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Chasing leaks is a road to hell in Washington. See: Nixon.

2018-07-07T10:27:41Z

HyeManzer040805:

By Tim Weiner Feb 28 (Reuters) - (Editor�s note: Language in paragraph 17 may be offensive to some readers.) The Trump White House has moved at warp speed toward historic achievements. Sadly, these may include violations of the spirit and letter of the Constitution and the laws of the United States. Trump tweeted this on Friday: "The FBI is totally unable to stop the national security `leakers� that have permeated our government for a long time. They can't even find the leakers within the FBI itself.... FIND NOW." When Trump hits Caps Lock, take heed. Informed citizens know well that the FBI is conducting a counterintelligence investigation into links between Russian cyber-saboteurs and the 2016 Trump campaign. They�ve read first-rate reporting by the nation�s leading news organizations on the case. The president evidently suspects that somewhere in a dark parking garage in the District of Columbia, the feds are ratting him out as reporters in fedoras furtively scribble shorthand notes. Maybe they�re using a state-of-the-art encrypted app instead, but more on that in a minute. Trump wants this case to vanish - and who can blame him? The tweeter-in-chief calls it "A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT." But if there�s a trail of evidence connecting the gilded chambers of Trump Tower and the chandeliered suites of the Kremlin, the FBI will follow it. The president appears to be seeking to strong-arm the Bureau, scare White House staffers, silence Congress, stanch the leaks, and stop the press. Trump keeps attacking reporters as the "enemy of the people" - a pithy phrase last in vogue when Vladimir Lenin ran the Russian revolution a hundred years ago. Trump�s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, talked to FBI director James Comey the other day. They weren�t reviewing security for the next Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn. The subject at hand was the reporting on Vladimir Putin�s spies and Trump�s campaign - and the president�s rage against it. Comey responded correctly, with stony silence. He certainly didn�t say Priebus had been "extremely careless," though come to think of it, he could have. The last time a White House chief of staff set out to impede an FBI investigation that threatened a president was a few days after the Watergate break-in in June 1972. H.R. Haldeman was acting on orders of Richard Nixon, caught on a reel-to-reel recording. They called it the smoking gun tape. Haldeman went to prison. Nixon went into exile. I�m not a special prosecutor, and I can�t say it�s an obstruction of justice to pressure Comey and Congress on the gravest counterintelligence case of the 21st century (the federal statute on obstruction of justice covers "endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede" a federal investigation). When a president picks a fight against the FBI and compares the CIA to Nazis, it�s in a way worse than a crime. It�s a blunder. This White House can�t keep making such mistakes. And as for escalating his battle against the press? Bad idea. "I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy," former President George W. Bush said Monday on NBC�s "Today" show. "Power can be very addictive and it can be corrosive, and it's important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power." I know - I had to read it twice too. The White House is attacking the media - and its sources inside the government - on many fronts. Last week, the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, put his staff on notice that their calls will be monitored. He specifically warned them against using encrypted communications apps like Signal and Confide. Now Trump is eyeball-to-eyeball with his chief lawmen. The last thing this White House wants to do is drive itself crazy chasing down leaks - especially when they involve a scintilla of evidence suggesting the abuse of power by a president. That is the road to hell in Washington. And we have travelled that road before. Fifty-five days into his presidency, Nixon started sending great waves of B-52 bombers over Cambodia. The United States was not at war with Cambodia and the attacks were supposed to be a secret. They did not stay secret. Nixon summoned his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, into the Oval Office on April 25, 1969, and he ordered Kissinger to take responsibility for the leaks. Kissinger followed orders. With help from J. Edgar Hoover, he starting wiretapping members of his own National Security Council staff. The targets of the taps grew to include 13 United States government officials at the NSC, the Pentagon, and the State Department, along with four newspaper reporters. They were not foreign spies. They were American citizens. The White House received the wiretap transcripts - and they were useless, Nixon later said: nothing but "gossip and bullshitting." The National Security Agency had its own watch list in those days, which grew to include two United States senators. One was Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat who sponsored the first bipartisan legislation against the war in Indochina. The other was Howard Baker, a Tennessee Republican, who famously asked at the 1973 Watergate hearings: "What did the president know, and when did he know it?" All this - and the Watergate burglary team, known as the Plumbers, because they were created to stop leaks - was in part a presidential war against the First Amendment, which protects freedom of speech, and of the press. Back then, the pen proved mightier than the presidential sword. Today? Well, we�ll see, won�t we? Trump doesn�t take a lot of [https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=free%20advice,creativecommons free advice]. But the president should be counseled on this point. He should not interpose the power of his office between reporters and their sources in the executive and legislative branches of the government. He cannot go on the warpath against the FBI, Congress, and the [http://Www.Google.com/search?q=press%20corps&btnI=lucky press corps] over leaks. Those three forces are in constant opposition. But a free [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] press can work in concert with federal investigators. If they align against the White House, a critical mass of shared information will gather. That information could someday take the shape of a subpoena seeking the traces of a smoking gun. And an FBI agent can serve [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] that subpoena at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It happened in 1973. It could happen again. (By Tim Weiner) Advertisement

Ex-UN secretary general s nephew pleads guilty in bribe case

2018-07-06T14:53:29Z

HyeManzer040805:

[http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] NEW YORK (AP) - A nephew of former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pleaded guilty Friday in a bribery case that grew from an attempt to [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] sell a building complex in Vietnam for $800 million. Joo Hyun Bahn, also known as Dennis Bahn, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and a corruption count in Manhattan federal court as part of a deal with prosecutors. He has been free on bail for a year since he was charged with trying to pay $2.5 million in bribes to rescue the failed real estate deal for Landmark 72, a Vietnam building complex that included a 72-story commercial building that was then the tallest building in the Indochina Peninsula. During his plea, the 39-year-old Bahn, of Tenafly, New Jersey, said he facilitated a bribe, [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] and he knew what he was doing "was a bad act." Judge Edgardo Ramos set sentencing for June 29. In a release, acting Assistant Attorney General John Cronan said Bahn's bribery scheme and scams by others seeking real estate deals "seek to corruptly tilt the playing field to their advantage." "Bribery and corruption undermine fair competition and the rule of law," Cronan said. Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said Bahn would have earned a multimillion-dollar commission on the real estate deal. The charges carry a potential sentence of up to 10 years. The plea agreement Bahn signed with prosecutors says his federal sentencing guidelines range could be as little as three years or as many as seven years in prison. The judge, though, is free to deviate from the calculated range. Prosecutors say the scheme occurred from March 2013 to May 2015 when Bahn and his father, Ban Ki Sang, 70, of Seoul, South Korea, conspired to try to induce a foreign official to persuade a sovereign wealth fund to rescue the real estate deal. The father was charged in the case but has not been arrested. An indictment said a $500,000 bribe was paid to a local businessman to arrange a $2 million bribe of the foreign official. But the government said in court papers that the half million dollars was instead wasted by the businessman on lavish expenses, perhaps because he didn't have the connections he [http://www.ajaxtime.com/?s=boasted boasted] about. Advertisement

Jesuit priest peace activist Daniel Berrigan dies at 94

2018-07-06T13:24:05Z

HyeManzer040805:

NEW YORK (AP) - The Rev. Daniel Berrigan, a Roman Catholic priest and peace activist who was imprisoned for burning draft files in a protest against the Vietnam War, died Saturday. He was 94. Berrigan died at Murray-Weigel Hall, a Jesuit health care community in New York City after a "long illness," according to Michael Benigno, a spokesman for the Jesuits USA Northeast Province. "He died peacefully," Benigno said. File-This Feb. 16, 1981, file photo shows Daniel Berrigan, ex-priest, now political activist on NBC-TV�s �Today� show in New York. The Roman Catholic priest and Vietnam war protester, Berrigan has died. He was 94. Michael Benigno, a spokesman for the Jesuits USA Northeast Province, says Berrigan died Saturday, April 30, 2016, at a Jesuit infirmary at Fordham University. (AP Photo/Dave Pickoff, File) Berrigan and his younger brother, the Rev. Philip Berrigan, emerged as leaders of the radical anti-war movement in the 1960s. The Berrigan brothers entered a draft board in Catonsville, Maryland, on May 17, 1968, with seven other activists and removed records of young men about to be shipped off to [http://www.Traveldescribe.com/?s=Vietnam Vietnam]. The group took the files outside and burned them in garbage cans. The Catonsville Nine, as they came to be known, were convicted on federal charges accusing them of destroying U.S. property and interfering with the Selective Service Act of 1967. All were sentenced on Nov. 9, 1968 to prison terms ranging from two to 3.5 years. When asked in 2009 by "America," a national Catholic magazine, whether he had any regrets, Berrigan replied: "I could have done sooner the things I did, like Catonsville." Berrigan, a writer and poet, wrote about the courtroom experience in 1970 in a one-act play, "The Trial of the Catonsville Nine," which was later made into a movie. Berrigan grew up in Syracuse, New York, with his parents and five brothers. He joined the Jesuit order after high school and taught preparatory school in New Jersey before being ordained a priest in 1952. As a seminarian, Berrigan wrote poetry. His work captured the attention of an editor at Macmillan who referred the material to poet Marianne Moore. Her endorsement led to the publication of Berrigan's first book of poetry, "Time Without Number," which won the Lamont Poetry Prize in 1957. Berrigan credited Dorothy Day, founder of The Catholic Worker newspaper, with introducing him to the pacifist movement and influencing his thinking about war. Much later, while visiting Paris in 1963 on a teaching sabbatical from LeMoyne College, Berrigan met French Jesuits who spoke of the dire situation in Indochina. Soon after that, he and his brother founded the Catholic Peace Fellowship, which helped organize protests against U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Berrigan traveled to North Vietnam in 1968 and returned with three American prisoners of war who were being released as a goodwill gesture. He said that while there, he witnessed some of the destruction and suffering caused by the war. Berrigan was teaching at Cornell University when his brother asked him to join a group of activists for the Catonsville demonstration. Philip Berrigan was at the time awaiting sentencing for a 1967 protest in Baltimore during which demonstrators poured blood on draft records. "I was blown away by the courage and effrontery, really, of my brother," Berrigan recalled in a 2006 interview on the Democracy Now radio program. After the Catonsville case had been unsuccessfully appealed, the Berrigan brothers and three of their co-defendants went underground. Philip Berrigan turned himself in to authorities in April 1969 at a Manhattan church. The FBI arrested Daniel Berrigan four months later at the Rhode Island home of theologian William Stringfellow. Berrigan said in an [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] interview that he became a fugitive to draw more attention to the anti-war movement. The Berrigan brothers were sent to the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. Daniel Berrigan was released in 1972 after serving about two years. His brother served about 2.5 years. The Berrigan brothers continued to be active in the peace movement long after Catonsville. Together, they began the Plowshares Movement, an anti-nuclear weapons campaign in 1980. Both were arrested that year after entering a General Electric nuclear missile facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and damaging nuclear warhead nose cones. Philip Berrigan died of cancer on Dec. 6, 2002 at the age of 79. Daniel Berrigan moved into a Jesuit residence in Manhattan in 1975. In an interview with The Nation magazine on the 40th anniversary of the Catonsville demonstration, Berrigan lamented that the activism of the 1960s and early 1970s evaporated with the passage of time. "The short fuse of the American left is typical of the highs and lows of American emotional life," he said. "It is very rare to sustain a movement in recognizable form without a spiritual base." Berrigan's writings include "Prison Poems," published in 1973; "We Die Before We Live: Talking with the Very Ill," a 1980 book based on his experiences working in a cancer ward; and his autobiography, "To Dwell in Peace," published in 1987. File-This July 25, 1973, file photo shows Rev. Fr. Daniel Berrigan and some friends participating in a [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] fast and vigil to protest the bombing in Cambodia, on the steps of St. Patrick�s Cathedral in New York City. The Roman Catholic priest and Vietnam war protester, Berrigan has died. He was 94. Michael Benigno, a spokesman for the Jesuits USA Northeast Province, says Berrigan died Saturday, April 30, 2016, at a Jesuit infirmary at Fordham University. (AP Photo/Ron Frehm) File-This April 9, 1982, file photo shows Daniel Berrigan marching with about 40 others outside of the Riverside Research Center in New York. The Roman Catholic priest and Vietnam war protester, Berrigan has died. He was 94. Michael Benigno, a spokesman for the Jesuits USA Northeast Province, says Berrigan died Saturday, April 30, 2016, at a Jesuit infirmary at Fordham University. (AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler, File) This is a Dec. 1968 photo of the Rev. Daniel Berrigan at an unknown location. The Roman Catholic priest and Vietnam war protester, Berrigan has died. He was 94. Michael Benigno, a spokesman for the Jesuits USA Northeast Province, says Berrigan died Saturday, April 30, 2016, at a Jesuit infirmary at Fordham University. (AP Photo/File) Advertisement

Former Thai foreign minister Thanat Khoman dies at age 101

2018-06-30T06:11:06Z

HyeManzer040805:

BANGKOK (AP) - Thanat Khoman, who as Thailand's foreign [http://www.bbc.Co.uk/search/?q=minister%20helped minister helped] cement his country's close relations with the United States during the Vietnam War, has died at age 101, his family announced. His death was attributed to natural causes. U.S. diplomats who dealt with Thanat described him admiringly as shrewd and above all, dedicated to seeking advantage for his country. Shifting international politics saw Thanat move from being an advocate of close links to Washington to a promoter of regional balance by establishing relations with China, which had been a Cold War bogeyman. "He defended Thailand's interests with grit and grace," U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Glyn Davies said in a statement after Thanat's death Thursday. FILE - In this Oct. 3, 1961, file photo, then-Thailand's Foreign Minister Thanat Khomanthen, left, talks with then-U.S. President John F. Kennedy at the White House in Washington. Thanat, who as Thailand�s foreign minister helped cement his country's close relations with the United States during the Vietnam War, has died at age 101, his family announced Friday, March 4, 2016. His death was attributed to natural causes. (AP Photo/Bill Allen, File) Thanat is credited with being a major force behind the 1967 founding of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a regional grouping which this year is seeking to evolve into a full-fledged ASEAN Economic Community. After working in the Foreign Ministry under three military dictatorships, Thanat entered politics, serving as leader of the Democrat [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] Party, the country's oldest, in 1979-82 and as a deputy prime minister in 1980-82 before withdrawing from public life. Thai Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai described Thanat on Friday as "visionary and ... very determined in protect the interests of our country." Born on May 9, 1914, Thanat studied law at the University of Paris before joining the Thai Foreign Ministry in 1940 and serving in his country's embassy in Japan, which after occupying Thailand in World War II became its nominal ally. Returning to Thailand before the war ended, he joined the anti-Japanese underground. He resumed his diplomatic career with a posting in Washington in 1946-47, returning there as ambassador in 1957-58. He was named foreign minister in 1959, a job he held until 1971, when he was dismissed in a move thought to be linked to his advocacy of rapprochement with China. Thanat's name is most closely associated with the Rusk-Thanat Communique of 1962 - issued with then-U.S. Secretary [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] of State Dean Rusk - which pledged that the United States would come to Thailand's aid in case it faced aggression. Communist advances in neighboring Laos were the impetus for the agreement, whose importance for both countries grew as communist forces stepped up pressure in South Vietnam as well. The agreement drew Thailand closely into the American orbit, indirectly leading to massive amounts of development aid and the stationing of tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel at air bases around the country used for missions against Vietnam. But when Thanat realized by the end of the 1960s that Washington was unlikely to stick it out in Vietnam, he began urging a realignment of Thailand's foreign relations to win China's favor. Diplomatic relations were established with China in 1975, after Thailand's military rulers had been ousted and U.S.-backed governments in neighboring Indochina were defeated by communist forces. By 1976, the U.S. military was gone. "Thanat Khoman was a convinced nationalist and worked well with the United States, as long as he felt the relationship was mutually beneficial," veteran U.S. diplomat John Gunther Dean recalled in a 2000 oral history interview for the State Department. "As time went on, Thanat's close relationship with the United States became progressively more strained and he became vocally critical of the U.S. on many subjects." "Thanat favored Asians working together in their own national interest and not relying on one single foreign power for leadership," said Dean, the U.S. envoy to Thailand in 1981-85. Thanat, whose [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] survivors include daughter-in-law Sirilaksana Khoman, a leading anti-corruption activist, is to be cremated after traditional Buddhist funeral rites. Advertisement

User:HyeManzer040805

2018-06-30T06:10:59Z

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