The Intercept’s Jon Schwarz on the Investigation That Led to the Third-Largest Financial Penalty the FEC Ever Issued

By Jeremy Scahill
 
Jeremy Scahill: Earlier this month, the Federal Election Commission issued a historic fine and cited The Intercept’s 2016 investigative series called “Foreign Influence.” That series was written by Jon Schwarz and Lee Fang, and through dogged reporting, they managed to expose a major violation of campaign finance law’s strict prohibition against foreign money being used in U.S. federal elections. Their reporting was so critical that the FEC, which rarely catches these sorts of violations, actually punished both the Chinese-owned company which donated the money, and the Super PAC which received it, fining them a combined total of $940,000. Before Citizens United in 2010, corporations couldn’t spend money to directly advocate for federal candidates. After Citizens United and related court decisions, corporations that were formed in the U.S.—even ones that are completely owned and controlled by foreigners—could send money to super PACs in unlimited amounts. Enter Jeb Bush in 2016. That’s right, Jeb. 

Jeb Bush: I think the next president needs to be a lot quieter but send a signal that we’re prepared to act in the national security interests of this country, to get back in the business of creating a more peaceful world. Please clap. 

Jeremy Scahill: Jeb’s sad campaign was backed by a super PAC called “Right to Rise USA.”  They received over a million dollars in donations from a California corporation called American Pacific International Capital, or APIC. That company, APIC, was controlled completely by two Chinese citizens living in Singapore. So remember, it’s illegal for foreign nationals to contribute money in connection to U.S. elections. But APIC and Jeb Bush’s “Right to Rise USA,” tried to get away with using the loophole created by Citizens United. Because APIC was incorporated in California, it was technically not foreign. And the financial contribution would have been fine if they had not egregiously violated one part of the law still on the books. That part of the law limits this sort of foreign influence. When foreign-owned corporations make political donations, only U.S. citizens are supposed to make the decision. My colleagues at The Intercept, along with reporter Elaine Yu in Hong Kong, got Gordon Tang, the Chinese national at the head of APIC, to admit that he helped make the decision to donate to Jeb Bush. And that was very illegal. Here is The Intercept’s Jon Schwarz to walk us through this bizarre tale. 

Jon Schwarz: So, in 2010, the Supreme Court famously decides in Citizens United, that U.S. campaign finance law was wrong. Before Citizens United, you could only contribute money for U.S. political campaigns in limited amounts. It had to come from individual citizens. After Citizens United, corporations, unions could put unlimited amounts of money. It could go to super PACs for instance, and as long as they were theoretically not coordinating with individual candidates, they could take this unlimited amount of money and then spend it however they wanted, promoting anything. Very soon after the Citizens United decision in 2010 was Obama’s State of the Union Address, and in it, he said —

Barack Obama: With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections. 

Jon Schwarz: What is the significance of that? If you look at the law, what is says is this: Foreign nationals are forbidden from putting money into U.S. elections. A foreign national is a foreign individual, it is a foreign government, and it is a foreign corporation. What happens if there is a U.S. corporation that is a wholly owned subsidiary of a foreign corporation? Well, according to U.S. law, that corporation counts as a U.S. national, meaning that a completely foreign-owned corporation could now, post-Citizens United, put as much money as they wanted into U.S. politics. 

Barack Obama: I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests; or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps correct some of these problems. 

Jon Schwarz: So six years later, Ellen Weintraub, then on the Federal Election Commission, now the chairman of the FEC, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about this issue about: Are foreign-owned corporations going to able to spend without limit in U.S. elections? 

Jon Schwarz: Lee Fang and I thought this is an interesting question. We decided to look into it, see what corporations were giving money to U.S. super PACs, and find out whether there was foreign ownership of any of them. And within 10 minutes of trying to find this out, we saw something that looked tremendously suspicious, which was a corporation called American Pacific International Capital located in San Francisco. 

Just a little bit of Googling found information that suggested this was in fact 100 percent foreign owned and it had given $1.3 million to the “Right to Rise USA” super PAC, which was supporting Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential candidacy. 

Jeb Bush: We’re 17 months from the time for choosing. The stakes for America’s future are about as great as they come. Our prosperity and our security are in the balance. So is opportunity in this nation where every life matters and everyone has the right to rise. 

Jon Schwarz: What we found out after speaking to Charlie Spies, who was the treasurer of “Right to Rise USA” and one of the most prominent campaign finance lawyers in the United States, was that Spies had actually written a memo explaining step-by-step how you could put foreign money into U.S. elections and have it be legal. We also spoke to Gordon Tang, who was the Chinese businessman behind APIC. 

[Audio: Gordon Tang, speaking in Cantonese, tells reporter Elaine Yu why the company gave over $1 million to Right to Rise USA, the main Super PAC supporting Jeb Bush.]

Jon Schwarz And to our great shock, he essentially unknowingly confessed to having broken U.S. campaign finance law. There are still some remaining weak prohibitions that you should be able to abide by that really can’t be easily enforced that will only create problems for you if reporters call you and you accidentally confess.

Jon Schwarz: If Gordon Tang had just kept his mouth shut, if he hadn’t told us, oh yes, you know, I said this seems like a good idea to me, then they would have been fine. They would have been able to, as Obama said, spend without limit in U.S. elections and there really should not have been any legal consequences. They just got sloppy. What’s crucial here is this fact: there’s sort of the law as written and the law as possible to be enforced. The law as written says: Yes, foreign-owned corporations can participate now in U.S. elections, but foreign nationals can’t participate in the decision making in terms of putting the money into the U.S. electoral process. 

Now, we were expecting that when this article came out, it would make huge news. You know, foreign interference in U.S. elections. It’s proven now. Obama called it, here it is. Essentially, nothing happened. No one paid any attention. It was the summer of 2016. It was around the time of the U.S. Democratic and Republican conventions. What we thought was an enormous story went nowhere. 

Now what happened then was: The Campaign Legal Center, which is sort of an election law watchdog in Washington, picked up our article, used the information in it to say, hey, this seems like a clear violation of very significant U.S. campaign finance law. They filed a complaint with the FEC. And then, no one heard anything for two and a half years. The FEC generally does not enforce U.S. campaign finance law. The Republican Party pretty much as policy now believes that campaign finance law is illegitimate and they simply at the FEC block it from being enforced. So we thought nothing was going to happen. And then, to our surprise, something did. 

Rachel Maddow: You don’t hear news like this all that often. You hardly ever hear about it on this scale. But a super PAC from the 2016 campaign, a super PAC that supported Jeb Bush for president, has just been hit by federal officials with a huge fine for accepting donations from foreigners. 

Jon Schwarz: It became public that the FEC was issuing the third largest fine in its history, the largest fine since Citizens United, almost $1 million. Both APIC, the foreign-owned corporation, and “Right to Rise,” the Jeb Bush super PAC, had to pay fines. Now, what it suggests is not just the fact that this was going on, that this happened for sure in 2016. But that with people who are more careful, it is probably going on in ways that can’t be detected. 

The reality is, foreign countries, foreign corporations, foreign individuals have very, very good reasons to try to influence U.S. politics. If I were a foreigner, I would try to influence U.S. politics. Of course, you have to. We’re the most powerful country on earth. You would be a fool not to try to do this. And as I say, people who are more sophisticated about it should be able to pull this off without detection. 

So, what does this mean right now? What it means is that post-Citizens United this absolutely can happen. It means that we don’t know what is happening. I would also encourage people to think about the fact that there is foreign influence on U.S. politics in all kinds of ways that was already legal before Citizens United. There’s tons of money that flows into think tanks in Washington. There’s tons of money that flows into lobbying organizations in Washington in ways that are perfectly legal but involve foreign influence on U.S. politics.

I hope that other reporters will look at this and realize that this was just out there in the open for anybody to find. Like, this information is probably there for other corporations, we just don’t know it yet. And this is actually something that anybody could do. Like, anybody can go look through the campaign finance filings. They’re on the FEC’s website. They’re at the Center for Responsive Politics. If you are interested in this issue, even if you’re not a journalist, go comb through this and send it to reporters. I guarantee you that they’ll be interested to hear about anything you find. 

Jon Schwarz: That was my colleague at The Intercept, Jon Schwarz. You can check out that series at theintercept.com. It was called “Foreign Influence.” Jon spoke to our assistant producer, Elise Swain.

Gaza Crisis: 'The Real Danger to Israel Comes from Within'

Interview Conducted by Julia Amalia Heyer

Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, but left behind death and destruction. Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz tells SPIEGEL that her country is gripped by fear and is becoming increasingly suspicious of democracy.

SPIEGEL: There was widespread support in Israel for the operation in the Gaza Strip, despite the huge numbers of civilian casualties and the deaths of hundreds of children. Why is that?

 Illouz: Where you see human beings, Israelis see enemies. In front of enemies, you close ranks, you unite in fear for your life, and you do not ponder about the fragility of the other. Israel has a split, schizophrenic self-awareness: It cultivates its strength and yet cannot stop seeing itself as weak and threatened. Moreover, both the fact that Hamas holds a radical Islamist and anti-Semitic ideology and the fact that there is rabid anti-Arab racism in Israel explain why Israelis see Gaza as a bastion of potential or real terrorists. It is difficult to have compassion for a population seen as as threatening the heart of your society.

SPIEGEL: Is that also a function of the fact that Israeli society has become increasingly militaristic?

Illouz: Israel is a colonial military power, a militarized society and a democracy all folded into one. The army, for example, controls the Palestinians through a wide network of colonial tools, such as checkpoints, military courts (governed by a legal system different from the Israeli system), the arbitrary granting of work permits, house demolitions and economic sanctions. It is a militarized civil society because almost every family has a father, son or brother in the army and because the military plays an enormous role in the ordinary mentality of ordinary Israelis and is crucial in both political decisions and in the public sphere. In fact, I would say that "security" is the paramount concept guiding Israeli society and politics. But it is also a democracy, which grants rights to gays and makes it possible for a citizen to sue the state.

SPIEGEL: Still, many would say that Israel has gone too far in this war with Hamas.

About Eva Illouz

 Eva Illouz, 53, was born in Morocco and grew up in Sarcelles, near Paris. She is a professor of sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She researches the relationship between emotions, economy and communication and has written several books including "Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation," which was published in English last year. Illouz also regularly writes essays and columns exploring the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its consequences for Israeli society.

 Illouz: I think Israelis have lost what we can call a "humanitarian sensibility," the capacity to identify with the suffering of a distant other. In Israel, there has been a change in perception of the "Palestinian other." The Palestinian has become a true enemy in the perception of Israelis, in the sense that "they are there" and "we are here." They ceased having a face and even a name.

SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for the shift?

Illouz: Israelis and Palestinians used to be mixed. They worked as construction workers and as cheap, underpaid labor. Then the wall was built. Then the road blocks came, which hampered the Palestinians' freedom of movement. The massive reduction in work permits followed. And in a few years Palestinians disappeared from Israeli society. The Second Intifada put the nail in that coffin, so to speak. The nature of Israeli leadership has also changed. The messianic right has progressively gained power in Israel. It used to be marginal and illegitimate; it is now increasingly mainstream. This radical right sits in Parliament, controls budgets and has changed the nature of discourse. Many Israelis do not understand the radical nature of the right in Israel. It successfully disguises itself as "patriotic" or "Jewish."

SPIEGEL: Why is the right so strong at the moment even though there are far fewer terror attacks in Israel than there used to be?

Illouz: Entire generations have been raised with the territories, with Israel being a colonial power. They do not know anything else. You have the settlements which are highly ideological. They expanded and entered Israeli mainstream political life. Settlements were strengthened by systematic government policies: They got tax breaks; they had soldiers to protect them; they built roads and infrastructure which are much better than those inside the country. There are entire segments of the population that have never met a secular person and have been educated religiously. Some of these religious segments are also very nationalist. The reality we are faced with in Israel is that we must choose between liberalism and Jewishness, and if we choose Jewishness, we are condemned to become a religious Sparta which will not be sustainable. Whereas in the 1960s, you could be both socialist and Zionist, today it is not possible because of the policies and identity of Israel. Then you have the role which Jews who live outside Israel play in Israel. Many of these Jews have very right-wing views and contribute money to newspapers, think tanks and religious institutions inside Israel. Let's face it: the right has been more systematic and more mobilized, both inside and outside Israel.

SPIEGEL: Do Jews in the Diaspora see Israel differently than do Jews in Israel?

Illouz: Diaspora Jews have been shaped by the memory of the Shoah. They often live in societies in which their own democratic rights are guaranteed. Sometimes they are under the assault of anti-Semitism and thus feel an urge to reinforce Jewish identity. They do not understand the distress of Israelis who see democracy progressively eaten away by dark forces. Today, Diaspora Jews and Jews in Israel do not have the same interests anymore.

SPIEGEL: What will happen if democratic principles continue to erode?

Illouz: One or two years ago, the newspaper Haaretz conducted a poll which found that 40 percent of the people said they were considering leaving Israel. I don't know the actual numbers, but I have never heard as much alienation from Israel as during this period. The people who live in secular Tel Aviv have much less in common with their religious counterparts in Jerusalem than they do with people living in Berlin.

SPIEGEL: You describe a fearful, anxious country.

Illouz: Fear is deeply engrained in Israeli society. Fear of the Shoah, fear of anti-Semitism, fear of Islam, fear of Europeans, fear of terror, fear of extermination. You name it. And fear generates a very particular type of thinking, which I would call "catastrophalist." You always think about the worst case scenario, not about a normal course of events. In catastrophalist scenarios, you become allowed to breach many more moral norms than if you imagined a normal course of events.

SPIEGEL: This differing perception of threats and conflict is problematic. Whereas Israel sees itself as the victim, the rest of the world is increasingly seeing the country as a violent occupying power.

Illouz: Imagine that you were a girl raised by a very brutal father. You would develop a "healthy" suspicion of men and would become very cautious. If you were to live for a time in an environment of good and nurturing men, your suspicions would relax. But if you lived in an environment in which some men were very brutal and some were not, your healthy suspicion would turn into an obsessive incapacity to differentiate between different types of men, the brutal and the caring. That is the historical trauma of the consciousness that Jews live with. The Israeli psyche has become incapable of making these distinctions.

SPIEGEL: Does this fear justify the kind of brutal violence that has been visited upon the civilian population in the Gaza Strip?

Illouz: Of course it doesn't. I'm only saying that fear is central to the Israeli psyche. These fears are cynically used by leaders like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He makes Israelis believe that they all want to destroy us. Hamas wants to destroy us, the UN wants to destroy us, al-Qaida and Iran want to destroy us. ISIS wants to destroy us. The European anti-Semites want to destroy us. This is basically the filter through which a conflict with Hamas is interpreted by the ordinary Israeli. Another dimension of this prism is that "they" are not human beings. Palestinians are dehumanized because they put their soldiers amongst civilians, send their children to fight, spend and waste their money on building deadly tunnels rather than on building up their own society. Along with the dehumanization of the other, Israelis have a strong sense of their own moral superiority. "We ask people to get out of their houses; we call them on the phone to make sure civilians are evacuated. We behave humanly," the Israeli thinks. An army with good manners.

SPIEGEL: And nevertheless, civilians have been the primary victims, with schools, housing complexes and hospitals being bombed.

Illouz: Yes, despite this, many Israelis still hold on the view they are morally superior. They judge by the intention, whereas the world judges by the consequences.

SPIEGEL: Still, an enormous wave of hatred has become visible in Israel in recent weeks. And it's not only directed at the Palestinians, but also at segments of Israeli society.

Illouz: Some basic norms of speech have been breached by some rabbis and Knesset members, who feel no qualms expressing hatred for Arabs in ways that provide legitimation to hatred. This is very worrisome. It happened because entire generations have been raised believing in religious and ultra-nationalist views. I don't think that there is more hatred in Israel than in some racist pockets of German or French society. But when some Palestinians recently sang in the streets of Paris "Death to the Jews," the reaction of the government of Prime Minister Manuel Valls was swift and clear. The authorities sent a strong message that there are forms of speech and forms of belief that are inadmissible. What is lacking in Israeli society is that kind of very strong moral normative claim coming from its leaders.

SPIEGEL: How do you explain this paradox -- the hate on the one hand and Israel's emphasis on its liberal values on the other?

Illouz: Israel started as a modern nation. It derived its legitimacy from the fact that it had democratic institutions. But it was also building highly anti-modern institutions in wanting to create a Jewish democracy by giving power to rabbis, in creating deep ethnic inequalities between different ethnic groups such Jews of Arab countries vs. Jews of European descent; Arabs vs. Jews; Jews vs. non-Jews. It thus blocked universalist thinking.

SPIEGEL: Would you say that the Jewish character of the country has subsumed the democratic character?

Illouz: Yes, definitely. We are at the point where it has become clear that Jewishness has hijacked democracy and its contents. It happened increasingly when the school curriculum started getting changed and emphasizing more Jewish content and less universal content; when the Ministry of the Interior expelled foreign workers because Shas party members were afraid non-Jews would inter-marry with Jews; when human rights are thought of as being left-wing only because human rights presuppose that Jews and non-Jews are equal.

SPIEGEL: That doesn't sound particularly encouraging.

Illouz: The only response is to create a vast camp of people who defend democracy. The right-left divide is no longer important. There is something more urgent right now: the defense of democracy. The voice of the extreme right is much louder and clearer than it was before. That's what's new: a racist right that is not ashamed of itself, that persecutes dissenters and even people who dare express compassion for the other side. The real danger to Israel and its sustainability comes from within. The fascist and racist elements are no less a security threat than the outside enemies.

SPIEGEL: Israeli enemies have also accused the country of no longer being democratic. Does that bother you?

Illouz: With all my critique and occasional disgust at Israeli arrogance, I am also puzzled that Israel is indeed singled out. Look at what happens in Syria or in Nigeria or Iraq. Why isn't the world demonstrating in the streets in the same way it is doing for Israel? America has also a shocking record outside its own borders. Where are the intellectuals who are going to boycott America? Where are they?

SPIEGEL: Do you support the military operation in the Gaza Strip?

Illouz: No, I don't. I'm not a pacifist in the sense that I do not think that military operations are always wrong. But I'm not in favor of this operation because there was no political process beforehand. Netanyahu gave such obvious sings that he was not interested in a political process. Instead, Netanyahu constantly undermined Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. I refuse categorically the idea that our only relationship with the Palestinians is a military one. We are in a march of folly. There is an increasingly large group of people who really think that they can subdue the Palestinian population and sustain a regime where Israel keeps dominating them.

 SPIEGEL: Is that not the consequence of 47 years of occupation, this feeling of not having to make any more concessions?

Illouz: Israelis pay a price, but we are not really aware of it. We don't know how it feels to live in a peaceful society, devoted exclusively to culture, education and improving the living conditions of everyone. People don't make a connection between the bad living conditions they have and the amount of resources invested in the settlements and in the army. In psychology, they call it dissociation. Israeli society has become very insensitive. Not only to the suffering of others, but also to its own suffering.

New Bank Leak Shows How Rich Exploit Tax Haven Loopholes

By The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

 

The identities of thousands of wealthy offshore clients of a major Channel Isles private bank have been leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

The individuals include donors to the British government, which has been outspoken against tax havens, and some of the most prominent people in British life.

The ICIJ has exclusively allowed The Guardian newspaper to analyze more than 20,000 of the names, all of whom had dealings with a discreet Jersey, Channel Islands branch of Kleinwort Benson, a famous London firm which specializes in “wealth management.”

In the interests of transparency, ICIJ and The Guardian will publish some of their findings over the coming days, detailing the offshore links of political donors; international celebrities; judges; sportsmen; businessmen; and British aristocrats.
Names range from vacuum cleaner tycoon James Dyson to Hollywood actor Mel Gibson. Today The Guardian identifies party donors who over the years have paid more than £8m to the governing Conservative party.

One of the recipients of donations is Britain’s newly-promoted financial services minister, Andrea Leadsom, who has run into a “Cash for Office” allegation after she told The Guardian she was unaware of the size of large offshore  donations to the Conservatives made by her own  family.

The ICIJ has previously published secret internal records of offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands. ICIJ director, Gerard Ryle, said: “We make this information available not because what we found is illegal but because we think most people would think it unfair. Tax havens allow some people to play by different rules.”

At a time of debate about inequalities of wealth in the UK, the data leaks reveal how the very richest families dip in and out of British jurisdiction as it suits them, exploiting what academic experts call Jersey's 'fictitious space.'

British finance minister David Gauke last year called for transparency from users of the tax haven, saying: “The time has come for those with hidden offshore interests to come forward.”

A British government report stated: “In the past, offshore accounts and other complex arrangements were shrouded in secrecy, so some people felt that they could dodge their tax obligations ... Those days are gone.”

Government ministers launched a scheme for Jersey account-holders to make disclosure. They claimed the big challenge the authorities face is secret tax evasion, which is a crime.

The British Chancellor George Osborne announced in April: “If you’re evading tax offshore, there is no safe haven and we will find you.”

But The Guardian findings contradict this picture of illegality. Many Jersey loopholes used by wealthy Britons to pass on their fortunes appear from The Guardian’s research to have been perfectly legal.

Both the ruling Conservatives and to a lesser extent the Labour opposition party have benefited by political donations from such individuals.

There is no published register of trusts or offshore holdings, and the rich appear to have often been able discreetly to avoid taxes, particularly inheritance tax, in ways too expensive for smaller people to use.

Children and other beneficiaries may have often had no hand in it themselves. The Earl of Guilford, for example, told The Guardian: “I inherited money from a deceased relative that was held in an offshore trust ...I have ... made full disclosure of this to HMRC [the British tax authorities]. You will understand that I did not establish an offshore account and was faced with the decision as to what to do with this money.”

Clarification:
Sir James Dyson’s former trust in the Channel Islands was through Orbis Trustees Guernsey Limited rather than Kleinwort Benson, which purchased Orbis after the trust was wound up in 1999, according to Dyson’s representatives.  No income was derived from the trust, nor was any tax avoided.

Contributors to this story: David Leigh and James Ball

 

President at 9/11 Museum Dedication (Video/Transcript)

 

New York, New York

THE PRESIDENT:  Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Cuomo, honored guests, families of the fallen.

In those awful moments after the South Tower was hit, some of the injured huddled in the wreckage of the 78th floor.  The fires were spreading.  The air was filled with smoke.  It was dark, and they could barely see.  It seemed as if there was no way out.
And then there came a voice -- clear, calm, saying he had found the stairs.  A young man in his 20s, strong, emerged from the smoke, and over his nose and his mouth he wore a red handkerchief.

He called for fire extinguishers to fight back the flames.  He tended to the wounded.  He led those survivors down the stairs to safety, and carried a woman on his shoulders down 17 flights. Then he went back.  Back up all those flights.  Then back down again, bringing more wounded to safety.  Until that moment when the tower fell.

They didn’t know his name.  They didn’t know where he came from.  But they knew their lives had been saved by the man in the red bandana.     
    
Again, Mayor Bloomberg; distinguished guests; Mayor de Blasio; Governors Christie and Cuomo; to the families and survivors of that day; to all those who responded with such courage -- on behalf of Michelle and myself and the American people, it is an honor for us to join in your memories.  To remember and to reflect.  But above all, to reaffirm the true spirit of 9/11 -- love, compassion, sacrifice -- and to enshrine it forever in the heart of our nation.

Michelle and I just had the opportunity to join with others on a visit with some of the survivors and families -- men and women who inspire us all.  And we had a chance to visit some of the exhibits.  And I think all who come here will find it to be a profound and moving experience.

I want to express our deep gratitude to everybody who was involved in this great undertaking -- for bringing us to this day, for giving us this sacred place of healing and of hope.

Here, at this memorial, this museum, we come together.  We stand in the footprints of two mighty towers, graced by the rush of eternal waters.  We look into the faces of nearly 3,000 innocent souls -- men and women and children of every race, every creed, and every corner of the world.  We can touch their names and hear their voices and glimpse the small items that speak to the beauty of their lives.  A wedding ring.  A dusty helmet.  A shining badge.     

Here we tell their story, so that generations yet unborn will never forget.  Of coworkers who led others to safety.  Passengers who stormed a cockpit.  Our men and women in uniform who rushed into an inferno.  Our first responders who charged up those stairs.  A generation of servicemembers -- our 9/11 Generation -- who have served with honor in more than a decade of war.  A nation that stands tall and united and unafraid -- because no act of terror can match the strength or the character of our country.  Like the great wall and bedrock that embrace us today, nothing can ever break us; nothing can change who we are as Americans.

On that September morning, Alison Crowther lost her son Welles.  Months later, she was reading the newspaper -- an article about those final minutes in the towers.  Survivors recounted how a young man wearing a red handkerchief had led them to safety.  And in that moment, Alison knew.  Ever since he was a boy, her son had always carried a red handkerchief.  Her son Welles was the man in the red bandana.

Welles was just 24 years old, with a broad smile and a bright future.  He worked in the South Tower, on the 104th floor. He had a big laugh, a joy of life, and dreams of seeing the world.  He worked in finance, but he had also been a volunteer firefighter.  And after the planes hit, he put on that bandana and spent his final moments saving others.

Three years ago this month, after our SEALs made sure that justice was done, I came to Ground Zero.  And among the families here that day was Alison Crowther.  And she told me about Welles and his fearless spirit, and she showed me a handkerchief like the one he wore that morning.

And today, as we saw on our tour, one of his red handkerchiefs is on display in this museum.  And from this day forward, all those who come here will have a chance to know the sacrifice of a young man who -- like so many -- gave his life so others might live.
Those we lost live on in us.  In the families who love them still.  In the friends who remember them always.  And in a nation that will honor them, now and forever.

And today it is my honor to introduce two women forever bound by that day, united in their determination to keep alive the true spirit of 9/11 -- Welles Crowther’s mother Alison, and one of those he saved, Ling Young.  (Applause.)

We risk disaster if drugs giants don't invest in research

With bacteria increasingly resistant to antibiotics, it's absurd that multinationals are halting the creation of new cures.

Will Hutton
Source:The Guardian

We could now be entering an alarming "post-antibiotic era", warned the World Health Organisation last week. The relief that humanity has won through antibiotics that fight off attacks on our health seems to be running out, as bacteria are developing ever better defence mechanisms. We thought the era of infectious diseases lay behind us; instead, is it coming back?

Already 25,000 people die every year in the European Union from diseases of the blood and urinary tract, from pneumonia, TB and diarrhoea, all of which could have been treated by effective antibiotics. And this is in a region where there is widespread vaccination against infections and where public health is strong.

The bugs behind TB or gonorrhoea now routinely fight off antibiotics ever faster, and these mutating bugs travel globally. Everywhere people are having to stay in hospital for longer and face a growing risk of infection by others. Death rates are beginning to rise rather than fall.

Nor is the situation likely to get any better. Part of the problem is that people are too casual over how antibiotics are prescribed and used so the bugs aren't eliminated, but instead develop better defence mechanisms. On top, over the past 30 years the drug companies have developed no new major antibiotic types. The last one was carbapenem – a so-called last resort antibiotic – back in 1980. Now more than half the cases of K pneumoniae that used to be treatable by carbapenem drugs no longer respond. Dr Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's assistant director general for health security, spelled out the danger: "Without urgent, co-ordinated action by many stakeholders," he said, "common infections and minor injuries, which have been treatable for decades, can once again kill."

The impact is felt across all of medicine. The effectiveness of drugs is interdependent. Cancer patients undergoing expensive chemotherapy need cheap antibiotics to handle the otherwise potentially fatal side effects as their immune systems reel from the impact of the poison to kill the cancer.

We are used to the notion that medical science is getting better; there is no need to fear an infected finger, let alone the diseases that traumatised earlier generations. Now it seems science is losing the battle we are accustomed to it winning.

But the crisis is much less in science than it is in the ways it is directed and organised. It is no accident that the failure to develop any major new antibiotics over the past 30 years has coincided with the roll back of the state and the accompanying collapse in self-confidence in public initiatives or in the beneficial affects of public spending.

Drug discovery, and with it the evolution of the entire complex medical ecosystem along with the science that supports it, has been driven by profit signals in the commercial marketplace. Because the easy to find antibiotic chemical compounds have been discovered, new research is complex and expensive – yet antibiotics are priced as low-margin commodity drugs. Worse, regulators – especially the FDA in the US which, as the gatekeeper to the richest drugs market in the world, is of pivotal importance – only license antibiotics for particular rather than generalised uses.

For a profit-maximising drug company such as Pfizer, there is an obvious conclusion. Don't waste valuable R&D on low-margin antibiotics that are never going to become super-profitable blockbusters. Instead, develop, say, Viagra (as it has), which is a high-margin, global money spinner. Exploit your financial muscle by avoiding as much tax as possible – other mutts can fund the infrastructure from which you directly benefit – and try to buy up other drug companies, such as AstraZeneca, which has been foolish enough to invest in drugs that are more integral to the entire medical ecosystem. You can harvest the results of their efforts, pocket your vast meta-bonus and buy an island in the Pacific. You may even be lucky enough to encounter a misguided, weak government – like the UK's – that believes this is the way to do business.

In the 19th century, one of the biggest catalysts to end laissez-faire was the lived experience of infectious diseases, lack of sewers, dirty air, contaminated food and unregulated quack medicine. The upper middle class built their pavilions on the windward west of English cities to try to limit their exposure not just to the stink but the risk of infection: is it no accident that the working class lived downwind on the east of cities?

But infectious disease does not respect the boundaries of class and wealth. Beginning with the 1840 Vaccination Act, the Victorians decided that public health had to come before individual freedom, and launched the interlocking efforts to build sewers, vaccinate infants and marshal ever better science to support their efforts. Anti-vaccination movements protesting against the extension of the state – the equivalent of today's Ukip – had to drop their resistance before the health need and weight of the evidence.

The WHO is invoking that same spirit today. Antibiotics are precious and the gains to public health precarious. Our culture does not respect these life-giving drugs enough; we use them like aspirin, not completing the courses we are prescribed or even giving unused drugs to friends or family for whom they were not diagnosed.

Nature is wreaking its revenge. Now we need a new collective effort to respond. It begins with each individual recognising and treasuring the miracle of antibiotics, but it also means that new antibiotics have to be developed faster and more effectively. We need smarter, more open forms of research collaboration between a multiplicity of drug companies around health strategies that understand that drugs are global public health goods, and that the medical ecosystem stands and falls as a whole. Antibiotics are as important as drug blockbusters to our health, if not to drug companies' profits. 

Governments need to reset the incentives and drug companies their priorities. The best scientists and universities know this and want their science to be deployed in that way.
Britain could take a lead but over the next few weeks we are to be robbed of one of our major pharmaceutical assets, AstraZeneca, which will probably be taken over by Pfizer, one of whose prime strategic objectives is tax avoidance. The WHO must call for changes in not just how antibiotics are used, but how they are researched and produced if the world is not to confront devastating consequences. Dangerous bacteria even infect the ideologues in Number 10 so anxious to sell out to US interests, and the AstraZeneca shareholders who declare no loyalty except to the highest, short-term share price. Our health demands a new seriousness of intent, and a recognition that it is a public good not a private plaything. Saying no to Pfizer would be a wake-up call for everyone.

Gavin Schmidt: The emergent patterns of climate change (Video/Transcript)

Source: TED
We live in a very complex environment: complexity and dynamism and patterns of evidence from satellite photographs, from videos. You can even see it outside your window. It's endlessly complex, but somehow familiar, but the patterns kind of repeat, but they never repeat exactly. It's a huge challenge to understand. The patterns that you see are there at all of the different scales, but you can't chop it into one little bit and say, "Oh, well let me just make a smaller climate." I can't use the normal products of reductionism to get a smaller and smaller thing that I can study in a laboratory and say, "Oh, now that's something I now understand." It's the whole or it's nothing.
 

The different scales that give you these kinds of patterns range over an enormous range of magnitude, roughly 14 orders of magnitude, from the small microscopic particles that seed clouds to the size of the planet itself, from 10 to the minus six to 10 to the eight, 14 orders of spatial magnitude. In time, from milliseconds to millennia, again around 14 orders of magnitude.
 

What does that mean? Okay, well if you think about how you can calculate these things, you can take what you can see, okay, I'm going to chop it up into lots of little boxes, and that's the result of physics, right? And if I think about a weather model, that spans about five orders of magnitude, from the planet to a few kilometers, and the time scale from a few minutes to 10 days, maybe a month. We're interested in more than that. We're interested in the climate. That's years, that's millennia, and we need to go to even smaller scales. The stuff that we can't resolve, the sub-scale processes, we need to approximate in some way. That is a huge challenge. Climate models in the 1990s took an even smaller chunk of that, only about three orders of magnitude. Climate models in the 2010s, kind of what we're working with now, four orders of magnitude. We have 14 to go, and we're increasing our capability of simulating those at about one extra order of magnitude every decade. One extra order of magnitude in space is 10,000 times more calculations. And we keep adding more things, more questions to these different models.
 

So what does a climate model look like? This is an old climate model, admittedly, a punch card, a single line of Fortran code. We no longer use punch cards. We do still use Fortran. New-fangled ideas like C really haven't had a big impact on the climate modeling community.

  
But how do we go about doing it? How do we go from that complexity that you saw to a line of code? We do it one piece at a time. This is a picture of sea ice taken flying over the Arctic. We can look at all of the different equations that go into making the ice grow or melt or change shape. We can look at the fluxes. We can look at the rate at which snow turns to ice, and we can code that. We can encapsulate that in code. These models are around a million lines of code at this point, and growing by tens of thousands of lines of code every year. 

So you can look at that piece, but you can look at the other pieces too. What happens when you have clouds? What happens when clouds form, when they dissipate, when they rain out? That's another piece. What happens when we have radiation coming from the sun, going through the atmosphere, being absorbed and reflected? We can code each of those very small pieces as well. There are other pieces: the winds changing the ocean currents. We can talk about the role of vegetation in transporting water from the soils back into the atmosphere. And each of these different elements we can encapsulate and put into a system. Each of those pieces ends up adding to the whole.

 And you get something like this. You get a beautiful representation of what's going on in the climate system, where each and every one of those emergent patterns that you can see, the swirls in the Southern Ocean, the tropical cyclone in the Gulf of Mexico, and there's two more that are going to pop up in the Pacific at any point now, those rivers of atmospheric water, all of those are emergent properties that come from the interactions of all of those small-scale processes I mentioned. There's no code that says, "Do a wiggle in the Southern Ocean." There's no code that says, "Have two tropical cyclones that spin around each other." All of those things are emergent properties.
 

This is all very good. This is all great. But what we really want to know is what happens to these emergent properties when we kick the system? When something changes, what happens to those properties? And there's lots of different ways to kick the system. There are wobbles in the Earth's orbit over hundreds of thousands of years that change the climate. There are changes in the solar cycles, every 11 years and longer, that change the climate. Big volcanoes go off and change the climate. Changes in biomass burning, in smoke, in aerosol particles, all of those things change the climate. The ozone hole changed the climate. Deforestation changes the climate by changing the surface properties and how water is evaporated and moved around in the system. Contrails change the climate by creating clouds where there were none before, and of course greenhouse gases change the system.

Each of these different kicks provides us with a target to evaluate whether we understand something about this system. So we can go to look at what model skill is. Now I use the word "skill" advisedly: Models are not right or wrong; they're always wrong. They're always approximations. The question you have to ask is whether a model tells you more information than you would have had otherwise. If it does, it's skillful. This is the impact of the ozone hole on sea level pressure, so low pressure, high pressures, around the southern oceans, around Antarctica. This is observed data. This is modeled data. There's a good match because we understand the physics that controls the temperatures in the stratosphere and what that does to the winds around the southern oceans.
 

We can look at other examples. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 put an enormous amount of aerosols, small particles, into the stratosphere. That changed the radiation balance of the whole planet. There was less energy coming in than there was before, so that cooled the planet, and those red lines and those green lines, those are the differences between what we expected and what actually happened. The models are skillful, not just in the global mean, but also in the regional patterns. 

I could go through a dozen more examples: the skill associated with solar cycles, changing the ozone in the stratosphere; the skill associated with orbital changes over 6,000 years. We can look at that too, and the models are skillful. The models are skillful in response to the ice sheets 20,000 years ago. The models are skillful when it comes to the 20th-century trends over the decades. Models are successful at modeling lake outbursts into the North Atlantic 8,000 years ago. And we can get a good match to the data.

Each of these different targets, each of these different evaluations, leads us to add more scope to these models, and leads us to more and more complex situations that we can ask more and more interesting questions, like, how does dust from the Sahara, that you can see in the orange, interact with tropical cyclones in the Atlantic? How do organic aerosols from biomass burning, which you can see in the red dots, intersect with clouds and rainfall patterns? How does pollution, which you can see in the white wisps of sulfate pollution in Europe, how does that affect the temperatures at the surface and the sunlight that you get at the surface?

We can look at this across the world. We can look at the pollution from China. We can look at the impacts of storms on sea salt particles in the atmosphere. We can see the combination of all of these different things happening all at once, and we can ask much more interesting questions. How do air pollution and climate coexist? Can we change things that affect air pollution and climate at the same time? The answer is yes.

So this is a history of the 20th century. The first one is the model. The weather is a little bit different to what actually happened. The second one are the observations. And we're going through the 1930s. There's variability, there are things going on, but it's all kind of in the noise. As you get towards the 1970s, things are going to start to change. They're going to start to look more similar, and by the time you get to the 2000s, you're already seeing the patterns of global warming, both in the observations and in the model.

We know what happened over the 20th century. Right? We know that it's gotten warmer. We know where it's gotten warmer. And if you ask the models why did that happen, and you say, okay, well, yes, basically it's because of the carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere. We have a very good match up until the present day.

But there's one key reason why we look at models, and that's because of this phrase here. Because if we had observations of the future, we obviously would trust them more than models, But unfortunately, observations of the future are not available at this time.

So when we go out into the future, there's a difference. The future is unknown, the future is uncertain, and there are choices. Here are the choices that we have. We can do some work to mitigate the emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That's the top one. We can do more work to really bring it down so that by the end of the century, it's not much more than there is now. Or we can just leave it to fate and continue on with a business-as-usual type of attitude. The differences between these choices can't be answered by looking at models.

There's a great phrase that Sherwood Rowland, who won the Nobel Prize for the chemistry that led to ozone depletion, when he was accepting his Nobel Prize, he asked this question: "What is the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we're willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?" The models are skillful, but what we do with the information from those models is totally up to you.

Thank you.

(Applause)

US seizes $458m in corrupt funds - but what now?

By Leslie Wayne
Source:The Center for Public Integrity

With much fanfare, the U.S. Department of Justice recently announced it had frozen more than $458 million in corrupt assets that the former Nigerian dictator, Sani Abacha, and his friends had hidden in bank accounts around the world. This was hailed as the largest forfeiture action bought as part of Justices’ Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, two-year old effort to identify the proceeds of corrupt officials and return them to those who were harmed.

In the case of Nigeria, that money was allegedly embezzled from the country’s central bank, extorted from local businesses and sent through a maze of bank accounts controlled by Abacha and his associates for their own benefit.  When the Abacha asset seizure was announced, Justice officials pulled out all the rhetorical flourishes:  “Today’s action sends a clear message: We are determined and equipped to confiscate the ill-gotten riches of corrupt leaders who drain the resources of their countries,’’ said Mythili Raman, Acting Assistant Attorney General in a statement in March.

Now comes the hard part – what to do with that $458 million?

Justice has said it wants to return any seized assets back to their country of origin, whenever possible.  The goal of the Kleptocracy Initiative, said Lanny Breuer, the former Assistant Attorney General who once headed the program, is “to identify the proceeds of foreign official corruption, forfeit them, and repatriate the recouped funds for the benefit of the people.”

Even President Obama has struck the same theme of returning stolen assets to the people.  In a major speech in 2011 on the Middle East and Africa, Mr. Obama said “We will help newly democratic governments recover assets that were stolen.”

Rhetoric aside, returning the fruits of corruption may be easier said than done.  In far too many cases, one corrupt ruling elite is only replaced by another, making it impossible to return assets directly to a new government.  And, in some cases, the corrupt officials are still in power.

In the case of Abacha and Nigeria, Peter Carr, a spokesman for Justice told ICIJ that “What happens in each individual case is determined by court order, which will happen at a later date with the funds identified in the Abacha order.”
 
For several years, some have been advocating for more creative uses of the money and the Abacha case has stirred them to action. One advocate is Alexander Sierck, counsel to an organization called the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), a non-governmental organization seeking to hold the Nigerian government accountable. In a letter to the Justice Department last month, Mr. Sierck asked that the $458 million “be conveyed to a reliable U.S. or Nigerian charitable organization to be spent on health care, for example, subject to anti-corruption safeguards.”

There is precedent for this approach.  In 2007, Justice took $84 million that had been seized as part of a bribery scheme involving officials in Kazakhstan and used the entire amount to create the BOTA Foundation, a non-governmental organization that supports education, health and social welfare in that country.  By all accounts it is working.  The BOTA Foundation has anti-corruption guidelines in place, has a solid track record of using the money wisely and the money has remained out of the hands of corrupt government officials.

In a 2009 speech, Attorney General Eric Holder cited several cases of repatriated assets, without giving any details.  These include $20 million returned to Peru, $100 million to Italy and several million to Nicaragua.  Mr. Carr, the Justice spokesman, said he did not have further information on these arrangements.

Mr. Sierck, a former Justice Department official and expert on white collar crime, has his own ideas – not just for the Abacha money but for all seizure cases.  He would like to see a general process set up to determine the fate of seized money, setting out rules and criteria for handling these windfalls. Once this process was in place, Justice could then decide whether it would keep the money and give it to the U.S. Treasury, return it to any new government that might replace a corrupt regime or give to a NGO for special projects, or anything else under the guidelines.

“What we are proposing is that Justice set up a process for handling this,’’ said Mr. Sierck, in an interview with ICIJ.  That, too, he acknowledges might be tough, given his own experience in government. There’s bureaucratic inertia, a resistance within the government to set up new mechanisms, and always the issue of turf, since any such program would also involve the departments of State and Treasury, he said.

So far, no one at Justice has answered Mr. Sierck’s letter, not even to acknowledge its receipt. And given how difficult it might be to enact the process he describes: “I’m not surprised I’ve not heard back.’’

Investigating Surveillance: German Parliament Divided over Snowden Subpoena

By SPIEGEL Staff

Berlin has insisted it wants to scrutinize NSA spying in Germany. But actually inviting Edward Snowden to testify before a paraliamentary investigation is proving delicate. Some in Chancellor Merkel's party are now casting doubt on Snowden's suitability as a witness. 

It was, of course, purely coincidental that Glenn Greenwald found himself in Berlin last week, just as the debate in Germany was swelling over whether Edward Snowden should be invited to testify before the NSA investigative committee in the Bundestag, the federal parliament.

Greenwald had flown in from Brazil, where he lives, to speak at the presentation of the Liberty Award, a prize honoring foreign correspondents from Germany. And he didn't pass up the opportunity to pay tribute to Snowden, the man whose source material he has relied on in helping to shed light on the global surveillance system maintained by the United States and Britain. "Every country," said Greenwald, 47, has a moral obligation to help Snowden. That, he added, is particularly true for Germany. Top politicians in Berlin were targeted by the NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ, and Germany would have been none the wiser but for Snowden. Meanwhile, Snowden's visa for political asylum in Russia, where he now lives, is set to expire this summer.

Just a few hours prior to Greenwald's speech, and not even two kilometers away, politicians belonging to Chancellor Angela Merkel's governing coalition made clear that help would not soon be forthcoming. The Greens and the Left Party, both in the opposition, had moved to invite Snowden to testify before the parliament's NSA committee, but conservative and Social Democratic members of the committee are in no hurry and it remains unclear when they might reach a decision. Opposition politicians are furious.

The squabbling within the committee -- which led to the resignation of Chairman Clemens Binninger of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) -- is more than just the standard Berlin bickering. Ten months after the NSA spying affair began, the parliamentary investigation has presented Merkel's government with the perfect opportunity to finally demonstrate its resolve in getting to the bottom of US and UK spying activities in Germany. Berlin has frequently insisted it is committed to probing the depths of the scandal, with Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière (of the CDU) even claiming that "boundless" American surveillance would be addressed. But if the handling of Snowden provides any indication, the government's resolve is to be doubted.

Lasting Damage
 
It is perhaps not surprising that Berlin would seem to have gotten cold feet. Snowden's presence in Germany would be delicate in the extreme from a foreign policy perspective. And trans-Atlanticists in the Merkel government have for months been uncomfortable with the fact that many of Snowden's closest supporters have chosen the German capital as their base of operations. Should Snowden, 30, be allowed to join them, many in Berlin fear that US-German cooperation could suffer lasting damage, particularly on intelligence issues.

Were Snowden to testify before the Bundestag investigative committee, says Heather Conley, a former US diplomat who is now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, it would be a "major irritant in the US-German bilateral relationship." His testimony, she continues, "will continue to deepen anti-American sentiment in Germany and elsewhere in Europe" -- just at a time when the Ukraine crisis is demonstrating just how important trans-Atlantic ties are.

Partly for that reason, Merkel decided early on not to grant Snowden asylum in Germany. Her fear of a clash with the US is just as great as her concern over a potentially divisive domestic political debate. Government sources say it could lead to a grave fissure in her governing coalition, which pairs her conservatives with the center-left SPD. The final say over visa issues lays with the Interior Ministry, under the control of de Maizière, one of Merkel's closest allies.

There is, however, an exception: Were a parliamentary investigative committee to subpoena a witness from abroad, the Interior Minister's discretion "could be reduced to nil," according to an expert opinion provided by the Bundestag's research service. On the contrary, he would then be required to do everything within his power to prepare such a visit, unless, the expert opinion notes, the welfare of the state is at risk. That, though, is a "question that can only be answered on an individual basis" -- and parliament has a significant say in the answer.

Both the Greens and the Left Party have been adamant that Snowden should be allowed to come to Germany and the expert opinion produced by the Bundestag's research service has made it clear that the investigative committee provides the best tool to reach that goal. Once Snowden is here, both opposition parties would like to see him stay.

That, though, is an impossibility from the perspective of Merkel's conservatives. "Were Snowden to come to Germany," says conservative domestic policy spokesman Stephan Mayer, "then the government, in my opinion, would be required to accede to the legally unobjectionable extradition request from the US." A final decision in this hypothetical could ultimately lie with the judiciary.

'A Dead-End'
 
Senior Green party figure Hans-Christian Ströbele says that it is paramount for the investigative committee to learn as much about American surveillance practices as possible. But, he notes, "there is a second important aspect for me: We have to make it possible for a man, whom we have so much to thank for, to live a normal life in a country based on the rule of law." And there isn't much time to achieve that goal, he adds. Snowden's asylum visa in Russia expires in August and nobody knows how long Russian President Vladimir Putin might continue to allow his presence.

The Left Party and the Greens sought to petition for a Snowden subpoena in the very first session of the investigative committee, but conservatives rejected the move. Indeed, the committee chairman, Clemens Binninger, unexpectedly resigned in response last Wednesday, saying that he stepped down to protest opposition efforts to turn the committee into a Snowden circus. In his statement, Binninger said that Snowden was not of particular interest as a witness. "Focusing only on him would lead the committee into a dead-end," he said.

The Greens immediately became suspicious and claimed, with no evidence whatsoever, that Binninger had been pressured into resignation by the Chancellery. Merkel, according to the Greens, didn't want to have a potential Snowden subpoena hanging over her during her trip to Washington at the beginning of next month. Binninger was quick to deny the accusations. "During the entire preparations for the committee, there were no discussions with the Chancellery -- formal or otherwise -- regarding how to approach the witness Snowden," he said, adding that his decision was his alone. Ströbele is not convinced and is now considering subpoenaing witnesses from the Chancellery.

But the Chancellery too was caught off guard by Binninger's sudden resignation. Chancellery sources note that Binninger was apparently unprepared for the political nature of most parliamentary investigative committees. To be sure, Merkel's staff has also denied accusations that it sought to influence the investigation, but sources also admit that Merkel is eager to avoid travelling to the US under the shadow of an impending Snowden visit to Berlin.

During the investigative committee's second session last Thursday -- now under the leadership of Patrick Sensburg -- coalition politicians listed a number of concerns related to the potential Snowden subpoena. Myriad questions pertaining to such a visit would have to be resolved, including organizational issues and Russia's potential stance.

The When and the How
 
When the Left Party and the Greens refused to back down, coalition lawmakers resorted to a procedural trick. Although the opposition can make as many motions to collect evidence as they like, the majority decides on when and how such motions are addressed.
The majority decided to delay the vote on whether to subpoena Snowden until its next meeting. By then, the government is to determine if and how such a visit could be arranged. Whether coincidence or not, the government has been asked to provide that information by May 2, precisely the date on which Chancellor Merkel embarks on her next trip to the United States to meete with President Barack Obama.

Committee Chairman Sensburg believes this is sensible, saying that it must be determined in advance whether Snowden has "anything relevant" to say. "Only then can we consider the question of when, where and how" it can take place, he said. The politician also said that the questioning didn't necessarily have to take place in Germany. The SPD's senior official on the committee holds a similar view. "I admonish all members of the committee not to use the Snowden issue to create media attention," he said. "That would be cheap and inappropriate."

Green Party politician Konstantin von Notz, on the other hand, is annoyed. "The Christian Democrats and the SPD are defending the government's interests," he said. "If that continues, then the next four years are going to be terrible." He says his faction is considering challenging the procedural tricks now being used by the majority at Germany's Federal Court of Justice. Notz said he finds it absurd that there has been a debate for weeks now on whether or not Snowden would make an important witness. "He is one of the most important ones," he said.

One man suspected early on that people would seek to discredit the whistleblower: Snowden himself. Even as he began his flight, he said that the American government would seek to impose long-term damage to his credibility as a witness.

Snowden wasn't a senior employee at the NSA, but he was an unusually perceptive and critical one. He says he made the decision to turn against his employer when, while working as a systems administrator, he stumbled across a document from the NSA's general inspector dating from 2009. In it, an NSA lawyer at the agency's headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, outlined the tectonic changes that had been made to America's security structures following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It described in detail how the NSA had been given wider leeway for its operations with significant support from former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Significant Value
 
That's the point at which Snowden came up with the idea of obtaining as many documents as he could. He had been planning his departure from the NSA for over a year. US officials claim that he then used a webcrawler to automatically detect and download data. Among other areas, they claim he used the software program to obtain reports from the powerful technical surveillance unit, which had a sort of online black board behind the firewall where reports were posted with information about various secret operations.

Information about that alone could be significantly valuable to the parliamentary committee. It would allow members of German parliament, who know little about the NSA's structures, to learn how the US intelligence service is organized, which data is stored, where it is stored and for how long, and the importance of certain types of documents. Even just the way he handled the material shows how deeply he dove into the NSA's inner workings. He sorted the data into categories that document the NSA's various secret programs -- the surveillance of other countries or Internet infrastructure, for example. He stored the some 50,000 documents from Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) separately. The papers include diverse clues that are also important for the investigation in Germany. They would spotlight, for example, the close cooperation between the NSA and the largest American telecommunications companies, like AT&T -- a cooperation which, documents show, sought to direct part of international data traffic through the United States to make it possible for the NSA to access it.

Of particular relevance to Germany is a program called "Tempora" which is operated jointly by the NSA and GCHQ. The program, operated out of Bude in Cornwall, is used by the intelligence services to tap parts of international data traffic in the large fiber optic cables that run across Europe. "Tempora is the first 'I save everything approach' ('full take') in the intelligence world," Snowden says. He claims "it sucks in all data, no matter what it is, and which rights are violated by it." Last week, Bloomberg reported that the NSA has been exploiting the Heartbleed bug in order to tap encrypted data. The US government has denied the allegation.

One of the parliamentary committee's key objectives is to determine the extent to which the NSA is surveilling the German people. Tempora would seem to be an important piece of this puzzle. Snowden spent a lot of time looking into Tempora and would likely be able to say a lot about the program.

'Think Twice'
 

Snowden's German lawyer, Wolfgang Kaleck, is convinced of this. Last Friday, he assured members of the committee in writing that Snowden occupied a "unique work status" in the US intelligence service structure. "He possesses expertise that for this reason alone is of crucial importance because he may be the only specialist of such rank who would also be willing to or is in a position to share his knowledge with the NSA investigative committee."

The decision on whether the former NSA employee testifies is a decision that Snowden himself must make. Diplomatic sources in Berlin suggest that Snowden would have to "think twice" about traveling to Germany. Even if he had hopes for applying for amnesty here, the risks for the 30-year-old in traveling from Moscow to Berlin would be considerable.

Memories in Berlin are still fresh of how vigorous efforts were in July 2013 to force a plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales to land in Vienna. At the time, the Americans suspected that Edward Snowden was on board the aircraft.

BY NIKOLAUS BLOME, HUBERT GUDE, RENE PFISTER, JÖRG SCHINDLER AND HOLGER STARK
 
Translated from the German by Charles Hawley and Daryl Lindsey