September 18, 2006

  • Polo Gym Bag, Cartier Time Piece

    I have ordered on of these in every color, and so I should be well received on my next trip to the workout salon.

    Really a bargain, when you think about how hard it must be to wrestle those nasty creatures into submission.

    Michael


    Jens Mortensen

    Locker Luxe Trust Ralph to come up with the ultimate gym bag. This crocodile duffel is $16,000 at select Ralph

    Lauren stores. Call (888)475-7674.

     

    This is a nice watch. The style is tweaked slightly from the classic, but it retains the inimitable Cartier charm. In case you have 20k you don't know what to do with, stop by your nearest Cartier Boutique and pick one up.

    Oh, by the way, I would not be offended in the slightest if you picked up one for me as well

    All the Best,

    Michael

September 1, 2006

  • Birth of Brunch

    The Birth of Brunch

    The Birth of Brunch
    Why and how we eat at midday.
    By Bryan Curtis
    Posted Thursday, Aug. 31, 2006, at 7:20 PM ET



    "It started right here. This is the beginning of the brunch." This is Gary Greengrass, the owner of the Upper West Side delicatessen Barney Greengrass, known as "The Sturgeon King." A large, bald man who has run his grandfather's deli since 1983, Greengrass is sitting at a Formica table, his eyes trained on the customers coming through the door. At my behest, he is speculating that New York brunch as we know it began here on Amsterdam Avenue at 86th Street, amid pickled herring, whitefish salad, and salmon with eggs and onions. "It sort of evolutionized from here," he says.

    Six blocks south, at Sarabeth's at 80th Street, another New York restaurateur was laying down her claim. "I was the original brunch girl," says Sarabeth Levine. "I reactivated the eating of breakfast." Whereas Greengrass specializes in Jewish delicacies, Levine, who opened the first of her five New York locations in 1981, has a menu that tends toward porridges, vegetable and Gruyère frittatas, and pumpkin waffles with sour cream, raisins, pumpkin seeds, and honey. "Before me, you had the local Greek diner or the corner bodega thing," Levine says. "But you didn't have a place to sit down and get hot cereal unless you went to the country."

    Sunday brunch is so omnipresent in New Yorkextending uptown and downtown, upscale and downscale, and, these days, across all days and hours of the weekthat its origins are necessarily hazy. Dozens of Manhattan restaurants can lay claim to inventing some part of brunch: You can trace the mythic origins of eggs Benedict, for example, to Delmonico's, a downtown steakhouse, and the Waldorf, in Midtown. But Sunday brunch's formative cauldron may be this otherwise unremarkable six-block stretch of Amsterdam on the Upper West Side. It is here that Sunday brunch acquired its defining characteristics, its casual manners.

    Why Sunday? While it's tempting to see brunch as a secular rituala slow start for those coming to after nocturnal prowlingsthere's an argument that it owes a great deal to American Jewry. Brunch, Gary Greengrass acknowledges, was a kind of Jewish alternative to church. Jewish families, with nothing much to do on Sunday mornings, would take a long, leisurely meal, with traditional foods like bagels, lox, and blintzes. Occasionally, they would take that meal out. (New York blue laws used to prohibit restaurants from being open on Sundays; Greengrass' grandfather, Barney, would gladly pay the fine.) These days, Barney Greengrass hosts its share of Jewish machers: Jerry Seinfeld, David Geffen, Richard Dreyfuss, and novelist Philip Roth, who, according to Gary Greengrass, is a brunch guy but not a Sunday brunch guy.

    Barney Greengrass has been serving the same fare since it opened it 1908, but it wasn't until the early 1980s that brunch culture began to develop in New York. At that moment, Amsterdam above 79th Street wasn't an especially ripe piece of real estate. "It was terrible," says Sarabeth Levine. "My husband used to walk me to the bakery at 4:30 in the morning. There was a whole subculture of ratswhole families!" With money still transferring over from the Upper East Side, Amsterdam was a pre-gentrification mix of Columbia professors, artists, and bohemiansthe sort of slackery Sunday-morning regulars who frequent brunch now.

    It's easy to see brunch as a battle of wills: the restaurateurs, who want to keep the turnstiles moving, vs. the customers, who would have the meal take all afternoon. Brunch parties tend to arrive in increments, dressed like refugees, occasionally hungover, usually after increasingly irate calls from other patrons. ("Are you still in bed? Is someone there with you? Well, bring her, what do I care?") When the party finally coalesces on the sidewalk, they are informed by the host that they will have to wait for a tableboth Barney Greengrass and Sarabeth's tend to have endless lines on Sundays. As Nora Ephron, a longtime Upper West Side resident, put it in e-mail the other day, "As far as I can tell, the essential quality of an Upper West Side brunch seems to consist of milling in a large group outside of a restaurant for over an hour."

    Perhaps because of this extended preamble, diners feel entitled to a lethargic meal, kibitzing and peeling through the thick Sunday New York Times. To combat this, Barney Greengrass waiters are trained to be as warm as the restaurant's Formica tabletops, adhering to a policy of "get 'em in, get 'em down, get 'em well fed, and get 'em out." (You get your check whether you ask for it or not.) Sarabeth Levine says, "Do I want people in here for two hours? I don't think so! Breakfast isn't this big expensive thing. It's not like going out for dinner, where you sit for two hours, order wine, and run up a $250 bill. We don't want people nursing a muffin for two hours."

    Other New York brunch traditions vary depending on taste. Brunch may be alcoholic or nonalcoholic. A general rule holds that if the previous night was well-oiled, a Bloody Mary or mimosa will be necessary. (Whereas if you were sober, you might wish to keep it that way.) Brunch often has a distinctly post-coital vibe. Either one is brunching with one's romantic partner from the previous evening, in which case a louche afterglow hangs in the air, or one is brunching with friends, in which case one is wondering aloud why a louche afterglow isn't hanging in the air.

    The other thing about Sunday brunch is that it tends to be generational. In your 20smandatory, often twice a weekend. In your 30s and 40sless so, unless you want to lug around a stroller. Fifties and beyondagain frequent, though starting at an earlier hour. It might as well be breakfast.

    Bryan Curtis is a Slate staff writer. You can e-mail him at curtisb@slate.com.

     

July 28, 2006











  • Today's Papers


    Deadly Day
    By Eric Umansky
    Posted Thursday, July 27, 2006, at 3:24 AM ET


    The Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Washington Post all lead with the heavy fighting in the Mideast: Eight Israeli soldiers died in an ambush as they were trying to take the strategic town of Bint Jbail near Lebanon's southern border. Another Israeli soldier was killed in a village Israel said it took a few days ago. Hezbollah also fired about 130 rockets into Israel, wounding 10 people. Two dozen Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza. About half of the dead were civilians. Only the LAT datelines from Gaza City, where the paper's reporter watched gunmen prepare for Israel's arrival. The Post describes "pitched battles" as about 30 tanks moved into one town. USA Today reefers the Mideast and leads with airfares up about 10 percent since last year.


    As expected, little happened at the yesterday's brief diplomatic confab in Rome, where Secretary of State Rice put the kibosh on the "entreaties of nearly all of her European and Arab counterparts" to push for an immediate cease-fire. The Post notes that U.N. chief Kofi Annan proposed an alternative platform calling for a "pause" in the fighting, but the measure was "blocked by intense U.S. pressure."


    Hezbollah's ground attack included mortars, RPGs, and laser-guided anti-tank missiles. It was so heavy and such a surprise that it took Israeli soldiersmost of whom were from the famed Golani Brigadean hour to shoot back. The eight soldiers killed reportedly died in the first few minutes of fighting. Israeli sources gave varying estimates on the number of guerrillas killed, and as usual Hezbollah didn't release any numbers.


    "It was hell on earth," one Israel soldier told Haaretz. "People risked their lives not only for the wounded but also for the dead bodies." A few days ago, an Israeli general had said Israel controlled the town.


    A front-page Post piece explores Hezbollah's resilience so far. "These may be the best Arab troops we've ever faced," said one Israeli intel expert. Hezbollah's force in the south operates nearly autonomously, and most of the fighters are part-time militiamen who live in the area. "The command and control system is this," said the intel expert, as he held up a cell phone.


    As the NYT explains, Israel's seemingly limited successes are why "the country's goals have so quickly changed from fully dismantling Hezbollah to securing a narrow strip" along the border.


    Everybody has more details on the Israeli strike that killed four U.N. soldiers. According to U.N. officials, their outpost was targeted by 21 strikes that went on for hours including after rescuers arrived. U.N. commanders said they made 10 calls to Israeli military officers, who promised to end the bombardment. Israeli Prime Minister Olmert said there will be an investigation and said it was "inconceivable" the compound was purposely hit.


    The NYT teases a poll that the paper says show a "strong isolationist streak" in the U.S. Nearly 60 percent of respondents said the U.S. doesn't "have a responsibility try to resolve the conflict" between Israel and others. About the same percentage said the U.S. should set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.


    The Wall Street Journal goes high with a poll showing 45 percent of respondents support the president's response to the Mideast crisis. The poll also has 60 percent saying the country is heading in the wrong directionabout the same as it's been for months.


    The Post off-leads a preview of a bipartisan congressional report concluding that the Homeland Security Department's contracting process is FUBAR. Investigators said the department doesn't have near enough contract specialists, and the number of no-bid contracts has, as the WP puts it, "exploded." Since DHS was created in 2003, there have been "significant overcharges, wasteful spending or mismanagement" on contracts worth a total of $34 billion.


    Everybody goes inside with Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki speaking to Congress and, apart from offering darn familiar rhetoric, all but begging for more reconstruction aid.


    After hanging with one U.S. unit in Baghdad for a few days, a Post reporter gets the impression that morale isn't all that high. "Honestly," said one named soldier, "it just feels like we're driving around waiting to get blown up."


    The Associated Press has an interesting analysis suggesting the new security push in Baghdad will increase the probability of a confrontation with radical cleric Moqtada Sadr. The reason: Sadr's gunmen control chunks of the city and are causing havoc.


    The LAT fronts an interview with the U.S.'s top ground commander in Iraq, who said the push in Baghdad will include about $100 million in reconstruction projects. "I am not downplaying the importance of security, but the key thing here is getting the people believing their life is going to get better," he said. Then he added, "Quite frankly, in 33 years in the United States Army, I never trained to stop a sectarian fight. This is something new."

    Eric Umansky (www.ericumansky.com) writes "Today's Papers" for Slate. He can be reached at todayspapers@slate.com.



     







    Mrs. Astor’s Son Denies Claims of Neglect










    Bill Cunningham/The New York Times
    Mrs. Astor at her 100th birthday party with her grandsons, Philip Marshall, center rear, and Alec Marshall, and Philips wife, Nan Starr.

    July 28, 2006
    Mrs. Astors Son Denies Claims of Neglect
    By SERGE F. KOVALESKI

    Anthony D. Marshall, who has been accused of neglecting his 104-year-old mother, the philanthropist and socialite Brooke Astor, spoke out yesterday for the first time in his own defense, saying that he had overseen expenditures of more than $2.5 million a year for his mothers care and comfort and calling the allegations against him completely untrue.

    Mr. Marshall, in a statement, said that he loved his mother and was mystified that one of his twin sons, Philip Marshall, had brought legal action against him without sharing his concerns with him beforehand.

    I am shocked and deeply hurt by the allegations against me, Mr. Marshall said. I love my mother, and no one cares more about her than I do. Her well-being, her comfort and her dignity mean everything to me.

    The necessity for Mr. Marshall, at 82, to publicly proclaim his love for his mother and defend her care came as Mrs. Astor was being treated at Lenox Hill Hospital, where she was reported in stable condition.

    She had been taken there after the court filing by Philip Marshall, which accused his father of failing to fill her prescriptions, stripping her apartment of artwork, reducing her staff, confining her dogs, and generally darkening her final years. Mrs. Astors welfare was being looked after by Annette de la Renta, a friend of Mrs. Astors who is married to the designer Oscar de la Renta, a spokesman said.

    Last night, Anthony Marshall and his wife, Charlene, walked from their Upper East Side apartment to Lenox Hill to visit his mother, buying a bouquet of pink roses at a corner grocery on the way.

    Were going through a hard time, Mr. Marshall said as he strolled on the humid evening in a dark blue suit, pin-stripe shirt and a red-and-blue tie. Its going to be very difficult for a long time now.

    His wife offered her own staunch defense of her husbands actions, and seemed to belittle claims by her stepson that Mrs. Astor living as she does in a large Park Avenue apartment with a retinue of servants and assistants exists in near squalor.

    Not everyone has a Park Avenue apartment, not everyone has eight servants, not everyone has this man, she said, gesturing toward her husband.

    Yesterdays developments seemed to cast the legal dispute as a contest between father and son, whose relationship has been described by some friends and relatives as distant and strained by decades of divorce, remarriage and the complicated conditions of caring for a woman who has lived past the century mark.

    Little is known about what prompted Philip Marshall to file a lawsuit, replete with affidavits from David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger. But Mr. Marshall, a 53-year-old university professor who was never very much in the news despite being a member of one of New Yorks highest-profile families, is now a pivotal character in the public drama.

    In his lawsuit, Philip Marshall accuses his father a Broadway producer and former diplomat who also worked for the C.I.A. for several years of not only mistreating Mrs. Astor, but also of enriching himself with millions of dollars. He asks that his father be removed as Mrs. Astors legal guardian and replaced by Mrs. de la Renta. The court papers were quoted extensively in The Daily News but have been sealed by a judge.

    Philip Marshall lives far from the city that his grandmother captivated for decades with her philanthropy and social activities. He lives in South Dartmouth, Mass., and is a professor of historic preservation in the school of architecture, art and historic preservation at Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I. Reached by telephone yesterday, he declined to comment.

    Some friends of Mrs. Astor said that she hardly ever talked about her grandson. I didnt even know she had a grandson, said John Fairchild, the retired publisher of Womens Wear Daily and a friend. She never mentioned a grandson.

    But Richard Cryan, 50, Mr. Marshalls first cousin, who lives in Needham, Mass., said that Mr. Marshall was very fond of his grandmother and feels a strong responsibility for her welfare. He said any speculation or suggestion that Mr. Marshall was somehow trying to cash in on Mrs. Astors fortune was unfounded.

    Philip is not an individual motivated by greed, Mr. Cryan said. He is a college professor and not money-oriented. I accept on face value that this is motivated by his concerns about the well-being of his grandmother.

    Mr. Cryan described Anthony Marshall as a classic father of the 50s, in that he was very dedicated to his career. And the flip side to that was he was not very accessible to Philip emotionally, he said. Philip Marshalls mother, Elizabeth Cryan, Mr. Cryan continued, is very warm, engaged and nurturing. I would say the relationship between Philip and his father was more distant, rather than contentious or hostile.

    One of the peripheral players in the situation is Mrs. Astors daughter-in-law, Charlene, who turned 61 yesterday. Though the Marshalls have already been demonized in tabloid accounts, those who know them find it shocking and incomprehensible that they could be accused of ignoring Mrs. Astors health, safety and personal needs.

    Charlene has been a great daughter-in law, and takes great care of Brooke, said David Richenthal, the Marshalls theatrical producing partner for such plays as the 2003 production of Long Days Journey Into Night. There is simply no connection between the reality of how loving and caring she has been, and these allegations, he said.

    The Marshalls divide their time between homes on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and Northeast Harbor, in Maine, which they met and where friends are also perplexed by the legal allegations. Im so surprised to hear these things about them, said Nan Lincoln, the arts editor of the weekly Bar Harbor Times.

    Ms. Lincoln recalled the days when her children went to the same elementary school as those of Charlene Marshall, who as a preachers wife, was living in the rectory. Charlene was married to the Rev. Paul Gilbert, the Episcopal minister at St. Marys by the Sea in Northeast Harbor. She was a friend before she ran off and shocked us all, Ms. Lincoln said of Mrs. Marshall. It was no small scandal, when she ran off.

    That was with Mr. Marshall, in 1992. Mr. Gilbert left shortly after that, Ms. Lincoln said. It was an uncomfortable situation.

    It is perhaps this past that has heightened speculation about family tensions. Though Mrs. Marshall has been a prominent participant with Mrs. Astor in legendary celebrations, those who know Mrs. Astor have described moments when she made it publicly clear even when her daughter-in-law was present that she was no fan of Mrs. Marshalls.

    And a neighbor, speaking of St. Marys by the Sea in Maine, recalled Mrs. Astor saying, after her sons affair with the ministers wife, I cant go to the church anymore.

    Yesterday, Mrs. Astor was visited at the hospital by Mrs. de la Renta, who was once considered her protégée. They have served on many charities and boards together and raised millions of dollars for the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When the investment banker Felix Rohatyn and his wife, Elizabeth, set off debate in 1986 by criticizing the opulence of their charity balls, Mrs. Astor and Mrs. de la Renta responded that the galas were critical fund-raising events. Mrs. Rohatyn was then shut out of many prestigious events for some time.

    Annette is an incredibly smart choice to act as her guardian, said Patrick McCarthy, the editorial director of Fairchild Fashion Group, which publishes Womens Wear Daily and W magazine.

    Mrs. de la Renta, 66, in addition to her work for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, the Morgan Library and Museum, the Animal Medical Center and Rockefeller University, joins in her husbands support of orphanages in the Dominican Republic.

    She is a powerhouse, the fashion publicist Paul Wilmot said. She has opinions and she is not afraid to voice them. But she does not go out for self-publicity.

    Mrs. Astors hospitalization was first reported yesterday by The Daily News and The New York Post. The hallway where Mrs. Astor is a patient looks different from the other floors: it has mahogany walls, artwork, a carpeted floor and a meditation room. It also has a special security detail with restrictions for visitors, including hospital staff. IDs are always required.

    After visiting his mother at the hospital, Mr. Marshall spoke outside his apartment building. His wife eventually pulled him away, saying that hes been dizzy; he needs his rest.

    Mr. Marshall said: I was very touched and encouraged by the fact that my mothers present state of age has brought attention to the need for care of elderly people. My mother always liked to spearhead a problem, whether it was within the New York community or throughout the nation. Im happy she can still do what she did for years for the foundation, even if she doesnt know it.

    Reporting for this article was contributed by Glenn Collins, Kate Hammer, Ethan Wilensky-Lanford and Eric Wilson in New York, Polly Saltonstall in Maine, and Stacey Stowe in Massachusetts.


    Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company








  • Phil Marino for The New York Times
    A lunch order arrives at North Shore Diabetes in New Hyde Park, N.Y. A pharmaceutical company paid for the food.

    July 28, 2006
    Drug Makers Pay for Lunch as They Pitch
    By STEPHANIE SAUL

    Anyone who thinks there is no such thing as a free lunch has never visited 3003 New Hyde Park Road, a four-story medical building on Long Island, where they are delivered almost every day.

    On a recent Tuesday, they began arriving around noon. Steaming containers of Chinese food were destined for the 20 or so doctors and employees of Nassau Queens Pulmonary Associates. The drug maker Merck paid the $258 bill.

    A deliveryman carrying trays of gourmet sandwiches sashayed past patients at Advanced Internal Medicine. The bill showed that Takeda Pharmaceuticals was picking up the bill. The doctors in the group must have liked the sandwiches. The next day, the exact same delivery came in, paid for by Cephalon.

    Free lunches like those at the medical building in New Hyde Park, N.Y., occur regularly at doctors’ offices nationwide, where delivery people arrive with lunch for the whole office, ordered and paid for by drug makers to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

    Like the “free” vacation that comes with a time-share pitch attached, the lunches go down along with a pitch from pharmaceutical representatives hoping to bolster prescription sales. The cost of the lunches is ultimately factored in to drug company marketing expenses, working its way into the price of prescription drugs.

    Doing business over lunch is a common practice in many fields, but drug makers have honed it to perfection, particularly since 2002, when the drug industry adopted a new code banning many other free enticements — golf outings, athletic tickets, trips and lavish dinners for doctors. The code gives approval to modest meals in the course of business. And conventional wisdom in both the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession is that a lunch is too small to pose an ethical problem. But a growing number of critics say that even those small lunches should be banned.

    A former pharmaceutical representative, Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau, called lunch “incredibly effective” in lifting pharmaceutical sales for the companies where she worked, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson.

    “We got the numbers of what the physicians were prescribing. If I brought in lunch one week, I could see the following week if that lunch had an impact,” Ms. Slattery-Moschkau said.

    Dr. John G. Scott, assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J., is examining the interaction between medical practices and pharmaceutical representatives.

    “We found that some offices get breakfast and lunch every day,” said Dr. Scott, who calls lunch the “currency” that buys access to doctors’ offices for drug representatives. He also noted that some doctors were hard pressed to meet payrolls and that the lunches provided an added benefit for their employees.

    “Essentially, we feel that most of what the pharmaceutical reps do works at an unconscious level,” Dr. Scott said. He said most doctors said they were not influenced by the food deliveries and other small gifts. But, he added, “They do influence prescribing.”

    The $258 Merck lunch, for example, cost the company only $10.75 a person and fell clearly within industry guidelines allowing modest meals. But it could easily return thousands of dollars for the drug maker in prescriptions for the osteoporosis medication Fosamax and the asthma treatment Singulair, the two drugs discussed during lunch with two Merck representatives.

    An official of Merck’s sales and marketing division, Patrick T. Davish, says his company views lunch meetings as appropriate and “a good time to sit around and talk about the clinical properties of your drug and the disease categories you deal with.” Spokesmen for both Takeda and Cephalon emphasize that the lunches they pay for are modest.

    Dr. Scott cited several studies that show that the lunches — plus small gifts like pens and sticky notepads, along with drug samples — can lead doctors to prescribe the more expensive brand names when cheaper generic drugs would be as effective.

    Such concerns have spurred the effort to ban lunches. The movement is making headway nationwide, as opponents of the practice cite ethics questions. The hospital at the University of Pennsylvania became the latest large institution barring industry-paid lunches, effective July 1, according to its medical director, Dr. Patrick J. Brennan.

    “It curries favor and it creates influence, and it introduces influences into decision-making processes that we think ought not to be there,” Dr. Brennan said.

    Similar rules have been adopted recently at several other academic medical centers. When the University of Michigan Health System banned industry lunches last year, officials calculated that they had been worth $2.5 million annually.

    In Madras, Ore., meanwhile, a group of internists earlier this year banned not only lunch but also visits by drug representatives. Even in Madras, a rural town of about 5,000, the group got visits from more than 30 drug representatives a month, including two or three lunches.

    “The complaints that I would get from my patients were, ‘You’re 15 minutes late to see me.’ ” said Dr. David V. Evans, a member of the group. “ ‘O.K., I was back there talking to a drug rep.’ That wasn’t such a good thing.”

    Dr. Evans added, “It’s an issue of professionalism and integrity, really.”

    The pharmaceutical industry employs about 90,000 representatives. While some patients grumble about their ubiquitous presence in medical office waiting rooms — and many are aware of lunch deliveries — others say the intrusion is worthwhile in exchange for the free drug samples.

    “The doctors I go to only see them at certain times,” said Arnold Dimond of Glen Oaks, N.Y., who was leaving the New Hyde Park building recently, carrying a plastic bag of drug samples. “The samples save you quite a bit of money, too.”

    One of the most vocal opponents of free lunch is Dr. Bob Goodman, a Manhattan internist who formed an organization called No Free Lunch.

    “I’d say that lunches are going to be one of the last things to go,” Dr. Goodman said. “The interesting thing is that it’s generally not something doctors are ashamed about. That’s why I find this thing so fascinating. They don’t think they’re doing anything wrong.”

    At 3003 New Hyde Park Road most of the doctors contacted declined to be interviewed for this article. But one, Dr. Javier Morales, said the samples that representatives bring to his office are helpful for low-income patients.

    And Scott M. Lassman, senior assistant general counsel for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said: “It’s our feeling that a modest meal is not the type of thing that is going to interfere with the independence of a health care practitioner. It’s really a recognition that these folks are extremely busy. They don’t have time to talk. Perhaps the only time they do have time to talk is over lunch or dinner. So we thought it was appropriate for the sales rep to pay for that.”

    Not every doctor’s office gets free lunches at 3003 New Hyde Park Road, though many do. The deliveries often start even before lunchtime, with representatives bringing in pastries and large containers of coffee from Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts.

    Ms. Slattery-Moschkau, the former pharmaceutical representative, said that nurses and staff members in some offices were quite demanding about lunch.

    “It was almost a game, and it was unbelievable the animosity they would show if you did not bring the right kind of food, or if it was the third time they had pizza that week,” said Ms. Slattery-Moschkau, who left the industry in 2002 and recently wrote and directed the documentary “Money Talks,” in which the practice of lunch is discussed.

    Midweek lunches, when all the doctors are sure to be in the office, are considered prime time.

    “Wednesdays are big,” said Larry Plompen of West Islip, N.Y., who peddles lunch and coffee out of a refrigerated truck at 3003 New Hyde Park Road. Several years ago, Mr. Plompen said, a drug company purchased lunch from his truck for the entire staff of a large practice in the building.

    Other entrepreneurs have also capitalized on the business — a segment of the restaurant industry that one national lunch-ordering company, Lunch and Earn, estimates is worth $4 million a day, or as much as $1 billion a year. A founder of that company, Amy Kristjanson, a former pharmaceutical representative, said her numbers were based on a calculation of lunch spending by representatives for the top 10 pharmaceutical companies.

    Mr. Lassman said he was not aware of any industrywide figure for the cost of such lunches. But various sales representatives, pharmaceutical companies and the lunch delivery industry supplied estimates of how much is spent for lunch. Judy Kay Moore, spokeswoman for Eli Lilly, for instance, said that company’s representatives spend $500 to $750 a month for lunches. Joseph R. Carolan, an owner of Casa Mia’s in Nottingham, Md., which does a large pharmaceutical lunch delivery business in the Baltimore area, said the average representative he deals with has a monthly lunch budget of close to $2,000.

    Mr. Carolan said his lunch business — about 30 to 40 orders a day — exploded after the new industry marketing code was adopted in 2002.

    “I got into this because the feds cracked down on the more extravagant things they were doing: the dinners, courtside N.B.A. games, flying them to the islands.” Mr. Carolan said.

    He is also on the forefront of another marketing trend: rewards programs for pharmaceutical representatives.

    One who spends $5,000 at Casa Mia’s, for example, can get a $100 gift certificate to Nordstrom, one month of tanning, or a Swedish massage with a manicure and pedicure.

    Ms. Kristjanson, the former representative who founded Lunch and Earn, said that lunch represented a fundamental shift in the business.

    “Reps used to have more freedom,” Ms. Kristjanson said. “Lunch is sort of what it’s come down to.”

    Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

June 20, 2006

  • Safavian, Helping Someone Arrested, Today's Blogs, Today's Papers, Missing Soldiers

















    Safavian Is Found Guilty in Lobbyist Trial










    Doug Mills/The New York Times
    David Safavian, in his lawyer's office on May 19, 2006.


    June 20, 2006


    Safavian Is Found Guilty in Lobbyist Trial


    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


    Filed at 10:30 a.m. ET


    WASHINGTON (AP) -- A jury found former Bush administration official David Safavian guilty Tuesday of covering up his dealings with Republican influence-peddler Jack Abramoff.


    Safavian was convicted on four of five felony counts of lying and obstruction. He had resigned from his White House post last year as the federal government's chief procurement officer.


    The trial consumed eight days of testimony about Safavian's assistance to Abramoff regarding government-owned real estate and a weeklong golfing excursion the lobbyist organized to the famed St. Andrews golf course in Scotland and London. Safavian went on the trans-Atlantic trip while he was chief of staff at the General Services Administration, and other participants were Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, two Ney aides and Christian Coalition founder Ralph Reed.


    The verdict came on the fifth day of jury deliberations.


    Safavian sat impassively as the judge read the verdict and showed no expression when the judge announced the guilty verdicts on each of four counts. Sentencing was scheduled for Oct. 12.


    Safavian was charged with two counts of obstructing justice during investigations into the Scotland trip by the GSA inspector general and the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. He also was charged with three counts of making false statements or concealing information from GSA ethics officials, a GSA inspector general investigator and a Senate investigator.


    The jury found Safavian guilty of obstructing the work of the GSA inspector general and of lying to a GSA ethics official. It also convicted him of lying to the GSA's Office of Inspector General and of making a false statement to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. He was acquitted of a charge of obstructing the committee's investigation.


    This was the first trial to emerge from the scandal surrounding Abramoff, who is a former business partner of Safavian. Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to federal crimes here and in Miami, would likely be a witness if the Justice Department assembles criminal cases against any members of Congress.


    The government made its case without ever putting Abramoff on the witness stand. It relied on the testimony of the officials Safavian was accused of deceiving.


    A key witness in the case was Neil Volz, a convicted partner of Abramoff's and ex-chief of staff to Ney. Prosecutors introduced hundreds of e-mails exchanged among Safavian, Abramoff, Volz and others in 2002.


    The Justice Department made a case that Safavian provided Abramoff advice and some inside information about two government properties including the Old Post Office in downtown Washington.


    Prosecutors said Abramoff wanted to buy or lease part of the GSA's White Oak property in the Maryland suburbs for use by a Jewish school he had established. They also said he wanted to give an Indian tribe client a leg up on obtaining the contract to redevelop the Old Post Office in as a luxury hotel, near two restaurants Abramoff owned.


    Volz testified the Abramoff team referred to Safavian as one of their ''champions'' inside government, who could give them insider information they couldn't get elsewhere. He said Safavian was the mastermind of some of the strategy for developing congressional pressure or action to sway GSA.


    Volz said they tried to keep this maneuvering secret.


    Prosecutors showed that Safavian's advice began right after he went to work at GSA and was intensely pursued in the weeks before Safavian went on the weeklong golfing expedition to Scotland in August 2002. Abramoff had arranged the trip for members of Congress and invited Safavian to come along when one of them dropped out.


    Safavian took the stand for two days in his own defense. He acknowledged some misjudgments and forwarding Abramoff some insider information, such as the position of other government officials on the GSA properties, but attributed these errors to his inexperience.


    Basically he maintained he simply gave generally available information to an old friend who was inquiring about government property that the GSA had not even decided what to do with yet.


    He said he answered all investigators' questions. Safavian said he didn't volunteer information about his advice on the two properties. Safavian said he didn't consider Abramoff was doing or seeking business with GSA because the agency wasn't letting contracts at the time.


    Safavian claimed he thought he paid all of his costs with a $3,100 check to Abramoff on takeoff, though he acknowledged that trial testimony had shown him some elements were more expensive than he thought.


    Prosecutors said the trip of nine participants cost more than $130,000. They scoffed at the notion anyone could think $3,100 would cover his share of chartered jet travel, $400 and $500-a-night hotels, $400 rounds of golf and $100 rounds of drinks.


    GSA officials and a Senate investigator said Safavian never told them about the advice he was giving Abramoff on the two properties or details about the Scotland costs. They also said they would have wanted to hear that. The GSA officials said if they had known, they might have ruled differently on his request to go on the trip. The GSA Inspector General's office closed an investigation of the trip without taking any action against Safavian in 2003. Safavian's problems didn't begin until 2004 when investigators began looking into Abramoff's illegal conduct.




     







    How to Help a Friend Who Gets Arrested in the Middle of the Night



     



    DWI Stop

    Enlarge
    DWI Stop
    It is 2 AM and someone you love has just been arrested. You know you need legal help. You do not want your loved one to make a confession or be in a line-up or even get fingerprinted if it can be avoided. It is tough to know what to do or who to trust. Moreover, you do not know who will even answer the phone at that time of day. Here is what you need to know if this happens in the United States of America.

    Steps



    1. Find out where they are being held and by what police agency. Whether you get the call from a police officer or your loved one, make sure that this is the first thing you ask. If you can, tell your friend or family member that you are finding him a lawyer and not to answer any police questions until the lawyer arrives. Your friend MUST invoke his rights himself. If you tell the detective not to talk to your friend (or loved one) without an attorney, he'll laugh at you. Only the arrested subject can invoke his rights.
    2. Ask what the charges are and what time the arrest was made. Do not let your loved one tell you what happened. The call is not privileged and it can, and probably will be, recorded by police for later use against your loved one. They should just tell you the actual charge. If they cannot tell you without explanation, tell them that it doesn't matter, and continue to step three below. If the arrested is an adult, the police are not required to tell a friend or family member anything.
    3. Tell your loved one not to make any statement or take any test and tell them you are getting a lawyer and not to do or say anything until they hear from that lawyer. (In some states, you have a very limited time or no right at all to contact a lawyer regarding alcohol testing. Also, in many states, refusal to take an alcohol test is treated as an admission of guilt and carries the same penalty as a test failure. If you don't know, ask the officer.)Only the arrested subject can invoke his rights; you can not do it for them.
    4. Select a criminal defense attorney. See the related wikiHow's below for steps to take in finding one. Keep calling lawyers until you find one that either answers their phone or has an answering service that can reach them anytime, day or night.
    5. Tell the lawyer that your friend is arrested and give as much information as you can. Ask that they immediately call the stationhouse and stop your friend from being questioned. Many lawyers will do this for free, but expect to pay at least $150-350 for that call.
    6. Gather as much money as you can to both pay the lawyer in court and to post bail. It is more important to get a good lawyer into the case early than to immediately get your friend out of jail.




    Tips



    • Always keep about $500-$1000 available without having to go to the bank. Most minor crimes and traffic violations can be bailed out from the stationhouse through the use of a desk appearance ticket or a desk sergent's bail.
    • Do not feel obligated to stay with the lawyer who helps you the first night. Selecting a lawyer for a case long-term should be done with the accused person's participation. Tell the lawyer you found that you are using him for the purpose of securing your loved ones rights only for the night in question. Do not sign a long term retainer.
    • Any legal fee for standing in at arraignment should either be a flat fee or should be hourly. Again, most criminal defense attorneys will charge between $150-$350 per hour. It will cost more in many big cities or urban areas. For example, many well known NY lawyers charge upwards of $600 per hour.
    • At the arraignment (the formal reading of criminal charges, and entering your plea) you do not have to use the lawyer that helped you get your loved one . A free lawyer is often available. However, it is better to have your own lawyer at arraignment if you can.
    • If you run into trouble finding out where your friend is being held and by what police agency, get ahold of a bail bondsman (see link below, how to make bail) as they are experienced at this, and can sometimes locate your friend faster than you using the same resources.




    Warnings



    • Remember the best way to help your friend with the problems associated with being arrested is to avoid the arrest in the first place. Keep your friends out of fights, drink responsibly, drive responsibly, and help your friends do so also.
    • Police do not have to "give you your rights," and their failure to do so does not invalidate an arrest. They only have to give you your rights if they (a) arrest you and (b) ask you questions about the crime. Hence, tell your friend who is under arrest to plead the fifth.
    • An oral statement is just as bad as a written statement. It is always best to say nothing.
    • Do not worry if you cannot find an attorney to represent your friend in court without being retained. Some courts will not let a non-retained lawyer stand in at arraignment. The court must provide an attorney at an arraignment if one is requested, or give the accused time to retain someone before he is arraigned.
    • There are times when the best thing you can do for your friend or loved one is to let them deal with the consequences of their actions on their own. Spending a night in jail can be a real wakeup call for someone who is in need of a wakeup call.





     







    Today's Blogs


    Murtha vs. Rove
    By Darren Everson
    Posted Monday, June 19, 2006, at 6:01 PM ET


    Bloggers discuss John Murtha's targeting of Karl Rove's "big, fat backside." They also react to North Korea's missile test plans and a high school that anointed 41 valedictorians.


    Murtha vs. Rove: Stepping up the recent rhetoric regarding the Iraq war, Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha ridiculed Karl Rove on Meet the Press Sunday. Rove gave a speech last week in which the president's senior adviser criticized Murtha's call for a quick withdrawal and rebuked the Democrats' "old pattern of cutting and running." In response, Murtha said, "You can't sit there in the air-conditioned office and tell troops carrying 70 pounds on their backs, inside these armored vessels hit with IED's every day, seeing their friends blown up-their buddies blown up -- and he says stay the course? Easy to say that from Washington, D.C."


    In Washington, the Iraq war debate has intensified in recent days as Republicans seek to capitalize on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's death and Democrats, on the defensive, propose a Senate resolution seeking a timetable for a phased withdrawal.


    Murtha's latest rant may rally some on the left"If EVER there was someone deserving to be the Speaker of the House (it's) Jack Murtha," writes commenter Curlew on Daily Kosbut his reasoning is giving ammunition to others.


    "I don't seem able to speak 'Murtha,' " concludes Colorado blogger Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom. "John Murtha has now made the transition from gutless Congressional peace activist to outright laughingstock," writes Froggy at military blog Blackfive.


    Murtha critics are seizing on other exchanges in the Meet The Press interview, including when Tim Russert pointed out that, in 2004, Murtha cautioned against a premature withdrawal. Russert also asked where withdrawn American troops could redeploy and be close enough to aid the nascent Iraqi army. Among other places, Murtha mentioned Okinawa.


    "Okinawa?" conservative Ed Morrissey writes incredulously at Captain's Quarters. "Okinawa is five time zones away -- over 5,000 miles from Baghdad. ... The question for Democrats is why they keep putting Murtha out as their defense expert when he can make statements like this with a straight face. It reveals the utter lack of military scholarship on their part when their two most hailed experts on military affairs are a man who cannot see why Okinawa might be a bad place for a staging ground for Southwest Asia, and a man who wants to turn over Iraqi sovereignty to Iran and Syria."


    But on the Huffington Post, Rachel Sklar reviews Murtha's performance and gives him two thumbs up: "I mean, did Murtha stick it to them or what? Boom! They have no plan. Boom! It's lipservice from Washington. Boom! History will prove them wrong. Boom! Karl Rove has a big, fat ass. It almost makes you weep."


    Read more about Murtha.


    Getting testy: North Korea may soon test an intercontinental ballistic missile. U.S. officials said Sunday that North Korea appears to have completed fueling a long-range missile, indicating a test might be imminent. The United States and others are urging against it, so much so that State Department officials directly contacted North Korean diplomats at the United Nations.


    Such warnings proved ineffective in 1998, when North Korea fired a missile over Japan despite the Clinton administration's protestations. North Korea agreed to a moratorium on long-range missile testing in 1999 and has not fired one since.


    But if North Korea goes ahead with another similar testlaunching a missile over another country's airspaceJames Robbins at the conservative National Review's blog The Corner actually sees an opportunity: "Sounds like a great opportunity to test our missile-defense technology." Liberal Kevin Drum, the Political Animal of Washington Monthly writes: "Hell, I could almost sign up for that. After 20 years, it's time for the missile defense guys to put their money where their mouths are."


    Drum also asks whether this latest North Korean crisis constitutes grounds for another pre-emptive strike. Andrew Olmsted answers: "We would doubtless prefer they not test a missile capable of striking the United States, but doing so is hardly grounds for war. And war is what we would have if we struck a target inside North Korea."


    Read more about North Korea.


    Everyone's a winner: Forty-one students were honored as valedictorians this year at a high school in Fairfax, Va., continuing a trend in which schools are increasingly recognizing as valedictorians every graduate who earns a 4.0 grade point average or better. Bloggers aren't fooled.


    Law blogger Ann Althouse rails against this supposed scourge, including the phenomenon of weighted grades that contributes to it. "The title of valedictorian is a terrific prize, and it becomes meaningless if every great student wins it," Althouse opines. "Why replicate the message that is already present in the academic records? Just give the prize to the person with the highest GPA and be done with it." A commenter at her site has a novel idea: "I read a suggestion that high schools use the system colleges use: Everybody with a 4.0 is summa cum laude and so forth," writes reader Jim C. "That's better than watering down the meaning of valedictorian."


    The very term valedictorian, writes Houston Chronicle writer John Whiteside at his personal blog, By The Bayou, "is commonly understood to mean the top student in a school. If educators really believe that the competition for that spot is a bad thing, they should just stop recognizing it altogether."


    Read more about the valedictorian debate.

    Darren Everson is a sportswriter in New York City.


     







    Today's Papers


    H2 Uh-0
    By Eric Umansky
    Posted Tuesday, June 20, 2006, at 3:13 AM ET


    The New York Times, Wall Street Journal's world-wide newsbox, and Washington Post all lead with the Supreme Court's divided ruling that "came close to rolling back" the Clean Water Act. The Los Angeles Times leads with the White House again warning North Korea to stop toying with a long-range missile test. Japan's prime minister also said his country "would have to respond harshly" to any test. USA Today leads with police in big cities across the U.S. saying "no, thanks" to the feds' requests that they help I.D. illegal aliens.


    The Supreme case involved what the plaintiffs argued is the government's too-loose definition of "wetlands," which results in altogether too much land being protected by the Clean Water Act. Four justices agreed and voted to restrict the definition, while four justices voted to leave things be. Justice Kennedy wrote his own, fence-sitting opinion where he agreed that the protections are being applied too broadly but didn't agree with the other justices on what to do about it. The upshot: The case was kicked back down to lower courts without much guidance.


    And what will that mean? Eh, good question:


    The WP: "JUSTICES REIN IN CLEAN WATER ACT."


    The LAT: "DIVIDED SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS FEDERAL PROTECTIONS FOR WETLANDS."


    It's still not a sure thing that North Korea is now ready, willing, and able to test a big missile. One of the key issues is whether it's actually fueled the thing. And countering yesterday's NYT, the Post says that's not clear. "We can't say anything for sure," said one "top official with access to the intelligence."


    The NYT editorial page takes another bold stance and declares that a missile test would be "thoroughly bad for North Korea, for its region and for just about everyone else." The editorial concludes, "We hope that North Korea's next surprise is to respond ... sensibly and cancel whatever plans it has for such a self-destructive move." You hear that, Pyongyang? Don't even think of crossing the Times editorial page.


    Bonus material: There's been some chatter among experts on blogs about how little we know of North Korea's overall missile program.


    According to late-night reports, Japan is ending its mission in Iraq and pulling its 600 troops. "We've finished this chapter," Prime Minister Koizumi reportedly said.


    Only USAT fronts a well-known insurgent group, an umbrella organization, really, claiming they've captured the two GIs who've been missing in Iraq. It's an interesting choice by the paper given that, as the NYT emphasizes, the group offered no video or other proof. (Witnesses have reported seeing the soldiers being pushed into cars.)


    The NYT alone fronts the military charging three soldiers with murdering three Iraqis. The Iraqis had been captured, but the Times says investigators have concluded the soldiers released them "before they were shot, apparently to have a pretext for killing them as they fled."


    About 25 Iraqis were killed in assorted attacks.


    USAT fronts a feature on the spiraling insurgency in Afghanistan and the West's less-than-full-fledged support for the country. The paper says one study concluded that aid to Afghanistan "equals $57 per person, compared with $679 in Bosnia and $206 in Iraq."


    The NYT points out that Taliban guerrillas killed 32 members of one pro-government family over the weekend. The WP has a feature inside on how Taliban militancy is spreading in Pakistan. "Things are starting to spin out of control," said one Western diplomat. "In some areas, it's beginning to look like they are setting up a government within a government."


    The LAT fronts New Orleans Mayor Nagin asking the National Guard to help patrol the city's streets after a shooting last weekend in which five teenagers were killed. Nearly a year after Katrina, the police force is still in a bad state, short on cops, money, and according to the NYT, "low on supplies like ammunition."


    The WP mentions that Bush attended an annual congressional GOP fundraiser where he "generally avoided the harsh language he used to describe Democrats at last year's dinner." The president said Democrats are "good talkers," while Republicans are "good doers." Using some of that non-harsh language, he said, "It's important to have members of the United States Congress who will not wave the white flag of surrender in the war on terror."

    Eric Umansky (www.ericumansky.com) writes "Today's Papers" for Slate. He can be reached at todayspapers@slate.com.


     







    Missing G.I.'s Are Found Dead in Iraq










    In this undated photo released Monday, June 19, 2006, by the Menchaca family, Army Pfc. Kristian Menchaca is shown. A senior Iraqi military official announced Tuesday June 20, 2006 that the bodies of two missing soldiers, U.S. privates, Menchaca 23, of Houston, and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore., had been found. An al-Qaida-linked group said Monday it was holding captive two soldiers who went missing last week in one of Iraq's most dangerous regions. (AP Photo/Menchaca family via The Brownsville Herald)

    June 20, 2006


    Missing G.I.'s Are Found Dead in Iraq


    By SABRINA TAVERNISE


    BAGHDAD, June 20 The Iraqi military said today that the bodies of two American soldiers missing since Friday were found this morning outside the town where they were captured.


    Although American military officials would not immediately confirm the report, CNN reported from Houston this morning that one of the families had been informed that the body of their son had been found dead.


    According to Reuters, an Iraqi military official, Major General Abdul Aziz Mohammed, said in Baghdad that the two bodies had marks showing that "they had been tortured in a barbaric fashion."


    An American military spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said that the military's first responsibility for reporting any news was to the families of the soldiers, who were identified by the military on Monday as Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore. He said it would be "very inconsiderate" to say more about the search for the two men.


    A third soldier, Specialist David J. Babineau, 25, of Springfield, Mass., was killed when insurgents attacked the three at a traffic checkpoint. "The search has been extremely extensive in continuing to look for our two soldiers, whose duty status and whereabouts was unknown," General Caldwell said.


    The two soldiers disappeared Friday night in an ambush southwest of Baghdad, and the military has been searching vigorously in and around Yusufiya with a force of 8,000 American and Iraqi troops.


    Ibrahim Obeidi, a spokesman for the Iraqi ministry of defense, said that soldiers had discovered the two bodies early this morning in the village of Jarf as-Sakhr, which is on the outskirts of Yusufiya.


    On Monday, an Islamic militant group linked to Al Qaeda had said it had captured two American soldiers listed as missing, but it offered no proof, and American military officials remained skeptical.


    Regarding the search for the two soldiers who have been missing since Friday, a message posted Monday on a Web site of the Council of Holy Warriors, which says it oversees Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and seven other militant groups, said, "Our brothers in the military wing" had seized the soldiers near Yusufiya, the town where the military began its search. "We will provide you with more details on this incident in the next few days," the group said.


    It was not clear whether the assertion was true: the group's posting was unusually brief and did not say precisely where the soldiers had been seized. It offered no pictures of the soldiers.


    In a separate posting, the same group said it had kidnapped four Russian Embassy employees in the upscale neighborhood of Mansour in early June. The group gave the Russian government 48 hours to withdraw from Chechnya, a rebellious Muslim republic within Russia, and to release Muslim detainees from Russian prisons.


    The Russian Foreign Ministry, in a statement on Monday, called for the release of the embassy employees.


    An American military spokeswoman said the military was investigating the claim about the soldiers, but an American official in Baghdad cautioned that the military viewed the Web statement with some skepticism. It contained only information that could have been easily gleaned from news articles on the Internet.


    Also, the official said, the council is an umbrella group and does not itself have the fighters needed to carry out an attack like the one it says led to the soldiers' capture.


    The sweeping search continued for the soldiers, identified by the military on Monday as Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore. A third soldier, Specialist David J. Babineau, 25, of Springfield, Mass., was killed when insurgents attacked the three at a traffic checkpoint.


    Since Friday, troops had searched 12 villages, detained 34 Iraqis and conducted 12 cordon-and-search operations, the military said. Troops were supported by fighter jets and pilotless Predator drones.


    A resident in Karagol, the village that appeared to be closest to where the soldiers were taken, said the Americans had shut off all water and electricity in the town.


    The troops appear to have met some resistance. Since Friday, three Iraqis identified as insurgents have been killed, the military said, and seven Americans have been wounded.


    Another Internet posting surfaced Monday in which Ansar al-Sunna, a militant group operating in northern Iraq, said it had captured an Iraqi woman serving as a translator, Salma Gasem Hamadi, a Shiite who the group said was working for the American military in Tikrit.


    The posting included a chilling warning for translators in the area to "leave your work immediately before we get you," according to a translation provided by the SITE Institute, a group that tracks militant Web sites.


    In Rome on Monday, three Italian prosecutors requested the indictment of an American soldier for the shooting of an Italian intelligence agent, Nicola Calipari, who was killed by gunfire at a checkpoint in Iraq last year, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.


    According to the report, the Italian prosecutors have asked that the soldier, identified as Specialist Mario Lozano, a member of the New York National Guard, stand trial for murder and attempted murder.


    On March 4, 2005, just after securing the release of an Italian journalist who had been kidnapped in Baghdad, Mr. Calipari was killed when the car carrying him and the journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, came under fire at a checkpoint.


    A spokesman for the United States Embassy in Rome said ithad not been contacted about the indictments and declined comment.


    Also on Monday, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said Iraqi troops would assume full responsibility in July for security in Muthanna Province, making it the first province outside of the Kurdish north to be under full Iraqi control.


    [On Tuesday, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan announced said that Tokyo would withdraw its troops from Iraq, Reuters reported. About 550 Japanese soldiers have been in Samawa, part of Muthanna Province in southern Iraq, since February 2004 on a non-combat mission.]


    In all, 13 Iraqis were killed and 36 wounded Monday in violence in Baghdad and in Diyala Province to the north, Iraqi authorities said.


    Sabrina Tavernise reported for this article from Baghdad. Reporting was contributed by Richard A. Oppel Jr., Mona Mahmoud and Omar al-Neami from Baghdad, Peter Kiefer from Rome and John O'Neil and Christine Hauser from New York.









  • Noun 1. avidity - a positive feeling of wanting to push ahead with something
    avidness, eagerness, keenness

    enthusiasm - a feeling of excitement


    ardor, ardour, elan, zeal - a feeling of strong eagerness (usually in favor of a person or cause); "they were imbued with a revolutionary ardor"; "he felt a kind of religious zeal"

June 12, 2006

  • British Grand Prix 2006













    Standings after British GP









    Racing series   F1
    Date 2006-06-11





















































































































































































     
    Drivers' Championship:
     
    Pos  Driver  Nat  Team  Points 
    1.  Fernando Alonso  E  Renault  74 
    2.  Michael Schumacher  D  Ferrari  51 
    3.  Kimi Raikkonen  FIN  McLaren-Mercedes  33 
    4.  Giancarlo Fisichella  I  Renault  32 
    5.  Juan Pablo Montoya  COL  McLaren-Mercedes  26 
    6.  Felipe Massa  BR  Ferrari  24 
    7.  Jenson Button  GB  Honda  16 
    8.  Rubens Barrichello  BR  Honda  13 
    9.  Nick Heidfeld  D  BMW  10 
    10.  Ralf Schumacher  D  Toyota  8 
    11.  David Coulthard  GB  Red Bull-Ferrari  7 
    12.  Jacques Villeneuve  CDN  BMW  7 
    13.  Mark Webber  AUS  Williams-Cosworth  6 
    14.  Nico Rosberg  D  Williams-Cosworth  4 
    15.  Christian Klien  A  Red Bull-Ferrari  1 
             
     
    Constructors' Championship:
     
    Pos  Constructor  Nat    Points 
    1.  Renault  F    106 
    2.  Ferrari  I    74 
    3.  McLaren-Mercedes  GB    60 
    4.  Honda  J    29 
    5.  BMW  D    17 
    6.  Williams-Cosworth  GB    10 
    7.  Toyota  J    8 
    8.  Red Bull-Ferrari  GB    8 
             

    



    


    

     
    

    

    




    


    


    

    British GP: Winners' press conference 

    


    

    British GP: Winners' press conference

    







    


    
Racing series  
F1 
    

    
Date 
2006-06-11

    

    British Grand Prix FIA winners' press conference transcript with 

    

    1. Fernando Alonso (Renault), 1h25m51.927s 
    2. Michael Schumacher (Ferrari), 1h26m05.878s 
    3. Kimi Raikkonen (McLaren), 1h26m10.599s 

    

    Q: Fernando, that looked to be a perfectly judged race for you and in some ways, on home soil too. 

    

    Fernando Alonso: Yes, it's true. Victory today was quite OK for us. Yesterday, getting pole position made the thing a little bit easier, starting from pole. Today, we saw that we had more fuel than the others yesterday in qualifying so this also helped in terms of strategy and things like that. The tyres performed really well all through the race so there weren't many opportunities for opponents to beat us and this is good news for the rest of the season. But we have to take the advantage now. We had a good car, no problems, no mechanical problems and we are taking good points, step by step. 

    

    Q: Your race was very much defined by the early phase, a lot of pressure from Kimi and Michael but you managed to pull away tenth by tenth in that early phase of the race. 

    

    Fernando Alonso: Yes, in the first two laps after the safety car Kimi was very quick. We had a little bit too much understeer. We prepared the car to be quick at the end of the stints. Lap by lap the car was feeling better and better, so I built a gap in the first stint and then I controlled it a little bit for the rest of the race. I had some graining problems in the second stint but nothing big and as I said, tyres were again perfect today. Thanks to all the team, all the mechanics and for the tyres; victory was in our hands again. 

    

    Q: How does it feel to win here at Silverstone, in Britain. 

    

    Fernando Alonso: Fantastic. To be honest, winning in Spain, Monaco, Silverstone, for me, the last three races is a dream come true. They are circuits with big names and big emotions. Great atmosphere at this circuit, it's all about Formula One and to win in this country, 20 minutes away from my home in Oxford is for me a really good feeling and I've had a fantastic day. 

    

    Q: Michael, a great drive to second place, taking second place in the second pit stops there, but very close racing with Kimi right at the start, almost touched wheels going into Abbey? 

    

    Michael Schumacher: Touched sidepods, I would say. I was already at the limit of the circuit. He didn't want to give me the inside so I had to try the outside. The rest worked out fine. We obviously got stuck in the early stages of the race but nevertheless, I have to say that we weren't quick enough this weekend but we will keep on working on that. 

    

    Q: That was a great period of the race when you did take second place from Kimi. Talk us through that: very quick on that lap after your tyre change, fastest in sectors two and three. 

    

    Michael Schumacher: We knew we had two sets of new tyres left. We knew that all the other guys chose to use their new set at the start, so they had no new sets left, so that was the only strategy we could pull out, to come in a lap early and then have a lap free of traffic and then build a gap to second and then get into second. 

    

    Q: Kimi, it was very close with Michael there going into Abbey. What was it like in that early phase of the race for you, with Michael and also Fernando just in front of you? 

    

    Kimi Raikkonen: We were really a bit too slow in a straight line to challenge anyone. I got quite close to Fernando after the safety car and on the first lap I just couldn't quite pass him. Then I was in front of Michael and I didn't know that we got so close but we didn't hit each other which was good. It wasn't an easy race, we weren't quick enough so there wasn't much we could do, but I did the best I could and we finished third. I think that was maximum that we could have done today. 

    

    Q: A good podium finish for you, but Giancarlo Fisichella was very close to you in the closing stages. What condition was your car in at that point? 

    

    Kimi Raikkonen: It wasn't perfect. I lost the rear end a little bit at the end of the race and I also got the lapped traffic in the first sector and Fisichella was always very quick through there. It was sometimes a bit difficult when you follow someone and on the back straight he was quick, but he wasn't too much of a problem. But I could have done without it also, but I'm happy with third place. 

    

    Q: Fernando, the run goes on: incredible reliability, a string of podium finishes for you, eight in a row now, it's been an amazing season. 

    

    Fernando Alonso: Yes, so far it has been fantastic: three wins and three seconds. Obviously there's nothing more to find in the car. We're running on the limit of the car. No mechanical problems, a fantastic job from all the people in the team, and for sure, we need to keep doing things like this. I think the best defence from now on will be attacking and keep winning races is what we have to do. 

    

    Q: Fernando, early on, Kimi seemed to be really having a go at you in those opening laps. How close was it? 

    

    Fernando Alonso: Very close. We prepared the car to be quicker in the middle and end of the stints, so for the first two laps, I had a little bit too much understeer and for sure, during the first and second laps I wasn't quick enough and Kimi obviously tried, but we had good straight line speed and it wasn't easy to overtake us, so we were lucky with that. 

    

    Q: And after that, no problems with the car? 

    

    Fernando Alonso: Well, the conditions haven't been easy all weekend here. It was very windy in the high speed corners so there were some surprises on some of the laps. Lap by lap the circuit was changing a little bit so you have to guess when you arrive at a corner, but no, not really. The car performed really well. I had a little bit of graining during the second stint but the gap was big enough not to have too many worries. 

    

    Q: You all seem to be quite hot and tired after that race; how was it? 

    

    Fernando Alonso: Well, we are not used to this temperature in England and I think we have all been a little bit surprised. It's quite tough, this circuit, with these high speed corners, especially this year with the V8, very quick through the corners, and yeah, it was quite a physical race. 

    

    Q: Michael, second place, was the car good, good enough for first, do you think? 

    

    Michael Schumacher: Don't know! It was going well, I didn't have any particular issues or problems but it's a bit difficult for me to analyse where we could have been and what could have happened. You guys sit there, have all the information. I just have my personal information but at the end of the day, we weren't good enough for the weekend. That is pretty obvious. 

    

    Q: The tactics of the second pit stop were obviously vital to your second place. 

    

    Michael Schumacher: Yeah, we would have loved to do that at the first pit stop already, but it didn't work out. I think there was even a bit of traffic involved. I'm not sure what happened at the very first pit stop, but if I remember correctly, the other two guys were on new tyres, I was on older tyres, which also made it a little bit more difficult for me to be right on Kimi's tail, whereas at the second pit stop I was very close to him and then had a quick lap on new tyres and got him. But after spending forty laps or more behind him, there's no opportunity left. 

    

    Q: How worrying is the Renault pace given that we're going to two flyaway races in succession? 

    

    Michael Schumacher: There's nothing new or a surprise. We have seen that they are strong all year long. We have been strong all year long with a couple of hiccups in some of the races and that's the difference. So we'll have to work on that to get even more out of our car and to have two cars up front and that is our target and our aim. We will work on this. I've heard some people saying that this is a crucial race but for me it's not crucial at all. There are ten races to go, plenty of opportunities. We believe in ourselves and we will do a lot of hard work to get going and to take as many points as we can to be up front at the end of the year, as much as they will keep working for the opposite. It's very natural, but there's no way we are resigning at all. 

    

    Q: Kimi, obviously frustrated to have lost second place. 

    

    Kimi Raikkonen: Err, yeah, but we were just not quick enough and there's nothing that I could have done. I went as quickly as I could but with Michael on new tyres there was no way that I could have kept him behind any more. We tried, but it wasn't enough. 

    

    Q: And you were really having a go at Fernando in those early stages. 

    

    Kimi Raikkonen: Yeah, but as I said, they were quick on the back straight and I got a very good exit in the last corner before the straight but I just couldn't get a tow and we were just not quick enough so it made it impossible to overtake him. 

    

    Q: Was it an aerodynamic thing when you say slow in a straight line? 

    

    Kimi Raikkonen: I don't know if we're running more downforce. Maybe we are, because we need to get more grip in the corners or maybe there is a slight difference in engines but I think it's the only way we can manage to go quicker around the lap so that's what we chose to do and I still think it's the best result we could have had today. The car was pretty OK, it was a bit difficult to drive when you pushed the whole way through the race but that's how the racing is. 

    

    Q: Fernando, it looked easy out there. What made it so easy for you? 

    

    Fernando Alonso: I think it's true in the race we work hard in every race, every weekend and it's going well so far. I don't know. Every race is a big challenge for us to stay competitive and working what we need to with the car. We need to keep developing, and, as I said in the press conference, we need to keep winning races to defend our position and, you know, to do a good job, as professional as we can all the time, so to keep ahead of the other teams, and I think this is a result of the victory. We are all focused, with all the people working in the same direction with no mistakes, and this is what we're aiming (for). 

    

    Q: Michael, you spent the early part of the race behind Kimi. Was it just that you wanted to keep a certain distance and how much were you advantaged when you got ahead of him? 

    

    Michael Schumacher: I guess you could see once I was in front of him what was the difference between him and me after that. To answer your question correctly, the reason to stay a second behind him is that when you get closer you just start sliding around because this is a very high-speed circuit, aerodynamics are very important and there is unfortunately no way to try and stick close because of the track. 

    

    Q: Kimi, Once Michael passed you, you dropped back from him a bit. Were you pushing hard still, or did you accept that Michael had passed you and not go full speed anymore? 

    

    Kimi Raikkonen: We were still going as quick as we could because Fisichella in the second Renault had still not stopped and so we didn't really know where they were going to end up and we saw that they were very close to us and in the race it is important to us to have to go as quickly as we can because otherwise we might lose places, so I was going as fast as I could. 

    

    Q: Fernando, Michael has a record of 19 successive podium finishes. You have now 14. Do you think that you can break the record? 

    

    Fernando Alonso: To be honest, we will try to finish on the podium in all of the races so far, but maybe, I don't know about the record but it's not very important. To finish in front for the championships at the end of the season, then for sure if I keep moving in that direction of the top three then it puts us in a good position to defend the championship and I hope to finish a lot more times on the podium this year. 

    

    Q: Michael, on the fourth lap you had a battle with Kimi going into the chicane. How close was that. It looked like it was wheel to wheel? 

    

    Michael Schumacher: Yes, it was. We didn't touch but I guess there wasn't a piece of paper's space left. It was close but it was okay. 

    

    Q: Fernando, that win was pretty easy. Was it your easiest win of the season? 

    

    Fernando Alonso: I don't know. Really, in Australia I had a little bit of a space, here, it was necessary to keep pushing all the race because we never know what was going to happen with tyres -- raining-wise -- Anything can happen in one of the pit-stops so it was worth having a little gap not to come into the pits too close. You never know what's gonna happen with Michael, He overtook Kimi at the second stop and he was on the pace with me in the Ferrari and so he had no chance to catch up and so I try to push for every lap of the race, but it's with the conditions we had here -- very windy in the high-speed corners. 

    

    Q: Fernando, how would you feel to have Lewis Hamilton as a team-mate next year? 

    

    Fernando Alonso: Don't ask me that. I try to win this year and next year we will have time enough to discuss about my team-mate. At the end of the day it's not very important to me. 

    

    Q: All three of you look very sad -- like you lost your parents this morning. Was it a very difficult race? 

    

    Fernando Alonso: My parents are still at home, I hope. For me, it was okay. I think I was a little more tired in Monaco because it was a stressful race with Kimi fighting a lot. Today I'm happy. It's my way of expressing my happiness. 

    

    Michael Schumacher: It was probably a lonely race for Fernando, there was a bit of action between me and Kimi, but it wasn't that exciting. There's no reason to jump around and be happy. In this season there's still a long way to go and everybody's got to try and focus on what happens next rather than feeling joy too much. 

    

    Q: As you said, it was not an exciting race, so, to all of you, how exciting is it to race to win when you cannot even overtake -- the overtaking is just in the pit-stops. Is it fun to race like that? 

    

    Michael Schumacher: It's part of the game. I think the ideal world doesn't exist. You always can improve things absolutely, but that's the way it is and that's the way it has been for so many years. 

    

    Fernando Alonso: I believe if you are quick, then you will overtake the guy in front, as Michael did today -- not in the circuit but in the pit-stops. Formula One is not just about a fast car. It's about a strategy and a combination of many things and for this it is so popular because it's quite interesting on the track in what goes on. 

    

    Kimi Raikkonen: Yeah, For sure everybody would like to have more overtaking, but, ever since I've been in Formula One it's been like this so it's not only for me, it's for everyone in Formula One, so in some races you have more, and some traces on high-speed circuits you just have it where people overtake on the last pit-stops. It's this kind of thing sometimes. 

    

    Q: Kimi, when you finished fifth in Barcelona, you said that was the maximum from the car. Now that you've finished third, is that more than the maximum. 

    

    Kimi Raikkonen: I think the car has maybe improved a bit from Barcelona in a bit and that is good because we struggled a bit in Barcelona, so hard to say how much improvement we've had. We are still too slow to try to fight for wins in the races. I think Monaco was a special place where we could challenge for a win but here it's back to reality. 

    

    Q: Fernando, what was the significance of your stance when you finished the race? It looked like you were firing an arrow or a catapult. 

    

    Fernando Alonso: Yes, it was an arrow. 

    

    Q: No specific reason? 

    

    Fernando Alonso: No 

    

    -fia- 

    


    

     
    

    

    




    


    


    

    Fernando Alonso Wins British Grand Prix 2006 

    


    








    


    

    

    

    

    
Podium: race winner Fernando Alonso celebrates
    F1 > British GP, 2006-06-11 (Silverstone): Sunday race

    

    Alonso victorious at British GP for first time

    







    


    
Racing series  
F1 
    

    
Date 
2006-06-11

    

    By Nikki Reynolds - Motorsport.com

    

    Renault's reigning world champion Fernando Alonso claimed victory in the British Grand Prix, his first win at Silverstone, with another faultless drive from pole to the chequered flag. Ferrari's Michael Schumacher put in a super-fast lap after his second pit stop to beat McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen to second and the Finn had to settle for third. 

    


    








    


    


    

    

    




    


    
See large picture

    Fernando Alonso. Photo by xpb.cc.

    		


    

    It was another hot and sunny day for the race, with the track temperature around 40 degrees at the start. It was a clean getaway in formation for the first five, pole man Alonso leading Raikkonen and Michael followed by Ferrari's Felipe Massa and Renault's Giancarlo Fisichella. Nick Heidfeld's BMW Sauber flew off the line to move up to sixth from ninth. 

    

    Juan Pablo Montoya's McLaren got a hefty bump from someone early on but he seemed to escape unscathed, and behind him there was trouble. Ralf Schumacher had a poor start from seventh and dropped back, while Toro Rosso's Scott Speed had a good start from 15th and the two clashed through Maggots and Becketts. 

    

    Speed made contact with the Toyota and Ralf was forced wide then veered back across the track, into the path of Mark Webber's Williams. The two cars collided, Ralf's Toyota sustaining some damage and both went off track and retired. Speed went into the pits but evidently was also too damaged to continue. 

    

    "We had a bad start and lost too many places and got into a mess," Ralf commented. "I didn't see anything; I had cars all over me." The stewards are investigating the situation -- it did appear that Speed was the one who initiated the accident, but the young American shrugged it off as a racing incident. 

    


    








    


    


    

    


    




    


    
See large picture

    Scott Speed. Photo by xpb.cc.


    

    "I had an awesome start and tried to go round the outside of Ralf at Maggots and Becketts," Speed explained. "It was working, I was alongside him but I don't think he saw me. I was just one of those things, nobody was really to blame." 

    

    There was quite a bit of debris on the track from the Toyota and the safety car was deployed for a couple of laps while it was cleared. At the restart Alonso really backed the pack up and made a good getaway. Montoya got past the Honda of Rubens Barrichello for seventh and the top three were glued together at the front. 

    

    Michael attacked Raikkonen and they went side by side with a little pushing and shoving but Raikkonen held the Ferrari off. Meanwhile, Nico Rosberg's Williams had climbed to ninth and back-starter Jarno Trulli had got his Toyota up to 13th. BMW Sauber's Jacques Villeneuve and Red Bull's David Coulthard held station in 10th and 11th. 

    

    Montoya was closing on Heidfeld and Honda's Jenson Button, who started 19th, was also on the move, up the field to dispatch Toro Rosso's Tonio Liuzzi for 12th at Stowe. But it was a short lived charge for Button as his Honda abruptly spouted flames at the back, caused by an engine oil leak, and he went off into the gravel to retire. 

    


    








    


    


    

    

    




    


    
See large picture

    Jenson Button. Photo by xpb.cc.

    		


    

    "It was a massive blow up, and a massive blow as well," he said. I started 19th and was up to 12th and things were looking pretty sweet. I think I could have got past DC (Coulthard) in the next couple of laps. The car was working pretty well. Its a shame for the British fans and particularly myself because I think we were in for a good race." 

    

    There was no change for a while in the top 10 order, with Alonso gradually pulling away from Raikkonen at the front and reeling off fastest laps on his way. Trulli was the first to pit, around lap 17 which was quite early as it was thought he would be heavily fuelled after starting at the back. Michael was next in, also quite early. 

    

    Everyone else peeled through the pits in fairly quick succession, Raikkonen and Massa next then Barrichello and Montoya. Fisichella managed to get ahead of Massa after his stop and Alonso rejoined in the lead after his. Montoya's McLaren had some damage to the side pod from his early bump but it didn't appear to be hugely affecting him. 

    

    The top eight order was then Alonso, Raikkonen, Michael, Fisichella, Massa, Montoya, Heidfeld and Rosberg. Heidfeld had some kind of problem in his stop which lost him time, otherwise he probably would have been higher up. Alonso was 12 seconds clear of Raikkonen, who had Michael homing in behind. 

    


    








    


    


    

    


    




    


    
See large picture

    Michael Schumacher. Photo by xpb.cc.


    

    Villeneuve and Barrichello made up the top ten, then came Trulli, Coulthard, Klien, Liuzzi, the MF1s of Christijan Albers and Tiago Monteiro and the Super Aguris of Takuma Sato and Franck Montagny. The race had settled into a fairly static state of affairs and Michael was first to duck in for the second round of pit stops. 

    

    Raikkonen was in next and Michael put in an absolutely storming lap to beat the McLaren to the first corner as Raikkonen exited the pits. Alonso made another clean stop and rejoined ahead of Massa, so Ferrari couldn't make use of the Brazilian in any tactical way. 

    

    Michael just wasn't close enough to think about mounting a challenge on the Renault for the remainder of the race. In the final laps Fisichella was homing in on Raikkonen but despite the team's encouragement on the radio to get revenge for Suzuka, the Italian couldn't find a way past. 

    

    Alonso crossed the line 13 seconds ahead of Michael to claim his first British GP win. It was a deserved victory as the Spaniard didn't put a foot wrong the whole race. It's looking harder and harder to imagine anyone being able to wrest the title from Alonso's grasp -- although there's still a long way to go. 

    


    








    


    


    

    

    




    


    
See large picture

    Podium: Race winner Fernando Alonso, second place, Michael Schumacher, third place, Kimi Raikkonen. Photo by xpb.cc.

    		


    

    "The race was really competitive, and tough," said the winner. "We had a set-up on the car that meant it was quite understeery in the first part of the stint, but just got better and better and I could build a lead as the fuel loads came down -- although I had a little bit of graining in the second stint that slowed my pace. It was windy out there too, like all weekend, so that made things a little bit unpredictable, and we are not used to this heat in Silverstone." 

    

    "So it was never an easy win, but this shows we are working really hard. There's no secret to this fantastic season. We attack every race as a new challenge, we are concentrating all the time and there are no mistakes from the team. The best form of defence is attack -- and we showed that today." 

    

    Michael drove well enough -- his lap to get ahead of Raikkonen was a stunner -- but Ferrari can't match Renault at the moment. Massa did a solid job for fifth but didn't really play any part save to keep himself out of trouble and pick up some more points. 

    

    Michael was reasonably content with second. "Although there were no real problems with the car this weekend, we were simply not quick enough to win. We must work very hard now to come back right from the next race. But all in all, we should still be pleased with these eight points. There are still ten races to go with a hundred points to play for. Even though I am twenty three points behind Alonso, I don't think the fight for the championship is over." 

    

    Raikkonen was surely disappointed to lose second but conceded that McLaren doesn't have the straight line speed. He didn't do anything wrong, and neither did Montoya in sixth, but McLaren is not displaying the flair and competitiveness that it had last year. 

    

    However, Raikkonen believes the team is moving forward. "We were not as quick as Alonso and Schumacher and third place was the maximum possible, but I think the good news is that this weekend has shown we are moving in the right direction and are getting more and more competitive," he commented. 

    

    "I made a good start off the line and was able to maintain my second place. However I was not fast enough on the straights to pass Alonso. After the Safety Car came back in I could close the gap a bit, but that was it really. I suffered from oversteer towards the end of the race which allowed Fisichella to close up. However I wasn't too worried as I knew it would be almost impossible for him to actually overtake." 

    


    








    


    


    

    


    




    


    
See large picture

    Nick Heidfeld. Photo by xpb.cc.


    

    BMW Sauber got both drivers in the points, Heidfeld seventh and Villeneuve eighth. A good effort from the team, although Heidfeld may well have been a place higher if not for his overly long pit stop. Rosberg was ninth and Barrichello rounded off the top 10. Behind them it was Trulli and Coulthard, followed by Liuzzi, Klien, Albers, Monteiro, Sato and Montagny. 

    

    Silverstone was not exactly a thriller of a race; after the early incident and safety car period it settled into a rhythm with little in the way action, which was disappointing. Having Alonso, Raikkonen and Michael at the front of the grid had raised expectations for a good battle but it just didn't happen. 

    

    However, F1 next heads to Montreal and Indianapolis, two races that have been known to produce all sorts of peculiar incidents and unexpected results. Final top eight classification: Alonso, M. Schumacher, Raikkonen, Fisichella, Massa, Montoya, Heidfeld, Villeneuve. 

    


    


    


    



    

    Photos for British GP
    
							
    
					
    
		
    
			
		
    
	
    

    • 

											
May 11, 2006
    

  • 
	
    
		
    
		
    
						
    
				
    NSA Call-Tracking Program Sparks Alarm
    Bush Insists That Citizens' Privacy is 'Fiercely Protected'

    

    By William Branigin
    Washington Post Staff Writer
    Thursday, May 11, 2006; 5:39 PM

    


    

    President Bush, responding to a newspaper report on a previously undisclosed program to track the phone call patterns of millions of Americans, insisted today that U.S. intelligence activities he has authorized are lawful and aimed strictly at the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

    

    In a hastily arranged appearance before reporters at the White House, Bush reacted to a USA Today report that says the National Security Agency has been secretly using records provided by the three largest American telephone companies to build a massive database of foreign and domestic phone calls. The program was launched shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with the aim of analyzing calling patterns to detect terrorist activity, the paper reported. The effort involves collecting phone numbers but does not entail recording or eavesdropping on phone conversations, it said.

    

    The NSA declined comment, saying only that it "operates within the law."

    

    In his statement, Bush denied that the government listens to domestic phone calls without court approval and maintained that "the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities."

    

    "We are not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans," Bush said. "Our efforts are focused on links to al-Qaeda and their known affiliates."

    

    After his brief remarks at the White House, Bush left the room without taking any questions from reporters.

    

    Earlier, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said the panel will demand answers from America's leading telephone companies on the reported NSA program.

    

    Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) vowed to haul the companies before his committee in response to the USA Today report saying that AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth turned over data to the NSA on phone calls made by their 200 million customers. The paper said the three were "working under contract with the NSA" on the program. It said another major telecommunications company, Qwest, refused to participate because it was uneasy about the legal implications of giving the government customer information without warrants.

    

    The report drew alarmed reactions from congressional Democrats, who accused the Bush administration of violating Americans' civil liberties in its zeal to combat international terrorism. Another secret NSA program -- involving eavesdropping without warrants on calls between people in the United States and suspected terrorists abroad -- sparked strong controversy when it was revealed late last year. President Bush confirmed the eavesdropping program, insisting that it targeted only international calls and was vital to U.S. efforts to ferret out terrorist plots.

    

    Specter told a Judiciary Committee executive meeting today that in addition to hearings on the eavesdropping program, "the committee will have an additional hearing" on the reported phone call database.

    

    "We will be calling upon AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth as well as others to see some of the underlying facts," he said. "When we can't find out from the Department of Justice or other administration officials, we're going to call on those telephone companies to provide information to try to figure out exactly what is going on."

    

    Specter said that testimony from telephone company executives was a key element in committee hearings that led to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The act, known as FISA, regulates domestic eavesdropping on the communications of foreign agents.

    

    An NSA spokesman, Don Weber, said in a statement, "Given the nature of the work we do, it would be irresponsible to comment on actual or alleged operational issues; therefore, we have no information to provide. However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law."

    

    Bush said today he had promised Americans after Sept. 11 "that our government would do everything within the law to protect them against another terrorist attack." He said he authorized the NSA to intercept the international communications of al-Qaeda operatives and that if such people are making calls into or out of the United States, "we want to know what they're saying."

    

    "Today, there are new claims about other ways we are tracking down al-Qaeda to prevent attacks on America," Bush said. He did not explicitly confirm or deny the call-tracking program but said U.S. intelligence efforts "strictly target al-Qaeda and their known affiliates." Bush said, "Al-Qaeda is our enemy, and we want to know their plans."

    

    He said the intelligence activities he has authorized "are lawful and have been briefed to appropriate members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat."

    

    Bush suggested that disclosure of the database program was harmful to national security.

    

    "As a general matter, every time sensitive intelligence is leaked, it hurts our ability to defeat this enemy," he said. "Our most important job is to protect the American people from another attack, and we will do so within the laws of our country."

    

    Senate Democrats reacted sharply to the latest revelation.

    

    Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, held up a copy of USA Today's front-page story during the panel's meeting and said, "Shame on us for being so far behind and being so willing to rubber-stamp anything this administration does."

    

    He said that if lawmakers are unwilling to demand answers from the administration, "then this Congress, this Republican leadership, ought to admit they have failed in their responsibility to the American government."

    

    The Senate minority leader, Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), said that while the U.S. government "must have every effective and legal tool needed to fight terrorism," Americans are losing confidence that the Bush "has an effective strategy" for waging that fight or is being candid about its actions.

    

    Reid said the USA Today report illustrates a need for congressional oversight, adding that Hayden's confirmation hearings on his nomination to be CIA director "present the Senate with an opportunity to explore this and other vital issues regarding the effectiveness of our intelligence community."

    

    Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she believes "we are on our way to a major constitutional confrontation on Fourth Amendment guarantees on unreasonable search and seizure." She said the disclosure of the database program constitutes "a growing impediment to the confirmation" of Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden to be the next director of the CIA. Hayden was nominated by Bush to replacing outgoing CIA chief Porter J. Goss, who announced his resignation last week.

    

    Hayden, who was director of the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005, headed the agency when the call-tracking program reportedly was launched. He left the NSA to serve as deputy director of national intelligence under John D. Negroponte, who was put in overall charge of the U.S. intelligence community last year.

    

    In a brief encounter with reporters as he met with senators on Capitol Hill ahead of his confirmation hearings, Hayden ducked a question about the legal authority under which the NSA call-tracking program was carried out.

    

    "All I would want to say is that everything that NSA does is lawful and very carefully done, and that the appropriate members of the Congress -- House and Senate -- are briefed on all NSA activities, and I think I'd just leave it at that," he said. He then turned and walked away.

    

    In the House, Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee circulated a letter demanding a hearing on the program. "We are very concerned about this practice and the privacy questions it raises," said the letter, which was drafted by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and addressed to the committee chairman, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.).

    

    The letter also questioned why the Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act, which the committee recently passed unanimously, was pulled from a scheduled floor vote on May 2. The bill, intended to prevent telecommunications companies from sharing consumers' phone records without their consent, was yanked "because of undisclosed concerns of the House Intelligence Committee," the letter said.

    

    Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement, "Americans are alarmed -- and rightly so -- because this administration continues to operate parts of the NSA program in violation of FISA and the Fourth Amendment."

    

    She said 14 members of the House intelligence and judiciary committees introduced legislation today to require that "all aspects of the NSA program comply fully with FISA."

    

    Harman described the White House as being "in free fall" and charged that Americans have "lost trust" in it for withholding information from Congress and insisting it is "above the law."

    

    In a commencement speech today at American University, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) called for a "full and vigorous debate" on Hayden's nomination as CIA director in view of the latest disclosures.

    

    Saying that "the NSA isn't just listening to international calls but is collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans who aren't suspected of wrongdoing," Kerry asked, "How many times will government secrecy shield decision-makers from any kind of accountability?"

    

    He added, "Enough is enough. It is long overdue for this Congress to end the days of roll-over and rubber stamp and finally assert its power of advise and consent" before Hayden becomes CIA chief.

    

    But White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, traveling with Bush on a flight to Mississippi, rejected the idea that the database story was impeding the Hayden nomination.

    

    "The feedback has been positive and we're full steam ahead on his nomination," she told reporters.

    

    Without confirming or denying the USA Today story, Perino said, "The government has no interest in knowing what innocent Americans are talking about on their domestic phone calls. So if you are calling to make reservations at a restaurant, and if you are calling your daughter at college, or if you are calling to plan your wedding, the government has no interest in knowing about those calls. The government is interested in finding out if al-Qaeda is planning an attack in America -- you can bet that we want to make sure that we get ahead of that to prevent that and to save lives."

    

    She refused to comment when asked if there had been any effort to persuade USA Today not to publish the story.

    

    At today's Judiciary Committee meeting, a leading Republican member, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, cautioned against overreacting to the report on the database program and offered a general defense of the administration.

    

    "This is not somewhere where the president or the intelligence community is running like a rogue elephant . . . trampling our civil liberties," he said. "I think we ought to lower our language and our rhetoric a little bit and be conscious of what's at stake, and what's at stake is the safety and security of the American people."

    

    The telephone companies today declined comment on the USA Today story, saying they would not get into national security matters. The companies would say only that they are assisting government agencies in accordance with the law, the Associated Press reported.

    

    "We have been in full compliance with the law and we are committed to our customers' privacy," said Bob Varettoni, a spokesman for Verizon.

    

    USA Today, citing sources who refused to be identified, said the NSA program "reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans -- most of whom aren't suspected of any crime." It quoted one source as saying the NSA's aim was "to create a database of every call ever made" in the United States and that the result was "the largest database ever assembled in the world."

    

    The paper said the phone companies are not turning over the names, street addresses and other personal information of customers, but that the phone numbers being collected enable the NSA to obtain such information easily by cross-checking with other databases.

    

    The data collection, intended to help the NSA analyze terrorist networks, has been conducted in the past, but never on such a large scale, USA Today quoted a U.S. intelligence official as saying.

    

    © 2006 The Washington Post Company
    
							
    
					
    
		
    
			
		
    
	
    

    • 

											

  • 
	
    
		
    
		
    
						
    
				
    
urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
    

    Bush Says U.S. Spying Is Not Widespread 

    


    

    May 11, 2006

    


    

    Bush Says U.S. Spying Is Not Widespread 

    

    By JOHN O'NEIL

    


    

    President Bush today denied that the government is "mining or trolling through the personal lives of innocent Americans," as Democrats expressed outrage over a news report describing a National Security Agency program that has collected vast amounts of telephone records. 

    

    The article, in USA Today, said that the agency did not listen to the calls, but secretly obtained information on numbers dialed by "tens of millions of Americans" and used it for "data mining" computer analysis of large amounts of information for clues or patterns to terrorist activity.

    

    Making a hastily scheduled appearance in the White House, Mr. Bush did not directly address the collection of phone records, except to say that "new claims" had been raised about surveillance. He said all intelligence work was conducted "within the law" and that domestic conversations were not listened to without a court warrant. 

    

    "The privacy of all Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities," he said. "Our efforts are focused on Al Qaeda and their known associates."

    

    In the Senate, Democrats denounced the program, citing it as evidence that Congress had failed to carry out its duty to make sure that the intelligence activities did not violate civil rights. 

    

    And Senator Arlen Specter, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would call executives of AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon "to see if we can learn some of the underlying facts." 

    

    He said he would question them about "what we can't find out from the Department of Justice or other administration officials." 

    

    The article named those three companies as cooperating with the security agency's request; it said that Qwest had refused to provide the information. AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon all issued statements declaring that they have always acted within the law.

    

    "BellSouth does not provide any confidential customer information without proper legal authority," said a company spokesman, Jeff Battcher.

    

    "AT&T has a long history of vigorously protecting customer privacy," said a spokesman, Selim Bingol. "If and when AT&T is asked to help, we do so strictly within the law and under the most stringent conditions."

    

    And Robert Verettoni, a Verizon spokesman, said, "We do not comment on national security matters, we act in full compliance with the law and we are committed to safeguarding our customers' privacy." 

    

    The New York Times reported last December that the agency had gathered data from phone and e-mail traffic with the cooperation of several major telecommunications companies.

    

    But Democrats reacted angrily to the USA Today article and its description of the program's vast size, including an assertion by one unnamed source that its goal was the creation of a database of every phone call ever made within the United States' borders. 

    

    "Are you telling me that tens of millions of Americans are involved with Al Qaeda?" Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the committee's ranking minority member, asked angrily. 

    

    Like Mr. Specter, Mr. Leahy made a link between the new charge and the administration's refusal to answer the many of the committee's questions about the security agency's warrantless wiretaps of calls between the United States and overseas in which one person is suspected of terrorist ties. 

    

    "It's our government, our government!" he said, turning red in the face and waving a copy of USA Today. "It's not one party's government, it's America's government!"

    

    Other Democrats demanded that the administration officials, including Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and former Attorney General John Ashcroft, be subpoenaed to testify under oath about both programs.

    

    And they made clear that they thought the new surveillance issue would complicate the nomination of Gen. Michael V. Hayden, a former head of the security agency, to be the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency. 

    

    "I want to ask General Hayden about these programs before we move forward with his nomination, which I was inclined to be supportive of, if he showed the requisite independence," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat and member of the Judiciary Committee.

    

    Republicans urged caution before drawing any conclusions based on the article, and noted that it described the program as collecting information only about phone numbers, not about the contents of conversations. 

    

    "It's not a wiretapping program, it's simply a compilation, according to the report here, of numbers that phone companies maintain," said Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who is also on the judiciary panel. 

    

    He compared it to "mail covers" and "pen registers," techniques long used by law-enforcement authorities to record the addresses on letters or calls made by individuals under investigation. No warrant is needed for such efforts, but the government must certify with a court that the information likely to be obtained is relevant to an ongoing investigation.

    

    But at least one prominent Republican expressed reservations. "I am concerned about what I read with regard to N.S.A. databases of phone calls," Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House majority leader, told The Associated Press.

    

    Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is a member of the Intelligence Committee as well as the Judiciary Committee, appeared to confirm at least the gist of the article, while stressing that what was under discussion was not wiretapping. "It's fair to say that what is in the news this morning is not content collection," she said.

    

    Even so, she warned, "I happen to believe that we are on our way to a major Constitutional confrontation on the Fourth Amendment guarantees over unreasonable search and seizure."

    

    Senator Russell D. Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat who is also on both the judiciary and intelligence panels, expressed dismay over what he termed the administration's "arrogance and abuse of power." He said the United States can fight terrorism and still protect privacy, "but only if we have a president who believes in these principles."

    

    The Times article disclosing the data mining program last December quoted officials in the government and the telecommunications industry who have knowledge of parts of the program as saying the N.S.A. has sought to analyze communications patterns to glean clues from details like who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, and the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages. Calls to and from Afghanistan, for instance, are known to have been of particular interest to the N.S.A. since the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said.

    

    In the USA Today article, the White House defended its overall eavesdropping program and said no domestic surveillance is conducted without court approval.

    

    "The intelligence activities undertaken by the United States government are lawful, necessary and required to protect Americans from terrorist attacks," said Dana Perino, the deputy White House press secretary, who added that appropriate members of Congress have been briefed on intelligence activities. 

    

    The anger among committee members carried over to a number of other related developments. Senator Specter said he was sending a letter to the Justice Department in response to a news report that an investigation by the Justice Department's ethics office into the lawyers who gave approval to the domestic surveillance program was abandoned because the investigators were refused the necessary security clearances. 

    

    "It's sort of incomprehensible that that was done," Senator Specter said, adding that he was asking that the clearances be granted so the review could continue. 

    

    Senator Richard J. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, called the decision "clear evidence of a cover-up within this administration."

    

    Mr. Specter also said that he "had some indication" that Mr. Ashcroft and James Comey, a former deputy Attorney General, had some knowledge about the domestic surveillance program, but said he didn't think it would be "fruitful" to subpoena them to testify. 

    

    And Mr. Specter said that he believed he had the agreement of all 10 Republicans on the committee for a bill he has proposed that would ask the special court that handles requests for warrants on foreign intelligence to rule on the Constitutionality of the domestic surveillance program. 

    

    But several Democrats indicated that they were not likely to support the bill in the absence of more information about the surveillance the government is conducting in general. 

    

    "How can we approve this without knowing much more?" asked Mr. Durbin. 

    

    David Stout contributed reporting from Washington for this article.

    



    


    

    
							
    
					
    
		
    
			
		
    
	
    

    • 

											

  • 
	
    
		
    
		
    
						
    
				







    


    

    

    

    

    
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
    Maureen Dowd. 

    May 10, 2006
    Op-Ed Columnist
    Father and Son Reunion 
    By MAUREEN DOWD
    WASHINGTON

    One Bush did it by staying out of Baghdad, raising taxes and driving down the deficit.

    The other Bush did it by going into Baghdad, cutting taxes and driving up the deficit.

    But, perhaps inevitably, the father and son ended up in an Oedipal tango at the same spot: 31 percent.

    After trying not to emulate his father's presidency in any way, W. emulated it in the worst possible way. He came out of a conflict with Saddam as a towering figure with soaring approval ratings and ended up as a shrunken figure with scalding approval ratings.

    In the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll, W.'s stunning implosion landed him in a tie with his dad's low point in July 1992, four months before the public traded in Poppy for Bill Clinton. As Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee noted in their Times article today, that is the lowest approval rating for any president in the last half-century, other than Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter.

    Even Hillary Clinton has a more favorable rating than W. — 34 percent. The president can draw some solace: John Kerry's at 26 and Al Gore's at 28 percent. And Dick Cheney is in the bunker at 20.

    But in the new poll, even many of the party faithful are glum. Only 45 percent of evangelical Christians, 69 percent of Republicans and 51 percent of conservatives like the way W. is taking care of bidness. A whopping 70 percent deem the country pretty seriously on the wrong track, and two-thirds consider the nation in worse shape now than when W. took over.

    On the issues that earned Karl Rove his nickname, Boy Genius — values and national security — the shift was notable. Fifty percent of respondents said Democrats came closer to sharing their moral values, compared with 37 percent who said Republicans did. And the G.O.P. retains a tenuous advantage on being seen as stronger on terrorism. The numbers for those who think we did the right thing by invading Iraq are steadily dropping, and the numbers are rising for those who believe we should have stayed out.

    Many Americans have simply lost faith in the administration's ingenuity. Only a quarter of those polled had much confidence in W.'s ability to handle a crisis; a mere 9 percent are sure he can successfully end the Iraq war, and a paltry 4 percent think the administration has a clear plan to keep gas prices down. (But can triumphalist Nancy Pelosi lift their spirits?)

    The Bush presidency has devolved into an assertion of empty will.

    The White House blew off warnings from Republicans in Congress about appointing Gen. Michael Hayden as C.I.A. chief. You know you're in trouble when conservatives fret that the military is getting too much power.

    If W. really cared about getting good intelligence for his war on terror, he would never have appointed Porter Goss. That wasted more than 18 months that could have been used fixing the dysfunctional agency, and drove out some good officials.

    Mr. Goss, the Cheney toadie, was appointed because W. and Vice wanted him to do a hostile takeover at Langley to clear out suspected leakers (especially Kerry contributors), malcontents, critics of the war or anyone else who wasn't with the program. 

    Before the Iraq invasion, it was about fixing the intelligence around the policy. Now it's about appointing yes men and enforcing loyalty. The Bush warriors didn't want good intelligence in the first place because it would have told them they were wrong about Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda and W.M.D. And now they're still more concerned with turf battles than with truth-tellers and finding someone — anyone — who can tell us where Osama is. (Osama who?)

    Even Denny Hastert, the Republican speaker, scoffed at the Hayden move as a Negroponte "power grab."

    The general is a Cheney pal who stood up for the White House's right to be unconstitutional, going along with the heinous warrantless snooping. That makes him one of the team and ready for a promotion, or a Medal of Freedom. He will no doubt be accommodating when Darth Cheney comes over to Langley to lurk around the analysts and oversee the evidence building a case for sending bombs, rather than diplomats, to Iran.

    Now that we're dealing with a crazed Iranian president, dreaming of nukes and writing an 18-page letter that sounds like an Israel-hating Islamic version of the Rapture, wouldn't it be great if our spooks could stop fighting and go spy on somebody? 


    Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company 
    
							
    
					
    
		
    
			
		
    
	
    

    •