Chris Hedges's Blog, page 136

The Inescapable Brutality of the Israeli Occupation

What follows is a conversation between journalist Richard Silverstein and Greg Wilpert of The Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

GREG WILPERT: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Greg Wilpert in Arlington.

The Palestinian Samer al-Arbid is hospitalized and in critical condition fighting for his life after having been tortured by the Israeli police. al-Arbid was suspected of being involved in the murder of an Israeli colonist, the 17 year old Rina Schnerb, but he was released from custody after no evidence or charges were brought against him. Two weeks later, he was arrested again. Israel’s secret police reported that they suspected he was in possession of a bomb and secured permission from an Israeli court to use torture. During the torture, al-Arbid lost consciousness and was rushed to the hospital where his rib cage was found to have been broken. Palestinians in the occupied West Bank protested fiercely against the treatment of Samer al-Arbid.

One of the thousands of protestors is of the Union of Palestinian Women Committees who herself spent many months in an Israeli prison. She said the following during the protest.

SPEAKER: We are here today to support the pioneer prisoners who suffered from brutal and inhumane torture. We want to tell the whole world that they should see Israel’s fascist policy. We shouldn’t call it Israel, it’s an occupied Zionist and fascist regime. How they treat the prisoners and how they kill them, they torture them to death.

GREG WILPERT: In 1984, the Israeli government signed the UN Convention Against Torture, even as the Israeli security agency also known as Shin Bet or Shabak continued to torture Palestinian prisoners. The Israeli Committee Against Torture published an article just two weeks ago on September 15 commemorating the 20 years of the Israeli Supreme Court decision to ban torture. But the group warned that the ban is not effective; courts continue to approve the use of torture when the secret police say that there is a special need for torture.

Joining me now to discuss the use of torture in Israel is Richard Silverstein. He is an independent journalist who writes for the Tikun Olam blog, which explores Jewish-Muslim relations and the Israeli-Arab conflict. Thanks for joining us again, Richard.

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

GREG WILPERT: So how can the Israeli government claim that torture is forbidden in Israel, and at the same time the secret police can conduct torture with the court’s approval? Can you make sense of the system for us?

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN: Well, it’s a long topic, but basically the Israeli Supreme Court has given sort of a gloss of liberalism and humanity to this Israeli regime, which basically is underlaid by, I call it a national security state or a a garrison state in which security is really the be-all and the end-all of everything that the state stands for. So the Supreme court basically gave an opening that a Mack truck could drive through in terms of the torture ruling. And so anytime that a suspect is ruled a ticking bomb, which means somebody who is either in imminent stages of planning a terror attack or may have an explosive device on their person or is in some way directly about to commit an act of terror as the Shabak, the Shin Bet, defines it, which I think is also another problem, that person can be tortured in order to elicit, supposedly to elicit information.

It’s questionable to me what information or whether there was any information in this case for them to elicit from Samer because I believe that basically this was an issue of revenge. They knew that he was, or they named him as the person heading the cell which committed the terror attack, and I believe therefore they wanted to inflict maximum injury and damage. In addition to the injuries you mentioned, he came into the hospital with kidney failure and he was unconscious and is now only breathing with use of an artificial respiration device. So I would say he just basically came in in a coma. He’ gravely injured. If he survives this treatment, he will be damaged for the rest of his life.

And this is not just a one-off situation. There are scores if not hundreds of Palestinian prisoners who’ve been treated very similarly. And in addition, there are just Palestinian prisoners who die in Israeli prisons of mistreatment and medical malfeasance. So this is really a whole structure that underlies the Israeli state, and it’s not a a sui generis kind of thing. It’s really systematic and routine.

GREG WILPERT: Now of course this case seems to call particular attention to the fact that this happens. But what is not very well known is the ISA, the Israeli secret police, is not part of the Israeli police force, and is also not answerable to the Ministry of Public Security. Instead, it answers directly to the prime minister’s office. Now, would that mean that Benjamin Netanyahu could be held accountable under international law, and thus could face charges in the international criminal court for ordering torture, which is considered to be a war crime?

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN: Well, I think the fact that Mossad, all of the intelligence agencies fit under that rubric except for the IDF’s intelligence agency, Aman, which is under the IDF. So you have the Mossad and Shin Bet that are under the prime minister’s office. That doesn’t mean though that the prime minister himself supervises what they do. It really basically just gives those two agencies carte blanche to do whatever they do without any oversight at all. Basically, the prime minister, he may be briefed on what these agencies are doing, or about to do, in some cases where it’s a very major, important operation where say the Mossad is about to assassinate a key figure of Hamas abroad, like has happened in several countries, the prime minister may approve that sort of operation. But I don’t think that he is involved in day-to-day operations.

That being said, I think there are many reasons and many points at which Netanyahu could be brought to the Hague for such international justice. And they involve ordering operations, military operations, in which thousands of Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and other places. So if we want to talk about potential war crimes, I think there’s plenty on his plate, perhaps not as much a in this sort of situation. Although, he has approved specific assassinations, and I believe those should be considered war crimes. So six of one, half dozen of the other, I guess.

GREG WILPERT: Now, the Israeli news media generally refer to al-Arbid as a terrorist even though no charges have been filed against him. And they also express surprise though, just the media expresses surprise that someone could emerge injured from a secret police interrogation even though, as you mentioned, this has happened many times before. So how do you explain this portrayal of al-Arbid’s case in the Israeli media given all of these contradictions?

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN: Well, it’s interesting that Israeli officials of the state, military officers who engage in war crimes and massive slaughter of Palestinians, don’t seem to be charged with war crimes, but a Palestinian engaged in resistance, violent resistance, is a terrorist. I would want to balance that out and say that the Israeli state engages in terror to a much more grave and lethal extent than the Palestinians do. And the issue also reflects the fact that the Israelis who were killed, not that they really themselves individually might’ve been guilty of any sort of oppression of Palestinians, but they were visiting the West Bank. This is occupied land, this is Palestine, and the father of the child who was killed is a rabbi, possibly an ultra-Orthodox rabbi.

So these are people that support the occupation. They are supporting the theft of Palestinian lands. So there is a one-sided sort of perspective in Israel that all of the Palestinians are suspect, and all are guilty until proven otherwise. And there’s no sense that any Israeli has committed any violation of Palestinian rights. And there’s a complete obliviousness to moral and political rights on the Palestinian side from the Israelis.

GREG WILPERT: Now, finally, in your blog, Tikun Olam, you expose that the officer in charge of the torture of al-Arbid, who is known only by the letter N, was recently promoted to lieutenant colonel. What can you tell us about her and about the way in which secrets slipped through the fingers of one of Israel’s most secretive organizations?

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN: Well, thankfully for me, I’m able to report stories that either are censored or under judicial gag orders in Israel due to several different sources, some of them being in the security establishment itself. These people may have their own reasons for being willing to share information with me. But in this particular case, I was told that a female commander in the Shabak whose code name is Nurit–and that’s hence the initial N, which means that her real first name does start with the initial N, or nun in Hebrew. I unfortunately do not know her family name, her last name. And I have appealed to any Israelis who may have information about that. I would like to expose her identity because she directly, or her unit under her command, have tortured this man to an inch of his life, and I do feel that these sort of crimes need to be exposed and need to have individuals attached to them.

And her appointment, originally, her recruitment to the Shabak was part of a new regime that was introduced to turn the Shabak from a male-dominated enterprise agency into a more balanced enterprise in which women would be recruited. The gloss that was given in the media, the gloss was that we were going to introduce new modes of thinking, we were going to introduce the women’s perspective into our activities. But really what has happened is the women who were recruited have turned into really mirror images of the men themselves who were always brutal, thuggish in their interrogations. And it’s proven by what she and her unit did in this case.

And I just wanted to mention that the Shabak doesn’t really have ranks that are equivalent to the IDF. So this rank, she was promoted from a major to a lieutenant colonel, these are reflective of the ranks within the Shabak and don’t necessarily have those names in the Shabak hierarchy, but she has an extremely senior position. And really this reflects the fact that gender, unfortunately, in a regime like Israel, female gender doesn’t really sort of moderate the torture in the worst successes of an agency like the Shabak. The women just become like the men and do their worst to assault the dignity of the Palestinian prisoners because that’s really what the state wants them to do.

GREG WILPERT: Okay, well we’re going to have to conclude there. I was speaking to Richard Silverstein, independent journalist and blogger at Tikun Olam. Thanks again, Richard, for having joined us today.

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN: Thanks. It was my pleasure.

GREG WILPERT: And thank you for joining The Real News Network.

DHARNA NOOR: Hey y’all. My name is Dharna Noor and I’m a climate crisis reporter here at The Real News Network. This is a crucial moment for humanity and for the planet. So if you like what we do, please, please support us by subscribing at the link below. Thank you.



As Impeachment Looms, GOP Revolts Against Trump on Syria

NEW YORK — They may have his back on impeachment, but some of President Donald Trump’s most loyal allies are suddenly revolting against his decision to pull back U.S. troops from northern Syria.

On Monday, one chief Trump loyalist in Congress called the move “unnerving to the core.” An influential figure in conservative media condemned it as “a disaster.” And Trump’s former top NATO envoy said it was “a big mistake” that would threaten the lives of Kurdish fighters who had fought for years alongside American troops against the Islamic State group.

Trump’s surprise move, which came with no advance warning late Sunday and stunned many in his own government, threatened to undermine what has been near lockstep support among Republicans at a critical moment in his presidency. Democrats are pursuing an impeachment inquiry in the House, while Republicans in the Senate stand as the president’s bulwark against being removed from office.

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Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who has been among Trump’s most vocal defenders, called the Syria decision “a disaster in the making” that would throw the region into chaos and embolden the Islamic State group.

“I hope I’m making myself clear how short-sighted and irresponsible this decision is,” Graham told Fox News. “I like President Trump. I’ve tried to help him. This, to me, is just unnerving to its core.”

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who has shrugged off the key allegation in the impeachment inquiry — that Trump pressured foreign powers to investigate a top Democratic rival — tweeted that Trump’s shift on Syria is “a grave mistake that will have implications far beyond Syria.”

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who has been more willing than many Republicans to condemn Trump’s calls for foreign intervention in the 2020 election, called the Syria move “a terribly unwise decision.”

And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell likened Trump’s latest foreign policy announcement to something from Barack Obama’s presidency.

“As we learned the hard way during the Obama Administration, American interests are best served by American leadership, not by retreat or withdrawal,” McConnell said.

Republicans in Congress have broken with Trump on Syria before. The GOP-controlled Senate voted overwhelmingly in February to oppose the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan the last time he unveiled a similar proposal without warning on Twitter late last year.

But the intensity, scope and timing of Monday’s backlash makes this time different. In the face of a serious impeachment inquiry, Trump’s very political future depends on his ability to maintain the loyalty of his party on and off Capitol Hill.

“For Trump to make a very controversial move on Syria at the exact moment when he needs Senate Republicans more than ever is risky politics,” said former Trump aide Alex Conant, noting the significance for many Senate Republicans of the United States’ policy in northern Syria, where Kurds would be particularly vulnerable to a Turkish invasion.

“They’re not just going to send out a couple of tweets and move on,” Conant said.

For a day, at least, the intraparty clash dominated the political conversation, overshadowing the president’s near-constant campaign to undermine the Democrats’ impeachment investigation.

Nikki Haley, who was Trump’s hand-picked ambassador to the United Nations, cast the decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Iraq as a betrayal of a key ally.

“The Kurds were instrumental in our successful fight against ISIS in Syria. Leaving them to die is a big mistake,” she wrote on Twitter.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., a member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees, called it a “misguided and catastrophic blow to our national security interests.”

On Fox News, a network where many rank-and-file Trump supporters get their news, host Brian Kilmeade said it was “a disaster.”

“Abandon our allies? That’s a campaign promise? Abandon the people that got the caliphate destroyed?” Kilmeade said on “Fox & Friends.”

A more frequent Republican Trump critic, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, cast Trump’s announcement as “a betrayal”: “It says that America is an unreliable ally; it facilitates ISIS resurgence; and it presages another humanitarian disaster.”

While unusually strong, the Republican rebellion was far from complete. And polling suggests that voters in both parties share Trump’s desire to end the nation’s decadeslong military operations in the Middle East.

Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., a prominent evangelical leader, said Trump was simply “keeping his promise to keep America out of endless wars.”

He suggested Trump could easily reengage in the region if the decision backfires.

“The president has got to do what’s best for the country, whether it helps him with this phony impeachment inquiry or not,” Falwell said in an interview.

Former Trump campaign aide Barry Bennett noted that the president has been talking about reducing troop levels in the Middle East since before the 2016 election.

“I understand that they don’t like the policy, but none of them should be shocked by the policy,” Bennett said. “He’s only been talking about this for four or five years now. I think he’s with the vast majority of the public.”

Trump defended his decision among a stream of more than a dozen social media posts Monday, downplaying the risk of a potential Turkish attack on the Kurds.

“If Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey,” Trump wrote. He added: “The endless and ridiculous wars are ENDING! We will be focused on the big picture, knowing we can always go back & BLAST!”

___

Associated Press writers Sagar Meghani and Alan Fram in Washington contributed to this report.

Trump’s Stealth Attack on America’s Seniors

Watch out, older Americans and people with disabilities! President Trump just announced a plan to give corporate health insurers more control over your health care. His new executive order calls for “market-based” pricing, which would drive up costs for everyone with Medicare, eviscerate traditional Medicare, and steer more people into for-profit “Medicare Advantage” plans.

Seema Verma, the Trump appointee who heads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), may not have warned Trump about the slew of government audits revealing that many Medicare Advantage plans pose “an imminent and serious risk to the health of… enrollees.” They also overcharge taxpayers to the tune of $10 billion a year.

In the last few years alone, CMS’ limited audits have highlighted major issues with Medicare Advantage plans. Reports from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and Government Accountability Office (GAO) have underscored these issues. They have recommended that CMS increase its oversight of Medicare Advantage plans and its enforcement efforts.

A Medicare Payment Advisory Commission report indicates that the problems with Medicare Advantage may be even more far-reaching than the government audits indicate. The Medicare Advantage plans have failed to turn over reliable and complete claims data, as required by law. Without this data, it’s not possible to know whether they are covering the health care services they are paid to provide or to oversee them to the extent necessary.

Last month, Senators Sherrod Brown, Amy Klobuchar, Chris Murphy, Richard Blumenthal, Bernie Sanders and Debbie Stabenow laid out several serious malfeasances by these corporate Medicare insurers—including UnitedHealth Group, Aetna, Cigna and Humana—in a detailed letter they sent to Verma.

The insurers’ wrongdoings are systematic. They are ongoing. They endanger the health and financial well-being of millions of people. They undermine the financial integrity of the Medicare program and harm the U.S. Treasury. Yet, to date, CMS has failed to develop, let alone execute, a plan to hold these insurers accountable for violating their legal obligations and to ensure their members get the health care to which they are entitled.

Tens of billions in overcharges are one big problem. Medicare Advantage plans have been overcharging the government for their services for many years now, by claiming that their members are in worse health than they actually are in order to increase payments. To make matters worse, they have refused to pay back the tens of billions in overpayments that the federal government has made to them. UnitedHealth successfully fought to keep the government from collecting this money.

Another major concern is that Medicare Advantage plans are failing to cover the care their members need and are entitled to. Government audits show that Medicare Advantage plans are inappropriately delaying and denying care and coverage to hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of their members. This puts patients’ health and safety at risk. Thousands of people end up paying for care that should have been covered—or foregoing care altogether.

CMS has not named or flagged these corporate health plans on its Medicare website or notified people in any other way of plans with serious violations, as it had agreed to do at the recommendation of the Office of the Inspector General. So, people with Medicare are unaware when they enroll in a Medicare Advantage plan that the government has found to be jeopardizing the health and safety of its members. Instead, CMS continues to give four- and five-star ratings to some of these health plans. In the process, it misleads older adults and people with disabilities about their performance.

What’s more, CMS has found that a sizeable number of Medicare Advantage plans have for years issued highly inaccurate provider directories; and, the GAO has noted “concerns about ensuring enrollee access to care.” Many of these health plans have narrowed their provider networks. GAO suggests that it is not at all clear which of these Medicare Advantage plans have an adequate number and mix of health care providers in their networks.

To date, the Trump administration has been steering people into Medicare Advantage plans, without regard to their deficiencies. And, it has failed to provide people with Medicare with meaningful information about their health plan choices as required by law. It is on a reckless path, promoting the business interests of Medicare Advantage plans that violate the law over the health care needs of vulnerable Americans.

The administration and its congressional allies are playing a game of bait and switch with older adults and people with disabilities. They allow Medicare Advantage plans to lure people with benefits that traditional Medicare does not offer, such as dental care and transportation services to the doctor, without exposing their failings. The Trump administration’s goal is to fully privatize Medicare and shift more costs onto older and disabled Americans.

To be clear, Trump’s executive order does nothing to hold the Medicare Advantage plans accountable for their fraudulent overcharges or their inappropriate denials of care and coverage. Rather, it rewards them. It gives them even more discretion regarding the services they cover and the freedom to create new bells and whistles to lure in members. The health and financial well-being of older and disabled Americans hangs in the balance.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Diane Archer is a senior adviser to Social Security Works and founder and president of Just Care USA, an independent digital hub covering health and financial issues facing boomers and their families and promoting policy solutions. She is the past board chair of Consumer Reports and serves on the Brown University School of Public Health Advisory Board. Ms. Archer began her career in health advocacy in 1989 as founder and president of the Medicare Rights Center, a national organization dedicated to ensuring that older and disabled Americans get the health care they need. She served as director, Health Care for All Project, Institute for America’s Future, between 2005 and 2010.

Bernie Sanders Has a Plan to Remove Corporate Money From Politics

Holding up the small-donor campaign model his campaign has revolutionized as proof alternatives exist, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday unveiled an ambitious new plan to get “corporate money out of politics.”

The Sanders plan aims to end the corrupting influence of dark money by dramatically curbing the ability of corporations to dominate giving to political parties, replacing the Federal Election Commission with a new enforcement agency, establishing public funding for all federal elections, and pushing for a Constitutional Amendment that makes clear that “money is not speech and corporations are not people.”

The Sanders campaign said in a statement that the new slate of proposals—which can be read in full here—are designed to end “the greed-fueled, corrupt corporate influence over elections, national party convention, and presidential inaugurations” that currently exists and deliver to the public an election system the puts the America people at the center.

“Our grassroots-funded campaign is proving every single day that you don’t need billionaires and private fundraisers to run for president,” Sanders said. “We’ve received more contributions from more individual contributors than any campaign in the history of American politics because we understand the basic reality that you can’t take on a corrupt system if you take its money.”

The plan would specifically target corporate giving by banning companies from donating to the Democratic National Convention and related committees, a change that would dramatically upend how the DNC has traditionally operated the quadrennial party gathering.

If Sen. Bernie Sanders wins the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2020, he plans to halt all corporate donations to the party’s convention next summer. W/⁦@ryanobles⁩ https://t.co/6SYN8zfGIp

— Annie Grayer (@AnnieGrayerCNN) October 7, 2019

The proposal would also abolish corporate giving to presidential inaugurations and cap individual donations to $500.

According to the campaign:

Corporate donors spend tremendous amounts of money on inaugural events. In 2016, Trump’s inaugural donors included AT&T, Bank of America, Boeing, Exxon Mobil, General Motors, Coca Cola, Pepsi, and many more. Private Prisons also shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars for Trump’s inauguration. And this is nothing new, Corporate donors to the 2013 inauguration included Microsoft, Boeing, Chevron, Genetech, and numerous federal contractors. Many of these corporations have federal contracts and business that comes before Congress. It is absolutely absurd that these entities are allowed to spend enormous sums of money in an attempt to garner favor with the president and vice president of the United States.

Sanders outraised all his Democratic rivals for the presidential nomination in the last quarter by bringing in $25.3 million, with an average donation of just $18. In September, the campaign announced it had received donations from one million different people so far in the campaign, with teachers, Walmart employees, and other blue collar workers making up the most represented donors.

In its statement announcing the new plan Monday, the campaign outlined other key elements of the ‘Corporate Money Out of Politics Plan,’ which includes:

Enacting mandatory public financing laws for all federal elections.
Updating and strengthening the Federal Election Campaign Act to return to a system of mandatory public funding for National Party Conventions.
Passing a Constitutional Amendment that makes clear that money is not speech and corporations are not people.
Ending the influence of corporations at the DNC.

Banning donations from federal lobbyists and corporations.
Institute a lifetime lobbying ban for National Party chairs and co-chairs.
Banning chairs and co-chairs from working for entities with federal contract, that are seeking government approval for projects or mergers, or can reasonably be expected to have business before Congress in the future.


Banning advertising during presidential primary debates.
Instituting a lifetime lobbying ban for former members of Congress and senior staffers.

As the Washington Post notes, Sanders’ plan to replace the FEC—which his campaign describes as “now-worthless”—with a new agency signals a bold shift:

Sanders envisions [a Federal Election Agency] made up of three members with legal backgrounds who serve terms long enough to ensure no president could appoint the entire committee at any one time. The FEA would have the power to pursue not only civil penalties but also criminal charges against those violating campaign finance laws.

Many Democratic candidates have criticized the FEC as toothless in the course of the campaign, though Sanders is the only one to call for its complete retooling. Sanders’s plan also attacks corporate influence in politics by banning former members of Congress and senior staffers from future lobbying endeavors.

The proposal is an indication that Sanders’ vision to fix American democracy goes far beyond “structural reforms” by targeting what he perceives as the rot at the center of the system: corporate greed and massive political power seized by the multinational corporations and the extremely rich.

A large part of the proposal includes leveling the playing field by putting working class people at the center of primaries and elections by boosting public funding. In order to combat “the outsized influence large corporate donors have on candidates,” the campaign argues, the U.S. must move to publicly fund federal elections in order to neutralize the corrupting influence of corporate donors and the uber wealthy.

Sanders argues that his grassroots campaign proves that not only that it can be done successfully, but that the people are hungry for it.

“Working people all over the country are responding to that message and demanding a political revolution through their small dollar donations,” Sanders said on Monday. “When we win the Democratic nomination and defeat Donald Trump, we will transform our political system by rejecting the influence of big corporate money.”

U.S. Researchers on Front Line of Battle Against Chinese Theft

WASHINGTON — As the U.S. warned allies around the world that Chinese tech giant Huawei was a security threat, the FBI was making the same point quietly to a Midwestern university.

In an email to the associate vice chancellor for research at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, an agent wanted to know if administrators believed Huawei had stolen any intellectual property from the school.

Told no, the agent responded: “I assumed those would be your answers, but I had to ask.”

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It was no random query.

The FBI has been reaching out to colleges and universities across the country as it tries to stem what American authorities portray as the wholesale theft of technology and trade secrets by researchers tapped by China. The breadth and intensity of the campaign emerges in emails The Associated Press obtained through records requests to public universities in 50 states. The emails underscore the extent of U.S. concerns that universities, as recruiters of foreign talent and incubators of cutting-edge research, are particularly vulnerable targets.

Agents have lectured at seminars, briefed administrators in campus meetings and distributed pamphlets with cautionary tales of trade secret theft. In the past two years, they’ve requested the emails of two University of Washington researchers, asked Oklahoma State University if it has scientists in specific areas and sought updates about “possible misuse” of research funds by a University of Colorado Boulder professor, the messages show.

The emails show administrators mostly embracing FBI warnings, requesting briefings for themselves and others. But they also reveal some struggling to balance legitimate national security concerns against their own eagerness to avoid stifling research or tarnishing legitimate scientists. The Justice Department says it appreciates that push-pull and wants only to help universities separate the relatively few researchers engaged in theft from the majority who are not.

Senior FBI officials told AP they’re not encouraging schools to monitor researchers by nationality but instead to take steps to protect research and to watch for suspicious behavior. They consider the briefings vital because they say universities, accustomed to fostering international and collaborative environments, haven’t historically been as attentive to security as they should be.

“When we go to the universities, what we’re trying to do is highlight the risk to them without discouraging them from welcoming the researchers and students from a country like China,” Assistant Attorney General John Demers, the Justice Department’s top national security official, said in an interview.

The effort comes amid a deteriorating relationship between the U.S. and China and as a trade war launched by President Donald Trump contributes to stock market turbulence and fears of a global economic slowdown. American officials have long accused China of stealing trade secrets from U.S. corporations to develop their economy, allegations Beijing denies.

“Existentially, we look at China as our greatest threat from an intelligence perspective, and they succeeded significantly in the last decade from stealing our best and brightest technology,” said William Evanina, the U.S. government’s chief counterintelligence official.

The FBI’s effort coincides with restrictions put in place by other federal agencies, including the Pentagon and Energy Department, that fund university research grants. The National Institutes of Health has sent dozens of letters in the past year warning schools of researchers it believes may have concealed grants received from China, or improperly shared confidential research information. The Justice Department launched last year an effort called the China Initiative aimed at identifying priority trade secret cases and focusing resources on them.

The threat, officials say, is more than theoretical.

In the past two months alone, a University of Kansas researcher was charged with collecting federal grant money while working full time for a Chinese university; a Chinese government employee was arrested in a visa fraud scheme that the Justice Department says was aimed at recruiting U.S. research talent; and a university professor in Texas was accused in a trade secret case involving circuit board technology.

The most consequential case this year centered not on a university but on Huawei, charged in January with stealing corporate trade secrets and evading sanctions. The company denies wrongdoing. Several universities including the University of Illinois, which received the FBI email last February, have since begun severing ties with Huawei.

The University of Minnesota did the same, with an administrator reassuring the FBI in an email last May that issues raised by a best practices letter an agent forwarded “have certainly been topics of conversation (and occasionally even action) in our halls for a while now.”

But the Justice Department’s track record hasn’t been perfect, leading to pushback from some that the concerns are overstated.

Federal prosecutors in 2017 dropped charges against a Temple University professor who’d been accused of sharing designs for a pocket heater with China. The professor, Xiaoxing Xi, is suing the FBI. “It was totally wrong,” he said, “so I can only speak from my experience that whatever they put out there is not necessarily true.”

Richard Wood, the then-interim provost at the University of New Mexico, conveyed ambivalence in an email to colleagues last year. He wrote that he took seriously the national security concerns the FBI identified in briefings, but also remained “deeply committed to traditional academic norms regarding the free exchange of scientific knowledge wherever appropriate — a tradition that has been the basis of international scientific progress for several centuries.

“There are real tensions between these two realities, and no simple solutions,” he wrote. “I do not think we would be wise to create new ‘policy’ on terrain this complex and fraught with internal trade-offs between legitimate concerns and values without some real dialogue on the matter.”

A University of Colorado associate vice chancellor equivocated in January on how to handle an agent’s request for a meeting, emailing colleagues that the request to discuss university research felt “probing” and like “more of a fishing expedition” than past occasions. Another administrator replied that the FBI presumably wanted to discuss intellectual property theft, calling it “bright on their radar.”

FBI officials say they’ve received consistently positive feedback from universities, and the emails do show many administrators requesting briefings, campus visits, or expressing eagerness for cooperation. A Washington State University administrator connected an FBI agent with his counterpart at the University of Idaho. The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill requested a briefing last February with an administrator, saying “we would like to understand more about the role of the FBI and how we can partner together.” A University of Nebraska official invited an agent to make a presentation as part of broader campus training.

Kevin Gamache, chief research security officer for the Texas A&M University system, told AP he values his FBI interactions and that the communication goes both ways. The FBI shares threat information and administrators educate law enforcement about the realities of university research.

“There’s no magic pill,” Gamache said. “It’s a dialogue that has to be ongoing.”

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas vice president for research and economic development welcomed the assistance in a city she called the “birthplace of atomic testing. “We have a world-class radiochemistry faculty, our College of Engineering has significant numbers of faculty and students from China, and we have several other issues of concern to me as VPR. In all of these cases, the FBI is always available to help,” the administrator, Mary Croughan, emailed agents.

The AP submitted public records requests for correspondence between the FBI and research officials at more than 50 schools.

More than two dozen produced records, including seminar itineraries and an FBI pamphlet warning that China does “not play by the same rules of academic integrity” as American institutions observe. The document, titled “China: The Risk to Academia,” says Beijing is using “non-traditional collectors” like post-doctoral researchers to collect intelligence and that programs intended to promote international collaboration are being exploited.

Some outreach is more general, like an agent’s offer to brief New Mexico State University on “how the FBI can best serve and protect.”

But other emails show agents seeking tips or following leads.

“If you have concerns about any faculty or graduate researchers, students, outside vendors … pretty much anything we previously discussed — just reminding you that I am here to help,” one wrote to Iowa State.

In May, an agent sent the University of Washington a public records request for emails of two researchers, seeking references to Chinese-government talent recruitment programs the U.S. views with suspicion. A university spokesman said the school hasn’t investigated either professor.

Last year, an agent warning of a “trend of international hostile collection efforts at US universities” asked Oklahoma State University if it had researchers in encryption research or quantum computing.

The University of Colorado received an FBI request about an “internal investigation” into a professor’s “possible misuse” of NIH funding. The school said it found no misconduct involving the professor, who has resigned.

Other emails show schools responding internally to government concerns.

At Mississippi State, an administrator concerned about Iranian cyberattacks on colleges and government reports on foreign influence suggested to colleagues the school scrutinize graduate school applicants’ demographics. “Have to be careful so U.S. law is not violated re discrimination but where does one draw the line when protecting against known foreign states that are cyber criminals?” he wrote.

Though espionage concerns aren’t new — federal prosecutors charged five Chinese military hackers in 2014 — FBI officials report an uptick in targeting of universities and more U.S. attention as a result. The FBI says it’s seen some progress from universities, with one official saying schools are more reliably pressing researchers about outside funding sources.

Demers, the Justice Department official, said the focus reflects how espionage efforts are “as pervasive, as well-resourced, as ever today.

“It’s a serious problem today on college campuses.”

Victims Gain a Voice to Help Guide Purdue Pharma Bankruptcy

Victims of opioid addiction weren’t in the room when OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma persuaded half the state attorneys general to settle claims over the company’s role in the nationwide overdose epidemic.

Now that Purdue is in federal bankruptcy court, four people whose lives were touched by addiction have important seats at the table — and could force fundamental changes to the tentative deal. They are part of a bankruptcy committee that will play a major role in deciding how much Purdue will pay and potentially how that money is to be spent.

The committee can investigate Purdue’s operations and possibly even go after more money from the members of the Sackler family who own the company. They will play a central role in evaluating the tentative settlement reached by the attorneys general representing roughly half the states.

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The four are a mother and a grandfather of children born dependent on opioids, a man in recovery from addiction and a mother who lost a son to overdose. Together, they could be an emotionally persuasive minority on the nine-member Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors appointed by the U.S. trustee overseeing the bankruptcy.

“There’s not a shy person in the bunch,” said addiction treatment advocate and lobbyist Carol McDaid, who attended the hearing when the committee candidates were interviewed and chosen. The four victims know how to make their voices heard, she said.

It’s unusual for a creditors committee to include private citizens. The other members are more typical: a medical center, a health insurer, a prescription benefit management company, the manufacturer of an addiction treatment drug and a pension insurer.

The committee can hire lawyers and financial experts paid for by the debtor — in this case, Purdue, said Robert Dammon, dean of the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. It can investigate issues such as the company’s value and even whether the Sackler family has improperly taken money out of it — something some state attorneys general are investigating.

Opioids, including prescription drugs and illegal ones such as heroin and illicitly made fentanyl, have been linked to more than 400,000 deaths in the U.S. since 2000. Thousands of infants have been born to mothers who were taking opioids while pregnant, and two committee members represent those children.

Kara Trainor is a mother of a child born dependent on opioids. Walter Lee Salmons, a grandfather, is helping raise two affected children. Ryan Hampton is an activist in recovery from opioid addiction. Cheryl Juaire lost her 23-year-old son to a heroin overdose after he became addicted to prescription painkillers.

They have been asked not to publicly discuss the bankruptcy case.

Some of the victims are veteran protesters who will need to channel the emotion of their personal stories in a different way. Juaire, whose son overdosed in 2011, regularly tells reporters she’d like to see the Sackler family in jail.

Now they’ll need to be practical, said Gary Mendell of Shatterproof, a national nonprofit working on addiction issues. Mendell, an entrepreneur who lost his son to addiction, has used his personal story to influence policies at the state and national level.

“It is connecting with people emotionally about a family that’s been shattered — and once you’ve connected emotionally, crafting practical approaches to sparing other families that same tragedy,” Mendell said.

McDaid said victims usually get “a token seat” at the table.

“Then they pat you on the head and give you an award later,” she said. “This could be very meaningful. There could be some justice.”

McDaid said “it will be a win” if the bankruptcy leads to investments in addiction treatment infrastructure and support for people in recovery such as housing and education “so people can get and stay well.”

Purdue is facing some 2,600 lawsuits over the toll of opioids, most of them filed by local governments. The company has accounted for a relatively small percentage of overall opioid sales, but its drug OxyContin is perhaps the best known prescription opioid. Several other drugmakers, distributors and pharmacies are facing most of the same lawsuits.

It’s not exactly clear how much clout the committee could have in such an unusual bankruptcy case.

“They can bring to court problems with what the debtor is trying to do,” said Lindsey Simon, a University of Georgia School of Law bankruptcy expert. “They have leverage.”

But she noted a judge does not have to do what the committee wants. Even though the thousands of state and local governments suing Purdue are not seated on this committee, they can give input into how the case should go.

The committee has been meeting virtually every business day by phone since it was formed toward the end of last month, according to a court filing made Saturday by the committee’s attorneys. It is expected to look out for the interests of all parties to whom Purdue owes money; so far, most of the attention in the case has been on the Purdue settlement talks with state and local governments.

“The public litigants have dominated the press for the past year or so … and there has been less press regarding the private litigants — and perhaps an inclination to discount the size and importance of those claims. Doing so, however, would be unfair, and contrary to the facts,” the committee’s attorneys wrote. “Collectively, the amount of the private litigants’ claims is vast — just like the public litigants.”

One of the committee members, for example, is Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, which represents a network of Blue Cross Blue Shield companies that provide health care coverage to one-third of all Americans, according to the court filing. It has a claim against Purdue ranging from nearly $69 billion to $78.6 billion for what it says are excess payments for prescription medications used by members of its health plans and for having to cover the costs for illnesses, injuries and addiction that “would not have been incurred but for the actions of the Debtors.”

Purdue’s settlement plan could be worth up to $12 billion over time. It calls for the company to be converted into a public benefit trust where profits would help pay for the settlement. Also included is the value of overdose antidotes and a treatment drug in development. As part of the deal, members of the Sackler family would pay $3 billion to $4.5 billion, depending how much they get from selling their international drug companies.

Twenty-four state attorneys general and key lawyers representing other plaintiffs suing Purdue and other drugmakers, distributors and pharmacies, have signed on. But another two dozen state attorneys general and hundreds of local governments have not and are pushing to be allowed to continue their lawsuits against the Sackler family. In court filings, they say the deal does not contain an admission of wrongdoing and doesn’t force the Purdue owners to repay money “they pocketed from their illegal conduct.”

Even if those suits can’t continue, the committee could work on the same issues as part of the bankruptcy process.

Marcia Lee Taylor of the Center on Addiction, a national nonprofit in New York that is focused on prevention and treatment, said it’s crucial to listen to families and people in recovery: “They’re the experts.”

The center’s recommendations for spending opioid settlement money are based on listening to people talk about an insurance system that’s difficult to navigate, doctors uneducated about treating addiction and other barriers.

“So many pieces of the system are broken,” Taylor said. “By hearing stories, it really highlights the broken joints in the system so we can fix it going forward.”

Lawyer: Second Trump Whistleblower Spoke to Inspector General

WASHINGTON — A second whistleblower has spoken to the intelligence community’s internal watchdog and has information that backs the original whistleblower’s complaint about President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, according to the lawyer for the two.

Attorney Mark Zaid told The Associated Press in a text message Sunday that the second whistleblower, who also works in intelligence, hasn’t filed a complaint with the inspector general but does have “firsthand knowledge that supported” the original whistleblower.

The original whistleblower, a CIA officer, filed a formal complaint with the inspector general on Aug. 12 that triggered the impeachment inquiry being led by House Democrats. The complaint alleged Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country” in the 2020 election.

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The disclosure of a second whistleblower threatens to undermine arguments made by Trump and his allies against the first whistleblower: that the complaint was improperly filed because it was based on secondhand or thirdhand information.

Trump and his supporters have rejected the accusations he did anything improper. But the White House has struggled to come up with a unified response. No administration officials appeared on the Sunday news shows, but several congressional Republicans came to the president’s defense during television interviews.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, two of Trump’s most vocal backers, sharply criticized the way House Democrats are handling the impeachment inquiry.

Graham said there was nothing wrong with Trump’s July phone call during which the president pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. The conversation has raised questions about whether Trump was using near $400 million in critical American military aid to Ukraine as leverage to get help on the Biden issue.

Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, at the same time his father was leading the Obama administration’s diplomatic dealings with Ukraine. Though the timing raised concerns among anti-corruption advocates, there has been no evidence of wrongdoing by either Biden. Joe Biden is a leading candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

“I think this is a nightmare for the Biden campaign,” Graham said. Biden wrote in The Washington Post that he had a message for Trump and “those who facilitate his abuses of power. … Please know that I’m not going anywhere. You won’t destroy me, and you won’t destroy my family.”

As for Trump, rather than visiting his nearby golf course in Sterling, Virginia, for a second day, he stayed at White House, where he tweeted and retweeted, with the Bidens a main target.

“The great Scam is being revealed!” Trump wrote at one point, continuing to paint himself as the victim of a “deep state” and hostile Democrats, even after standing on the South Lawn last week and publicly calling on another foreign government, China, to investigate Biden.

As the president often does when he feels under attack, he trumpeted his strong support among Republican voters and kept lashing out at Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, one of the few Republicans who has publicly questioned Trump’s conduct.

“The Democrats are lucky that they don’t have any Mitt Romney types,” Trump wrote, painting the former GOP nominee as a traitor to his party. Romney had said on Twitter that “By all appearances, the President’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.”

A Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Florida Rep. Val Demings, said she believes the original whistleblower is a “patriot” who stepped forward to report wrongdoing despite the potential career risk.

“The reporting that a second whistleblower has come forward or is about to come forward, I believe again would be someone who sees wrongdoing, hears wrongdoing and wants to do something about it,” Demings said.

In response to news of an additional whistleblower, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, another Democratic presidential candidate, said Trump is “acting like a global gangster.”

Additional details about Trump’s July 25 call with Zelenskiy emerged Sunday.

Shaylyn Hynes, a spokeswoman for Energy Secretary Rick Perry, said Perry had encouraged Trump to speak with the Ukrainian leader, but on energy and economic issues. Hynes said Perry’s interest in Ukraine is part of U.S. efforts to boost Western energy ties to Eastern Europe.

Trump, who has repeatedly has described his conversation with Zelenskiy as “perfect,” told House Republicans on Friday night that it was Perry who teed up that call, according to a person familiar with Trump’s comments who was granted anonymity to discuss them. The person said Trump did not suggest that Perry had anything to do with the pressure to investigate the Bidens.

As the furor over Trump’s phone call and the House’s subsequent impeachment inquiry escalates, two Republicans challenging Trump for the GOP presidential nomination engaged in a heated on-air debate over what should happen to the president.

The exchange between former Reps. Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Joe Walsh of Illinois was notable given the refusal of all but three Republican senators to criticize Trump’s conduct.

Walsh said the president deserves to be impeached. Sanford tried to make the case that moving forward with impeachment in the Democratic-run House if the Republican-controlled Senate doesn’t have the votes to convict would be counter-productive and only distract from the election debate.

“This president needs to be impeached, just based on what he himself has said,” Walsh said. “And Republicans better get behind that.”

Demings was on “Fox News Sunday” and Jordan appeared on ABC’s “This Week,” while Klobuchar, Walsh and Sanford were on CNN’s “State of the Union” and Graham spoke on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

___

Associated Press writers Alan Fram, Ellen Knickmeyer and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

Police Look for 2 Men in Kansas Bar Shooting That Killed 4

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Two men opened fire inside a bar in Kansas City, Kansas, early Sunday, killing four people and wounding five others in a shooting believed to have stemmed from an earlier dispute, police said.

Authorities were searching Sunday for the two gunmen, said Officer Thomas Tomasic, a police spokesman. He said the two men had apparently gotten into some sort of disagreement with people inside Tequila KC Bar, left, then returned with handguns.

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“We think there was something that happened in the bar earlier probably,” Tomasic said. “Unfortunately, they left and decided to take it to another level, came back and started shooting.”

Around 40 people were inside the small bar when gunfire erupted around 1:30 a.m., Tomasic said. The gunfire sent people running for the exits, with the injured leaving trails of blood as they fled. One of the injured was trying to get a ride to the hospital when ambulances arrived.

“It’s a pretty small bar, so if you have two guys come in and start shooting, people are just running, running anywhere they can,” Tomasic said.

All four men who were killed were Hispanic, but Tomasic said authorities do not believe the shooting was racially motivated. The shooting happened in a neighborhood with a large Hispanic population.

Tomasic cautioned that police were still investigating exactly what happened. He said they were reviewing surveillance video and interviewing witnesses while looking for the gunmen.

“Obviously being a bar at 1:30, stories vary a lot,” he said.

Among the dead was one man in his late 50s, another in his mid-30s and two in their mid-20s, police said. Authorities did not immediately release their names.

However, Juan Ramirez, of Kansas City, Kansas, told The Kansas City Star that his 29-year-old nephew was among those killed. He said his nephew left behind a 6-year-old son and a 4-year-old daughter.

“I don’t wish this upon anybody,” Ramirez said.

Bartender Jose Valdez told the newspaper that he had refused to serve one of the suspects on Saturday night because the man had previously caused problems at the bar. Valdez said the man threw a cup at him and left, but returned later with another man shortly before closing time.

The gunfire created smoke inside the business, Valdez said, and he thought the building was “going to cave in.”

“I don’t know what to make of it. A sad day for everybody who lost their lives and their families,” he said, choking up. “How can you go into a place full of people and just start shooting?”

Big Pharma Lures Mexicans to Donate Plasma in U.S.

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Every week, thousands of Mexicans cross the border into the U.S. on temporary visas to sell their blood plasma to profit-making pharmaceutical companies that lure them with Facebook ads and colorful flyers promising hefty cash rewards.

The donors, including some who say the payments are their only income, may take home up to $400 a month if they donate twice a week and earn various incentives, including “buddy bonuses” for recruiting friends or family. Unlike other nations that limit or forbid paid plasma donations at a high frequency out of concern for donor health and quality control, the U.S. allows companies to pay donors and has comparatively loose standards for monitoring their health.

Donating plasma too frequently can hurt a donor’s immune system. A donor’s level of the antibody immunoglobulin G should be screened every four months under guidelines from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But in the U.S., donors are still allowed to give plasma up to 104 times a year, far more than in most other countries. Selling plasma has been banned in Mexico since 1987.

Genesis, a 21-year-old Mexican studying to be a paramedic, who asked that her last name not be used for her protection, said she gives plasma twice a week in El Paso, Texas. She said she often faints, gets migraines and has numbness in her limbs. The more she donates plasma, the weaker she feels. “I have trouble lifting stuff, problems with my muscles.”

Like many Mexicans donors, Genesis comes into the U.S. on temporary visas, which allow non-immigrants to visit family, shop or “engage in commercial transactions, which do not involve gainful employment in the United States.”

The plasma companies contend their payments are not wages as defined under the law. They classify them as “compensation” for donor time, since the process often requires long waits and an hour or more hooked up to plasma extraction equipment.

“Plasma donors are compensated because of the time and commitment involved in being a regular plasma donor,” said the pharmaceutical company Grifols, which is based in Barcelona, Spain, and runs 17 plasma donation centers along the U.S.-Mexico border, more than any other company.

The companies also say they carefully monitor donors and follow all safety procedures.

These flyers show that U.S.-based plasma centers accept Border Crossing Cards issued with temporary visas. The practice falls into a gray area of federal immigration law.

As the Trump administration clamps down on most traffic at the southern border, U.S. immigration agencies have done little to stop the stream of Mexicans using their B-1/B-2 visas to visit plasma centers. In interviews with ARD German TV, some former plasma center employees said they routinely recommended that clients lie to U.S. Customs and Border patrol about the purpose of their U.S. visits.

“If people are using a B-1/B-2 visa to cross the border to sell plasma, they could be putting that document at risk,” said Roger Maier, a spokesman for CBP, the agency that examines visas at the border. “We strongly encourage people to not use their documents for that capacity.”

Maier said agents “have a lot of discretion in our ability to allow people to enter the United States based on the documents they present.” Asked if the use of visitor visas to donate plasma violates the law, he said, “I’m sorry, it’s a gray area, but I can’t give you a yes or no.”

The U.S. State Department said later that the visa rules do not address “the legality of this specific purpose of travel.” The Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas, which includes El Paso, did not respond to requests for comment.

The U.S. is the largest supplier of blood plasma in a $21 billion global market. FDA data shows that of the 805 plasma donation centers in the U.S., 43 are located along the southern border, up to 62 miles from Mexico.

The border clinics are the most productive, according to internal Grifols documents obtained by ARD. While most U.S. centers receive around 1,000 paid donations a week, centers at the border count more than 2,300. The documents show that border centers also rank highest in donor frequency; they top of list of centers with customers who donate 75 times or more per year.

Companies say they follow numerous safety precautions and seek new donors because they face a critical need as demand increases for lifesaving pharmaceutical products made from plasma, a yellowish fluid extracted from blood that contains antibodies that defend against disease.

The centers are mainly owned by Grifols, the Australia-based CSL and BPL, an emerging player headquartered in the U.K. U.S.-based GCAM Inc. has four centers along the southern border.

The FDA requires companies to monitor patient health before each donation. In some CSL centers, the payment amount depends on body weight, which determines how much blood plasma can be collected. Donors weighing between 110 and 149 pounds receive $20 per donation, while donors between 175 and 400 pounds earn up to $40. However, a person who doesn’t finish the donation for any reason doesn’t get paid.

Calculating the exact number of Mexican donors coming into the U.S. is difficult because the companies do not disclose this data to state or federal agencies. ARD German TV obtained two weeks of donation counts for all the Grifols facilities in the U.S. from earlier this year, including those along the Texas-Mexico border.

Grifols employees at five centers along the border, who requested anonymity to protect their jobs, estimated that Mexican citizens make up 60% to 90% of donors each day, depending on the facility.

Based on those estimates, nearly 10,000 Mexican citizens donated plasma at those five Grifols centers during each of the two weeks. Thirty-eight additional plasma donation centers operate in the border area.

Reporters from ARD German TV and Searchlight New Mexico, an investigative news organization, talked to more than 50 plasma donors from the Mexican cities of Ciudad Juárez, Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa, Nogales and Matamoros, and they found that most use their plasma payments to cover basic needs like food, electricity, diapers and clothes. A typical worker in Ciudad Juárez makes about $9 a day.

Genesis lives just across the border from El Paso. Selling blood plasma in the United States is her only income; she’s crossed the border twice a week for three years. Her father, Gamaliel, introduced her to making a living this way.

Genesis, like most Mexican plasma donors, relies on a B-1/B-2 temporary visa to gain entry. In July alone, the State Department issued or renewed 84,804 Border Crossing Cards for Mexican citizens.

Most donors interviewed by ARD and Searchlight said that they give CBP officials a reason for their trips that obscures the real purpose. Donors are anxious and uncertain, but willing to take the risk. “I understand it is not illegal,” Gamaliel said. “But, if you get to an officer in a bad mood, they could take your visa. So it’s better not to tell.” The 44-year-old fitness trainer runs his own gym in Ciudad Juárez, but he hardly makes $100 a month. For nine years, he’s donated twice a week to cover his and his youngest daughter’s basic needs.

Genesis said she tells CBP she’s visiting an aunt who lives in the U.S., but she rarely does so; instead, she goes directly to the lab. For the petite student, the moment right before crossing the border into El Paso is the most stressful. “I can never be sure. Who will be the officer on duty, what will they say or think. There’s always a chance they don’t believe you.”

The subterfuge is necessary because, at best, crossing into the U.S. to donate plasma for money falls into a questionable area of the law. While neither the State Department nor CBP calls plasma donation payments illegal, the law doesn’t define specifically if visa rules prohibit them. There haven’t yet been any investigations or prosecutions of plasma labs.

Potential liability for the pharmaceutical companies is even muddier. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which regulates legal immigration into the U.S., says that companies could be subject to charges if they engage in a “pattern or practice of knowingly hiring unauthorized aliens,” including people who are in the U.S. legally but not legally authorized to work.

The Plasma Protein Therapeutics Association, a trade organization representing for-profit plasma-producing pharmaceutical companies in North America and Europe, said in an email that donors are not employees of plasma centers and “only a person lawfully permitted to be in the United States can be accepted as a donor.”

CSL and Grifols, the dominant companies at the U.S. border, declined interview requests but gave written statements. Grifols emphasized that “all donors, regardless of where they come from, must comply with all necessary health, regulatory and legal requirements to donate. There are no exceptions.” CSL said the company “complies with all laws in the countries in which we operate.”

BPL said in a statement it was “following all applicable guidelines that exist to promote the safety of both plasma donors and the patients who use plasma derived therapeutics.”

GCAM did not reply to a request for comment.

Grifols offers bonuses to lure donors. Only if donors give at the maximum frequency allowed by FDA they receive the full payment.

Blood and vaccines rank among the most valuable U.S. exports. In 2018, the U.S. collected 41 million liters of plasma intended for the production of medicine, and almost half of that was shipped abroad.

Around 78% of blood plasma exported from the U.S. ended up in Germany, Spain and Austria, where Grifols, CSL and others operate large high-tech plasma processing plants. A large portion of the drugs produced are then reimported and sold in the U.S.

There is little information about the long-term consequences of frequent plasma donations. Some scientists argue that a donor’s antibodies should be tested after every fifth donation, and some European countries like Germany require this. But the FDA in a statement defended its requirement that levels be checked every four months, saying, “We recognize that regulators in other countries may reach different regulatory conclusions even when considering the same data.”

Genesis keeps losing weight, leaving her perilously close to the 110-pound minimum required for donation. To avoid getting turned away at the clinics for being underweight, which has happened in the past, Genesis said she regularly fools the scales by putting water bottles in her pockets. Her trick has never been noticed.

When our reporters asked Genesis to get her blood levels examined, the lab results confirmed what Genesis felt. The test showed a dangerously low immunoglobulin G level. According to Paul Strengers of the International Plasma Fractionation Association, a trade group for not-for-profit collectors of blood plasma, the loss of antibodies can damage the immune system and lead to serious infections like pneumonia. The doctor who conducted the blood tests suggested that she stop donating plasma until her body is fully recovered. But, Genesis said, “stopping is a luxury I cannot afford.”

‘Multiple Whistleblowers’ Could Blow the Lid off Trump-Ukraine Call

Attorneys representing the intelligence official who filed the formal complaint about President Donald Trump’s call with Ukraine’s leader confirmed Sunday that they now represent “multiple whistleblowers” who have decided to come forward to detail potential misconduct by the U.S. president.

“I can confirm that my firm and my team represent multiple whistleblowers,” Andrew Bakaj, the lead attorney for the original whistleblower, tweeted Saturday. “No further comment at this time.”

IC WHISTLEBLOWER UPDATE: I can confirm that my firm and my team represent multiple whistleblowers in connection to the underlying August 12, 2019, disclosure to the Intelligence Community Inspector General. No further comment at this time. https://t.co/05b5aAVm2G

— Andrew P. Bakaj (@AndrewBakaj) October 6, 2019

Mark Zaid, part of the legal team representing the first whistleblower, told ABC Sunday that his firm is representing a second whistleblower with “first-hand knowledge” about Trump’s call with the Ukrainian leader, during which the U.S. president pushed for an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden.

The call is at the center of the impeachment inquiry House Democrats launched last month.

“I can confirm this report of a second whistleblower being represented by our legal team,” Zaid tweeted in response to ABC‘s story. “They also made a protected disclosure under the law and cannot be retaliated against. This WBer has first-hand knowledge.”

 

NEWS UPDATE: I can confirm this report of a second #whistleblower being represented by our legal team. They also made a protected disclosure under the law and cannot be retaliated against. This WBer has first hand knowledge. https://t.co/zYkUYgJ0mE

— Mark S. Zaid (@MarkSZaidEsq) October 6, 2019