Chris Hedges's Blog, page 617

Gayle King Grills Paul Ryan on Lack of Diversity in GOP

In his first major interview since announcing he will not run for re-election, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., was interviewed by “CBS This Morning” host Gayle King, who grilled him about the lack of representation of women and people of color in the Republican Party.

During the interview, King mentioned a photo of Ryan along with President Trump, Vice President Pence and a number of other administration and congressional officials, all smiling and giving Trump’s signature thumbs-up sign.

“Very celebratory. What were you all celebrating?” King asked.

“Just the accomplishments we’ve had heretofore and then the rest of the agenda that we’re working on,” Ryan responded before listing what he sees as his party’s accomplishments regarding infrastructure, health care and other issues. King, however, wasn’t done talking about the photo.

” ‘Cause, you know, when I look at that picture, Mr. Speaker, I have to say I don’t see anybody that looks like me in terms of color or gender,” King said, adding: “And you were one of the main people that said you want to do more for the Republican Party, to expand. You wanted to expand the base. Some say this president really doesn’t want to expand the base. So when I look at that picture, I have to say I don’t feel very celebratory. I feel very excluded.”

“Well, I— I— I don’t like the fact that you feel that way. And we need more minorities, more women in our party,” Ryan replied. He later added: “That’s something I’m going to keep working on. That’s something—I’m not going away from life. I’m going to keep being involved and focusing on inclusive, aspirational politics.”

—posted by Emily Wells

 

Pope Admits His ‘Grave Errors’ in Handling Sex Case

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis admitted Wednesday he made “grave errors” in judgment in Chile’s sex abuse scandal and invited the victims he had discredited to Rome to beg their forgiveness.

In an extraordinary public letter, Francis also summoned all of Chile’s bishops to the Vatican for an emergency meeting in the coming weeks to discuss repairing the damage from the scandal, which has badly tarnished his reputation and that of the Chilean church.

The Vatican orders up such emergency visits only on rare occasions, such as when American bishops were summoned in 2002 after the clerical sex abuse scandal exploded in the U.S. and in 2010 when Irish bishops received a comprehensive Vatican dressing down for their botched handling of abuse cases.

Francis blamed a lack of “truthful and balanced information” for his missteps in judging the case of Bishop Juan Barros, a protege of Chile’s most notorious predator priest, the Rev. Fernando Karadima. Francis strongly defended the bishop during his January visit to Chile despite accusations by victims that Barros had witnessed and ignored their abuse.

In Chile and during an airborne press conference returning to Rome, Francis accused the victims of “calumny” for pressing their case against Barros, demanded they present “proof” of their claims and revealed he had twice rejected Barros’ resignation.

“I am convinced he is innocent,” the pope insisted.

After causing an outcry, Francis sent the Vatican’s most respected sex abuse investigator, Archbishop Charles Scicluna, to look into the scandal.

While his letter didn’t reveal his ultimate conclusions about Barros, Francis made clear that he and the bishops have a lot of work to do to turn the Chilean church around.

In words that laid bare his simmering anger, Francis said they must “re-establish confidence in the church, confidence that was broken by our errors and sins, and heal the wounds that continue to bleed in Chilean society.”

But the Chilean bishops insisted they had been truthful to Francis about the need to get rid of Barros — they had proposed he resign and take a year sabbatical — and victims’ advocates said Francis had only himself to blame, since the accusations against Barros were well known and well-founded.

Anne Barrett Doyle, of BishopAccountability.org, an online abuse resource, noted an Associated Press report that Francis received a personal letter about Barros’ misdeeds from a victim in 2015, but seemingly chose to ignore it.

“If Francis was misinformed or inadequately informed, it was because he chose to be so,” she said.

Karadima was a charismatic preacher who was removed from ministry by the Vatican for sexually abusing minors and sentenced in 2011 to a lifetime of penance and prayer. Karadima had long been a darling of the Chilean hierarchy, and his victims have accused church leaders of covering up his crimes to protect the church’s reputation.

Scicluna and his colleague, the Rev. Jordi Bertomeu, spent nearly two weeks in Chile and New York earlier this year interviewing Karadima’s victims, who for years have denounced Barros’ silence and were stunned by Francis’ strong defense of him.

In his letter, Francis thanked the 64 people who testified and had the courage to bare the “wounds of their souls” for the sake of truth. After reading the 2,300-page dossier his envoys prepared, Francis affirmed the victims “spoke in a stark way, without additives or sweeteners, of many crucified lives.”

“I confess this caused me pain and shame,” he wrote.

“For my part, I recognize – and so I want it to be faithfully transmitted – that I have fallen in grave errors of judgment and perception of the situation, especially due to the lack of truthful and balanced information,” Francis wrote. “From now on I ask forgiveness of all those I offended and I hope to be able to do it personally in the coming weeks.”

In a statement, Barros’ three main accusers said they appreciated Francis request for forgiveness and were weighing his invitation to meet. They said they would continue fighting for reparation and forgiveness “until zero tolerance about abuse and cover-up in the church becomes a reality.”

Many of Chile’s bishops, and members of Francis’ own sex abuse advisory board, had questioned Barros’ suitability to lead a diocese given claims by Karadima’s victims that Barros stood by and did nothing while Karadima groped them.

Francis overrode their concerns and appointed Barros bishop of the southern Chilean diocese of Osorno in 2015, saying the church had investigated the claims against him and found them to be baseless.

Osorno’s lay Catholics and many Osorno priests rejected him, and they greeted Francis’ letter Wednesday with graciousness, accepting his request for forgiveness but renewing their demand for Barros’ removal.

The head of the Chilean bishops’ conference, Monsignor Santiago Silva, insisted the Chilean church had provided only truthful information to Francis about Barros. But, he added, “obviously we didn’t do everything we should have done.”

Other clerics more favorable to Barros had Francis’ ear: the Vatican ambassador, who has long been hostile to Barros’ accusers; the retired archbishop of Santiago, who has accused Cruz of being a liar and “serpent”; and an old Spanish Jesuit friend who evaluated Barros years ago.

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Associated Press writer Nicole Winfield reported this story at the Vatican and AP writer Eva Vergara reported from Punta de Tralca, Chile.

257 Dead in Worst Aviation Tragedy in Algeria’s History

ALGIERS, Algeria — A hulking military transport plane crashed just after takeoff in Algeria Wednesday, killing 257 people in the worst aviation disaster in the North African nation’s history and plunging the country into mourning.

Soldiers, their family members and a group of 30 people returning to refugee camps from hospital stays in Algeria’s capital died in the morning crash of the Russian-made II-76 aircraft.

The plane went down in a field just outside a military base in Boufarik, 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of Algiers, and was devoured by flames, killing 247 passengers and 10 crew members, the Defense Ministry said.

There was no official mention of survivors, but one witness reported seeing people jump out of the aircraft before it crashed.

Arabic-language channel Dzair TV reported that five people were in a critical state, but it was unclear if they had been on the plane or were injured on the ground.

Several witnesses told Algerian TV network Ennahar they saw flames coming out of one of the planes’ four engines just before it took off.

“The plane started to rise before falling,” an unidentified man lying on what appeared to be a hospital bed told Ennahar TV. “The plane crashed on its wing first and caught fire.”

Video on the state television channel ENTV showed a blackened hulk broken into pieces, with huge wheels scattered about along with other plane parts. Firefighters doused the flames while body bags were placed in rows in the field.

The victims’ bodies were transported to the Algerian army’s central hospital outside the capital.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika ordered three days of mourning starting immediately and prayers for the dead on Friday at mosques across the country.

In the south, the Algerian-backed Polisario Front seeking independence for Western Sahara ordered a week of mourning for the 30 dead Sahrawi people returning to its refugee camps in Tindouf, a statement from the group said.

The flight was scheduled to go to Tindouf and then Bechar, the site of another military base, according to Farouk Achour, spokesman for Algeria’s civil protection services. Tindouf is home to many refugees from the neighboring Western Sahara, a disputed territory annexed by Morocco.

Algeria is vast and plane flights are often the best way to traverse Africa’s largest nation.

It was the first crash of an Algerian military plane since February 2014, when a U.S.-built C-130 Hercules turboprop slammed into a mountain in Algeria, killing at least 76 people and leaving just one survivor.

The four-engine Il-76 made its maiden voyage in 1997, according to Aviation Safety Network. The plane has been in production since the 1970s, and is widely used for both commercial freight and military transport.

The Algerian military, which historically depended on the Soviet Union and then Russia for military hardware, operates several of the planes.

Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst with Teal Group outside Washington, said it would be difficult to compare the accident rate of the II-76 to common Western airplanes because of the relatively smaller number produced and the fewer hours flown.

“It is a Russian design. That doesn’t make it unsafe, but they tend to need more maintenance,” he said.

The II-76 was designed to carry extremely heavy cargo, and it is unlikely that passengers alone — even a large number — would be a problem. Aboulafia said the number of troops that could be carried would be limited by space inside the aircraft more than weight considerations.

A retired Algerian officer, Mohamed Khelfaoui, told the online Algerian TSA site that he had flown in the aircraft several times and “it has proven itself in Algeria and elsewhere.”

Wednesday’s crash was not the deadliest of an Il-76. According to Aviation Safety Network, the 2003 crash of an IL-76 of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard killed 275 people.

The heavy loss of life of soldiers was certain to deeply shake Algeria. The National Liberation Army — which grew out of the fighting force which freed Algeria from French colonial rule — is revered by Algerians.

Today, the army is credited with saving the nation from an insurgency by Islamist extremists in the 1990s and early 2000s. The battle continues with sporadic attacks around Algeria and networks dismantled by soldiers.

The army’s experience fighting terrorism has made it a valued ally of the United States and other western nations.

The U.S. Embassy in Algiers expressed its “deepest condolences” to “our partners and colleagues in the Algerian military,” one of the numerous condolences that flooded into the capital from far and wide.

The previous deadliest crash on Algerian soil occurred in 2003, when 102 people were killed after a civilian airliner crashed at the end of the runway in Tamanrasset, in the south. Only one person survived.

Also in 2003, 10 people died when an Algerian Air Force C-130 crashed after an engine caught fire shortly after it took off from the air base near Boufarik, according to the Aviation Safety Network.

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AP Airlines Writer David Koenig in Dallas and Samuel Petrequin and Elaine Ganley in Paris contributed to this report.

Who’ll Follow Paul Ryan as Speaker? Contest Hums Below Radar

WASHINGTON — Some say it’s a fight between West and South. Or who might win an endorsement from President Trump. Or a test of who can woo conservatives.

But one thing was clear Thursday: Any maneuvering in the brewing showdown between California Rep. Kevin McCarthy and Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise for House speaker was occurring below the radar, and the leading players were choosing their words carefully.

“I’ve heard from none of the candidates, and all of the mentioned candidates are not just friends, they’re close friends,” said Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Ala.

A day earlier, House Speaker Paul Ryan told colleagues he wouldn’t seek re-election in November, implicitly starting the race to replace him. Disconcertingly for the GOP, Trump’s unpopularity and early Democratic momentum leave it unclear whether Ryan’s replacement will be speaker or minority leader.

For now, the chief contenders are McCarthy and Scalise, two affable lawmakers who knew each other as young party activists before arriving in Congress.

McCarthy, 53, is his party’s No. 2 House leader and was one of the earliest and steadiest backers of Trump’s presidential campaign.

If Trump weighs into the contest, his clout could rally lawmakers behind his favored candidate, especially conservatives. But it could alienate moderates and others who want a leader who has their back, not necessarily the president’s. It’s uncertain whether Trump will intervene or for whom, though many suspect it would be McCarthy. White House officials declined comment.

McCarthy was elected in 2006 and rocketed into a leadership job in 2009, thanks to his campaigning for fellow Republicans. He replaced Eric Cantor as majority leader in 2014 after the Virginian unexpectedly lost a primary for his House seat and quit.

In 2015, McCarthy sought to succeed Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who’d alienated conservatives who considered him insufficiently doctrinaire. McCarthy abruptly left that contest days later after failing to line up enough votes, and Ryan accepted the post.

Scalise, 52, the House GOP vote counter and No. 3 leader, was first elected a decade ago and had little national name recognition until tragedy thrust him into headlines. He was shot at a congressional baseball practice last year and is still recovering from his injuries, an ordeal that’s earned the conservative former state legislator broad respect.

“The strength he’s shown with his injury, I think, has heightened where he is” among colleagues, said Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn.

Scalise aides say he and Trump speak frequently, but they provided no detail. Trump visited Scalise in the hospital after his June 2017 shooting. Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., Scalise’s housemate in Wasington, said Trump often calls Scalise out by name at events.

Neither Scalise nor McCarthy have acknowledged a race for Ryan’s job or definitively denied it.

“I’ve never run against Kevin and wouldn’t run against Kevin. He and I are good friends,” Scalise said Thursday on the Fox News Channel.

That comment essentially put the onus on McCarthy to line up 218 votes, the number needed to become speaker next January should Republicans keep the majority. It was unclear what if any efforts were quietly underway to deny that support to McCarthy, but Scalise’s remarks clearly left himself as the alternative.

Ryan later told reporters Scalise “thinks after the election that Kevin McCarthy ought be the person to replace me.” Scalise didn’t answer directly when asked if he’s now supporting McCarthy. But the whip’s aides said while he and Ryan spoke Thursday morning, Scalise said nothing privately that differed from his public remarks, seemingly suggesting Ryan had gone too far.

Lawmakers and GOP donors want a leader who can raise money, and there McCarthy has an advantage. He raised $8.75 million in the first quarter of this year and has done fundraisers for 40 GOP candidates, said a person familiar with his political operation. Scalise has raised $3 million, a record for House whips, and hosted almost 50 events, his aides said.

Neither man is known for rhetorical flourishes, with McCarthy, in particular, prone to sentences that defy the rules of grammar. And both have resume problems that fellow Republicans insisted they’d overcome.

In 2014, Scalise was discovered to have addressed a white-supremacist group in 2002 founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Scalise apologized and said he’d been unaware of the group’s racial views.

McCarthy suggested in 2015 that a House committee probing the deadly 2012 raid on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya, had damaged Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers, undermining GOP arguments that the investigation wasn’t politically motivated.

That raised questions about his ability as a communicator, a key for party leaders.

Scalise is viewed as more conservative than McCarthy. That’s important in a House GOP conference that could grow more conservative after November, when many Republicans who are retiring or face likely defeat are moderates.

McCarthy has worked to improve his relationship with conservatives, including trying to craft legislation cutting spending from the government budget enacted recently.

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Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.

Brett Favre Links His Memory Loss to ‘Thousands’ of Concussions

Brett Favre says he might have had “thousands” of concussions during his Hall of Fame career.

The three-time NFL MVP who played from 1992-2010 and was known for his aggressive approach to football said Thursday on NBC’s “Megyn Kelly Today” that he is experiencing short-term memory issues.

Favre, 48, has become an advocate for concussion research and said he had three or four known concussions during his lengthy career, which spanned 302 regular-season games and 24 in the postseason.

“But as we’re learning about concussions,” he told Kelly, “there’s a term we use in football and maybe other sports, that I got ‘dinged.’ When you have ringing of the ears, seeing stars, that is a concussion.

“If that’s a concussion, then I’ve had hundreds, probably thousands, throughout my career, which is frightening.”

Favre added that he worries about developing chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) as he ages.

“My football career has meant a great deal to me and has provided a lot of things, a lot of joy not only for me, but for my family,” Favre said. “Now, my family doesn’t have to face the physical problems that could potentially arise, or the mental problems that could, but they are directly associated with me in that regard. It’s kind of a blessing and a curse.

“I grew up playing football. My dad was the coach, he was tough on me, he was a hard-nosed, just in-your-face-type of guy, and he didn’t know what concussions were about. We knew basically what a concussion was, but the thought process in those days was you would never come out of a game or practice because you had a little head ding. You would be considered, for lack of a better term, a sissy.

“My point in this is 30 years ago, there wasn’t a problem in anyone’s mind from playing football. It was just a matter of being tough, and the ones who stuck it out and made the most of it. Now, what we know, is it has nothing to do with toughness and that’s a lot scarier. So I look at my career as something wonderful. I didn’t know; had I known in Year 5, I would have looked at my future a bit closer as my career unfolded.”

Favre appeared on Kelly’s program with three other retired star athletes: soccer’s Abby Wambach, baseball’s David Ross and Favre’s fellow Pro Football Hall of Famer and former teammate Kurt Warner. All four have invested in a company developing a concussion-treatment drug that is not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Favre said he would not encourage youngsters to play football.

“The brain and just the skull itself, for (8- to 15-year-olds), and maybe even older, is not developed enough and they should not be playing tackle football,” Favre said. “We should protect them, especially when there is no treatment solution out there.”

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For more NFL coverage: http://www.pro32.ap.org and http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL

National Enquirer Paid $30,000 to Trump Doorman, AP Reports

NEW YORK—Eight months before the company that owns the National Enquirer paid $150,000 to a former Playboy Playmate who claimed she’d had an affair with Donald Trump, the tabloid’s parent made a $30,000 payment to a less famous individual: a former doorman at one of the real estate mogul’s New York City buildings.

As it did with the ex-Playmate, the Enquirer signed the ex-doorman to a contract that effectively prevented him from going public with a juicy tale that might hurt Trump’s campaign for president.

The payout to the former Playmate, Karen McDougal, stayed a secret until The Wall Street Journal published a story about it days before Election Day. Since then curiosity about that deal has spawned intense media coverage and, this week, helped prompt the FBI to raid the hotel room and offices of Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

The story of the ex-doorman, Dino Sajudin, hasn’t been told until now.

The Associated Press confirmed the details of the Enquirer’s payment through a review of a confidential contract and interviews with dozens of current and former employees of the Enquirer and its parent company, American Media Inc. Sajudin got $30,000 in exchange for signing over the rights, “in perpetuity,” to a rumor he’d heard about Trump’s sex life — that the president had fathered a child with an employee at Trump World Tower, a skyscraper he owns near the United Nations. The contract subjected Sajudin to a $1 million penalty if he disclosed either the rumor or the terms of the deal to anyone.

Cohen, the longtime Trump attorney, acknowledged to the AP that he had discussed Sajudin’s story with the magazine when the tabloid was working on it. He said he was acting as a Trump spokesman when he did so and denied knowing anything beforehand about the Enquirer payment to the ex-doorman.

The parallel between the ex-Playmate’s and the ex-doorman’s dealings with the Enquirer raises new questions about the roles that the Enquirer and Cohen may have played in protecting Trump’s image during a hard-fought presidential election. Prosecutors are probing whether Cohen broke banking or campaign laws in connection with AMI’s payment to McDougal and a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels that Cohen said he paid out of his own pocket.

Federal investigators have sought communications between Cohen, American Media’s chief executive and the Enquirer’s top editor, the New York Times reported. And on Thursday, the government watchdog group Common Cause filed complaints with the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission, asking authorities to investigate whether the payment violated campaign finance laws.

Cohen’s lawyer has called the raids “inappropriate and unnecessary.” American Media hasn’t said whether federal authorities have sought information from it, but said this week that it would “comply with any and all requests that do not jeopardize or violate its protected sources or materials pursuant to our First Amendment rights.” The White House didn’t respond to questions seeking comment.

On Wednesday, an Enquirer sister publication, RadarOnline, published details of the payment and the rumor that Sajudin was peddling. The website wrote that the Enquirer spent four weeks reporting the story but ultimately decided it wasn’t true. The company only released Sajudin from his contract after the 2016 election amid inquiries from the Journal about the payment. The site noted that the AP was among a group of publications that had been investigating the ex-doorman’s tip.

During AP’s reporting, AMI threatened legal action over reporters’ efforts to interview current and former employees and hired the New York law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, which challenged the accuracy of the AP’s reporting.

Asked about the payment last summer, Dylan Howard, the Enquirer’s top editor and an AMI executive, said he made the payment to secure the former Trump doorman’s exclusive cooperation because the tip, if true, would have sold “hundreds of thousands” of magazines. Ultimately, he said the information “lacked any credibility,” so he spiked the story on those merits.

“Unfortunately … Dino Sajudin is one fish that swam away,” Howard told RadarOnline on Wednesday.

But four longtime Enquirer staffers directly familiar with the episode challenged Howard’s version of events. They said they were ordered by top editors to stop pursuing the story before completing potentially promising reporting threads.

They said the publication didn’t pursue standard Enquirer reporting practices, such as exhaustive stakeouts or tabloid tactics designed to prove paternity. In 2008, the Enquirer helped bring down presidential hopeful John Edwards in part by digging through a dumpster and retrieving material to do a DNA test that indicated he had fathered a child with a mistress, according to a former staffer.

The woman at the center of the rumor about Trump denied emphatically to the AP last August that she’d ever had an affair with Trump, saying she had no idea the Enquirer had paid Sajudin and pursued his tip.

The AP has not been able to determine if the rumor is true and is not naming the woman.

“This is all fake,” she said. “I think they lost their money.”

The Enquirer staffers, all with years of experience negotiating source contracts, said the abrupt end to reporting combined with a binding, seven-figure penalty to stop the tipster from talking to anyone led them to conclude that this was a so-called “catch and kill” — a tabloid practice in which a publication pays for a story to never run, either as a favor to the celebrity subject of the tip or as leverage over that person.

One former Enquirer reporter, who was not involved in the Sajudin reporting effort, expressed skepticism that the company would pay for the tip and not publish.

“AMI doesn’t go around cutting checks for $30,000 and then not using the information,” said Jerry George, a reporter and senior editor for nearly three decades at AMI before his layoff in 2013.

The company said that AMI’s publisher, David Pecker, an unabashed Trump supporter, had not coordinated its coverage with Trump associates or taken direction from Trump. It acknowledged discussing the former doorman’s tip with Trump’s representatives, which it described as “standard operating procedure in stories of this nature.”

The Enquirer staffers, like many of the dozens of other current and former AMI employees interviewed by the AP in the past year, spoke on condition of anonymity. All said AMI required them to sign nondisclosure agreements barring them from discussing internal editorial policy and decision-making.

Though sometimes dismissed by mainstream publications, the Enquirer’s history of breaking legitimate scoops about politicians’ personal lives — including its months-long Pulitzer Prize-contending coverage of presidential candidate Edwards’ affair — is a point of pride in its newsroom.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, the Enquirer published a string of allegations against Trump’s rivals, such as stories claiming Democratic rival Hillary Clinton was a bisexual “secret sex freak” and was kept alive only by a “narcotics cocktail.”

Stories attacking Trump rivals or promoting Trump’s campaign often bypassed the paper’s normal fact-checking process, according to two people familiar with campaign-era copy.

The tabloid made its first-ever endorsement by officially backing Trump for the White House. With just over a week before Election Day, Howard, the top editor, appeared on Alex Jones’ InfoWars program by phone, telling listeners that the choice at the ballot box was between “the Clinton crime family” or someone who will “break down the borders of the establishment.” Howard said the paper’s coverage was bipartisan, citing negative stories it published about Ben Carson during the Republican presidential primaries.

In a statement last summer, Howard said the company doesn’t take editorial direction “from anyone outside AMI,” and said Trump has never been an Enquirer source. The company has said reader surveys dictate its coverage and that many of its customers are Trump supporters.

The company has said it paid McDougal, the former Playboy Playmate, to be a columnist for an AMI-published fitness magazine, not to stay silent. McDougal has since said that she regrets signing the non-disclosure agreement and is currently suing to get out of it.

Pecker has denied burying negative stories about Trump, but acknowledged to the New Yorker last summer that McDougal’s contract had effectively silenced her.

“Once she’s part of the company, then on the outside she can’t be bashing Trump and American Media,” Pecker said.

In the tabloid world purchasing information is not uncommon, and the Enquirer routinely pays sources. As a general practice, however, sources agree to be paid for their tips only upon publication.

George, the longtime former reporter and editor, said the $1 million penalty in Sajudin’s agreement was larger than anything he had seen in his Enquirer career.

“If your intent is to get a story from the source, there’s no upside to paying upfront,” said George, who sometimes handled catch-and-kill contracts related to other celebrities. Paying upfront was not the Enquirer’s usual practice because it would have been costly and endangered the source’s incentive to cooperate, he said.

After initially calling the Enquirer’s tip line, Sajudin signed a boilerplate contract with the Enquirer, agreeing to be an anonymous source and be paid upon publication. The Enquirer dispatched reporters to pursue the story both in New York and in California. The tabloid also sent a polygraph expert to administer a lie detection test to Sajudin in a hotel near his Pennsylvania home.

Sajudin passed the polygraph, which tested how he learned of the rumor. One week later, Sajudin signed an amended agreement, this one paying him $30,000 immediately and subjecting him to the $1 million penalty if he shopped around his information.

The Enquirer immediately then stopped reporting, said the former staffers.

Cohen, last year, characterized the Enquirer’s payment to Sajudin as wasted money for a baseless story.

For his part, Sajudin confirmed he’d been paid to be the tabloid’s anonymous source but insisted he would sue the Enquirer if his name appeared in print. Pressed for more details about his tip and experience with the paper, Sajudin said he would talk only in exchange for payment.

“If there’s no money involved with it,” he said, “I’m not getting involved.”

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Horwitz reported from Washington.

Barrel of Radioactive Sludge Ruptures at Nuclear Facility

BOISE, Idaho—A barrel containing radioactive sludge ruptured at an Idaho nuclear facility, federal officials said Thursday, resulting in no injuries and no risk to the public but possibly slowing progress in shipping waste out of the state.

The U.S. Department of Energy said the 55-gallon barrel ruptured late Wednesday at the 890-square-mile site that includes the Idaho National Laboratory, the nation’s top federal nuclear research lab.

Federal officials said it’s the first known rupture of a barrel containing radioactive sludge at the site but might not be the last.

That’s because secretive record keeping during the Cold War makes it hard for officials to now know the exact contents of similar barrels, said Idaho National Laboratory Joint Information Center spokesman Don Miley.

The barrel contains a mixture of fluids and solvents that came from nuclear weapons production at the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver, Colorado.

Officials during the Cold War were extremely secretive about the contents of the barrels for fear that the process of making nuclear weapons could be revealed if the contents were known, Miley said.

A preliminary theory about the cause of the barrel rupture, he said, is that radioactive decay made the barrel heat up and ignite particles of uranium. An investigation is planned.

“They haven’t run into anything like this actually happening,” he said. “They’ve got a really good idea of what’s in (the barrels), but they might not always know the concentrations.”

He said an investigation will try to determine if there are other barrels at risk of rupturing.

Workers entering the structure, even before the breach, must use self-contained breathing apparatus and wear full protective clothing. Officials said no radiation has been detected outside the structure, which has special filters to prevent radioactive particles from escaping.

It’s not clear how many barrels are in the earthen-floor structure that’s 380 feet (116 meters) long and 165 feet (50 meters) wide. The barrel that ruptured had been moved to the containment structure in preparation for shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New Mexico.

The sprawling Idaho site in high-desert sagebrush steppe sits atop the giant Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer that’s used by cities for drinking water and farmers for irrigation. The area is near the striking 7,550-foot (2,300-meter) Big Southern Butte, which has a road to the top for adventurous drivers.

The site has been used for nuclear waste disposal and storage beginning in the 1950s. The federal government has been cleaning it up following court battles and several agreements with Idaho in the 1990s amid concerns by state officials that Idaho was becoming the nation’s nuclear waste dump.

The Energy Department has already missed several deadlines under those agreements involving moving nuclear waste out of Idaho and has paid about $3.5 million in fines.

Idaho is also preventing research quantities of spent nuclear fuel from entering the state to be analyzed by Idaho National Laboratory scientists due to a missed deadline.

The federal agency also faces deadlines concerning waste stored in barrels, and the radioactive release and investigation could slow the process of moving that waste out of state.

The Energy Department has floated the idea of bringing in more nuclear waste from Hanford in Washington state for treatment at a $500 million facility at the Idaho site.

Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden on Thursday declined to comment on the situation.

Wendy Wilson of the Snake River Alliance, an Idaho-based nuclear watchdog group, said the incident is a reminder of why the state should not allow more nuclear waste to be shipped into Idaho for treatment.

“It sure demonstrates how much things can go wrong when you’re dealing with waste that hasn’t been fully assessed,” she said.

Comey’s New Book Likens Trump to a Mafia Boss

WASHINGTON — Former FBI Director James Comey blasts President Donald Trump as unethical and “untethered to truth” and calls his leadership of the country “ego driven and about personal loyalty” in a forthcoming book.

Comey reveals new details about his interactions with Trump and his own decision-making in handling the Hillary Clinton email investigation before the 2016 election. He casts Trump as a mafia boss-like figure who sought to blur the line between law enforcement and politics and tried to pressure him regarding his investigation into Russian election interference.

The book adheres closely to Comey’s public testimony and written statements about his contacts with the president during the early days of the administration and his growing concern about the president’s integrity. It also includes strikingly personal jabs at Trump that appear likely to irritate the president.

The 6-foot-8 Comey describes Trump as shorter than he expected with a “too long” tie and “bright white half-moons” under his eyes that he suggests came from tanning goggles. He also says he made a conscious effort to check the president’s hand size, saying it was “smaller than mine, but did not seem unusually so.”

The book, “A Higher Loyalty,” is to be released next week. The Associated Press purchased a copy this week.

Trump fired Comey in May 2017, setting off a scramble at the Justice Department that led to the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation. Mueller’s probe has expanded to include whether Trump obstructed justice by firing Comey, an idea the president denies. Trump has assailed Comey as a “showboat” and a “liar.”

Comey’s account lands at a particularly sensitive moment for Trump and the White House. Officials there describe Trump as enraged over a recent FBI raid of his personal lawyer’s home and office, raising the prospect that he could fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, or try to shut down the probe on his own. The Republican National Committee is poised to lead the pushback effort against Comey, who is set to do a series of interviews to promote the book, by launching a website and supplying surrogates with talking points that question the former director’s credibility.

Trump has said he fired Comey because of his handling of the FBI’s investigation into his Clinton’s email practices. Trump used the investigation as a cudgel in the campaign and repeatedly said Clinton should be jailed for using a personal email system while serving as secretary of state. Democrats, on the other hand, have accused Comey of politicizing the investigation, and Clinton herself has said it hurt her election prospects.

Comey writes that he regrets his approach and some of the wording he used in his July 2016 press conference in which he announced the decision not to prosecute Clinton. But he says he believes he did the right thing by going before the cameras and making his statement, noting that the Justice Department had done so in other high profile cases.

Every person on the investigative team, Comey writes, found that there was no prosecutable case against Clinton and that the FBI didn’t find that she lied under its questioning.

He also reveals for the first time that the U.S. government had unverified classified information that he believes could have been used to cast doubt on Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s independence in the Clinton probe. While Comey does not outline the details of the information — and says he didn’t see indications of Lynch inappropriately influencing the investigation — he says it worried him that the material could be used to attack the integrity of the probe and the FBI’s independence.

Comey’s book will be heavily scrutinized by the president’s legal team looking for any inconsistencies between it and his public testimony, under oath, before Congress. They will be looking to impeach Comey’s credibility as a key witness in Mueller’s obstruction investigation, which the president has cast as a political motivated witch hunt.

He provides new details of his firing. He writes that then-Homeland Security secretary John Kelly — now Trump’s chief of staff — offered to quit out of a sense of disgust as to how Comey was dismissed, as well as his first encounter with Trump, a January 2017 briefing at Trump Tower in New York City. Kelly has been increasingly marginalized in the White House and the president has mused to confidantes about firing the chief of staff.

Comey also writes extensively about his first meeting with Trump after his election. Others in the meeting included Vice President Mike Pence, Trump’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, Michael Flynn, who would become national security adviser, and incoming press secretary, Sean Spicer. Comey was also joined by NSA Director Mike Rogers, CIA Director John Brennan and DNI Director James Clapper.

After Clapper briefed the team on the intelligence community’s findings of Russian election interference, Comey said he was taken aback by what the Trump team didn’t ask.

“They were about to lead a country that had been attacked by a foreign adversary, yet they had no questions about what the future Russian threat might be,” Comey writes. Instead, he writes, they launched into a strategy session about how to “spin what we’d just told them” for the public.

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Lemire reported from New York.

Trump Exploring Rejoining Pacific Trade Talks, Lawmakers Say

WASHINGTON — President Trump has asked trade officials to explore the possibility of the United States rejoining negotiations on the Pacific Rim agreement after he pulled out last year as part of his “America first” agenda.

Farm-state lawmakers said Thursday after a White House meeting with Trump that he had given that assignment to his trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, and his new chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow. The Trans-Pacific Partnership would open more overseas markets for American farmers.

“I’m sure there are lots of particulars that they’d want to negotiate, but the president multiple times reaffirmed in general to all of us and looked right at Larry Kudlow and said, ‘Larry, go get it done,'” said Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb.

Eleven countries signed the agreement last month. Trump’s rejection of the deal has rattled allies and raised questions at home about whether protectionism will impede U.S. economic growth.

Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, said he was “very impressed” that Trump had assigned Kudlow and Lighthizer “the task to see if we couldn’t take another look at TPP. And that certainly would be good news all throughout farm country.”

The discussions came during a meeting in which Trump told farm-state governors and lawmakers that he was pressing China to treat the American agriculture industry fairly. Midwest farmers fear becoming caught up in a trade war as Beijing threatens to impose tariffs on soybeans and other U.S. crops, a big blow to Midwestern farmers, many of whom are strong Trump supporters.

Trump has mused about re-joining TPP negotiations in the past but his request to his top aides show a greater level of interest in rejoining the pact he railed against during his 2016 campaign.

During a February news conference with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Trump raised the possibility of rejoining TPP if the negotiators offered more favorable terms. In a CNBC interview in January, Trump said, “I would do TPP if we were able to make a substantially better deal. The deal was terrible.”

The White House meeting was aimed at appealing to the Midwest lawmakers at a time of high anxiety because of the China trade dispute.

During the exchange, Trump suggested the possibility of directing the Environmental Protection Agency to allow year-round sales of renewable fuel with blends of 15 percent ethanol.

The EPA currently bans the 15-percent blend, called E15, during the summer because of concerns that it contributes to smog on hot days. Gasoline typically contains 10 percent ethanol. Farm state lawmakers have pushed for greater sales of the higher ethanol blend to boost demand for the corn-based fuel.

The oil and natural gas industries have pressed Trump to waive some of the requirements in the federal Renewable Fuel Standard law that would ease gasoline and diesel refiners’ volume mandates. Farm state lawmakers fear that would reduce demand for the biofuels and violate the RFS law.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum said Trump made some “pretty positive statements” about allowing the year-round use of E-15 ethanol, which could help corn growers.

The administration is also considering the possibility of the federal government aiding farmers harmed by retaliatory tariffs from China, according to lawmakers on Capitol Hill and advocacy groups. But some key senators oppose the approach. “We don’t need that. We do not want another subsidy program. What we want is a market,” Roberts said during a congressional hearing this week.

The meetings came as an array of business executives and trade groups expressed alarm to federal lawmakers Thursday about the impact that tariffs will have on their business.

Kevin Kennedy, president of a steel fabrication business in Texas, said tariffs on steel and aluminum imports have led U.S. steel producers to raise their prices by 40 percent. He said that’s shifting work to competitors outside the U.S. including in Canada and Mexico because they now enjoy a big edge on material costs.

Representatives for chemical manufacturers and soybean farmers also expressed their concerns to the House Ways and Means Committee, which is examining the impact of the tariffs.

The U.S. and China are in the early stages of what could be the biggest trade battle in more than a half century. Trump campaigned on promises to bring down America’s massive trade deficit – $566 billion last year – by rewriting trade agreements and cracking down on what he called abusive practices by U.S. trading partners.

Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, urged lawmakers and the administration to stay the course in getting tough on China. He said China’s theft of intellectual property has inflicted serious damage to U.S. companies and threatens the country’s future economic outlook.

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Associated Press writers Catherine Lucey, Jill Colvin and Matthew Daly in Washington and James MacPherson in Bismarck, North Dakota, contributed.

California to Send Troops to Border but Rejects Trump’s Stance

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—California Gov. Jerry Brown accepted President Donald Trump’s call to send the National Guard to the Mexican border, but rejected the White House’s portrait of a burgeoning border crisis and insisted that his troops will have nothing to do with immigration enforcement.

The Democratic governor broke a week of silence Wednesday by agreeing to contribute 400 troops, though not all will be on the border. Brown’s commitment brought pledges from the four states that border Mexico just shy of the low end of the president’s target to marshal 2,000 to 4,000 troops.

Brown cast his decision as a welcome infusion of federal support to fight transnational criminal gangs and drug and firearms smugglers.

“Combating these criminal threats are priorities for all Americans – Republicans and Democrats,” Brown wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

Federal law, notably the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, sharply limits military involvement in civilian law enforcement, creating a supporting role for the Guard. The Pentagon said last week that troops won’t perform law enforcement functions or interact with people detained by border authorities without its approval.

Brown released a proposed agreement with the federal government that emphasizes the widely shared understanding of the Guard’s limited role but explicitly bans any support of immigration enforcement. It says troops cannot guard anyone in custody for immigration violations or participate in construction of border barriers.

The White House praised Brown’s decision without addressing his comments on immigration enforcement.

“We’re also glad to see California Gov. Jerry Brown work with the administration and send members of the National Guard to help secure the southern border,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.

Reaction in California was limited, with few of Brown’s allies or opponents weighing in.

State Sen. Kevin de Leon, a Democratic U.S. Senate candidate and author of California’s so-called sanctuary state law, said Guard deployment was unnecessary and not a good use of resources. But he said more can be done to combat border crime and that he appreciated Brown’s design of “a clear and limited mission focused on real public safety threats.”

“I am confident Governor Brown will not use our National Guard to harass or tear apart immigrant families in California,” he said in a statement.

Rob Stutzman, who advised former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, praised the decision on Twitter, calling Brown’s decision to accept money for using the Guard to fight drugs and human trafficking “good government.”

Immigration advocacy groups were generally quiet, although some were skeptical.

Pedro Rios, director for the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S.-Mexico border program in San Diego, questioned why Brown would send troops while rejecting Trump’s premise that they are needed to help stop illegal immigration.

“If he’s in disagreement with Donald Trump about the justifications for having the National Guard on the border, then why would he accept it?” he said.

Unlike Republican governors in other border states, Brown disagreed with Trump’s portrayal of a border spiraling out of control, noting that Border Patrol arrests fell to the lowest level last year since 1971 and that California accounted for only 15 percent of the agency’s arrests on the Mexican border.

“Here are the facts: there is no massive wave of migrants pouring into California,” Brown wrote the Trump Cabinet members.

In contrast, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who is contributing 1,000 troops, embraced Trump’s mission the day it was announced, saying it would promote the rule of law and “help ensure we are doing everything we can to stem the flow of illegal immigration.”

Brown said California’s troops would join an existing program to combat transnational drug crime, firearms smuggling and human trafficking. About 250 California National Guard troops are already participating, including 55 at the border.

The new contingent of California Guard members being deployed could be posted at the border, the coast and elsewhere statewide, Brown said.

California deployed troops to the border under former Presidents George W. Bush in 2006 and Barack Obama in 2010.

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Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.