The New York Times Newspaper - September 19 2012, Literatura, Gazety, Magazyny
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VOL. CLXII . . No. 55,899
NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2012
© 2012 The New York Times
Russia Halting
Groups’ Access
To U.S. Money
ROMNEY STANDS
BEHIND MESSAGE
CAUGHT ON VIDEO
Kremlin Sees Aid as a
Form of Meddling
WELCOMES FULL DEBATE
Says Views Help Define
Philosophical Choice
Facing Voters
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
and ELLEN BARRY
MOSCOW — Russia has or-
dered the United States to end its
financial support for a wide
range of pro-democracy, public
health and other civil society pro-
grams here, in an aggressive step
by the Kremlin to halt what it
views as American meddling in
its internal affairs.
The Kremlin’s provocative de-
cision to end two decades of work
in post-Soviet Russia by the Unit-
ed States Agency for Internation-
al Development — with little
warning ahead of an Oct. 1 dead-
line — was announced on Tues-
day by the State Department in
Washington. The move stands to
cut off aid that currently totals
about $50 million a year, a rela-
tively small sum but a potentially
devastating blow for groups that
came to rely on foreign money as
domestic controls over politics
tightened.
American officials, who were
informed of the decision earlier
this month, quickly pledged to
maneuver around the Kremlin.
The Obama administration last
October proposed the creation of
a new $50 million fund— essen-
tially an endowment for a private
foundation established under
Russian law — for Russian civil
society groups, and one senior
administration official said work
on that project would speed up.
The Kremlin has taken a num-
ber of actions in recent months to
bring pressure on nongovern-
mental groups and clamp down
on political dissent, including a
new law requiring any organiza-
By JIM RUTENBERG
and ASHLEY PARKER
Mitt Romney on Tuesday fully
embraced the substance of his se-
cretly recorded comments that 47
percent of Americans are too de-
pendent on government, saying
that his views helped define the
philosophical choice for voters in
his campaign against President
Obama.
“The president’s view is one of
a larger government; I disagree,”
Mr. Romney said in an interview
on Fox News. “I think a society
based on a government-centered
nation where government plays a
larger and larger role, redistrib-
utes money, that’s the wrong
course for America.”
The comments were Mr. Rom-
ney’s attempt to find some bene-
fit in the political furor after the
disclosure of statements he made
at a closed fund-raiser in Florida
in May, where he spoke of nearly
half of Americans who pay no
federal income taxes and, in his
analysis, would never vote for
him.
Those are people, he said at the
fund-raiser, who are “dependent
upon government, who believe
that they are victims, who believe
the government has a responsi-
bility to care for them.”
Mr. Romney, who on Monday
called the remarks inelegant,
suggested on Tuesday that it was
time for a full debate about de-
pendency, entitlements and what
his campaign characterized as a
long history of Mr. Obama’s sup-
port for “redistributionist” pol-
icies. [Page A16.]
But despite the effort by Mr.
Romney to take the offensive, his
campaign spent the day working
to keep the episode from becom-
ing a turning point in a campaign
CHANG W LEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Million-Dollar View? Try $90 Million
A park view from near the top of a tower going up on 57th Street in Manhattan, soon to be a den of billionaires. Page A25.
At a Campus Scarred by Hazing, Cries for Help
Teachers End
Chicago Strike
On Second Try
Another student said he was
hazed night after night, until
right before morning classes. He
wrote in an anonymous e-mail to
the university, “I was hosed, wa-
terboarded, force-fed disgusting
mixtures of food, went through
physical exercises until I passed
out, and crawled around outside
in my boxers to the point where
my stomach, elbows, thighs and
knees are filled with cuts, scrapes
and bruises.”
It is a new school year at Bing-
hamton University, one of the
most prestigious public institu-
tions in the Northeast. But the
most urgent order of business is
one left over from the last school
year — a hazing scandal that
forced the university to suspend
pledging and induction at all fra-
ternities and sororities.
The university has a new dean
of students and a renewed focus
on curbing hazing. But a review
of complaints submitted to the
administration last year indicates
just how overmatched Bingham-
ton has been. While student
deaths at Cornell and Florida
A&M Universities last year have
drawn widespread attention to
dangerous behavior in student
organizations, the reports, ob-
tained recently by The New York
Times, provide a rare look into
the fraternity and sorority cul-
ture on an American campus.
Sunni Solomon, the universi-
ty’s assistant director of Greek
life from 2010 until July, said in an
e-mail, “My entire tenure from
start to finish, I was scared to
death that someone was going to
die.”
No one died. But the reports,
mostly anonymous e-mails and
phone calls, depict students, par-
ents and alumni essentially beg-
ging the university to find a way
By PETER APPLEBOME
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — One
student said she feared for her
boyfriend’s health and ability to
do his schoolwork because he
was coming home from fraternity
pledging around 4 a.m. with gash-
es and cuts on his hands and el-
bows that reopened daily.
A parent said her son returned
home with a shaved head and in-
juries, from running barefoot on a
bed of rocks, that required an
emergency room visit and subse-
quent treatment.
By MONICA DAVEY
and STEVEN YACCINO
CHICAGO — The Chicago
Teachers Union agreed on Tues-
day to end its strike in the na-
tion’s third-largest school sys-
tem, allowing 350,000 children to
return to classes on Wednesday
and bringing to a close, at least
for now, a tense standoff over is-
sues like teacher evaluations and
job security that had upended
this city for more than a week.
In a private meeting on Tues-
day afternoon, 800 union dele-
gates voted overwhelmingly to
suspend the strike after classes
had been halted for seven school
days, which left parents at loose
ends and City Hall taking legal
action. The delegates, who had
chosen on Sunday to extend their
strike rather than accept a deal
reached by negotiators for the
union and the Chicago Public
Schools, this time decided to
abandon their picket lines.
Karen Lewis, the union presi-
Continued on Page A3
Continued on Page A19
Crunching the Numbers
A Quinnipiac University/New
York Times/CBS News poll
shows the challenges facing Mitt
Romney’s campaign. Page A16.
Continued on Page A27
Continued on Page A22
A F
aded Pi
ece of Papyrus Refers to Jesus’ Wife
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A his-
torian of early Christianity at
Harvard Divinity School has
identified a scrap of papyrus that
she says was written in Coptic in
the fourth century and contains a
phrase never seen in any piece of
Scripture: “Jesus said to them,
‘My wife . . . ’”
The faded papyrus fragment is
smaller than a business card,
with eight lines on one side, in
black ink legible under a magni-
fying glass. Just below the line
about Jesus having a wife, the pa-
pyrus includes a second provoca-
tive clause that purportedly says,
“she will be able to be my dis-
ciple.”
The finding was made public in
Rome on Tuesday at the Interna-
ANDREW TESTA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
As the Arctic warms, oil, gas and minerals are being exposed, and outsiders are taking notice.
Race Is On as Ice Melt Reveals Arctic Treasures
erals that are, thanks to climate
change, becoming newly acces-
sible along with increasingly
navigable polar shipping short-
cuts. This year, China has be-
come a far more aggressive play-
er in this frigid field, experts say,
provoking alarm among Western
powers.
While the United States, Rus-
sia and several nations of the Eu-
ropean Union have Arctic territo-
ry, China has none, and as a re-
sult, has been deploying its
wealth and diplomatic clout to se-
cure toeholds in the region.
“The Arctic has risen rapidly
on China’s foreign policy agenda
in the past two years,” said Linda
Jakobson, East Asia program di-
rector at the Lowy Institute for
International Policy in Sydney,
Australia. So, she said, the Chi-
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
NUUK, Greenland — With Arc-
tic ice melting at record pace, the
world’s superpowers are increas-
ingly jockeying for political influ-
ence and economic position in
outposts like this one, previously
regarded as barren wastelands.
At stake are the Arctic’s abun-
dant supplies of oil, gas and min-
KAREN L KING
tional Congress of Coptic Studies
by Karen L. King, a historian who
has published several books
about new Gospel discoveries
and is the first woman to hold the
nation’s oldest endowed chair,
the Hollis professor of divinity.
The provenance of the papyrus
fragment is a mystery, and its
owner has asked to remain anon-
ymous. Until Tuesday, Dr. King
had shown the fragment to only a
small circle of experts in papyrol-
Continued on Page A14
Continued on Page A21
INTERNATIONAL A4-15
NATO Limits Afghan Contacts
BUSINESS DAY B1-9
Kudos, Mostly, for iPhone 5
The coalition’s change in policy was
prompted by an increase in deadly at-
tacks on international troops by Afghan
soldiers and police.
Apple uses its strengths in design, pro-
duction and components to improve its
phone, but the charging connector gives
pause, David Pogue writes.
PAGE A12
PAGE B1
Turks Sour on Syrian Uprising
ARTS C1-8
Middle Class, on the Edge
The Turkish public is starting to believe
that their government’s support for the
Syrian opposition has hurt their own
economy and security.
In “Detroit,” at Playwrights Horizons,
two couples do a closely choreographed
dance on the edge of a precipice. A re-
view by Charles Isherwood.
SPORTSWEDNESDAY B11-16
Building Baseball in Israel
PAGE A4
Burmese Activist Shifts Course
PAGE C1
Pitcher Alon Leischman is one of three
Israelis on Israel’s national team, which
consists mostly of American players
with Jewish ties. The team was put to-
gether to compete in the World Baseball
Classic and also build support for base-
ball in Israel.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, visiting Wash-
ington, called for the lifting of American
sanctions against Myanmar.
DINING D1-8
Wonders of Fermentation
PAGE A6
NATIONAL A16-22
A Pile of Unfinished Bills
The author Sandor Katz celebrates fer-
mentation, which has brought the world
cheese, beer and pickles.
PAGE B11
PAGE D1
With lawmakers about to recess until af-
ter the election, the 112th Congress is set
to enter the record books as the least
productive in a generation.
NEW YORK A23-27
Reviving Jewish Communities
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A28-29
Thomas L. Friedman
PAGE A21
PAGE A29
In areas with dwindling Jewish popula-
tions, including part of New York City,
synagogues and other groups are offer-
ing newcomers cash rewards and other
financial benefits.
West Nile’s Unpredictable Toll
Dallas County is trying to come to terms
with the seeming randomness of fatali-
ties from the West Nile virus.
U(D54G1D)y+%!}!@!#!$
PAGE A20
PAGE A23
A2
THE NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2012
Ø
N
Inside The Times
INTERNATIONAL
NATIONAL
BUSINESS
QUOTATION OF THE DAY
As Google Fills In Blank,
A German Cries Foul
In an earlier, more innocent era, the
shocking rumors about the past of a
former first lady of Germany would
have stayed put in the drawing
rooms of the political elite. Now,
they appear unbidden on Google, in
the search engine’s autocomplete
function, spawning a lawsuit.
PAGE A4
Ruling on Royal Photos
A French court rebuked a magazine
for publishing “particularly intru-
sive” photographs of the Duchess of
Cambridge, the former Kate Middle-
ton, ordering its publisher to cease
all publication or sales of the pic-
tures and to hand over all digital
copies to the royal family. PAGE A6
China Warns on Islands
China reiterated its opposition to
Japanese control of a contested
group of islands, with angry pro-
tests in dozens of cities and a warn-
ing from its defense minister that
“further actions” were possible.
PAGE A8
Pakistan Court Prevails
After months of legal battles, the Pa-
kistani government agreed to
judges’ demands that it write a let-
ter to the authorities in Switzerland
regarding corruption charges
against the president. PAGE A14
India Coalition Imperiled
India’s national government was
plunged into turmoil after a crucial
regional ally threatened to withdraw
her support from the governing co-
alition to protest a package of fuel
price increases and pro-business
economic changes. PAGE A15
Online Education Site
Expands Its University
Coursera, a start-up online educa-
tion company that has enrolled 1.35
million students in its free online
courses since it began just five
months ago, is now doubling the
number of universities that will offer
classes on its platform. PAGE A20
Prosecutors Accused
The Philadelphia district attorney’s
office challenged a claim by lawyers
for a convicted Roman Catholic
priest that prosecutors had persuad-
ed another priest, now defrocked, to
falsely admit to sexually abusing a
boy in order to obtain the conviction.
PAGE A22
After Losing in Court,
Samsung Alters Approach
Samsung may have lost the most re-
cent round in its legal fight in the
United States with Apple over cell-
phone technology, but that hasn’t
stopped it from mounting a new as-
sault against Apple that relies on a
more public tactic — full-page ads
that take direct aim at the iPhone 5.
PAGE B1
Questions Linger for Spain
Spain took advantage of improved
bond market sentiment in the euro
zone to sell government debt, but
questions still lingered about wheth-
er, or when, it would seek European
help to lower its borrowing costs.
PAGE B4
‘‘
It’s hard to construct
a scenario that is at all
plausible in which some-
body fakes something like
this. The world is not real-
ly crawling with crooked
papyrologists.
’’
ROGER BAGNALL,
of New York University, on a
scrap of papyrus that has Jesus
uttering the words “my wife.”
[A21]
DINING
Where the Words
Fail the Dishes
A movie is in trouble when a voice-
over has to explain the plot that the
combined efforts of the screenwrit-
er, director and editor failed to make
clear. Something like that is going
on at Eleven Madison Park, which
now offers only one menu, a $195
blowout that lasts about four hours.
Pete Wells, Critic’s Notebook.
PAGE D1
NEW YORK
SPORTS
In a Rebuke to Christie,
Outlook Is Downgraded
Standard & Poor’s downgraded New
Jersey’s financial outlook to nega-
tive from stable, saying Gov. Chris
Christie’s revenue projections for
the current fiscal year are overly op-
timistic. PAGE A23
Mood Changes at Harvard
After a Cheating Scandal
Six months ago, the Harvard men’s
basketball team was a source of un-
common athletic pride on campus.
But after published reports implicat-
ed the co-captains of the basketball
team in a widespread academic
cheating scandal, the mood at Har-
vard had shifted. PAGE B11
OBITUARIES
OP-ED
Tom Sims, 61
Mr. Sims was credited with invent-
ing one of the earliest snowboards
and with helping to further snow-
boarding’s widespread acceptance
in the sporting world.
PAGE B10
Steve Sabol, 69
Mr. Sabol was the creative force be-
hind NFL Films, which helped lend
professional football the aura of
myth. PAGE B10
Maureen Dowd
PAGE A29
ARTS
Brazil’s Pied Piper
Of Street Art
Bel Borba, an artist who has made
the streets, walls, plazas and beach-
es of Salvador, Brazil, his canvas
since the late 1970, is spending a
month making public art in New
York neighborhoods. PAGE C1
Crossword
C2
Obituaries
B10
TV Listings
C6
Weather
B16
Classified Ads
A27
Commercial
Real Estate Marketplace
B2
Corrections
FRONT PAGE
An article on Saturday about
widespread violent protests over
a video that denigrates Islam re-
ferred incorrectly to the Interna-
tional Crisis Group, whose pro-
gram director for the Middle East
and North Africa, Rob Malley,
said the protests were partly at-
tributable to discontent by rad-
icalized and unemployed male
youths. The group is an inde-
pendent nonprofit organization
that conducts research and pro-
vides analysis and advice on pre-
venting and resolving deadly
conflicts, according to the group’s
Web site, crisisgroup.org. It is not
a consulting firm.
An article on Friday about ef-
forts by Egyptian leaders to try
to repair relations with Washing-
ton, after a warning from Presi-
dent Obama over their failure to
stand firmly against the attack on
the American Embassy in Cairo,
referred incorrectly to the loca-
tion of the Colorado hotel from
which Mr. Obama called the
Egyptian president, Mohamed
Morsi, late Wednesday night. It is
in Denver — not in Stapleton,
which is one of its neighbor-
hoods, not a separate city.
in Central Park said she had with
her attacker referred incorrectly
to the authority of a park ranger,
to whom the woman said she had
reported the initial encounter af-
ter she said she saw the man
masturbating in the park. Rang-
ers have the power to issue cita-
tions and make arrests; it is not
the case that they “are not law-
enforcement officers.”
BUSINESS DAY
An article on Tuesday about
the challenges of entrepreneurs
who finance their enterprises
through crowdfunding mis-
spelled the surname of the co-
founder and chief executive of
Fundable, which is using crowd-
funding for start-up companies.
He is Wil Schroter, not Schroeter.
INTERNATIONAL
An article on Monday about a
video that appeared to show a
crowd of Libyans removing the
motionless body of Ambassador
J. Christopher Stevens from a
building at the American mission
in Benghazi, Libya, omitted attri-
bution for statements by
Mohamed Yussef Magariaf, pres-
ident of Libya’s newly elected na-
tional congress, and Susan Rice,
the United States ambassador to
the United Nations. Their com-
ments about the attacks in Libya
were made during their appear-
ances on CBS’s “Face the Nation”
on Sunday.
An article in some editions on
Tuesday about resistance in the
English department at Queens-
borough Community College to a
proposal to cut classroom hours
misstated the middle initial of the
deputy chairman of the depart-
ment in some copies. He is David
T. Humphries, not David P.
SCIENCE TIMES
A chart with the Visuals article
on Tuesday about a sharp decline
in the rate of highway fatalities,
misstated the year Ralph Nader’s
book “Unsafe at Any Speed” was
published. The book came out in
1965, not in 1966.
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Sullivan, at public@nytimes.com.
Newspaper Delivery:
customercare@nytimes.com or call
1-800-NYTIMES (1-800-698-4637).
NEW YORK
An article on Saturday about a
previous confrontation the 73-
year-old woman who was raped
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THE NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2012
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VICTOR DRACHEV/AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
GETTY IMAGES
Buildup to Election
A woman voting early in Kurkovo, a village in the former Soviet
republic of Belarus, which holds parliamentary elections on
Sunday. Two years ago, the voting was followed by a police
crackdown on protesters who, along with foreign monitors, said
President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko rigged his re-election. This
time, the opposition urged Belarussians to go fishing instead.
Russia Halting Groups’ Access to Financing by U.S.
or support staff on the ground.
The American aid agency em-
ploys 13 Americans in its Moscow
headquarters, as well as a Rus-
sian staff of 60.
Officials said that the Russian
foreign minister, Sergey V. Lav-
rov, informed Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton of the de-
cision on Sept. 8, when they met
in Vladivostok in Russia’s Far
East during the Asia-Pacific Eco-
nomic Cooperation summit meet-
ing.
Formal notice was then sent to
Washington, through the Ameri-
can ambassador, Michael A.
buoyed by oil and gas revenues,
the agency swung more than half
of its portfolio to democracy and
human rights programs, among
them prominent critics of govern-
ment policy. Since the fall of the
Soviet Union, the programs have
cost American taxpayers $2.7 bil-
lion, with about one-third of the
yearly funding now going to
health programs.
In recent years, however, Rus-
sia has bridled at the foreign aid
flowing across its borders, in part
because it views itself as a world
power, a member of the Group of
8, and therefore more appropri-
ately positioned to dole out as-
sistance than to receive it.
Underscoring this view, Russia
said on Tuesday that it was for-
giving nearly all of North Korea’s
accumulated foreign debt, which
Russian officials have valued at
roughly $11 billion, dating back to
the closer relationship between
them during the Soviet era.
The forgiveness step, which
has been in the works for many
months, would help clear the way
for Russia to make new invest-
ments in North Korea — a devel-
opment that runs counter to
American-led efforts to econom-
ically ostracize the North over its
expanding arsenal of nuclear
weapons.
Mr. Melkonyants of Golos said
he could not understand why
American aid agency’s work ran-
kled the Kremlin so. “Free elec-
tions are not an American goal —
that is absurd,” he said. “They
are a Russian goal.”
has said unrest is being stoked by
the State Department, working
covertly through nonprofit or-
ganizations.
Among the groups supported
by the money from Washington is
Golos, Russia’s only independent
election monitoring group, which
last winter enlisted thousands of
young Russians as poll-station
monitors and posted reports of
vote-rigging on its Web site.
Grigory A. Melkonyants, the
deputy director of Golos, said it
would take at least a year to find
alternate financing to replace the
American grants, if it was even
possible.
“They see us as the source of
criticism, and they are trying to
halt that source,” Mr. Melko-
nyants said. “Many people are al-
ready scared to talk about the
problems that exist today. The
press is already frightened. Now
they are trying to shut up civil or-
ganizations.”
The news filtered through
Moscow’s human rights circles,
already battered by new sanc-
tions on political activities.
“What is the list of other coun-
tries that have expelled
U.S.A.I.D.?” said Yelena A. Panfi-
lova, the head of the Moscow
branch of Transparency Interna-
tional. “It’s not about money —
we can cope somehow — the
problem is about this whole feel-
ing that we have been brought to-
gether with Venezuela, Somalia
and Belarus.”
As a practical matter it was un-
clear how many of the programs
could continue without financing
From Page A1
tion receiving aid from abroad to
register with the justice manager
as “acting as a foreign agent.”
Russia also increased the penal-
ties for libel and slander — a step
that seemed intended to intimi-
date critics of government offi-
cials.
Russia is not alone in its re-
sentment of United States-led de-
mocracy building efforts. Those
have become a sore point for a
number of countries in recent
years, including allies like Egypt
and Pakistan, which have object-
ed to outside groups telling them
how to run their affairs. The aid
agency’s cold war history of pro-
viding a front for American intel-
ligence agencies is still fresh in
the memories of foreign officials,
many of whom have never fully
dropped their suspicions.
The abruptness of Russia’s an-
nouncements represents a sour
new turn in relations between the
countries, which have been
touch-and-go since Mr. Putin re-
turned to the presidency in May.
While Mr. Putin has rebuffed
overtures from President Obama
for international action on Syria,
he has also praised him as “a
very honest man” who could pos-
sibly conclude a missile defense
deal in coming years.
Mr. Putin also undoubtedly
would prefer to deal with the dev-
il he knows rather than the one
he does not — the Republican
presidential nominee, Mitt Rom-
ney, whom Mr. Putin has crit-
icized for characterizing Russia
as America’s greatest geopoliti-
cal foe.
Reaction was swift in Washing-
ton to what was widely perceived
as an affront, with Senator John
McCain, the Arizona Republican,
urging the White House to con-
demn the Kremlin. “The Russian
government’s decision to end all
U.S.A.I.D. activities in the coun-
try is an insult to the United
States and a finger in the eye of
the Obama administration, which
has consistently trumpeted the
alleged success of its so-called re-
set policy toward Moscow,” Mr.
McCain said in a statement.
But the State Department
spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland,
suggested that if Russia did not
want American assistance, the
money could be better spent else-
where. “It’s their sovereign deci-
sion to make,” she said. “There
are many countries around the
world who would like to have
more AID funding and help.”
Mr. Putin, facing large-scale
dissent at home for the first time,
American officials
pledged to find
another way to
distribute the aid.
McFaul, in a memorandum dated
Sept. 11, officials said.
The American-financed pro-
grams played a crucial role in
helping Russia recover from the
collapse of the Soviet Union, and
included efforts to build the coun-
try’s capital markets and finan-
cial system and its mortgage-
lending industry. The United
States also supported an array of
health programs, including ef-
forts to combat tuberculosis and
the spread of H.I.V.
But as Russia’s economy was
Steven Lee Myers contributed re-
porting from Washington, Rick
Gladstone from New York and
Andrew Roth from Moscow.
IVAN SEKRETAREV/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Golos, Russia’s only independent election monitoring group, is among the organizations that ex-
pect to lose financing from the United States Agency for International Development next month.
A Top Colombian Drug Trafficker Is Captured in Venezuela
Mr. Santos said, calling the traf-
ficker, Daniel Barrera, “the last of
the great kingpins.”
Venezuela’s justice minister,
Tareck El Aissami, confirmed the
arrest, saying on Twitter, “It is
the most important blow” to drug
trafficking “that we have made in
Venezuela.”
Mr. Santos, in televised re-
marks, said the operation that led
to Mr. Barrera’s capture was di-
rected from Washington and in-
volved the cooperation of Vene-
zuelan drug police, Colombian
authorities, the C. I.A. and British
intelligence officials.
The arrest is a potential blow
to Colombia’s largest rebel group,
which was closely allied with the
Mr. Barrera, known as El Loco.
The Colombian government and
the rebel group, the leftist Revo-
lutionary Armed Forces of Co-
lombia, or FARC, have agreed to
begin peace talks next month.
Mr. Santos said Venezuelan au-
thorities captured Mr. Barrera in
San Cristóbal, near the border
with Colombia. The head of Co-
lombia’s National Police, Maj.
Gen. José Roberto León Riaño,
said on television that Mr. Barre-
ra’s extradition to Colombia was
being arranged. Mr. León Riaño
was in Washington, where he
helped coordinate the operation.
In 2010, the Treasury Depart-
ment singled out Mr. Barrera as
playing a significant role in
FARC’s financing and drug traf-
ficking networks.
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
CARACAS, Venezuela — One
of Colombia’s most wanted drug
lords has been arrested in Vene-
zuela, the Colombian president,
Juan Manuel Santos, said Tues-
day.
“This is perhaps the most im-
portant arrest” in recent times,
Jenny Carolina González contrib-
uted reporting from Bogotá, Co-
lombia.
A4
N
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2012
As Google
Fills In Blank,
A German
Cries Foul
By NICHOLAS KULISH
BERLIN — In an earlier, more
innocent era, the shocking ru-
mors about the past of a former
first lady of Germany would have
stayed put in the drawing rooms
of the political elite. Nowadays,
they appear unbidden on Google.
Say a schoolchild writing a
homework assignment about
Bettina Wulff entered her name
into the search engine. “Bettina
Wulff prostitute,” Google’s auto-
complete function would helpful-
ly but perhaps slanderously sug-
gest. “Bettina Wulff escort”
would pop up for good measure.
“I was stunned,” Ms. Wulff,
who vehemently denied the accu-
sations, told the weekly news-
magazine Stern, one of several
publications to feature her on the
cover in recent weeks. “I felt
powerless and cried a lot.”
As a result, Ms. Wulff, whose
husband resigned as president in
February in the midst of a scan-
dal over favors from wealthy
friends, is now the leading player
in a latter-day fable mixing gos-
sip, sharp-elbowed politics and
new technology. Taking an ag-
gressive tack against the rumors,
she filed a lawsuit against Google
in a Hamburg court.
Her suit signals the latest ef-
fort to force the Internet giant to
play the role of online referee, fol-
lowing close behind Google’s de-
cision to block an inflammatory
anti-Muslim video from YouTube
in certain countries.
In Ms. Wulff’s case, Google has
countered that it is not to blame
for her troubles. “All of the que-
ries shown in Autocomplete have
been typed previously by other
Google users,” Kay Oberbeck, a
spokesman for the company, said
in a statement that suggested it
was the curiosity of the many,
and not the assessment of the
company, that was causing the
offending terms to pop up.
Not content
with litigation,
Ms. Wulff has
started a cam-
paign to clear
her name. Her
newly pub-
lished memoir
became
ADEM ALTAN/AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE GETTY IMAGES
Above, Syrian refugees at the Altinozu camp in Turkey, near the border with Syria. Below, Syrians marched toward Turkey in August, pleading to be allowed in.
Turkish Public Sours on Syrian Uprising
Unrest Is Seen as Threat to Economy and Security at Home
ous setback for the foreign policy
of Turkey’s prime minister, Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, who has ridden
the turmoil of the Arab Spring to
promote Turkey’s influence
abroad and his standing at home.
Suddenly, Turkey appears vul-
nerable on multiple fronts.
“A lot of Turks are seeing this as
a direct result of Turkey’s ag-
gressive posture against Assad,”
said Soner Cagaptay, the director
of the Turkish Research Program
at the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy, referring to the
Syrian president, Bashar al-As-
By TIM ARANGO
ISTANBUL — As the war in Syria rages
next door, Turks have grown increasingly
weary of nearly daily reports of troubles at
home: Iranian spies working with Kurdish in-
surgents, soldiers ambushed and killed, mil-
lions spent caring for a flood of refugees, lost
trade and havoc in border villages.
“This is how we start our morning,” Meh-
ment Krasuleymanoglu, a bookseller in a nar-
row alley in central Istanbul, said recently as
he laid out several newspapers, each with a
blaring headline about an explosion at a muni-
tions depot that killed more than two dozen
soldiers. The government called it an acci-
dent, but in the current environment, many
Turks, including Mr. Krasuleymanoglu, are
not so sure.
“What do we have to do with Syria?” he
said. “The prime minister and his wife used to
go there for tea and coffee.”
The Turkish government is facing a spasm
of reproach from its own people over its policy
of supporting Syria’s uprising; hosting fight-
ers in the south, opposition figures in Istanbul
and refugees on the border; and helping to
ferry arms to the opposition. While many
Turks at first supported the policy as a stand
for democracy and change, many now believe
MUHAMMED MUHEISEN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
that it is leading to instability at home, un-
dermining Turkey’s own economy and securi-
ty.
Turkey’s call for military intervention,
which much of the international community
opposes, has only added to the domestic frus-
tration. Now, in the wake of the anti-American
protests that have convulsed the Muslim
world in reaction to a film that denigrated Is-
lam, it seems less likely that Turkey will find
partners in the West to join its call for military
action in Syria.
The souring mood presents the first obvi-
sad.
In the face of criticism from columnists and
opposition politicians, and signs of rising pub-
lic opposition to its Syria policy, the country is
being compelled to reassess its overall strat-
egy for spreading its influence and interests
across the Middle East, including Egypt, Iraq
and Iran. Increasingly frustrated with its ef-
forts to join the European Union, Turkey
turned noticeably toward regaining and ele-
vating its standing in the Muslim world, espe-
cially amid the chaos and reordering of alli-
the
best-selling
nonfiction book
in Germany
this week.
The nightmare started out
more like a fairy tale. Bettina
Körner married Christian Wulff,
then the state premier in Lower
Saxony, in 2008. They left the
state capital, Hanover, for big-
time politics in Berlin in 2010,
when Mr. Wulff was chosen for
the important but largely cere-
monial job of president.
Mr. Wulff was the president,
but his wife, just 36 when he was
elected by special assembly at
the Reichstag, became the star.
She was celebrated in the press
for her looks and her glamour,
her height and her elegance. The
tabloid media never tired of re-
peating that she had a tattoo, as if
it were a badge of hipness.
But she was followed to the
presidential palace, Schloss
Bellevue, by one of the most per-
nicious and persistent rumors in
German politics: that she had
worked as an escort. “My pseu-
donym was supposedly Lady
Viktoria, and my domain was
supposed to be an establishment
by the name of Château Osna-
brück,” Ms. Wulff wrote in her
book, rebutting the rumors.
The newspaper Süddeutsche
Zeitung has reported that the ru-
mors date from 2006, when she
first met her future husband, and
that they were circulated not by
the opposition but by members of
his own party. “She was the
glamour girl from the beginning,”
said Lutz Hachmeister, director
of the Institute for Media and
Communication Policy in Berlin.
“He was the Catholic, conserva-
tive provincial politician.”
When the rumors spread on
the Internet, Ms. Wulff kept quiet
while her husband dealt with rev-
elations that he had received a
questionable personal loan when
he was state premier, as well as
the use of a car and other favors
from wealthy friends. Mr. Wulff
resigned, but the gossip about his
wife did not go away.
Her publicity offensive may
have done a better job of selling
books than extinguishing the
prostitution story. A representa-
tive survey by the polling group
Emnid for the newspaper Bild
am Sonntag found that 81 percent
of Germans had never heard the
rumors before she started her
campaign to stop them.
Bettina Wulff
Continued on Page A10
Trial of Ex-Police Chief in China Scandal Ends in a Sign of Leniency
By EDWARD WONG
CHENGDU, China — A former
Chinese police chief helped to
cover up the murder of a British
businessman by the wife of Bo
Xilai, the Communist official top-
pled from power this year, but he
also secretly collected evidence
used to convict her, according to
a lawyer for the police chief and
an official account released Tues-
day at the end of his trial.
During the trial, the former po-
lice chief, Wang Lijun, confessed
to the most serious charge
against him, defection, and did
not contest the other three
charges — abuse of power, tak-
ing bribes and bending the law
for personal gain, a court spokes-
man said. The first two charges
were heard in a closed-door ses-
sion Monday because they in-
volved state secrets, said the
spokesman, Yang Yuquan, while
the second two were reviewed
Tuesday in a so-called public
hearing from which journalists
were barred.
It was unclear when a formal
verdict or sentence would be an-
nounced. Like the trial of Mr.
Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, who was
convicted last month of the mur-
der of the Briton, Neil Heywood,
the opacity of Mr. Wang’s trial
raised questions about the fair-
ness of China’s legal process.
Verdicts in Chinese trials are
often predetermined, especially
when the trial is tied to elite poli-
tics.
Mr. Wang helped catalyze the
downfall of Mr. Bo, and the big-
gest eruption in Chinese politics
in a generation, when he fled to
the United States Consulate in
Chengdu, the capital of the
southwestern
siders have said the wiretapping
campaign run by the police chief
and overseen by Mr. Bo resulted
in the surveillance of senior offi-
cials visiting from Beijing.
Like the defense, the prosecu-
tion argued that Mr. Wang had
helped the state in certain ways,
the court statement said. He
asked police officers in Chong-
qing to collect and keep evidence
for a case against Ms. Gu, the
court said.
A resident of Chongqing with
police contacts said that Mr.
Wang would probably receive ei-
ther a suspended death sentence
or a 20-year prison sentence, giv-
en the nature of the case. He add-
ed that in sparing Mr. Wang from
execution, some party officials
could employ Mr. Wang as a
“time bomb” against Mr. Bo and
his allies, because Mr. Wang
knows secrets about Mr. Bo.
The second day of the trial be-
gan quietly Tuesday morning,
with more than 15 police officers
in light blue uniforms standing at
the front of the courthouse.
Shops on blocks surrounding the
court building were closed and
only opened a couple of hours af-
ter the trial had begun. Dozens of
foreign journalists stood in a
roped-off section of the sidewalk.
One of the few moments of ex-
citement occurred around 8:45
a.m., when a white-haired man
carrying a leather satchel
walked up to the journalists and
yelled Mr. Wang’s name. “Every-
one must be treated equally by
the law,” he shouted.
He said he had been a peti-
tioner who had tried to inform of-
ficials in Beijing of his griev-
ances, though he did not say
what those grievances were. A
half-dozen security officers ush-
ered him away.
“Wang Lijun should be a les-
son to you,” he told the officers.
CCTV/AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE GETTY IMAGES
The former chief Wang Lijun confessed in court, but officials added that he helped prosecutors.
Sichuan, in February and told
diplomats there about Mr. Hey-
wood’s murder last year. Mr.
Wang, 52, had been the flamboy-
ant police chief of the nearby city
of Chongqing, which Mr. Bo
ruled until his removal as party
secretary this spring.
Mr. Yang read a statement af-
ter the hearing ended that de-
tailed Mr. Wang’s crimes, while
also discussing mitigating fac-
tors cited by the prosecution and
the defense, including Mr.
Wang’s help to investigators in
other cases.
The mention of those factors
indicated that Mr. Wang prob-
ably would not be given the
death sentence, but perhaps
would be given life in prison
through a suspended death sen-
tence or be treated even more le-
niently. Wang Yuncai, a defense
lawyer for Mr. Wang who is not
related to him, said in an in-
terview after the trial that
“Wang Lijun regrets his crimes.”
The defense lawyer added that
Mr. Wang had provided “blood
samples and other material” to
Chinese investigators that
helped lead to Ms. Gu’s convic-
tion. “He defected because his
life was under threat,” Ms. Wang
said. She did not mention the Bo
family specifically as the source
of the threat, and she declined to
say whether Mr. Bo’s name came
up at the trial.
With Ms. Gu’s trial finished —
she was given a suspended death
sentence — and Mr. Wang’s
nearing completion, the one re-
maining case in the scandal is
that of Mr. Bo. No date has been
announced for a trial, and some
party insiders say Mr. Bo could
simply face party disciplinary
procedures rather than criminal
charges.
A once-a-decade handover of
power is expected to take place
this autumn in China, and party
officials apparently have still not
decided whether to announce the
fate of Mr. Bo before the transi-
tion.
The court statement Tuesday
revealed additional details about
the prosecutors’ case against Mr.
Wang. The prosecutors accused
Mr. Wang of taking 3.05 million
renminbi, or about $475,000, in
bribes. The statement did not say
who paid the bribes; Ms. Wang
said Mr. Wang took the bribes
while in Chongqing.
As for the abuse of power
charge, the statement said that
Mr. Wang forged approvals for
technical surveillance. Party in-
province
of
Patrick Zuo contributed research
from Chengdu, and Shi Da from
Beijing.
Victor Homola contributed re-
porting.
A5
THE NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2012
N
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