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THE FIX

WEEKLY

THE FIX

Dissecting Cohen’s plea deal Dissecting Cohen’s plea deal BY

A ARON B LAKE

M M

BY A ARON B LAKE ichael Cohen reached a new plea deal last week with special counsel Robichael reached a new plea deal ert S. Mueller III’s team, in Cohen which he last week with admitted to lying to Congress aboutspecial counsel RobMueller III’s team, in which he an effort to build a Trump Towerert inS.Moscow. admitted toforlying to Congress about We don’t know why President Trump’s anand effort topleaded build a Trump mer personal attorney fixer to that Tower in Moscow.

WeMueller don’t know why President Trump’s forcrime now — or even why would want mer personal attorney and fixer pleaded to that his plea now. nowclues — or even But we can glean crime potential fromwhy the Mueller would want document. Here arehis a plea few now. takeaways about But we can glean potential clues from the what’s significant. document. Here are a few takeaways about SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES what’s significant.

1. There are conspicuous mentions of Michael Cohen admitted in a plea deal that he

It’s notable that Mueller is now directly contradicting Peskov’s claim in a criminal filIt’s covering notable up that Mueller is now directly ing. It suggests Russia was Trumpcontradicting Peskov’s claim in a criminal filrelated things, too. ing. It suggests Russia was covering up Trumprelatedfamily’s things, too.

3. This ties the Trump efforts to

the Russian government 3. This ties the Trump family’s efforts to As Cohen was planning to travel to Russia, theFelix Russian his Russian associate Satergovernment relayed a As Cohen planning message that Cohen might even was get an audi- to travel to Russia, Russian associate Felix Sater relayed a ence with Putin or his Russian Prime Minister message that Cohen might even get an audiDmitry Medvedev. encePeskov with Putin Russian Prime Minister Sater told Cohen that “wouldorlike to Dmitry Medvedev. invite you as his guest to the St. Petersburg told that Forum which is Russia’sSater Davos it’sCohen June 1619.Peskov “would like to invite you as his guest He wants to meet there with you and possiblyto the St. Petersburg SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES Forum is Russia’s introduce you to either [thewhich President of Rus-Davos it’s June 16- 19.

Trump and his family lied about a Trump Tower project in Moscow.

He wants to meet there with you and possibly 1.

There are conspicuous mentions of Michael Cohen admitted in a plea deal that he sia] or [the Prime Minister of Russia], as they In written testimony to both the House and introduce you to either [the President of RusTrump andlast his family lied about a Trump Russia Tower project in Moscow. are not sure if 1 or both will be there.” more direct line between the potential Senate intelligence committees year, Cosia]received or [the Prime In written testimony to both theestate Housedeal andand the Trumps than either So Cohen not only a replyMinister from of Russia], as they real hen said the Trump Tower Moscow deal was are not sure if 1 or both will be there.” more direct line between the potential Russia Senate intelligence committees last year, CoPeskov’s office but also that office was making Cohen or the Trumps have acknowledged. abandoned in January 2016.

So Cohen not only received a reply from real estate deal and the Trumps than either hen said the Trump Tower Moscow deal was high-level arrangements for him — the lawyer But why do that? Will this be a more central The plea deal says that not only did Cohen Peskov’s office but also that Cohen or the Trumps have acknowledged. abandoned in January 2016. and fixer for an American presidential candi- office was making piece of the collusion investigation going forcontinue to pursue the project through June high-level arrangements for him — the lawyer But why do that?

Will this be a more central The plea deal says that not only did Cohen date. ward? Is Mueller laying marker?

2016, but also that he briefed President Trump formuch an American piece of the collusion investigation going forcontinue to pursue the project through June The question fromand herefixer is how Trump presidential candion it more than the three times he had originaldate. office was helping ward? Isappears Mueller laying marker? also thatTrump’s he briefed President Trump knew and when. If Putin’s 2. Putin’s spokesman to have ly claimed, and also2016, that but he briefed The question here is how much Trump on it more than the three timeshelped he hadcover originalhim with a business proposal duringfrom the 2016 this up family members. knew andcommentary when. If Putin’s 2. that Putin’s spokesman have ly the claimed, that he briefed election,to that casts his Russia in office was helping It has Trump’s been reported Cohen emailed appears “COHEN discussed status and and also progress him with a business proposal during the 2016 helped cover this up family members. whole new light. And Trump is already having Vladimir Putin’s press office in January 2016 of the Moscow Project with Individual 1 — a castsof hisnot Russia commentary in It hasfor been “COHEN discussed the status and progress retreatemailed from hiselection, previousthat claims seeking to grease the skids the reported deal. ButthattoCohen clear reference to Trump — “on more than the whole new light. And Trump is already having Vladimir in January 2016in Russia. of the Moscow with Individual — he a never business Cohen had1said heardPutin’s back. press office having three occasions COHEN claimed toProject the Comto retreat from his previous claims of not seeking grease the skids reference to Trump more than out, the that was a lie.toAn assistant to for the deal. But mittee, and he briefedclear family members of Indi-— “on Turns having business Russia.

Cohen had said he never heard back. three occasions COHEN claimed to the Com4. The deal apparently died thein day The Putin’s top spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, emailed vidual 1 within the Company about the project.” out, that a lie.Post An assistant to about Russian hacking mittee, andThursday he briefedthat family members Indibroke a story him back,of according to Turns the plea deal, andwas then Trump’s lawyers confirmed 4. The apparently Putin’s top spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, emailed vidual within the Company the project.”

The plea deal indicates that deal the last known died the day The Cohen spoke with the assistant on the phone the president was aware of1the ongoing effort about Postwas broke him back, according to the plea deal, andabout thenthe deal that discussion “onaorstory aboutabout June Russian hacking forThursday 20 minutes. during the primaries. Trump’s lawyers confirmed The plea deal indicates Cohen spoke with the assistant on the phone the president was aware of the ongoing effort 14,” 2016, when Cohen told Sater that he was that the last known But Cohen wasn’t the only one who lied The briefing of family members is a particudiscussion about the deal was “on or about June for 20 minutes. during the primaries. canceling plans to travel to Russia. about it. So, too, apparently, did Peskov. Here’s larly conspicuous inclusion.

Cohen never di14,” 2016, when Cohen told Sater that he was But Cohen wasn’t the only one who lied The briefing of family members is a particuIt happens to be the day The Washington what Peskov said of the matter back in August rectly denied briefing them; he only said he canceling plans to travel about it. So, larly conspicuous inclusion.

Cohen di-I repeat PostPeskov. broke Here’s a big story that Russia had hackedto Russia.

2017: “ . never . . Since, again, wetoo, do apparently, not react did didn’t brief them when he made the decision to It happens to be what Peskov said of the matter back in August rectly denied briefing them; he only said he the Democratic National Committee. n the day The Washington to such business topics — this is not our work — shutter the project.

Post©The Washington Post broke a big story that Russia had hacked 2017: “ . . .

Since, I repeat again, we do not react didn’t brief them when he made the decision to we left it unanswered.”

It seems possible Mueller is trying to draw a the Democratic National Committee. n to such business topics — this is not our work — shutter the project. we left it unanswered.”

It seems possible Mueller is trying to draw a ©The Washington Post

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WEEKLY

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

ON THE COVER Mussels hang 4 80 feet deep on a grow out line at 8 ON THE COVER Mussels hang Catalina Sea Ranch Pedro, POLITICS 4 off80San 10 feet deep on a grow out line at Calif., on Oct. 24.

Photo by RALPH NATION 8 12THE PACE Catalina for The Washington Post.Sea Ranch off San Pedro, 10 16THE WORLD Calif., on Oct. 24. Photo by RALPH STORY 12 18COVER PACE for The Washington Post.

NOTE TO READERS: 16 The National 20INNOVATIONS Weekly will not 18 publish the week of 23BOOKS NOTE TO4.READERS: The National Dec 30. It will resume on Jan. OPINION 20 Weekly will not publish the week of TRADITIONS 23 Dec 30. It will resume on Jan. 4.

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OPINIONS

How we can help stop the next migrant caravan GEORGE P. SHULTZ AND PEDRO ASPE Shultz is a former secretary of state, labor, and treasury and a former director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Aspe is a former treasury secretary in Mexico and is a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution.

This was written for The Washington Post.

The highly publicized progress by a “caravan” of approxi­ mately 5,000 migrants from Central America to the Unit­ ed States underlines a persistent trend. The reason for the trend is obvious. Economic conditions in Central America are grim, and the many young people there have poor prospects for advancement. The countries these migrants are fleeing are also plagued by violence.

KIM KYUNG-HOON/REUTERS

Net migration of Mexicans to the United States has been negative in recent years, but the number of immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — countries that are part of the Northern Triangle of Central America, or NTCA — rose by 25 percent from 2007 to 2015, according to the Pew Research Center. The demographic picture suggests that the migration is going to continue in the medium term: While fertility rates in those countries have declined substantially in recent years, the high rates of the two previous decades mean many young people are still in the pipeline.

Guatemala’s working-age population will double by midcentury, and Honduras’s will rise by three-fifths.

What should be done about the impetuses driving them north?

Start by improving economic conditions in the NTCA countries, an effort that can be achieved without any direct budgetary outlay from the United States. The election of a new Inter-American Development Bank president is scheduled for 2020, an opportunity for new leadership to redirect the bank’s finance focus from bankable countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru) to its poorest member countries. We suggest a 70 percent resource allocation to projects in the neediest countries, independent of how much these

countries contribute to the IADB. The principal emphasis should be on financing a sizable infrastructure and public-health plan that puts in place the basis for economic expansion and offers immediate job opportunities to citizens in their home countries. Redirected lending could be tied to governance improvements in the region such as rule-of-law and anti-corruption measures. And Central American countries should be encouraged to enter a free-trade agreement, establishing a unified market with common standards. Perhaps Mexico could join the agreement, with Canada and the United States eventually signing up as well.

The advantages of participating in a larger market would expand the economies of these Central American countries, creating more jobs with decent wages.

Violence, the other main driver of the migration north, stems largely from the fight among drug lords in Central America for access to and dominance in the U.S. market. The United States’ failed war on drugs is thus a principal contributor to violence in Central America.

The goal of the war on drugs, which began during the Nixon administration, was to educate the public about their dangers and to do everything possible to make them difficult to obtain —

A girl from Honduras, part of a migrant caravan, cries after running away from tear gas thrown by U.S. border control last week.

to attack them on the supply side.

However, as became apparent long ago, when there is a big, profitable demand for drugs in the United States, there will be a supply, and that supply has come predominantly from south of the U.S. border. The profits are used by drug cartels and gangs to buy weapons, use them to create an atmosphere of violence and, in many cases, to pay off local authorities.

Curbing violence in Central America will require addressing the U.S. war on drugs. The supply-side approach’s failure can be seen in the fact that the United States has the highest use of cocaine among major economies. The United States should instead focus more on reducing the demand for illegal drugs.

The United States would do well to study the example of Portugal, which has found success by taking a demandoriented approach to drug control. In 2001, Portugal decriminalized drug use and small-scale (for personal use) possession of drugs; punishments remain but are distinct from the prison system, and addicts can seek treatment without fear of arrest. The Portuguese experience suggests that real progress is possible,

particularly among young people, in preventing and treating addiction. If the United States were to adopt this approach, people would increasingly go to free, well-vetted drug treatment centers, and the illegal drug market in this country would gradually disappear, as would profits going south to the drug lords.

Some say the answer is legalization, especially for drugs such as marijuana, and many states have been moving in this direction. But this misses the point. The goal should be to reduce drug use, not to encourage its recreational consumption.

Resources spent on disrupting supply and paying for the costly domestic incarceration of drug users could be used instead to support drug demand reduction and treatment efforts.

Instead of blaming the migrants who are fleeing violence and corruption in Central America, we should recognize why they are leaving and do something about it. If we succeed in improving economic conditions and reducing drugrelated violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, then we can expect that the citizens of those countries will choose to stay home. n ©The Washington Post

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BY SACK FOR THE STAR TRIBUNE

Evaluating the Great Recession ROBERT J. SAMUELSON is a Washington Post economics columnist.

Here’s today’s economic quiz: Was the 2007-09 Great Recession more damaging than the Great Depression of the 1930s? Surely the answer is “no.” During the 1930s, unemployment reached 25 percent. By contrast, the recent peak in the jobless rate was 10 percent. Case closed.

Not so fast, says economist J. Bradford DeLong of the University of California at Berkeley. “Fifty years from now, historians will . . . write that President Franklin Roosevelt, Congress and the Federal Reserve provided a collective policy response that was, if not optimal, at least respectable. . . . By contrast, they will [argue] that the responses of President Barack Obama, Congress and the Federal Reserve did not come up to the standard [set by] the mid-1930s policy-makers.”

Could DeLong be correct? The answer matters, because if he’s right, the economy — despite its present strength — faces a future of longterm sluggishness.

Writing in the Milken Institute Review, an economics journal, DeLong accepts the conventional wisdom that the rapid response to the Great Recession by both the Federal Reserve and Congress prevented a second Great Depression. But his praise stops there.

We are now 11 years removed from the beginning of the crisis in 2007, and income per worker has risen only 7.5 percent, DeLong notes. By contrast, income per worker rose 10.5 percent in the 11 years following the 1929 stockmarket crash.

What explains the gap, he argues, is a psychological hangover from the Great Recession. Consumers and businesses are more cautious, and the despondency is likely to persist.

“We seem to have fumbled the recovery from the recession,” DeLong says, blaming bad policy.

“Early in the recovery, left-center economists (like me) warned that cutting off stimulus prematurely in the name of deficit reduction or inflation-fighting would run huge risks,” he adds. Thus, today’s policymakers deserve low marks compared with their predecessors in the 1930s.

I am sympathetic to DeLong’s

BY LUCKOVICH FOR THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION

analysis, having made somewhat similar arguments myself. The main difference is that I think private caution may have some public virtue. It can dampen financial speculation and boombust cycles. Even granting this, I think DeLong overstates his case.

Just how much the economy’s sluggish recovery can be attributed to Americans’ sour mood is unclear. The slowdown has two main causes: first, reduced growth of the labor force, as baby boomers retire; and second, slower growth in productivity — the economic efficiency that raises wages, salaries and profits.

The retirement of baby-boom workers would have occurred without the Great Recession. The slowdown in productivity growth — reflecting technology, management and worker skills — is not well understood, but may also be independent of the Great Recession.

What is particularly misleading is the contrast with the decades after World War II. As Stanford University historian David M. Kennedy points out in his Pulitzer-Prize winning “Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945”: “The young Americans who went off to war in the twilight years of the New Deal

came home to a different country.”

Victory and defense jobs restored confidence. Fifteen years of depression and war had left a huge backlog demand for cars, homes and appliances. The onset of the postwar baby boom further inflated demand, while shoppers — blocked by rationing from spending their incomes — were awash in savings, which could now be spent. Similarly, new technologies boosted productivity.

All these developments triggered a strong expansion. The circumstances today are much different. Households are trying to restore their savings after the excesses of the housing bubble more than a decade ago. The demographics — mainly aging — have also moved against a stronger recovery. Despite the Internet, so has (it seems) technology.

The lesson of history remains that the World War II economic boom played an essential role in ending the Depression. It wasn’t that policymakers were smarter then than they are now. In fact, the opposite may be true. In 1940, the unemployment rate still exceeded 14 percent. It is doubtful many Americans would trade today’s economy for its prewar predecessor. n

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In Tijuana, bottom-up organizing Slain missionary obsessed with tribe In Tijuana, bottom Evangelist B A G in Tijuana, Mexico n Instagram, John A. planned Chau came off like a careore than 5,000 namesfree young adventurer — and are inscribed in a wornclimbing mountain peaks notebook, one and for each exploring jungles. But in realtrained forwaiting migrant ity, here the missionary harbored a for asylum — a list that has grown deadly obsession with an isolated years tosince the tribe exponentially caravan in India he had first read arrived. about as a teen. trespass A few hundred yards Chau fromspent years planning and where U.S. authorities fired tear to travel illegally to retraining onatremote gas a group of migrants mote apNorth Sentinel Island on a proaching the border fence lastto convert its residents to mission Indian week, the first step in the backChristianity, including learning logged American asylumemergency process medicine, and studyisland is quietly playing out ining a small linguistics and cultural anB Y K EVIN S IEFF AND S ARAH K INOSIAN

sleep on the Mexican the family needs peace.side of the border U.S. officials agree to Chauuntil majored in sports medimeet with them. cine at Oral Roberts University, in Tijuana, Mexico This pastin Tuesday in Tijuana, it graduating 2014, and he volunVladimir Muñoz, 21, from San teered for soccer programs in Iraq ore than 5,000 names was Sula, Africa.

Honduras, who in wasa and South He lived are inscribed in a worn Pedro a group of about in 10 Whismancabinoffor three summers notebook, one for each one the list.

He has waited for six keytown National Recreation migrant waiting here ning his name to called.

Area inforCalifornia; atbeone point, for asylum — a list that has grown weeks he helped those whose numwas hospitalized after being exponentially since the caravan heAs bers called and who were bittenwere by a rattlesnake. arrived. lineMiddleton up to ask for A friend,to John RamA few hundred yards from preparing he said thein number of sey, 22, recalls that 2016 Chau where U.S. authorities fired tear asylum, on the shot up stayed with himlistinhad Bellingham, gas at a group of migrants ap- names caravan arrived.

Wash.,the and that the island in the proaching the border fence last when “The wait waswas onemuch month, Sea onmayhis week, the first step in the back- Andaman a couple weeks more, before mind.

Chau confided that he was logged American asylum process be caravan, but nowattachments it’s gone up avoiding romantic is quietly playing out in a small the two or we haven’t even plaza. Here, the migrants have his missionary group because of so his— planned mission. thropology, plaza. Here, the migrants have to themChau yet,” he said. forces attempted to bring organization Thattoyear, joined said. Though he knew the islandattempted to bring organization gotten At All 8:20Nations, a.m. Tuesday, Muñoz to a system that has become a missionary ers diffihad long violently resisted to a system that has become diffi- with several other City, migrants cult even for attorneys to under- he conducted a covert groupthe based in Kansas Mo., outsiders, cult even for attorneys to under- and run the list began calling out stand, forcing those in search that sends Christian missionaries missionof to the protected island stand, forcing those in search of who and names and counrefuge to wait for months within to 40 countries.

The group prolast month. Police said that shortrefuge to wait for months within numbers tries: handful fromand Haiti, Cuba, eyeshot of San Diego. vided ahim training support, ly after he arrived at the island, eyeshot of San Diego.

Salvador, HonEach morning, Mexican offi- killed him. Indian auaccording toGuatemala Mary Ho, itsand internathe tribe Each morning, Mexican offi- El but most from Michoacan cials learn from their U.S.thorities counter- say they have yet to tional executive leader.

She was cials learn from their U.S. counter- duras, CAROLYN VAN HOUTEN/THE WASHINGTON POST Guerrero, states in Mexico parts how many asylumrecover seekersthe body. surprised by the “soft-spoken, parts how many asylum seekers and insecurity deepened. will be allowed to cross the border very gentle younghas man” who had The death of the 26-year-old will be allowed to cross the border where Among thosecall” whose names that day. The officials pass that “radical to find “unmissionary from Washington that day. The officials pass that a very called Tuesday was Lorena information on to the migrants, reached groups.” state — who broke a raft of laws information on to the migrants, were 38,see who fled Michoawho have chosen leadersand among “You could that every deciput the health of the indigwho have chosen leaders among Rodriguez, hermade, two sons them to manage the notebook. sion with he has everyafter stepher he enous people at risk — has them to manage the notebook. can whothen she was said driven was a Those leaders call the names of international outrage, a has taken since sparked Those leaders call the names of ex-husband, of a criminal organizathe people at the top ofheated the list,debate about the protecby his desire to be among the the people at the top of the list, member SOCIAL MEDIA/REUTERS threatening them with and add the names of new Northbegan Sentinelese people,” Ho tionarrivof tribal communities and at and add the names of new arriv- tion, wasn’t what for to als, doling out handwritten numtion (CBP) officials typically procnez, 38, arrived in the plazaals, with Lorena Rodriguez num- death. said.

HeShe planned tosure live there least two investigations by audoling out handwritten tion (CBP) officials typically procexpect now hoped that40 she to bers on tiny pieces of paper. between 40 and 80 cases a day andpieces her son Andres her three children. They, too,bers hadon tiny years towas learn their thorities in ess India.

It also has of paper. ess and between and 80about cases a day with U.S. officials.

“Come back in a month,” one of soul-searching from Tijuana, claiming don’tNorth Aguilar leftSentinelese Honduras intribe, October,last buttrip not language. prompted in the they in the to Angel the he spent “Come backisland, in a month,” one of meet from Tijuana, claiming they don’t caravan arrived, Tithem instructed the newU.S. arrivals have the community, capacity to accept more Rodriguez, 12, from theAge caravan.

Now she would Ho said groupto was aware evangelical which lived awith Stone existence time studying how tothe circumvent Self-styled them instructed new arrivals Since have thethe capacity accept more juana’s shelters have overflowed. on Tuesday.John than 100 per whether day.

Mexico, wait at the probably have to wait theon carathatthan Chau had to India as which has been debating on a nearby island, protected by a for military patrols. missionary Tuesday.

100 pertraveled day. month, the city’s mayor de“You must keep to your number,” Throughout journey San Ysidro border van members to be processed bea tourist, without the misChau was a martyr, a fool orhis waslong three-mile, exclusion zone imChau had a “very Allen Chau wanted “You must keep meticulous your number,” Last Throughout hisproper long journey clared the situation a humanitarisaid another. the complex. caravan, Vasquez crossing Tijuana. she government. could begin herplan asylum sionary visa, because missionary afflicted by awith messiah posedhad by thefore Indian introduce the North to camouflage hisinexpedition said another. with the caravan, Vasquez had crisis andeasy asked the to United As of Tuesday morning,“God, thereI don’t remained asylum, Thousands are claim. visas “aren’t to come by.”

Ho want tocommitted die,” Chau toThe tribe has long resisted outSentinelese people as fishing activity,” said Dependra As of Tuesday morning, there an remained committed asylum, were 5,030 people here waiting for in even as other of human the contact. of of for Nations The notebook was created ear-5,030 insisted that Chau had not violatscrawled his journal whilemembers sitside to Christianity.

Pathak, the seeking director general were peoplereview here waiting even for as help. other members of the those needs havethe beasylum. Of those on the list, group discussed crossing the bor- toldlier their cases

by U.S. thisthat year, U.S. border offiany laws, though authorities inborting2,560 in a fishing boat off the coast Snoeij Chau theas island police for the Andaman and Nicoasylum.

Of those on the list, 2,560 ed Already, group discussed crossing visible.

Lainez said Tuesday she are members of the caravan whoisland derwhere illegally. until was Tuesday officials. cials restricted peoIndia he clearly of the the But North off-limits, butincreasingly on dive excurbarare Islands. members of the caravan who come dersaid illegally.

Butdid. until find any five space forinher arrived mostly last week.Sentinelese Most do morning, aftershortly five days sions, in Tijuaple from Brahma Chellaney, adays professor people live, he regaled thebeginning Americantheir asylum The son mostly of a doctor whoMost fled do couldn’t arrived last week. morning, after Tijuawhen they arrived not know what they’ll dobefore for the na, he wasn’t how he would claims on the the American of at the for Policy Research he was killed.

“WHOsure WILL with local lore — about two side China during the Cultural Revonotthe know what they’ll do for the family na, Center he wasn’t sure how helast would soDelhi, they the have been sleeping next several months of waiting — PLACE even begin the asylum process.

He who border.

That left waiting in New saysasylum Chau violated TAKE MY IF I DO?” fishermen traveled tomigrants the lution, had been fascinated nextChau several months of waiting — week, even begin process. He street where they’ll sleep, what they’ll and his brother-in-law mostly in and northern Mexico without awhere way theaand country’s aboriginal and Chau, easygoing and friendly, had island in 2006 were strangled with the outdoors since he pulled they’ll sleep, what they’ll on his corner. brother-in-law had formostly some of eat or what will happen once theirlike any beenother walking laps aroundby a sports keep track of who wasa next incopy protection laws as wella sports as seemed backpacker islanders,to about the rumors dusty Crueat or what of will“Robinson happen once their estMeanwhile, been walking laps members around caravan already have made it he names are finally called. when he showed complex shelter. that Thenthe he Japanese line. Although cultural norms. upturned at Remco militaryMexican had immigrasoe”names off hisare father’s finallybookshelf called. as a the complex turned shelter.

Then that they the do trespassed not intend on to “We don’t have controlSnoeij’s over the diveheard the notebook. officials communicate direct“He repeatedly shopabout in 2016 on buried gold tion there during World child, he told online wilder“We don’tan have control over the clear heard about notebook. the months that might process, but it’s the only option we Island “I — met guy who me II. that ly with CBP, the Mexicanness governthis island, Havelock in aIndia’s An-toldWar adventure journal.

Heoption later we wait process, but it’s the only “I met aand guythey who lost told their mebethat to begin their asylum have,” said Osman Alexis daman Vasquez,and Nicobar this is how youchain start the asylum ment did interest not haveina system to said patience him,” Chellaney island “He shared a keen read the novelOsman “The Alexis Sign of the necessary have,” Vasquez, this is with how you start the asylum Experts say that thethere 36, from La Ceiba, Honduras. process,” Vasquez, drivorganize the thousands asylum said.

“There is faith, and — and said he wantedsaid to learn to a taxi researching and knowing more ofBeaver,” about a boy Honduras. who is left claims.

36, from La Ceiba, process,” said Vasquez, alonger taxi is drivasylum asked tofled wait Experts say there arescuba roughly once here.“ItSo the migrants mental illness. .are . . He didn’t undive. er in his hometown who fled about them,”seekers Snoeij said. must alone Experts and guards family’s log say his there are roughly er in seekers his hometown who once official border crossings, the 8,000 caravan members, mostly in time a local gangisland, starteda threatening derstand line between faith Chau’s on the have struck astepped chord.”in. cabin with the help of a Native 8,000 caravan members, mostly in at a localthe gang started threatening likely it that they’ll to Tijuana, with others scattered himwas andlargely his family.

At other otherfriends borderhe crossings, in- friend. andhim doing that’s try absodiver’s haven, unreChau later told American Tijuana, with others scattered more andsomething hisisfamily. border illegally. around northwestern markable.

Mexico. Yet Snoeij Not long after that Vasquez’s cluding several in Texas, there lutelythe nutty.” recalled wasname on a kind of reconnaissance In anisemail, Chau’s father,Mexico.

Pat- cross n n after around northwestern Not long Vasquez’s name U.S. Customs and BorderChau Protecwas inscribed, Emma Dinora Lai- police no list all, leaving toCustoms ©The Washington Post seemed intently interested mission; saidatthat on his families rick, declined to comment, saying U.S. and Border Protecwas inscribed, Emma Dinora Lai-

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KLMNO WEEKLY

POLITICS

Trump is now central figure in probe

BY C AROL D . L EONNIG AND J OSH D AWSEY

I

n two major developments this past week, President Trump has been labeled in the parlance of criminal investigations as a major subject of interest, complete with an opaque legal code name: “Individual 1.”

New evidence from two fronts of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation casts fresh doubts on Trump’s version of key events involving Russia, signaling potential political and legal peril for the president. Investigators have now publicly cast Trump as a central figure of their probe into whether Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign.

Together, the documents show investigators have evidence that Trump was in close contact with his lieutenants as they made outreach to both Russia and WikiLeaks — and that they tried to conceal the extent of their activities.

On Thursday, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress when he insisted that Trump was not pursuing plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow after January 2016, casting Trump’s repeated claims that he had no business interests in Russia in a new light. A draft special counsel document revealed Tuesday also indicates that prosecutors are closely scrutinizing Trump’s interactions with a longtime adviser, Roger Stone, as Stone was allegedly seeking information about WikiLeaks’ plans to release hacked Democratic emails.

Legal experts said it’s still unclear how much peril the president might face as a result of the new evidence Mueller has gathered about the Moscow project and WikiLeaks, but his prominence in the prosecutors’ papers puts the president in an awkward starring role.

“It’s deeply troubling. It’s not a place that anybody wants to be, or where you would want your friends or family to be,” former federal prosecutor Glen Kopp

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST

Mueller inquiry casts doubts on president’s version of key events President Trump speaks with reporters Thursday about Michael Cohen, who used to be his personal attorney and who has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress in statements related to Trump’s pursuit of building a Trump Tower in Moscow.

The president called Cohen “not very smart.”

said. “And it’s certainly not a place that you would want your president to be.”

Trump, identified as “Individual 1” in Cohen’s guilty plea, was said to have received direct updates from Cohen as he pursued a Moscow Trump Tower project with the Kremlin, up until June 14, 2016. The president also appears in the draft charging document for Trump ally Jerome Corsi, who allegedly told Stone about WikiLeaks’ plans to release damaging Democratic emails in October of that year because he knew Stone was in “regular contact” with Trump. The Washington Post reported this past week that

Trump spoke with Stone the day after he got the alert from Corsi.

In the draft documents, prosecutors sought to have Corsi plead guilty to lying when he said he didn’t know about WikiLeaks’ plans and urging others to visit WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to obtain emails damaging to Democrats.

Trump has given slightly differing accounts of his Moscow business ties over time. In July 2016, he tweeted: “For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia.” A day later he claimed, “I have nothing to do with Russia.”

In January 2017, he told a reporter: “I have no deals that could

happen in Russia, because we’ve stayed away.”

Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said Thursday that the president’s written answers to Mueller about the Moscow project, which he submitted just before Thanksgiving, conform with Cohen’s version of events. They discussed a project, starting in 2015, continuing into 2016, and it went nowhere, he said.

“The president, as far as he knows, he remembers there was such a proposal for a hotel,” Giuliani said. “He talked it over with Cohen as Cohen said. There was a nonbinding letter of intent that was sent. As far as he knows it

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POLITICS

ANDREW HARNIK/ASSOCIATED PRESS

never came to fruition. That was kind of the end of it.”

Alan Dershowitz, a Trump ally and constitutional lawyer, said Cohen’s confessions don’t suggest Trump committed any crime but could suggest that Trump wasn’t telling the public the whole truth about the Moscow deal.

“This is politically damaging, but I’m not sure how legally damaging it is,” Dershowitz said. “This is all about questionable political behavior. It’s a good reason for people voting against Trump. But I don’t see a crime yet.”

But Tim O’Brien, a Trump biographer and frequent critic, said the developments pose significant new challenges for the president.

“This is part of the fact pattern that gets to the heart of whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin during the campaign,” O’Brien said. “I think the unforgiving grinding force of the U.S. justice system, which he has tried to undermine since he became president, is encircling him. I don’t think we know where he will land.

But he is certainly mired in something that he is ill-equipped, legal-

ly and personally, to handle.”

Some legal experts argued Mueller appears to be drawing a picture of a candidate who was beholden to the Kremlin. Emails released in the Cohen plea show Trump seeking a financial endorsement from the Russian government on a private project while Russian President Vladimir Putin was offering to say flattering things about Trump.

“It creates the potential for Trump to feel an obligation to pay back President Putin, or Russia in general that . . . do not put the best interests of America forward,” Kopp said. “You are creating a potential vulnerability for a future leader of America.”

Trump privately stewed as he followed news coverage of Cohen’s plea early Thursday morning, a White House official said.

A Justice official called the White House Counsel’s Office on Wednesday evening to let personnel know that Cohen would be pleading guilty in a case the following day, according to one person with direct knowledge of the notice. They were not told the details, however, which they

A draft special counsel document indicates that prosecutors are looking at Trump’s interactions with longtime adviser Roger Stone, above, as Stone was allegedly seeking information about WikiLeaks’ plans to release hacked Democratic emails.

learned about shortly before Cohen’s plea Thursday morning.

Giuliani said the president believed the news development was a gratuitous slap from the Mueller team just as he was about to depart the White House for a trip to the Group of 20 summit in Argentina.

In public, Trump was defiant, telling reporters that Cohen was a liar and a “weak person” who would do anything to save himself from fraud charges he faces related to his taxi business. Speaking before he stepped onto the Marine One helicopter for his trip, he also denigrated Cohen’s intelligence, calling him “not very smart.”

“He was convicted of various things unrelated to us,” Trump said. “He’s a weak person, and what he’s trying to do is get a reduced sentence. So he’s lying about a project that everybody knew about. I mean, we were very open with it.”

He questioned the scrutiny of the Moscow project.

“There would have been nothing wrong if I did do it,” Trump said. “When I’m running for president, that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to do business.”

KLMNO WEEKLY

Trump often grows aggrieved seeing Cohen on TV, aides say.

Among White House advisers, Cohen is seen as an existential threat — as much or more so than the Mueller investigation itself because of his longtime role as Trump’s fixer. Trump’s legal team did not learn until Thursday that Cohen had sat for dozens of hours of interviews with Mueller’s office, according to a senior administration official.

Trump was infuriated this year when Cohen released tapes of him, and he asked his lawyers and advisers if anything could be done to stop Cohen from releasing any more.

The Trump legal team cast Cohen as a flawed character whose word is meaningless, as it had when he pleaded guilty in August to eight felony counts, including paying women for their silence about alleged affairs with Trump.

Legal experts said prosecutors were not likely to build a guilty plea — a brick in the overall case — on the word of one person. The prosecutors’ filings show they have corroborated and buttressed Cohen’s account with contemporaneous emails, and people familiar with the probe say they have also obtained corroborating testimony from other witnesses.

“This is obviously a significant plea and statement. It means that when the president was representing during the campaign that he had no business interests in Russia, that that wasn’t true,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat in line to become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “If the president and his associates were being untruthful in real time as they were pursuing this deal, what does it mean now about how much we can rely on what the president is saying about any continuing Russian financial interest?”

Giuliani said the president and his business have not tried to hide his pursuit of a Moscow tower project and voluntarily disclosed some of the documents Mueller’s team used in its probe of Cohen for lying to Congress. According to a person familiar with the investigation, Cohen and the Trump Organization could not produce some of the key records upon which Mueller relies. Other witnesses provided copies of those communications. n ©The Washington Post

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NATION

Right-wing violence is rising in U.S. B Y W ESLEY L OWERY, K IMBERLY K INDY AND A NDREW B A T RAN

A

s a Republican, Mitchell Adkins complained of feeling like an outcast at Transylvania University in Lexington, Ky. “Hardcore liberals” made fun of him, he wrote, and he faced “discrimination on a daily basis.” He soon dropped out and enrolled in trade school.

But his simmering rage led him back to campus one morning in April 2017, when Adkins pulled out a machete in the campus coffee shop, demanded that patrons state their political affiliation and began slashing at Democrats.

“There was never any ambiguity about why he did it,” said Tristan Reynolds, 22, a witness to the attack, which left two women injured.

Over the past decade, attackers motivated by right-wing political ideologies have committed dozens of shootings, bombings and other acts of violence, far more than any other category of domestic extremist, according to a Washington Post analysis of data on global terrorism. While the data show a decades-long drop-off in violence by left-wing groups, violence by white supremacists and other farright attackers has been on the rise since Barack Obama’s presidency — and has surged since President Trump took office.

This year has been especially deadly. Just in October, 13 people died in two incidents: A Kentucky gunman attempted to enter a historically black church, police say, then shot and killed two black patrons in a nearby grocery store.

And an anti-Semitic loner who had expressed anger about a caravan of Central American refugees that Trump termed an “invasion” has been charged with gunning down 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue, the deadliest act of anti-Semitic violence in U.S. history.

November brought two more bodies: A military veteran who had railed online against women and blacks opened fire in a Tallahassee yoga studio, killing two women and wounding five. All

STEVE CANNON/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Uptick comes amid a renewed focus on hate-driven attacks told, researchers say at least 20 people have died this year in suspected right-wing attacks.

While Trump has blasted Democrats as “an angry left-wing mob” and the “party of crime,” researchers have identified just one fatal attack in 2018 that may have been motivated by left-wing ideologies. In February, Tierre Guthrie, an ex-Marine who was sympathetic to the far-left Black Nationalist movement, shot and killed a police officer trying to arrest him at his Georgia home for failing to appear in court for a traffic violation.

The uptick in right-wing terrorism comes amid a renewed national focus on hate-driven violence. The Anti-Defamation League documented a 57 percent surge in anti-Semitic incidents in 2017, especially at schools and on

college campuses. Meanwhile, FBI statistics released last month show reported hate crimes jumped 17 percent last year.

Among them was the vehicle attack in August 2017 that killed one person and injured 35 others protesting a rally by white supremacists in Charlottesville. The accused driver, James Alex Fields Jr., 21, faces up to life in prison for multiple charges in a trial set to begin Monday.

Terrorism researchers say right-wing violence sprouted alongside white anxiety about Obama’s presidency and has accelerated in the Trump era.

Trump and his aides have continuously denied that he has contributed to the rise in violence. But experts say right-wing extremists perceive the president as offering them tacit support for their cause.

A military veteran who had railed online against women and blacks attacked a Tallahassee yoga studio, killing two women and wounding five.

Above, police investigate the shooting on Nov. 2.

After the violence in Charlottesville, for example, Trump asserted that “both sides” were equally to blame and that there were “some very fine people” among the far-right demonstrators, many of whom wore “Make America Great Again” caps while chanting racist and anti-Semitic slogans.

More recently, Trump rallied crowds in the run-up to the Nov. 6 midterm elections with incendiary rhetoric about Muslims and immigrants, terming a caravan of Central American refugees an “invasion” and ordering active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.

“If you have politicians saying things like our nation is under attack, that there are these marauding bands of immigrants coming into the country, that plays into this right-wing narra-

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NATION tive. They begin to think it’s okay to use violence,” said Gary LaFree, criminology chairman at the University of Maryland and founding director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START. Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, said political leaders, “from the White House down, used to serve as a check on conduct and speech that was abhorrent to most people. I see that eroding.”

START maintains the federally funded Global Terrorism Database, the most comprehensive list of terrorist attacks available to the public. The database tracks terroristic incidents in the United States and around the world since 1970, defined as the threatened or actual use of violence by nonstate actors seeking to attain political, economic, religious or social goals through fear or intimidation.

Determining motivation is an imperfect science, and many acts of domestic terrorism do not sort neatly along the ideological spectrum. In many cases, such as last year’s shooting at a Las Vegas music festival that left 58 people dead, the motive is unknown.

Where motive can be identified, researchers have divided the incidents into about a dozen categories, such as “jihadi-inspired extremists,” “anti-LGBT extremists” and “anti-government extremists.” For recent cases, The Post sorted those categories according to ideology, then refined the data through a case-by-case review.

The results show that unlike the turbulent 1970s, when environmental, antiwar and other left-wing groups were responsible for historically high rates of terrorism in the United States, today’s attackers are far more likely to have right-wing sympathies.

Of 263 incidents of domestic terrorism between 2010 and the end of 2017, a third — 92 — were committed by right-wing attackers, according to The Post’s analysis. Another third were committed by attackers whose motives were either unknown or not clearly political.

Islamist terrorists committed 38 attacks. And left-wing attackers were responsible for 34 at-

Domestic terrorism incidents in the U.S. since 1970 500

468

400

Despite the high number of incidents in 1970, there were only 33 fatalities.

300

Although the United States suffered just 41 terrorist incidents in 2001, it saw by far the highest number of fatalities, 3,008, largely owing to the 9/11 attacks.

65 41

200

100

0

1970

2001

2017

Total incidents in the U.S. by category

Total fatalities in the U.S. by category

RIGHT-WING

RIGHT-WING

50

36

50

11 0

2002

2017

LEFT-WING

0

2002

2017

LEFT-WING

50

50

10 0

2002

2017

0

6 2002

2017

ISLAMIST EXTREMISM

ISLAMIST EXTREMISM

50

50

7

0

2002

2017

16 0

2002

2017

OTHER/UNKNOWN

OTHER/UNKNOWN

50

50

62

12 0

2002

2017

0

2002

2017

The 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting incident and its fatalities are included in the “Other/unknown” category, as the gunman’s motive remains unknown.

Sources: Global Terrorism Database, Washington Post analysis

tacks — about 13 percent.

Among the most deadly leftwing attacks were the 2016 killings of eight police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge by gunmen sympathetic to the Black Lives Matter movement. One of the most prominent was last year’s attack on Republican members of a congressional baseball team, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (La.). The gunman, James Hodgkinson, had raged against Trump online and was a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Joshua D. Freilich, a criminologist at John Jay College and co-director of the Extremist Crime Database, an open-source database of violent and financial crimes

THE WASHINGTON POST

“I never thought I would be bombed in America.”

Mohamed Omar, executive director of an Islamic center that was attacked in 2017

committed by political extremists, said that right-wing attacks not only happen more often but also are more likely to result in fatalities than left-wing attacks.

Stacey Hervey, a criminologist at the Metropolitan State University of Denver who has studied radicalization, said the attackers generally fit one of three archetypes: thrill-seekers, such as teenagers who paint swastikas on the sides of buildings; reactive attackers, who lash out suddenly at perceived enemies; and missionoriented attackers, who aim to send a specific message or achieve a certain political goal.

Adkins, who pleaded guilty last month to the machete attack in Transylvania University’s Jazzmans Cafe, falls into the reactive category.

In a 2015 letter to the student newspaper, Adkins wrote that “being a Republican in this school makes me such a minority that I’ve had to face discrimination on a daily basis.” Online, he later complained about “hardcore liberals” and announced that he had dropped out of college because “the constant bullying and lack of friends drove me to an overdose, a trip to the hospital and two trips to the mental hospital.”

Prosecutors and Adkins’s attorney declined to comment on the case. Adkins’s mother, Amy, said her son is filled with “remorse and sorrow.” She believes that he was driven less by his conservative views than by feelings of marginalization and disrespect.

“It’s not a question of being right-wing,” she said. “It’s a question of feeling that you’re required to give credence to what people believe, but they aren’t required to give you the same respect, regardless of what the issue is.”

As a result of the attack, Transylvania President Seamus Carey said the 1,100-student campus has adopted civility as its theme this year. But Carey said it can be hard for students to be civil when society has grown so coarse.

When political and religious institutions “lose their moral authority,” Carey said, “all the people who relied on that can feel a little lost.”

Even more menacing, Hervey said, are the mission-oriented attacks. The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting was the deadliest act of anti-Semitic terror in the United States since an April 2014 shooting

KLMNO WEEKLY

rampage by Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., a former KKK member and white supremacist who has been sentenced to die for killing three people at a Jewish Community Center and a Jewish retirement home in suburban Kansas City, Kan. More recently, members of a tiny right-wing militia group came to the attention of police in connection with two acts of terror in 2017, including a pipe bomb thrown through the window of a women’s health clinic in Champaign, Ill., last year.

That bomb did not go off, but a few months earlier, one did: In August, a pipe bomb crashed through the window of the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington, Minn., and exploded a few yards from five people gathered for early morning prayers.

Police arrested members of the White Rabbit 3 Percent Illinois Patriot Freedom Fighters Militia, an anti-government group that issues its own currency and has published a handbook that calls for a return to “the good old days” and “Our Old America,” according to an investigation by Chicago’s ABC 7 Eyewitness News.

One of the group’s members, Michael McWhorter, 29, told FBI agents that the mosque bombing was not intended to kill anyone but to “scare them out of the country,” to “show them, hey, you’re not welcome here, get the f--- out,” according to court records.

No one was injured in the bombing. But Mohamed Omar, the Islamic center’s executive director, said it shattered his belief that, in America, he and his family would be safe.

“I was born in Somalia, a wartorn country, and ran 8,000 miles to get away from bombs,” Omar said. “I never thought that I would be bombed in America. My wife and my daughter kept asking, ‘Who would do this to us?’ ” In addition to the militia members, Omar said he blames Trump and other political leaders who have demonized immigrants generally and Muslims specifically.

“When politicians speak and talk the politics of hate and division, people who don’t know us see us as an enemy,” Omar said. “These three guys came all the way from a small town in Illinois to throw a bomb at people they never met.” n ©The Washington Post

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COVER STORY

Planting hope in DEEP-SEA WATERS

T

BY S COTT W ILSON ABOVE THE SAN PEDRO SHELF

The Pacific Ocean is mountain-spring clear here six miles off the coast of Huntington Beach, Calif., where Phil Cruver has been ranching for a fewmonths now.

Dangling between buoys that rise on the occasional swell are sweeps of lines, some strung horizontally, others plunging vertically toward the sea plateau’s floor 150 feet below. The depth drops into oblivion about a mile to the west, and what rises are nutrients that make this prime farming territory. The proof is on the lines — the thick coils of mussel, Cruver’s livestock and his bet that deep-ocean ranching is the future of the world’s food supply.

This 100-acre patch of Pacific is the Catalina Sea Ranch, the first commercially viable aquaculture operation in Mussels hang from a grow line at the Catalina Sea Ranch off San Pedro, Calif., in October.

PHOTOS BY RALPH PACE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

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COVER STORY

KLMNO WEEKLY

federal waters. The first mussel harvest was this summer, and it is expanding to a planned 30 times its current size.

As it does, the ranch will take on the scope that the Trump administration envisions for an industry burdened for decades by a confused bureaucracy and a wary view that using the sea as a solution to future food shortages might do more environmental harm than good.

Diving along line No. 38 in the unseasonably warm water, it is easy to see the promise. The clumps of mussels are bulky along the length of the lines, which vanish into cobalt blue about 60 feet down. Schools of small fish swirl around the lines, and tiny scallops grow on the shells of the jet-black mussels.

Each line hosts a small world of its own.

“Ninety percent of the ocean is a desert,” said Brian Schmidt, whose company Primary Ocean Producers is an investor in Cruver’s kelp-harvesting operation.

“But it doesn’t have to be.”

Nearly five decades ago, Jacques Cousteau urged the world to “plant the sea and herd its animals” as projections for human population forecast that the world would one day run out of food. But the controlled raising and harvesting of shellfish, finfish and seaweed has been slow to

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COVER STORY

develop in the United States, which — despite its long coastlines, once-bountiful fisheries and maritime traditions — imports 90 percent of its seafood.

That is changing. A rare common ground inhabited by the Trump administration and the environmental community has made developing offshore sea ranches such as this one off the Southern California coast a national priority, though for different reasons.

The administration wants to reduce a roughly $15 billion annual seafood trade deficit, much of it with Asian nations such as China, Japan and South Korea. In its current strategic plan, the Commerce Department states that “a strong U.S. marine aquaculture industry will serve a key

role in U.S. food security and improve our trade balance with other nations.”

For environmentalists who still have some concerns about the nascent industry, the potential benefit is more far-reaching.

Farming and ranching have depleted land and animal species on a broad scale worldwide, and as the global population grows by an estimated 2.4 billion people in the next three decades, the world will need to produce 70 percent more food than it does today. The oceans — covering more than twothirds of the planet but producing just 2 percent of its food — could be a substitute for terrestrial farming.

“We’re at the proverbial tipping point over whether we want to take responsibility for our own

Containers of algae used to feed the Catalina Sea Ranch’s broodstock are seen at its lab in San Pedro, Calif.

food production,” said Michael Rubino, director of the office of aquaculture at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “This is a new frontier. It’s exciting, and it’s also not without its difficulties.”

Small-scale aquaculture operations have been running in state waters for years, mostly along the southeastern U.S. coast, where farms raising shellfish have thrived. Those operations are expanding, if slowly, because operating close to shore can bring farms into conflict with shipping, recreational fishing and water sports. The water quality also is likely to be lower than in the open ocean.

In Maine, lobstermen are exploring whether they can grow kelp, a seaweed with potential as a

biofuel, to augment their incomes. Cold-water Alaska, too, is looking at farming kelp, with the goal of becoming what Rubino called the “Saudi Arabia of seaweed.” Hawaiian ranchers are raising yellowtail tuna.

But it is often difficult, especially in a heavily regulated state such as California, to pass the necessary environmental tests required to open a sea ranch. California is not issuing any aquaculture permits in state waters, pending the completion of an official environmental review expected in the next year or so.

Federal waters, largely off limits until recently, are the industry’s immediate future. The reason they have not been opened sooner has less to do with concerns about aquaculture as a prac-

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COVER STORY tice than with a federal bureaucracy that is hesitant to take the lead in regulating a new industry.

To operate in navigable federal waters, an operation needs a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. But a number of other agencies have had a stake in aquaculture regulation, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration and NOAA. Would-be aqua farmers often bounced from one agency to another, racking up costs and frustrating investors.

NOAA officials have been working with other federal agencies and aqua farmers to clarify the process. One proposal would have NOAA act as the lead agency in issuing aquaculture permits in coordination with other regulators. Legislation to make that official was introduced in the House and Senate this year, but it is likely to have to be resubmitted to the Congress taking office in January.

“The biggest constraint has always been the permitting process, which is exceedingly long and expensive,” said Paul Olin, an aquaculture specialist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., who adds that the cumbersome system has brought a wait-and-see caution to the industry.

“There’s a lot of investment capital out there,” he said. “But the problem is that everyone wants to be first to be second.”

Olin has spent his career in aquaculture, developing programs to raise shrimp, scallops and finfish. He is consulting with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife as it prepares the environmental review of aquaculture in state waters. In the meantime, he is looking to the federal oceans as the next possibility.

Working with the port of Ventura, about two hours north of here, Olin is helping organize a project in which the port would lease 20 federal parcels of 100 acres each off the coast. The port, bearing the costs of permitting, would then lease the parcels to mussel farmers.

The benefit to the farmers is clear. But the port would also gain, Olin said, from the business the mussel farms would bring to a once-thriving working harbor that, like many along the Southern California coast, has been converted largely to tourism uses.

“We’ve seen a major shift in

public sentiment — the social license — and government acceptance that this is the only way we’re going to produce the seafood we need,” said Olin, who hopes the Ventura project will be up and running within two years.

Most environmental concerns center on the farming of finfish, which Cruver has avoided thus far.

The permitting for raising fin-

Catalina Sea Ranch founder and owner Phil Cruver, top, drives his boat out to his 100-acre mussel ranch off San Pedro, Calif. There, deckhands remove and discard cracked mussel shells.

fish is more rigorous — more federal agencies are involved in regulating and monitoring the activity — and environmentalists worry that feeding the large pens of livestock will severely deplete baitfish populations.

In these operations, commercially profitable fish such as yellowtail and bluefin tuna are raised in large, conical pens that hang from buoys. These species are carnivorous — they eat other fish — so feeding them is a challenge. There are fish-based proteins that can be used as food. But farmers also can use whole mackerel, sardine and other baitfish, raiding one fishery to grow a more

lucrative one.

“If you have to feed the fish you are raising more fish than what you are producing, is it really aquaculture?” said Aaron McNevin, director of the aquaculture program at the World Wildlife Fund, who has been working to develop a set of farming “best practices.”

“It does make sense to look to the two-thirds of the world covered by sea to increase our protein production,” he said. “And it does mean a trade-off. With any production, there will be impacts. But by taking this offshore, those are lessened.”

There are no finfish aquaculture operations in federal waters.

But Don Kent, president of the Hubbs-Sea World Research Institute in San Diego, has been trying to change that.

Kent was born and raised in San Diego, and he watched as a once-thriving seaport steadily lost the commercial fishing that had built it. The tuna industry once supported 40,000 jobs along the waterfront, all of them now gone.

Four years ago, he began to seek permits to operate a tuna farm four miles off the coast. Occupying less than a quarter-squaremile of surface, the farm would comprise 28 underwater cages.

The goal would be to produce 5,000 tons of tuna a year — five times the amount of all the fish, lobster and urchins that come into San Diego today.

“It’s one thing when you are talking about cellphones and Samsung TVs, but this is our food we are importing,” Kent said. “And I live in California, where we feed the world. So when you are looking at seafood in the supermarkets from Asia and Norway and other countries, it makes no sense.”

His initial investors made the cages used on finfish farms. But after two years of waiting for the Obama administration to act, they gave up to concentrate on ranches in Mexico. Kent has found new investors and thinks there is now “a pathway” through the federal bureaucracy that could end in a permit, though that is likely to be at least two years away.

“Either we figure out how to do this ourselves or more and more of our seafood will be coming from elsewhere,” Kent said.

Everyone in the small aquacul-

KLMNO WEEKLY

ture community knows Cruver, a 73-year-old force of nature, shirtless as he pilots his motorboat around the farm he owns and runs.

Cruver has been through the permitting mill, and on this bright fall day, with the hazy mainland on one side, a trio of oil platforms looming in the near distance and Santa Catalina Island beyond, he sounds like a man who has figured it out.

He spent $1.5 million getting the ranch up and running, only to see the first trial harvest last year hampered by the lack of nearby federal monitoring laboratories, which meant that the seafood could not be certified as healthy in time to be sold. But after a nearly year-long delay, that process was smoothed out and profit margins are high enough to make even the wait worth it.

With every harvest, something that happens twice a week, a NOAA representative accompanies sea ranch employees to the site, taking samples and sending them to be tested. Then the mussels, harvested at a rate of 1,500 pounds a day, can be sold.

“How’s it going?” Cruver calls to a pair of recreational fishermen cruising the ranch site, which attracts other wildlife, including the occasional stray juvenile great white shark, that gathers at the edge of the shelf.

“Good,” comes the response.

“Any problem?”

“None, just wanted to know what you’re catching,” says Cruver, the welcoming neighborhood rancher. “We’re going to take this place to 3,000 acres, so there is going to be a lot of fish out here.

Get ready.”

A third of the ranch will be mussel, a third kelp and a third “cage cultures,” which means scallops, abalone and oysters. Such shellfish and seaweed have a beneficial effect on the ocean, filtering the water and reducing some of the acid in it.

The ranch house is a yellow boat with a big winch that cranks in lines from which mussels are plucked by some of the dozen people Cruver employs. Each daily harvest takes hours.

“I’ve had five start-ups in my life, and every time something slammed the door on each of them,” Cruver says. “But this? It just keeps getting better.” n ©The Washington Post

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KLMNO WEEKLY

INNOVATIONS

Parents turn to AI to hire babysitters BY

D REW H ARWELL

W

hen Jessie Battaglia started looking for a new babysitter for her 1-year-old son, she wanted more information than she could get from a criminalbackground check, parent comments and a face-to-face interview.

So she turned to Predictim, an online service that uses “advanced artificial intelligence” to assess a babysitter’s personality, and aimed its scanners at one candidate’s thousands of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts.

The system offered an automated “risk rating” of the 24-year-old woman, saying she was at a “very low risk” of being a drug abuser.

But it gave a slightly higher risk assessment — a 2 out of 5 — for bullying, harassment, being “disrespectful” and having a “bad attitude.”

The system didn’t explain why it had made that decision. But Battaglia, who had believed the sitter was trustworthy, suddenly felt pangs of doubt.

“Social media shows a person’s character,” said Battaglia, 29, who lives outside Los Angeles. “So why did she come in at a 2 and not a 1?”

Predictim is offering parents the same playbook that dozens of other tech firms are selling to employers around the world: artificial-intelligence systems that analyze a person’s speech, facial expressions and online history with promises of revealing the hidden aspects of their private lives.

The technology is reshaping how some companies approach recruiting, hiring and reviewing workers, offering employers an unrivaled look at job candidates through a new wave of invasive psychological assessment and surveillance.

The tech firm Fama says it uses AI to police workers’ social media for “toxic behavior” and alert their bosses.

And the recruitment-technology firm HireVue, which works with companies such as Geico, Hilton and Unilever, offers a system that automatically

KYLE GRILLOT FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Tech assesses personality through social media, but methods remain unproven and unexplained analyzes applicants’ tone, word choice and facial movements during video interviews to predict their skill and demeanor on the job. (Candidates are encouraged to smile for best results.)

But critics say Predictim and similar systems present their own dangers by making automated and possibly life-altering decisions virtually unchecked.

The systems depend on blackbox algorithms that give little detail about how they reduced the complexities of a person’s inner life into a calculation of virtue or harm. And even as Predictim’s technology influences parents’ thinking, it remains entirely unproven, largely unexplained and vulnerable to quiet biases over how an appropriate babysitter should share, look and speak.

There’s this “mad rush to seize the power of AI to make all kinds of decisions without ensuring it’s accountable to human beings,” said

Jeff Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a tech advocacy group. “It’s like people have drunk the digital Kool-Aid and think this is an appropriate way to govern our lives.”

Predictim’s scans analyze the entire history of a babysitter’s social media, which, for many of the youngest sitters, can cover most of their lives. And the sitters are told they will be at a great disadvantage for the competitive jobs if they refuse.

Predictim’s chief and co-founder Sal Parsa said the company, which launched in October as part of the University of California at Berkeley’s SkyDeck tech incubator, takes ethical questions about its use of the technology seriously.

Parents, he said, should see the ratings as a companion that “may or may not reflect the sitter’s actual attributes.”

But the danger of hiring a problematic or violent babysitter, he

Jessie Battaglia, 29, used Predictim, an online service that uses “advanced artificial intelligence” to assess potential babysitters’ personalities, before hiring a sitter. She’s pictured at home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., with her 1-year-old son, Bennett.

added, makes the AI a necessary tool for any parent hoping to keep his or her child safe.

A Predictim scan starts at $24.99 and requires a babysitter’s name and email address and her consent to share broad access to her social media accounts. The babysitter can decline, but a parent is notified of her refusal, and in an email the babysitter is told “the interested parent will not be able to hire you until you complete this request.”

Predictim’s executives say they use language-processing algorithms and an image-recognition software known as “computer vision” to assess babysitters’ Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts for clues about their offline life.

The parent is provided the report exclusively and does not have to tell the sitter the results.

Parents could, presumably, look at their sitters’ public social media accounts themselves. But the computer-generated reports promise an in-depth inspection of years of online activity, boiled down to a single digit: an intoxicatingly simple solution to an impractical task.

The risk ratings are divided into several categories, including explicit content and drug abuse. The start-up has also advertised that its system can evaluate babysitters on other personality traits, such as politeness, ability to work with others and “positivity.”

The company hopes to upend the multibillion-dollar “parental outsourcing” industry and has begun advertising through paid sponsorships of parenting and “mommy” blogs. The company’s marketing focuses heavily on its ability to expose hidden secrets and prevent “every parent’s nightmare,” citing criminal cases including that of a Kentucky babysitter charged this year with severely injuring an 8-month-old girl.

But tech experts say the system raises red flags of its own, including worries that it is preying on parents’ fears to sell personality scans of untested accuracy.

They also question how the systems are being trained and how vulnerable they might be to mis-

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INSPIRATION understanding the blurred meanings of sitters’ social media use.

For all but the highest-risk scans, the parents are given only a suggestion of questionable behavior and no specific phrases, links or details to assess on their own.

Jamie L. Williams, a staff attorney at the civil-liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said most algorithms deployed now to assess the meaning of words and images online are widely known to lack a human reader’s context and common sense. Even tech giants such as Facebook have struggled to build algorithms that can tell the difference between a harmless comment and hate speech.

“Running this system on teenagers: I mean, they’re kids!” Williams said. “Kids have inside jokes.

They’re notoriously sarcastic.

Something that could sound like a ‘bad attitude’ to the algorithm could sound to someone else like a political statement or valid criticism.”

And when the system gets it wrong — suggesting, for instance, that a babysitter abuses drugs — it can be impossible for a parent to know. The system’s clear-cut ratings and assertions of confidence might lead parents to expect it to be far more accurate or authoritative than a human could be.

Americans still harbor a lingering distrust over algorithms whose decisions could affect their daily life. In a Pew Research Center survey released last month, 57 percent of respondents said they thought automated résumé screening of job applicants was “unacceptable.”

Some AI experts believe that systems like these have the potential to supercharge the biases of age or racial profiling, including flagging words or images from certain groups more often than others. They also worry that Predictim could coerce young babysitters into handing over intimate data just to get a job.

But Diana Werner, a mother of two living just north of San Francisco, said she believes babysitters should be willing to share their personal information to help with parents’ peace of mind.

“A background check is nice, but Predictim goes into depth, really dissecting a person — their social and mental status,” she said. n ©The Washington Post

KLMNO WEEKLY

School’s ‘talking bananas’ share supportive messages BY

C ATHY F REE

Early each morning, while students who attend Kingston Elementary in Virginia Beach are still asleep, school cafeteria manager Stacey Truman sits down at her desk and picks up a banana.

Actually, 60 bananas. Sometimes, bunches more. For the next 45 minutes, Truman patiently writes messages of hope on each

STACEY TRUMAN

Stacey Truman writes messages of hope in marker on dozens of bananas each day.

banana with a black marker: “Not all those who wander are lost,” she’ll write on one.

“If you can dream it, you can achieve it,” she’ll print on another.

On she goes (“You get what you give” and “Never give up”), until she’s filled several trays with what students call “talking bananas” — a lunch choice offering both positivity and potassium.

Truman, 35, who has worked in Kingston’s cafeteria for nine years, honed her banana-writing skills on messages that she’d tuck into lunchboxes for her two daughters, Mackenzie, 10, and Kayleigh, 7. Two months ago, she decided that the kids at Kingston

might find the idea appealing as well.

“I want them to succeed in life and have an awesome day at school,” she said. “Whenever I can put a smile on all of those little faces, I’ve done my job.”

Although only about 10 percent of Kingston’s 540 students put bananas on their trays each day, many more have found Truman’s daily words of wisdom delightful, said the school’s principal, Sharon Shewbridge.

“She’s helped the kids to make healthier choices,” said Shewbridge. “But it’s more than that.

Stacey genuinely cares and wants them to know they are loved.

What I especially appreciate is that she does this without being directed or asked.”

Truman, who lives in Moyock, N.C., near the Virginia border, leaves her house every weekday at 4:45 a.m. and drives almost an hour to Kingston Elementary. It’s also her job to open the school and turn on the lights every morning before preparing the day’s lunch offerings with two colleagues. After she checks her email, she enjoys the quiet and writes on bananas at her desk before the rest of the cafeteria crew arrives and the morning becomes hectic.

Her husband, Zachery Truman, a computer tech, helps get their girls ready in the mornings, “because I’m not there when they wake up,” she said. For almost two years when her girls were younger, Stacey Truman also worked nights as a waitress because her family needed additional income to pay their bills.

“My girls sacrificed because I only saw them on the weekend, other than when I’d sneak in while they were sleeping to kiss them on the forehead,” she said.

“When I was getting their lunches ready the night before, I started writing little notes on their bananas to let them know I was thinking of them and wished I could be there.”

Truman’s own childhood didn’t include “talking bananas.” Her

parents divorced when she was 9, she said, requiring her and her two sisters to move into their grandparents’ house with their mother.

“It was really hard. I wanted to give my daughters a better life than what I lived through and experienced,” she said. “Writing on a banana is such a simple thing, but it has an impact.”

She may be starting a trend, now that Principal Shewbridge has shared photos of Truman’s bananas on Twitter. When the Dole fruit company heard about Truman’s efforts in early November, they delivered 540 bananas to the school — one for every student.

On that morning, Truman enlisted help from PTA members and friends to come up with sayings and write them on each banana, “otherwise, I’d have still been writing when school let out,” she said.

To use up the extras, she also created a batch of banana dolphins that were a huge hit.

A longtime collector of motivational sayings, Truman confessed that she gets a little help now from Google so that she’ll always have a large supply of fresh (but not overly mushy) material.

One of her favorite expressions is “Shoot for the moon — if you miss, you’ll end up with the stars.”

Small sayings such as “Dream big,” “Be yourself ” and “Laughter heals hurt” are equally powerful, she said.

“To see the kids’ faces light up when they choose their bananas is my reward,” said Truman. “And now, kids who bring lunches from home are coming in with talking bananas from their parents. I really love that.”

Always on the lookout for new ways to entice children to select more fruits and vegetables, she is now thinking of expanding her produce scribblings. She’s got her eye on citrus.

“Why not emoji oranges?” she said. n ©The Washington Post

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SUNDAY, December, 2, 2018

Foothills Magazine presents its 7th Annual

PHOTO CONTEST

Enter your photos taken in North Central Washington for the chance to win cash prizes and see your photos published in the magazine. Photos must have been shot during the 2018 calendar year. Entries will be judged in two categories — human subjects and landscapes.

Get all the details at photos.ncwfoothills.com Entries must be submitted by January 4, 2019

North Central Washington’s lifestyle magazine ncwfoothills.com