ordered not to leave town. But the weeks and months went by with no indication that the investigations against him would be dropped. Mr. Litvinenko, his wife, Marina, and son, Anatoly, fled Moscow in October 2000. According to accounts by Mr. Litvinenko at the time, and by others including Mr. Goldfarb and Viktor Suvorov, a former Soviet military intelligence officer and defector, his trail led from Russia to the town of Antalya in southern Turkey, possibly via Ukraine. But once in Turkey, no one, it seemed, wanted to deal with a renegade Russian agent. "I brought him to the U.S. Embassy at the end of October in Ankara," said Mr. Goldfarb, by his own account an American citizen who fled the Soviet Union 31 years ago and spent many years in exile working for, among others, the financier George Soros. "We just walked in and said here's the F.S.B. colonel, and they are not interested." Finally, Mr. Litvinenko left Turkey using a ticket allowing him to transit, but not stay, in London. In November 2000, he arrived at Heathrow airport, surrendered to the British police and claimed asylum, according to accounts by Mr. Litvinenko and in the British press. But he was still not treated as a high-level defector. Mr. Suvorov, an agent from Russian military intelligence, G.R.U., who defected in 1978, said: "I raised the question, 'Look, there's a man who has lots of information about organized crime' — no one else had so much information — but no one questioned him about it, British, French, Americans. He had incredible knowledge." Neither Turkish nor American officials confirmed this account. But, to judge from what happened later, Mr. Litvinenko was determined to put his knowledge of Russia's intelligence networks to use. Émigrés in London From the minute he landed in Britain, Mr. Litvinenko resumed his association with Mr. Berezovsky, who had arrived some months earlier also seeking asylum. From a modest row house in white-collar Muswell Hill in north London, he appears to have moved easily in security and former espionage circles, frequently visiting Mr. Berezovsky's offices in Mayfair — one of London's most upscale districts. He was part, too, of a population of an estimated 300,000 Russians in London, including political émigrés, old-time defectors and wealthy tycoons who spend their time in nightclubs and boutiques and buying up real estate and soccer clubs. He was granted British citizenship earlier this year. But he also maintained contact with his former F.S.B. colleagues, like Mikhail Trepashkin, who was jailed in October 2003 for betraying state secrets while investigating apartment bombings in Moscow and elsewhere in 1999 that killed scores of people. Those bombings formed the basis of a book published in English the same year by Mr. Litvinenko accusing Russia's security services of staging the bombings as a pretext for the second Chechen war. In a letter released Friday and dated Nov. 23, Mr. Trepashkin said in a reference to the F.S.B., "Back in 2002, I warned Alexander Litvinenko that they set up a special team to kill him." But Mr. Litvinenko also registered increasing concerns about his safety. "A secret service is designed to fight another secret service," he told The New York Times in a telephone interview in 2004 during the inquiry into the poisoning of Viktor A. Yushchenko, then a Ukrainian presidential candidate. "When a secret service goes after an individual, they have no chance." Mr. Litvinenko said his supporters arranged for him to address British legislators, whom he told that members of the Russian secret services were "getting more aggressive, threatening my relatives." He said he knew of 32 Russian spies working in England. "They follow us and prepare provocations and our liquidation," he said. In September 2004, two weeks after his appeal to Parliament, Mr. Litvinenko said in the interview, bottles containing burning liquid were thrown at his apartment at 1 a.m. Some of his associates bridled at the idea that he was Mr. Berezovsky's personal agent or go-between. "He was not just someone who came from Russia and said to Berezovsky: give me some money," said Mr. Suvorov, the former G.R.U. agent. But Mr. Litvinenko nonetheless displayed a knack for confidential business. According to a report in The Times of London in November, he traveled to Israel weeks before he died to hand over a dossier on the Yukos oil affair — in which the company's former chairman, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, has been imprisoned for tax evasion — to Leonid Nevzlin, an exiled oil tycoon. Mr. Nevzlin was quoted as confirming the article. On the fateful day when he first took ill, the radiation trail of his movement led to the offices of Erinys, an international security company in Mayfair. It was in that upscale district on Nov. 1 that he met his former Russian security service colleagues, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun, in the Millennium Mayfair hotel, and Mr. Scaramella, the Italian consultant and academic, in the sushi bar on nearby Piccadilly. All three men have denied poisoning him. A Mystery Deepens But the saga was not over. One week after the police reported that Mr. Litvinenko had been poisoned, Mr. Scaramella himself was hospitalized when concentrations of the isotope were found in his body. Traces were also found on a member of Mr. Litvinenko's family. The mystery seemed as deep as ever: the police had traced Mr. Litvinenko's movements and his contacts on Nov. 1. Detectives had spent 20 hours interviewing him in the hospital, according to associates. Yet the trail to Moscow seemed elusive and was impossible to confirm. Speculation swirled inconclusively about Kremlin plots and counterplots and efforts by rogue operatives to pursue their own feuds or discredit President Putin. But no one could say where the poison came from or how it entered Mr. Litvinenko's body. Indeed, Mr. Lugovoi, the former K.G.B. agent, said in a Russian newspaper interview published on Saturday that Mr. Litvinenko might have, in fact, ingested the poison weeks earlier than anyone realized. If true, that would upend some of the most basic assumptions of the investigation — at least as far as it has been made public — and explain why radiation was found on a British Airways plane that flew between Moscow and London on Oct. 25. "Alexander Litvinenko, my business partner Dmitri Kovtun and I were in London on Oct. 17 at a meeting in the office of Erinys," the private security company, Mr. Lugovoi told the Russian newspaper Kommersant. "Traces of radiation could have been left there after this visit." Some of Mr. Litvinenko's associates said his position might have been made more precarious when he began to gather information about the death of Ms. Politkovskaya, the Russian investigative reporter shot to death in Moscow in October. "He was a very good investigator himself," said Mr. Suvorov, the former G.R.U. agent. "That made him very dangerous and vulnerable: if anyone called him and said, 'I know who killed Politkovskaya,' he just arranged a meeting. So, definitely, he was very vulnerable." Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington, and Steven Lee Myers and Viktor Klimenko from Moscow.
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| Rumsfeld Called for Change in War Plan  In his memo, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested withdrawing some troops to pressure Iraq's government.
| | Photo Credit: By David Hume Kennerly -- Associated Press
Related Article: Rumsfeld Called for Change in War Plan, page A01 Rumsfeld Called for Change in War Plan
Before Resignation, He Privately Sought 'Major Adjustment'
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 3, 2006; A01
Two days before he resigned from the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld sent to the White House a classified memo recommending "a major adjustment" in Iraq strategy and acknowledging slow progress there. "Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough," Rumsfeld wrote in the Nov. 6 memo. Rumsfeld has made similar comments in public about insufficient progress in Iraq, both before and immediately after his resignation on Nov. 8. But the defense secretary's unusually expansive memo also laid out a series of 21 possible courses of action regarding Iraq strategy, including many that would transform the U.S. occupation. Michael O'Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution, said the revelation of the memo would undercut any attempt by President Bush to defend anything resembling a "stay the course" policy in Iraq. "When you have the outgoing secretary of defense, the main architect of Bush's policy, saying it's failing, that puts a lot more pressure on Bush," he said. The memo makes clear that Rumsfeld understood acutely the political implications of changing strategy. "Announce that whatever new approach the U.S. decides on, the U.S. is doing so on a trial basis," he wrote in one of the bulleted options. "This will give us the ability to readjust and move to another course, if necessary, and therefore not 'lose.' " He next advised: "Recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) -- go minimalist." Similarly, Rumsfeld advocated announcing "a set of benchmarks" for the Iraqi government -- "to get them moving," he added parenthetically, as well as to "reassure" the U.S. public that progress can be made. The existence of the memo was first reported last night by the New York Times, which posted it on its Web site. The Pentagon confirmed the memo's authenticity. Asked about the memo, White House spokeswoman Eryn Witcher said: "The president has said he's been dissatisfied with the progress in Iraq, so the right thing to do is reevaluate our tactics. There are a number of reviews underway, and the president is open to listening to a wide array of options." Rumsfeld's ideas did not depart radically from the alternative strategies emerging so far from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group or from other military and governmental Iraq policy reviews initiated in recent weeks. For example, Rumsfeld called for significantly increasing the number of U.S. military trainers embedded with Iraqi forces, and, in a twist, for "a reverse embeds program" that would place Iraqi soldiers with American squads, partly to boost the Arabic-language skills of U.S. troops. Several options Rumsfeld raised involve withdrawing or pulling back the 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq as a way to pressure the Iraqi government to take greater responsibility for its own security. This idea, favored by many Democrats in Congress, has not been publicly embraced by Rumsfeld to such a degree. Still, Rumsfeld wrote that he opposed setting a firm withdrawal date. "Begin modest withdrawals of U.S. and Coalition forces (start 'taking our hand off the bicycle seat'), so Iraqis know they have to pull up their socks, step up, and take responsibility for their country," Rumsfeld wrote. Rumsfeld suggested using the security provided by U.S. troops in a carrot-and-stick approach, providing security only for provinces and cities that fully cooperate with U.S. forces. Similarly, reconstruction aid should go only to "those parts of Iraq that are behaving," he wrote, adding: "No more reconstruction assistance in areas where there is violence." Options the defense secretary characterized as "less attractive" involved U.S. troop increases, such as a surge in U.S. forces into Baghdad or substantially increasing the number of American combat brigades in Iraq. The only place he recommended a U.S. troop increase was along Iraq's borders with Syria and Iran. Rumsfeld's well-known frustration with other branches of the U.S. government comes through repeatedly in the memo and is far blunter than the secretary has been in public. He called for reaching out to U.S. military retirees and reservists to "aggressively beef up" Iraqi ministries, adding, "i.e. give up on trying to get other USG Departments to do it." Similarly, he called for a "massive program for unemployed youth" but said it would have to be run by U.S. forces, "since no other organization could do it." Retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich, now a professor of international relations at Boston University, said his impression of the memo is that it is a "laundry list" of current ideas entirely lacking in analysis. "The memo is a tacit admission of desperation and of impending failure," said Bacevich, who has been critical of the conduct of the war. People in Washington familiar with the workings of the Pentagon and the media were suspicious of the motives behind the leak of the memo. Retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, an Iraq veteran who has been critical of Rumsfeld, said he was bothered by both the timing and the substance of the memo. "For Mr. Rumsfeld to write this leaked memo, saying things aren't going well, is disingenuous and self-serving," said Eaton. But he added that he did not think it would affect the morale of troops or officers serving in Iraq, saying he thought they would dismiss it as irrelevant "high-level politics." Staff writers Thomas E. Ricks and Michael Abramowitz contributed to this report.
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| Ten Best Books of 2006 ABSURDISTAN
By Gary Shteyngart. Random House, $24.95.
Shteyngart's scruffy, exuberant second novel, equal parts Gogol and Borat, is immodest on every level - it's long, crude, manic and has cheap vodka on its breath. It also happens to be smart, funny and, in the end, extraordinarily rich and moving. "Absurdistan" introduces Misha Vainberg, the rap-music-obsessed, grossly overweight son of the 1,238th richest man in Russia. After attending college in the United States, he is now stuck in St. Petersburg, scrambling for an American visa that may never arrive. Caught between worlds, and mired in his own prejudices and thwarted desires, Vainberg just may be an antihero for our times. THE COLLECTED STORIES OF AMY HEMPEL
Scribner, $27.50.
A quietly powerful presence in American fiction during the past two decades, Hempel has demonstrated unusual discipline in assembling her urbane, pointillistic and wickedly funny short stories. Since the publication of her first collection, "Reasons to Live," in 1985, only three more slim volumes have appeared - a total of some 15,000 sentences, and nearly every one of them has a crisp, distinctive bite. These collected stories show the true scale of Hempel's achievement. Her compact fictions, populated by smart, neurotic, somewhat damaged narrators, speak grandly to the longings and insecurities in all of us, and in a voice that is bracingly direct and sneakily profound. THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN
By Claire Messud. Alfred A. Knopf, $25.
This superbly intelligent, keenly observed comedy of manners, set amid the glitter of cultural Manhattan in 2001, also looks unsparingly, though sympathetically, at a privileged class unwittingly poised, in its insularity, for the catastrophe of 9/11. Messud gracefully intertwines the stories of three friends, attractive, entitled 30-ish Brown graduates "torn between Big Ideas and a party" but falling behind in the contest for public rewards and losing the struggle for personal contentment. The vibrant supporting cast includes a deliciously drawn literary seducer ("without question, a great man") and two ambitious interlopers, teeming with malign energy, whose arrival on the scene propels the action forward. THE LAY OF THE LAND
By Richard Ford. Alfred A. Knopf, $26.95.
The third installment, following "The Sportswriter" (1986) and "Independence Day" (1995), in the serial epic of Frank Bascombe - flawed husband, fuddled dad, writer turned real estate agent and voluble first-person narrator. Once again the action revolves around a holiday. This time it's Thanksgiving 2000: the Florida recount grinds toward its predictable outcome, and Bascombe, now 55, battles prostate cancer and copes with a strange turn in his second marriage. The story, which unfolds over three days, is filled with incidents, some of them violent, but as ever the drama is rooted in the interior world of its authentically life-size hero, as he logs long hours on the highways and back roads of New Jersey, taking expansive stock of middle-age defeats and registering the erosions of a brilliantly evoked landscape of suburbs, strip malls and ocean towns. SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS
By Marisha Pessl. Viking, $25.95.
The antic ghost of Nabokov hovers over this buoyantly literate first novel, a murder mystery narrated by a teenager enamored of her own precocity but also in thrall to her father, an enigmatic itinerant professor, and to the charismatic female teacher whose death is announced on the first page. Each of the 36 chapters is titled for a classic (by authors ranging from Shakespeare to Carlo Emilio Gadda), and the plot snakes ingeniously toward a revelation capped by a clever "final exam." All this is beguiling, but the most solid pleasures of this book originate in the freshness of Pessl's voice and in the purity of her storytelling gift. NONFICTION FALLING THROUGH THE EARTH
A Memoir.
By Danielle Trussoni. Henry Holt & Company, $23.
This intense, at times searing memoir revisits the author's rough-and-tumble Wisconsin girlhood, spent on the wrong side of the tracks in the company of her father, a Vietnam vet who began his tour as "a cocksure country boy" but returned "wild and haunted," unfit for family life and driven to extremes of philandering, alcoholism and violence. Trussoni mixes these memories with spellbinding versions of the war stories her father reluctantly dredged up and with reflections on her own journey to Vietnam, undertaken in an attempt to recapture, and come to terms with, her father's experiences as a "tunnel rat" who volunteered for the harrowing duty of scouring underground labyrinths in search of an elusive and deadly enemy. THE LOOMING TOWER
Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.
By Lawrence Wright. Alfred A. Knopf, $27.95.
In the fullest account yet of the events that led to the fateful day, Wright unmasks the secret world of Osama bin Laden and his collaborators and also chronicles the efforts of a handful of American intelligence officers alert to the approaching danger but frustrated, time and again, in their efforts to stop it. Wright, a staff writer for The New Yorker, builds his heart-stopping narrative through the patient and meticulous accumulation of details and through vivid portraits of Al Qaeda's leaders. Most memorably, he tells the story of John O'Neill, the tormented F.B.I. agent who worked frantically to prevent the impending terrorist attack, only to die in the World Trade Center. MAYFLOWER
A Story of Courage, Community, and War.
By Nathaniel Philbrick. Viking, $29.95.
This absorbing history of the Plymouth Colony is a model of revisionism. Philbrick impressively recreates the pilgrims' dismal 1620 voyage, bringing to life passengers and crew, and then relates the events of the settlement and its first contacts with the native inhabitants of Massachusetts. Most striking are the parallels he subtly draws with the present, particularly in his account of how Plymouth's leaders, including Miles Standish, rejected diplomatic overtures toward the Indians, successful though they'd been, and instead pursued a "dehumanizing" policy of violent aggression that led to the needless bloodshed of King Philip's War. THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA
A Natural History of Four Meals.
By Michael Pollan. The Penguin Press, $26.95.
"When you can eat just about anything nature has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety," Pollan writes in this supple and probing book. He gracefully navigates within these anxieties as he traces the origins of four meals - from a fast-food dinner to a "hunter-gatherer" feast - and makes us see, with remarkable clarity, exactly how what we eat affects both our bodies and the planet. Pollan is the perfect tour guide: his prose is incisive and alive, and pointed without being tendentious. In an uncommonly good year for American food writing, this is a book that stands out. THE PLACES IN BETWEEN
By Rory Stewart. Harvest/Harcourt, Paper, $14.
"You are the first tourist in Afghanistan," Stewart, a young Scotsman, was warned by an Afghan official before commencing the journey recounted in this splendid book. "It is mid-winter - there are three meters of snow on the high passes, there are wolves, and this is a war. You will die, I can guarantee." Stewart, thankfully, did not die, and his report on his adventures - walking across Afghanistan in January of 2002, shortly after the fall of the Taliban - belongs with the masterpieces of the travel genre. Stewart may be foolhardy, but on the page he is a terrific companion: smart, compassionate and human. His book cracks open a fascinating, blasted world miles away from the newspaper headlines. |
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| Today's Papers Rummy's Parting Shot
By Jesse Stanchak
Posted Sunday, Dec. 3, 2006, at 6:51 AM E.T. Everyone's top non-local story is a classified memo from outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, written just two days before his resignation, in which he admits that U.S. strategy in Iraq is in need of a "major adjustment." Rumsfeld lays out a number of possible plans to turn things around, including decreasing troop levels, setting benchmarks for progress with the Iraqi government, limiting aid to violent parts of the country and putting Iraqi political and religious leaders on the U.S. government payroll to win their loyalty. The New York Times originally obtained the memo, posting the text on its site. The NYT points out that Rumsfeld is not endorsing any particular alternative, and he stresses that some of his suggestions are less desirable or "below the line." The NYT also notes that Rumsfeld's ideas are not particularly new, and many of them have been floated by White House critics for some time. The Los Angeles Times calls the memo "rambling" and characterizes the memo as "an admission of failure." The Washington Post questions the timing and significance of the memo's leak, given that it's just a list of options, devoid of real analysis— and given that Rumsfeld is now on his way out and his opinions are of greatly diminished importance. Which asks a bigger question: why is this front page news? Is it a window into how the White House is thinking now? Is it just a sign of how much the political tide has shifted? Is it a victory dance of sorts— the satisfaction of seeing a man known for his inflexibility admitting there may be better courses of action? Or maybe it's just the irony of Rumsfeld admitting that something had to change, just two days before that something turned out to be him. Everyone mentions UCLA's 13-9 Rose Bowl upset of USC, (the LAT off-leading, the NYT teasing, the WP going over the masthead with the score) putting USC out of the running for the national championship. The NYT looks into whether deregulating the trucking industry has affected driver safety, as some would claim. At issue are rules governing how long a trucker can stay behind the wheel, which critics say are routinely flaunted. Meanwhile, the agency in charge of enforcing these regulations is led by former trucking industry heads who are none-too-keen on cracking down. The WP, building on yesterday's top story, reports that tensions are continuing to mount in Beirut, as Hezbollah-linked protestors call for the collapse of the Lebanon's western-backed government. The NYT tries to unravel the past of Alexander V. Litvinenko, the former Russian spy who died last week of radiation poisoning. The paper doesn't exactly get to the bottom of the story, but does come up with a few plausible reasons why the Kremlin would want their former agent dead. In a local story of national interest, the LAT explains how a new state campaign finance law allows Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to keep raising money. He can't use it for campaigning of course, since he's term-limited out. But he can use it to fund a lavish inaugural celebration for himself and to keep the former movie star traveling and working in the style to which he is accustomed. Under the fold, the WP delves into the curious history of medical dissection. From the prognostication department: inside, the WP takes a stab at guessing how history will judge President George W. Bush. The paper lets five historians have their say. TP will save you the trouble and just say that while there's a range of opinions expressed here, none of them are terribly generous. Under the fold, the WP looks at the controversial decision to continue to fund Gulf War Syndrome research, despite a dearth of scientific research acknowledging the condition's existence. The research bill is currently at $316 million, with another $75 million in the pipeline. The LAT reports inside that gay hate crimes legislation has an improved prognosis in the 110th Congress. The WP teases Castro's failure to show up for his own birthday parade, fueling speculation that the Cuban leader is on his way off the mortal coil. Inside, the NYT braces foe Castro's death. Understatement of the day: "Mr. Castro's Cuba is very much a work in progress." Inside, the LAT reports that the gender pay gap is finally shrinking. The bad news: women aren't earning more, men are simply earning less than they used to. Columbia University is investigating whether or not at least one student may have cheated on his or her ethics final, as Radaronline reported Friday. The WP's take on the story is nothing if not optimistic, arguing that being at the center of this kind of story can't help but teach this year's graduating class something about navigating an ethical crisis. Jesse Stanchak is an assistant documents editor at Congressional Quarterly. He covers elections in Oregon and Idaho for CQpolitics.com.
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Friday, December 01, 2006 | Today's Papers June Dreams
By Daniel Politi
Posted Friday, Dec. 1, 2006, at 5:04 AM E.T. The Washington Post leads with more leaks from the Iraq Study Group's report. Sources tell the paper the commission will recommend the withdrawal of all U.S. combat units from Iraq by early 2008. The New York Times leads, and the Wall Street Journal tops its worldwide newsbox, with President Bush denying there will be any sort of quick pullout of troops from Iraq. His statements came at a news conference after he had a breakfast meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who said his country's forces will be able to take over much of the work in June. The Los Angeles Times leads with news that the Lebanese government has doubled the size of its security forces in recent months, mostly with Sunni and Christian troops. These troops, who were given weapons donated by the United Arab Emirates (a Sunni state), are meant to counter the growing influence of Iran and Hezbollah. USA Today leads with the federal government's plan to begin the first airport screening system that takes X-ray photographs of passengers, which the ACLU calls a "virtual strip search." This new system, designed to make it easier to detect weapons and bombs, will be tested in Phoenix and another still-unnamed airport. The proposed pullout date does not necessarily mean yesterday's reports, which said the commission would not include a "firm timetable," were wrong, because 2008 seems to be more of a goal than a set deadline. The final report will allegedly include lots of disclaimers emphasizing that U.S. commanders should have the final say on any withdrawal dates after taking into account the situation on the ground. Regardless, the withdrawal of U.S. troops would not mean the end of American presence in Iraq. There would still be plenty of advisers, trainers, and U.S. troops embedded with Iraqi units. The Post says it got these latest leaks from "sources familiar with the proposal," but, unfortunately, doesn't specify how many. "This business about a graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever," Bush carefully noted at the news conference. Bush insisted American troops would stay in Iraq, unless the Iraqi government asks them to leave. "I can tell you that by next June our forces will be ready," Maliki said in a statement most analysts and lawmakers described as highly unrealistic. Probably as an attempt to diffuse the effects of a leaked memo that called into question Maliki's ability to govern Iraq, Bush said the Iraqi prime minister is "the right guy for Iraq, and we're going to help him." In an analysis piece inside, the NYT says, "the idea of a rapid American troop withdrawal is fast receding as a viable option." The donation of weapons by the United Arab Emirates illustrates the broad regional implications of a possible power struggle in Lebanon. News of the increase in Lebanese security forces comes on the same day as Hezbollah has planned for a mass demonstration in Beirut. Hezbollah has urged its supporters to go to the Lebanese capital today and remain on the streets until the government collapses. In preparation for the protests, the Lebanese government has mobilized 8,000 troops into Beirut. Calling for a protest among supporters "marks the sharpest escalation yet in a month-long crisis that may decide the direction of Lebanese politics for years ahead," says the WP. Despite the possible broad implications of today's protests, the LAT is alone in giving it Page One play. The WP off-leads with word that administration officials are taking a hard look at whether they want to give up on the goal of forming a unified Iraqi government by stopping its outreach to alienated Sunnis and instead put its support behind Shiites and Kurds. This proposal was designed by the State Department as part of the White House effort to review the situation in Iraq. Although there are plenty of people who have spoken up against the plan within the administration, some in the State Department say the United States meddling in Iraqi politics is doing more harm than good. Of course, a big problem with this plan is that America's closest allies in the region have Sunni governments. (Slate's Fred Kaplan writes that choosing sides is "a terrible idea.") Despite increasing pressure for the administration to go into talks with Iran and Syria to discuss Iraq, the White House and State Department continue to be against the idea. Yesterday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hinted that the United States would continue to push for sanctions against Iran, even if it can't get Russia to go along with the plan. The Post is alone in fronting a draft report issued by a federal agency that says electronic voting machines "cannot be made secure" if they don't leave a paper trail. The National Institute of Standards and Technology's report said election officials should be able to recount the ballots by hand without the aid of a machine in order to ensure the accuracy of electronic votes. If the Election Assistance Commission adopts any of NIST's recommendations, there would still be no practical changes to voting machines until after the 2008 election. Regardless, those who have often spoken up against electronic voting felt vindicated by the report. The WP fronts, and everyone else mentions, British officials announcing they have found traces of radiation in 12 locations around London so far. Among the sites are two hospitals, a hotel, and a car that was found in north London. The autopsy of former spy Alexander Litvinenko will be performed today and investigators hope it will help shed more light on the death. But as USAT notes, this will be no ordinary autopsy. Those performing it will have to take special precautions, because they have to start off from the assumption that all of the former spy's bodily fluids are contaminated. Meanwhile, Irish authorities began an investigation yesterday into the sudden illness of former Russian Prime Minister Yegor T. Gaidar. Many suspect he was poisoned, although there is still no definitive proof. Everybody mentions Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack became the first official candidate for president in 2008 when he launched his campaign yesterday. On World AIDS Day, the WP publishes an op-ed by three advocates who say that even though many more in Africa have been receiving life-saving treatments, there are still too many people dying due to a lack of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists who can administer the drugs. In addition to providing medicine, donor countries need to make a commitment to "empower and mobilize an army of health workers" to aid in all aspects of AIDS treatment, particularly in rural areas. Ripped from the (future) headlines … According to USAT, producers of CSI approached health physicist Andrew Karam a few years ago to ask him questions regarding a possible polonium-poisoning scenario. He told them it was too far-fetched. Daniel Politi writes "Today's Papers" for Slate. He can be reached at todayspapers@slate.com.
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| Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn’t Clear 
Jim Wilson/The New York Times A boy, 5, left, who identifies as a girl, plays with a friend in Northern California. He began emulating girls shortly after turning December 2, 2006 Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear OAKLAND, Calif., Dec. 1 — Until recently, many children who did not conform to gender norms in their clothing or behavior and identified intensely with the opposite sex were steered to psychoanalysis or behavior modification. But as advocates gain ground for what they call gender-identity rights, evidenced most recently by New York City's decision to let people alter the sex listed on their birth certificates, a major change is taking place among schools and families. Children as young as 5 who display predispositions to dress like the opposite sex are being supported by a growing number of young parents, educators and mental health professionals. Doctors, some of them from the top pediatric hospitals, have begun to advise families to let these children be "who they are" to foster a sense of security and self-esteem. They are motivated, in part, by the high incidence of depression, suicidal feelings and self-mutilation that has been common in past generations of transgender children. Legal trends suggest that schools are now required to respect parents' decisions. "First we became sensitive to two mommies and two daddies," said Reynaldo Almeida, the director of the Aurora School, a progressive private school in Oakland. "Now it's kids who come to school who aren't gender typical." The supportive attitudes are far easier to find in traditionally tolerant areas of the country like San Francisco than in other parts, but even in those places there is fierce debate over how best to handle the children. Cassandra Reese, a first-grade teacher outside Boston, recalled that fellow teachers were unnerved when a young boy showed up in a skirt. "They said, 'This is not normal,' and, 'It's the parents' fault,' " Ms. Reese said. "They didn't see children as sophisticated enough to verbalize their feelings." As their children head into adolescence, some parents are choosing to block puberty medically to buy time for them to figure out who they are — raising a host of ethical questions. While these children are still relatively rare, doctors say the number of referrals is rising across the nation. Massachusetts, Minnesota, California, New Jersey and the District of Columbia have laws protecting the rights of transgender students, and some schools are engaged in a steep learning curve to dismantle gender stereotypes. At the Park Day School in Oakland, teachers are taught a gender-neutral vocabulary and are urged to line up students by sneaker color rather than by gender. "We are careful not to create a situation where students are being boxed in," said Tom Little, the school's director. "We allow them to move back and forth until something feels right." For families, it can be a long, emotional adjustment. Shortly after her son's third birthday, Pam B. and her husband, Joel, began a parental journey for which there was no map. It started when their son, J., began wearing oversized T-shirts and wrapping a towel around his head to emulate long, flowing hair. Then came his mothers' silky undershirts. Half a year into preschool, J. started becoming agitated when asked to wear boys' clothing. En route to a mall with her son, Ms. B. had an epiphany: "It just clicked in me. I said, 'You really want to wear a dress, don't you?' " Thus began what the B.'s, who asked their full names not be used to protect their son's privacy, call "the reluctant path," a behind-closed-doors struggle to come to terms with a gender-variant child — a spirited 5-year-old boy who, at least for now, strongly identifies as a girl, requests to be called "she" and asks to wear pigtails and pink jumpers to school. Ms. B., 41, a lawyer, accepted the way her son defined himself after she and her husband consulted with a psychologist and observed his newfound comfort with his choice. But she feels the precarious nature of the day-to-day reality. "It's hard to convey the relentlessness of it, she said, "every social encounter, every time you go out to eat, every day feeling like a balance between your kid's self-esteem and protecting him from the hostile outside world." The prospect of cross-dressing kindergartners has sparked a deep philosophical divide among professionals over how best to counsel families. Is it healthier for families to follow the child's lead, or to spare children potential humiliation and isolation by steering them toward accepting their biological gender until they are older? Both sides in the debate underscore their concern for the profound vulnerability of such youngsters, symbolized by occurrences like the murder in 2002 of Gwen Araujo, a transgender teenager born as Eddie, southeast of Oakland. "Parents now are looking for advice on how to make life reasonable for their kids — whether to allow cross-dressing in public, and how to protect them from the savagery of other children," said Dr. Herbert Schreier, a psychiatrist with Children's Hospital and Research Center in Oakland. Dr. Schreier is one of a growing number of professionals who have begun to think of gender variance as a naturally occurring phenomenon rather than a disorder. "These kids are becoming more aware of how it is to be themselves," he said. In past generations, so-called sissy boys and tomboy girls were made to conform, based on the belief that their behaviors were largely products of dysfunctional homes. Among the revisionists is Dr. Edgardo Menvielle, a child-adolescent psychiatrist at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington who started a national outreach group for parents of gender-variant children in 1998 that now has more than 200 participants. "We know that sexually marginalized children have a higher rate of depression and suicide attempts," Dr. Menvielle said. "The goal is for the child to be well adjusted, healthy and have good self-esteem. What's not important is molding their gender." The literature on adults who are transgender was hardly consoling to one parent, a 42-year-old software consultant in Massachusetts and the father of a gender-variant third grader. "You're trudging through this tragic, horrible stuff and realizing not a single person was accepted and understood as a child," he said. "You read it and think, O.K., best to avoid that. But as a parent you're in this complete terra incognita." The biological underpinnings of gender identity, much like sexual orientation, remain something of a mystery, though many researchers suspect it is linked with hormone exposure in the developing fetus. Studies suggest that most boys with gender variance early in childhood grow up to be gay, and about a quarter heterosexual, Dr. Menvielle said. Only a small fraction grow up to identify as transgender. Girls with gender-variant behavior, who have been studied less, voice extreme unhappiness about being a girl and talk about wanting to have male anatomy. But research has thus far suggested that most wind up as heterosexual women. Although many children role-play involving gender, Dr. Menvielle said, "the key question is how intense and persistent the behavior is," especially if they show extreme distress. Dr. Robin Dea, the director of regional mental health for Kaiser Permanente in Northern California, said: "Our gender identity is something we feel in our soul. But it is also a continuum, and it evolves." Dr. Dea works with four or five children under the age of 15 who are essentially living as the opposite sex. "They are much happier, and their grades are up," she said. "I'm waiting for the study that says supporting these children is negative." But Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a psychologist and head of the gender-identity service at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, disagrees with the "free to be" approach with young children and cross-dressing in public. Over the past 30 years, Dr. Zucker has treated about 500 preadolescent gender-variant children. In his studies, 80 percent grow out of the behavior, but 15 percent to 20 percent continue to be distressed about their gender and may ultimately change their sex. Dr. Zucker tries to "help these kids be more content in their biological gender" until they are older and can determine their sexual identity — accomplished, he said, by encouraging same-sex friendships and activities like board games that move beyond strict gender roles. Though she has not encountered such a situation, Jennifer Schwartz, assistant principal of Chatham Elementary School outside Springfield, Ill., said that allowing a child to express gender differences "would be very difficult to pull off" there. Ms. Schwartz added: "I'm not sure it's worth the damage it could cause the child, with all the prejudices and parents possibly protesting. I'm not sure a child that age is ready to make that kind of decision." The B.'s thought long and hard about what they had observed in their son. They have carefully choreographed his life, monitoring new playmates, selecting a compatible school, finding sympathetic parents in a babysitting co-op. Nevertheless, Ms. B. said, "there is still the stomach-clenching fear for your kid." It is indeed heartbreaking to hear a child say, as J. did recently, "It feels like a nightmare I'm a boy." The adjustment has been gradual for Mr. B., a 43-year-old public school administrator who is trying to stop calling J. "our little man." He thinks of his son as a positive, resilient person, and his love and admiration show. "The truth is, is any parent going to choose this for their kid?" he said. "It's who your kid is." Families are caught in the undertow of conflicting approaches. One suburban Chicago mother, who did not want to be identified, said in a telephone interview that she was drawing the line on dress and trying to provide "boy opportunities" for her 6-year-old son. "But we can't make everything a power struggle," she said. "It gets exhausting." She worries about him becoming a social outcast. "Why does your brother like girl things?" friends of her 10-year-old ask. The answer is always, "I don't know." Nila Marrone, a retired linguistics professor at the University of Connecticut who consults with parents and schools, recalled an incident last year at a Bronx elementary school in which an 8-year-old boy perceived as effeminate was thrown into a large trash bin by a group of boys. The principal, she said, "suggested to the mother that she was to blame, for not having taught her son how to be tough enough." But the tide is turning. The Los Angeles Unified School District, for instance, requires that students be addressed with "a name and pronoun that corresponds to the gender identity." It also asks schools to provide a locker room or changing area that corresponds to a student's chosen gender. One of the most controversial issues concerns the use of "blockers," hormones used to delay the onset of puberty in cases where it could be psychologically devastating (for instance, a girl who identifies as a boy might slice her wrists when she gets her period). Some doctors disapprove of blockers, arguing that only at puberty does an individual fully appreciate their gender identity. Catherine Tuerk, a nurse-psychotherapist at the children's hospital in Washington and the mother of a gender-variant child in the 1970s, says parents are still left to find their own way. She recalls how therapists urged her to steer her son into psychoanalysis and "hypermasculine activities" like karate. She said she and her husband became "gender cops." "It was always, 'You're not kicking the ball hard enough,' " she said. Ms. Tuerk's son, now 30, is gay and a father, and her own thinking has evolved since she was a young parent. "People are beginning to understand this seems to be something that happens," she said. "But there was a whole lifetime of feeling we could never leave him alone."
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Thursday, November 30, 2006 | Long After We Withdraw November 26, 2006 The Way We Live Now Long After We Withdraw By DAVID RIEFF As the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate and as policy makers debate how to extricate the United States honorably from what increasingly appears a war without end, it is worth remembering that all wars do end eventually, and that postwar relationships between the bitterest of enemies can turn out surprisingly well. President Bush's recent trip to Vietnam, where he attended the annual meeting of APEC — the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation organization — illustrates this reality and even offers a measure of hope at a time when battlefront reports are almost unrelievedly bad and when America's foreign policy seems to lurch from crisis to crisis. It often seems as if the U.S. presence in Iraq has created so many new enemies in the Muslim world that the clash of civilizations described by Prof. Samuel Huntington has gone from being the hypothesis of a Harvard political scientist to a historical inevitability. Even many of those who resist the notion that Islam and the West are on a collision course still worry that the harm that has been done in Iraq to relations between the U.S. and the Islamic world will be almost impossible to undo. And yet the example of Vietnam suggests otherwise. If anything, the trauma of the Vietnam War on the American psyche was and for some still is far deeper than anything the Iraq war has yet produced. These days we speak — probably too glibly — of an America almost evenly divided between so-called red and blue states. But for anyone who remembers what this country was like during the Vietnam era and in its immediate aftermath, these contemporary divisions seem rather shallow. Vietnam truly split the country and brought millions of people into the streets against their own government. People died protesting the Vietnam War on campuses like Kent State. On the battlefield, there was also tremendous savagery. Think of the C.I.A.-run Phoenix program of targeted assassination or the systematic torture of American prisoners of war by the North Vietnamese. Nevertheless, 30 years after the end of a war that left Vietnam in ruins and America in turmoil and confusion, the issues left over — accounting for the missing in action, reuniting families and even paying compensation for Agent Orange-induced maladies — are far less central to U.S.-Vietnamese relations than issues of trade and investment. America is now Vietnam's leading trading partner, and Intel has just announced the expansion of its factory near Ho Chi Minh City. While Congress dealt a temporary setback to President Bush's efforts to promote trade with Vietnam, few doubt that such efforts will succeed. As Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, has put it, Vietnam is "reforming" and "booming." (Of course, he might have added that it is hardly a paragon of human rights.) Remarkably, President Bush's cordial reception to Prime Minister Phan Van Khai in 2005 was accepted with little protest except from small groups of Vietnamese-Americans. On the Vietnamese side, the dour commissars who fought the French and then the Americans, at the cost of more than a million of their own dead — "born in the North, die in the South" was a well-known saying in the North Vietnamese Army at the time — have given way to proud capitalists who, despite their Communist affiliations, are far more interested in deepening trade relations with America and in warding off their historic rival China than in pulling the scabs off old wounds. Is there a lesson here for Iraq? The answer is that, in fact, there are many. The first, and perhaps the most important, is that history is not predictable and even the most deep-seated enmities can evaporate over time when the conditions are right. As President Bush himself said when he was in Hanoi last week: "History has a long march to it. Societies change, and relationships can constantly be altered to the good." There is no iron law of history that says that the bad relations between America and the Islamic world, and even between the United States and radical Shiite groups like the one led by the militant cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, are fated to continue this way indefinitely and immutably. Nor is there any reason to believe that an American withdrawal from Iraq will harm these relations any more than the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam permanently damaged U.S.-Vietnamese relations. After the searing experience of Iraq, few among us believe that outsiders can impose democracy at the point of a gun. Nations and peoples simply have to find their own way. Of course, it is crucial not to romanticize this process. For the Vietnamese, the first decade after the fall of Saigon in 1975 was an appalling one — an era of mass repression and mass hunger. It is entirely possible, likely even, that in Iraq the situation will get considerably worse after a U.S. withdrawal, as it did in Vietnam. To put it starkly, however, the effort to foster democracy in Iraq has failed, and with that failure, short-term suffering may have to be the price of long-term coexistence. Is this perspective harsh to the point of cruelty? Perhaps. But it may be a necessary and sober one as well. No one in his right mind should imagine a rosy future for Iraq — regardless of whether American commanders choose to preserve the status quo, start withdrawing or even add more troops to try a "final push" this spring. But again, all wars do end eventually. And in their aftermath, in the peace that follows, possibilities arise that seem almost unimaginable as people lie bleeding. It is conceivable that 30 years from now, one of President Bush's successors will travel to Baghdad not for crisis meetings in the Green Zone or to serve Thanksgiving turkey to the troops but to talk about peacetime matters like trade, tourism and the environment. Yet given America's inability to guarantee the security of ordinary Iraqis after an occupation that has lasted almost as long as our participation in World War II, it is possible to speculate that the sooner American forces leave Iraq, the sooner such a trip is likely to happen. David Rieff is a contributing writer for the magazine.
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