The Washington Post National Weekly - January 31, 2016

Worst Week Roger Ailes 3

Politics State of disunion 4

Travel Sniffing out the threats 17

5 Myths Reconstruction 23

ABCDE NATIONAL WEEKLY SUNDAY, JANUARY 31, 2016

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Error in the sky Reaper drones used by the Air Force are prone to sudden electrical failures PAGE 12

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2016

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KLMNO WEEKLY

WORST WEEK IN WASHINGTON

Roger Ailes of Fox News

by Chris Cillizza

T

his past week, Fox News honcho Roger Ailes learned the same lesson that the entire Republican field has been made to understand in this campaign: When you fight with Donald Trump, you lose.

Trump began the week by flirting, yet again, with the idea of not participating in Thursday’s debate on Fox, citing past “unfair” treatment from moderator Megyn Kelly. He even put up a Twitter poll asking his millions of followers what they thought he should do.

Then Fox did this: “We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president,” said a news release, apparently written by Ailes. “A nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings.”

Trump does not like to be mocked. He abruptly canceled his plans to attend the debate and instead scheduled a counter­rally, billed as a fundraiser for veterans, just a few miles from the Iowa debate hall. In typical Trumpian fashion, he dismissed the debates without him as “low­rated afterthoughts.”

The Trump­less debate proved the Donald right. It was, in the main, a vanilla affair with few memorable moments as the seven candidates onstage played it safe with the Iowa caucuses looming. The ratings, too, were decidedly

KLMNO WEEKLY

ALEX KROKE/2MK STUDIO/FOX NEWS VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

un­Trumpian. While more than 24 million people watched the first GOP presidential debate on Fox, roughly half as many watched this one.

Roger Ailes, for becoming the latest victim of the Trump juggernaut, you had the worst week in Washington. Congrats, or something. n

This publication was prepared by editors at The Washington Post for printing and distribution by our partner publications across the country. All articles and columns have previously appeared in The Post or on washingtonpost.com and have been edited to fit this format. For questions or comments regarding content, please e-mail weekly@washpost.com. If you have a question about printing quality, wish to subscribe, or would like to place a hold on delivery, please contact your local newspaper’s circulation department. © 2016 The Washington Post / Year 2, No. 16

CONTENTS POLITICS THE NATION THE WORLD COVER STORY HEALTH BOOKS OPINION FIVE MYTHS

4 8 10 12 16 18 20 23

ON THE COVER A Reaper drone is parked at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. The drones have been bedeviled by a rash of sudden electrical failures. Photograph by ISAAC BREKKEN, Getty Images

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BY

POLITICS

P HILIP R UCKER in Freedom, N.H.

R

epublican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz strode into the general store in this aptly named New England village last week and, with the swagger and zeal of a warrior, rattled off the problems facing the country: Federal regulations are a jackboot strangling everyone. Obamacare is a disaster, and taxes are too high. Constitutional rights are being violated left and right. Sanctuary cities are endangering citizens. The terrorists are beating us.

Russia and China are laughing at us. Pulling America back from the abyss requires daily prayer and a political awakening.

When the Democratic candidates gathered at a forum Monday night in Des Moines, they identified an entirely different set of problems: Wages are stagnant, and workers have been left behind by the economic recovery; guns are rampant; the big banks are greedy and reckless; the police can no longer be trusted; and climate change threatens environmental catastrophe.

Presidential elections have long featured major differences between Democrats and Republicans, but the fault lines have generally been over how to fix the problems facing the country. What makes the 2016 campaign unique is that the two parties don’t even agree on the problems.

The conversations underway on the two parties’ debate stages and at their candidates’ rallies and town-hall meetings are strikingly different. This fall’s general election is likely to turn on which set of issues voters consider more urgent.

“Ultimately, it’s going to be which of these visions — regardless of what the solutions are, but what the priorities are, what the issue set is — will appeal to independent voters,” said Jeff Weaver, campaign manager for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont. “Which vision are independents going to accept as the legitimate vision, even if they don’t agree with all of the solutions?”

The dynamic also could have significant consequences for whoever is sworn in as president.

A Democratic president such as Sanders or Hillary Clinton, for instance, would be heavily engaged

in reining in Wall Street, toughening gun laws and combating climate change.

But a Republican president probably would not see those as areas of concern, much less emphasis. That president would probably focus on undoing President Obama’s biggest achievements and recalibrating U.S. foreign policy to be more assertive toward the Islamic State.

One of the few areas of agreement between the two parties is drug abuse — specifically the heroin epidemic tearing through the country. “The drug thing is killing Republicans and Democrats together,” former president Bill Clinton said at a campaign rally in Concord, N.H. Joel Benenson, the pollster on Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns and now Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist, attributed the divide on issues to the constituencies that each party is trying to reach. While Republicans aggressively court evangelicals and other grass-roots conservatives, Democrats cater to the interests of minorities, women and workingclass people.

“The Democratic Party generally has been focused on the lives of working Americans and the fundamental issues that they’re still dealing with: How do I get a goodpaying job? How do I get my kids into college? How do I get my pay up? How do I get some of my costs down,” Benenson said. “The Republican Party seems to be locked in some kind of echo chamber.”

But Republicans say their top issues are the priorities of most Americans — and they point to the groundswell of enthusiasm for their campaigns as proof.

“There is an awakening that’s sweeping this country,” Cruz said repeatedly as he visited nearly two dozen New Hampshire towns this month on a bus tour.

The two debates in Charleston, S.C. — clocking in at about two hours each — offered a vivid illustration of the gulf. At the Jan. 14 GOP debate, there were 15 mentions of the word “immigration,” but three days later at the Democratic debate, it came up only three times.

China was invoked 43 times in the GOP debate but only three times at the Democratic one. No

Talking past each other

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POLITICS

WEEKLY

Number of mentions of specific words at two recent debates “Immigration” nnnnnnnn nnn nnnnnnn

D: 3 R: 15

“China” nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn nnn nnn

3 43

“Climate” nnnnnnn

7 0

“ISIS” nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn nnnn nnnnnn

20 46 Notes: Both two-hour debates were held in Charleston, S.C. The Republican debate was Jan. 14; the Democratic debate was Jan. 17.

ISTOCKPHOTO

Forget finding common ground to fix America’s problems. The political parties can’t even agree on what’s plaguing the nation in the first place.

Republican said the word “climate,” yet it was uttered seven times on the Democratic stage.

And “ISIS” was said 46 times by the Republicans, compared with 20 times by the Democrats.

After seeing the Democrats spar, Matt Moore, chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, walked away stunned.

“No candidate mentioned national security over the first hour of thedebate,”Mooresaid.“Webelieve national security is the most important issue facing the American people. That was quite perplexing.”

For a split-screen contrast, just attend one of Chris Christie’s town-hall meetings. The Republican governor of New Jersey often goes on for more than an hour talking almost exclusively about the danger of “radical jihadist terrorism” and warning that the next target could be anywhere.

“I lose three times as many calories when I listen to the Republi-

canstalk thanwhen I listento Democrats because it gets you all revved up,” Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) said. “You almost feel like: ‘Oh, my God, the world’s going to end next week. I better do something.’ ” Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D) lamented that issues she and many of her urban constituents consider critical — including criminal justice reform and voting rights — are largely ignored by the leading Republican candidates.

“It’s a mystery to me that at a time that is so critical to our country’s future, virtually half the country would be satisfied with that type of superficial and too-often childish debate, when we have some real serious things going on in our country,” Rawlings-Blake said.

It’s not only the issues that the candidates prioritize but also the kind of language they use during their campaigns.

At the Democratic debate, no candidate said the words “God,” “Christian,” “Bible” or “scripture,” nor do the three candidates — Clinton, Sanders or former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley — commonly use such words in their speeches. Although they are religious, they often campaign without talking about faith.

By contrast, the Republican candidates tend to wear their faith on their sleeves, in part to win over conservative Christian voters in Iowa and other states.

Donald Trump brings his childhood Bible with him to some campaign rallies and holds it up as a prop, although the billionaire mogul drew mockery when he botched a reference to “Second Corinthians” during a recent speech to students at Liberty University, the Christian college in Virginia founded by the late televangelist Jerry Falwell.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush often talks about his Catholic faith and carries a rosary on the campaign trail.

And Cruz, whose father is a born-again Christian and travels the country preaching, has taken to quoting scripture in his stump speeches. He cites 2 Chronicles 7:14 and urges his supporters to find time every day to pray for the country’s future.

“Just one minute when you wake up in the morning,” Cruz says. “When you’re shaving. When you’re having lunch. When you’re tucking your kids into bed.” n

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Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders hope the issues they prioritize will appeal the most to voters.

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POLITICS

On faith, Sanders breaks the mold

BY F RANCES S TEAD S ELLERS AND J OHN W AGNER

sense of morality be part of our politics.”

G

rowing up, Bernie Sanders followed the path of many young American Jews. He went to Hebrew school, was bar mitzvahed and traveled to Israel to work on a kibbutz.

But as an adult, Sanders drifted away from Jewish customs. And as his bid for the White House gains momentum, he has the chance to make history. Not just as the first Jewish president — but as one of the few modern presidents to present himself as not religious.

“I am not actively involved with organized religion,” Sanders said in a recent interview.

Sanders said he believes in God, though not necessarily in a traditional manner.

“I think everyone believes in God in their own ways,” he said.

“To me, it means that all of us are connected, all of life is connected, and that we are all tied together.”

Sanders’s religious views, which he has rarely discussed, set him apart from the norm in modern American politics, in which voters have come to expect candidates from both parties to hold traditional views about God and to speak about their faith journeys.

Every president since James Madison has made the pilgrimage across Lafayette Square to worship at St John’s Episcopal Church at least once, according to the White House Historical Association. Only three presidents, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, have been unaffiliated with a specific religious tradition, according to the Pew Research Center for Religion and Public Life. And President Obama and his predecessors have regularly hosted clergy for White House prayer sessions Sanders’s chief rival, Hillary Clinton, emphasized her lifelong affiliation as a Methodist during an exchange Monday with voters in Iowa. Clinton did not mention Sanders, but her words underscored the stark contrast between

JOSHUA LOTT FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

The presidential candidate rarely talks about his Jewish upbringing or his spirituality her more traditional approach and that of her rival.

“I am a person of faith. I am a Christian,” Clinton said. “I am a Methodist. I have been raised Methodist. I feel very grateful for the instructions and support that I have received starting in my family but through my church.”

Reticent on his faith For Sanders, rejecting the formal trappings of religion adds to the unconventional nature of a candidacy that has energized many liberals but could prove problematic in a general election.

He is a self-described “democratic socialist” who has refused to shy away from policy positions that would expand government and increase taxes.

Sanders often presents his support for curbing Wall Street banks and ending economic inequality in value-laden terms. He recently described it as “immoral and wrong” that the highest earners in the country own the vast ma-

jority of the nation’s wealth.

Even so, Sanders has appeared reluctant to delve into discussions about his faith, prompting many to assume on social media that he is more secular than Godfearing.

When late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel asked Sanders in October whether be believes in God and if that matters to the American people, the senator seemed to avoid a direct response: “I am what I am,” he said. “And what I believe in, and what my spirituality is about, is that we’re all in this together.”

Sanders, 74, told The Washington Post that his upbringing as the son of an immigrant father and first-generation American mother in Brooklyn instilled in him a sense of morality found in Judaism and many other faiths.

“I want to be treated with dignity and respect, and I want other people to be treated with dignity and respect,” he said.

“I think it is important that a

Sen. Bernie Sanders, seen at a rally in Iowa, was raised in the Jewish faith and says he believes in God, but he is “not actively involved with organized religion.”

A Jewish upbringing Sanders’s father, Eli, grew up in a rural village in southern Poland and crossed the Atlantic in 1921, driven by penury rather than prejudice to seek opportunities in Brooklyn, where an older brother had settled. He married the daughter of Polish immigrants and made his living as a paint salesman, finding community among a circle of like-minded relatives and friends.

Bernie Sanders, born in 1941, was raised only blocks from where his second wife, Jane O’Meara, later grew up, but it was culturally distant from her Catholic quarter.

“It wasn’t a question of, ‘Are we Jewish?’ ” recalled his older brother, Larry Sanders. “It was just as uncontested as saying you’re an American.”

Almost seven years apart in age, the Sanders boys shared a bedroom in a modest but comfortable apartment. Passover seders would rotate among neighbors. When their father went to synagogue on Yom Kippur, the boys would sometimes wait outside, listening to the World Series.

Their Jewish education was “unsophisticated,” Larry Sanders said, grounded in a simple moral code of right and wrong.

“He could read a prayer in Hebrew,” Larry Sanders said, “but not with a great deal of understanding.”

‘The ethical thing to do’ People who have known Sanders over the four decades of his political ascent in Vermont — as a member of the leftist Liberty Union Party, mayor of Burlington, and subsequently as an independent member of the House and the Senate — say Sanders’s central interest has always been politics, not religion.

“I can’t tell you how seldom we talked about religion,” said Stanley “Huck” Gutman, a professor of English at the University of Vermont and Sanders’s former chief of staff. Gutman then described

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POLITICS his friend’s moral code in terms of core religious tenets.

“He often talks about ‘the ethical thing to do,’ ” said Gutman, “and his ethics are shaped by a concern for social justice and for other human beings that is part of a Judeo-Christian tradition.”

A vivid illustration of Sanders’s approach came in September, on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. While many Jews took the day off from work and school to worship, Sanders was campaigning — at Liberty University, the evangelical Christian school in Lynchburg, Va. In his speech, Sanders sought a religious common ground by alluding to a New Testament passage from the Sermon on the Mount that outlines Jesus’s moral teaching.

“I am motivated by a vision which exists in all of the great religions — in Christianity, in Judaism, in Islam, Buddhism and other religions — and which is so beautifully and clearly stated in Matthew 7:12,” Sanders said. “And it states: ‘So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the law and the prophets.’ ” In the interview with The Post, Sanders sought to explain how his approach to political issues, from climate change to income inequality, is grounded in a moral understanding that transcends religious and political partisanship.

“In terms of climate change, you have people as conservative as the evangelicals, many evangelicals, who understand that you cannot destroy God’s planet. And you have Pope Francis, who as you know, I admire very, very much, talking about this planet and the suicidal direction regarding climate.”

Sanders has also used his family history to draw what he says are important lessons about the dangers of democracy when it is untethered from morality. He recalled during a recent breakfast with reporters how a trip he and his brother took to their father’s ancestral village in Poland reminded him of what happened when elections precipitated the rise of the Nazis, leading to the death of 6 million Jews, including three members of Sanders’s family.

“What I learned as a little kid,” Sanders said, “is that politics is, in fact, very important.” n

CAMPAIGN

KLMNO WEEKLY

2016 THE FIX

Debate winners, losers BY

C HRIS C ILLIZZA

S

even of the eight leading Republican presidential candidates gathered in Iowa on Thursday night for the seventh debate of the race.

Donald Trump, the race’s clear front-runner, was holding his own counter-rally after deciding not to participate.

My take on the best and the worst from the night:

WINNERS

Rand Paul: Maybe the senator from Kentucky just needed to take a debate off. After not making the main stage in the sixth debate (and refusing to appear in the undercard debate), Paul was a major player in this one. He showed off his trademark willingness to needle the other candidates — he went after Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz at various points — but also offered nuanced thoughts on racial profiling and abortion. This was the Paul whom many political observers — myself included — thought we might see in this campaign: a candidate willing and able to speak to issues his party has struggled to address in recent years. Too little, too late.

But, at least he had a moment.

Megyn Kelly: There has rarely been a debate moderator who has come under as much scrutiny as Kelly has during the course of this campaign. Despite all of that negative attention, Kelly showed why she is the face of Fox News on Thursday night. She was pointed, tough and well versed on the issues. And, more important to me?

She showed her sense of humor and a willingness to not take herself too seriously. That she performed so well with so many eyes on her speaks incredibly highly of her abilities.

Jeb Bush: If you had any doubt about how much Donald Trump is in Bush’s head, this debate should have cleared it up.

The former Florida governor was, from the get-go, more relaxed and more forceful in this Trump-less debate than he has been in the previous six debates where Trump

was included. He owned his family’s political legacy unapologetically. He fought Rubio to a draw in an immigration back and forth.

He regularly was the only candidate — aside from Paul — who answered the questions asked of him. Bush is still a somewhat (okay, very) awkward candidate — his halting closing statement was painful — who doesn’t really like going on the attack. But, without Trump looming over him, Bush looked positively presidential.

coherence. His response to a question about how to deal with Russia simply made no sense — further adding to the narrative that he is far, far out of his depth on foreign policy. At one point, he seemed stunned to even get a question, which isn’t the best look for a guy running to be the leader of a 300million-person country. Carson looked out of his league tonight.

Chris Christie: The New Jersey governor felt a little like a Johnny One-Note tonight. For ev-

JIM YOUNG/REUTERS

Gov. Chris Christie (N.J.) spent a lot of time — maybe too much — bashing Hillary Clinton during the Republican presidential debate.

LOSERS

Ted Cruz: The senator from Texas did the thing I hate the most in debates — complain about the rules — when he tried to game a bit more talking time and got shut down by moderator Chris Wallace. Cruz’s joking threat that if he kept taking incoming from the other candidates he might leave the stage (Trump reference!) fell flat. He was on the wrong end of a scolding by Paul over his conservative righteousness. And, time and time again, Cruz found himself insisting that on a panoply of issues — military spending, immigration etc. — everyone was either wrong about his position or didn’t understand it well enough.

That’s too much defense for Cruz to play — especially in a debate without Trump.

Ben Carson: Whoa boy. Carson swung from barely being asked any questions to providing answers that often bordered on in-

ery question he was asked, the answer was how terrible Hillary Clinton is, was and will be. Okay, I get that bashing Clinton is never a bad idea in a Republican primary, but the strategy made Christie look very two dimensional and brought to my mind memories of Rudy Giuliani’s campaign in 2008. And not in a good way.

Fox News Channel: The simple fact is that from an entertainment perspective, this debate was less interesting than virtually all of the previous six. The reason?

Trump wasn’t there. That, of course, is not entirely (or even mainly) Fox’s fault. But the ratings for this debate were a good deal lower than the other Republican debates on major cable channels. And if you don’t think ratings are the way networks judge success, I have a whole mess of compact discs — they’re the future of music! — to sell you. n

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NATION

Coming to the rescue in Flint BY

C OLBY I TKOWITZ

I

n Flint, Mich., there is a famous block of concrete that for decades has served as a community message board.

Like an old-school Facebook feed, residents use it to post personal news, images, upcoming events and commentary in sprawling graffiti.

This past week, several residents went to “The Block” (or “The Rock,” depending on whom you ask) with a message.

In big, black capital letters they painted: “YOU WANT OUR TRUST?? WE WANT VA Tech!!!”

Underneath they wrote “PSI” and circled it in red with a line through it. It stands for Professional Service Industries, the independent business the city hired to test its water for contamination, and which the residents don’t trust.

They want Marc Edwards.

And now, they’re getting him.

On Wednesday, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder announced that he was appointing Edwards to the newly created Flint Water Interagency Coordinating Committee, tasked with finding a long-term strategy to address the water crisis. The 17-person team of experts will have three years to report their recommendations.

Edwards is the environmental engineering professor from Virginia Tech who once led, almost entirely on his own, a crusade against the federal government’s failure to protect residents of Washington, D.C., from lead in the city’s water. And he won.

It was Edwards, 51, who more than a decade earlier discovered corrosion in the pipes of the nation’s capital that caused lead to seep into the water supply and pass through kitchen faucets and shower heads. After exposing that water crisis in 2004, he spent six years challenging the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to admit they weren’t being honest about the extent of the damage the lead had on children.

He burned through thousands of dollars of his own money, as well as $500,000 from a MacArthur Foundation genius grant he won

JIM STROUP/VIRGINIA TECH UNIVERSITY

When residents wanted help to get to the bottom of their water problems, they turned to this man in 2008, to take on the federal government. He was harassed, lampooned and threatened. He lost friends.

Then, in 2010, he was vindicated when it was proved that the CDC had lied to the public in a misleading report, which falsely claimed lead levels in the water had not posed a health risk to D.C. residents.

Then his phone rang in April 2015. It was a woman named Leeanne Walters, a Flint, Mich., stay-athome mother who was getting nowhere convincing state and local officials that there was something seriously wrong with the orangetinted water coming out of her tap.

Her family’s hair was thinning. Her son’s skin was red and irritated.

They told her the water was perfectlysafe.Andevenmonthslater,when it had been determined there were high traces of lead in her water, the officials shrugged it off as an isolated problem.

Desperately, she called Edwards, who she had read about

online. Over the phone he walked her through how to take her own water samples. The next day she sent them FedEx to Edwards to test. It was the worst lead levels he had ever seen.

“When we saw that my heart skipped a couple of beats,” he said.

“The last thing I needed in my life was another confrontation with government agencies. But it was us or nobody.”

He shared his findings with the Environmental Protection Agency. He hoped the system would work this time. But in July, a highlevel EPA official ignored it, and told the mayor of Flint everything was fine. The mayor famously went on television and drank a glass of the city’s water to prove that all was well.

Edwards was furious. It felt like history repeating itself. So he formed a team of researchers at Virginia Tech, to, as he puts it, “go all in for Flint.”

He collected hundreds more water samples, providing his ex-

Marc Edwards, an environmental engineering professor at Virginia Tech, helped bring to light how much lead was in the water in Flint, Mich. He paid for the efforts largely with his own money.

pertise and funding. He set up a Web site to update the public on his findings and hold the government accountable. As he did in D.C., he became investigative reporter, activist and scientist.

He filed Freedom of Information Act requests for documents and e-mails of state and city officials to find out how much they knew and what they could be covering up. Turns out they knew a lot and did nothing.

“We just enabled them to really get to the truth,” he said. “We couldn’t sit by and let another D.C. unfold before our eyes.”

He’s again largely funding this effort out of his own pocket. He received a small $33,000 emergency grant from the National Science Foundation, but he’s estimated that he’s spent another almost $150,000.

Since Edwards and his team intervened, the world has taken notice. It’s caused “a crisis in confidence in government,” he said.

Walters, who leads a group of residents that call themselves the “Water Warriors” said the mistrust is so deep that they won’t let the city’s chosen company come test their water. They only want Edward’s team.

“He was critical, he showed this problem was all throughout the city and not at one person’s house,” she said. “I don’t think this fight would be where it was if it wasn’t for Marc.”

Edwards, a father of two teenagers, teaches a course on ethics and heroism at Virginia Tech.

“I feel like I’m doing the job I was born to do,” he said. “I get up every day with such a sense of purpose I wish everyone could experience something like that once in their life.”

The work is far from over. Edwards sees his role as continuing to hold the government accountable to the residents of Flint. He’ll share his scientific knowledge and continue to advocate for better civil servants.

“I didn’t get in this field to stand by and let science be used to poison little kids,” Edwards said. “I can’t live in a world where that happens.

I won’t live in that world.” n

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NATION

KLMNO WEEKLY

U.S. assesses threat posed by Zika The mosquitoborne virus’s spread is worrying, but the effect here is still uncertain

BY L ENA H . S UN AND B RADY D ENNIS

W

ith the Zika virus now circulating in two dozen countries and territories across the Americas, the mosquito-borne pathogen seems destined to reach the United States, and probably sooner rather than later.

What is far less certain, say public health and infectious disease experts, is Zika’s potential reach and impact here. The South is seen as especially vulnerable because of its warm, humid climate and pockets of poverty where more people live without air conditioning or proper window screens. Plus, the region is already home to mosquitoes that can transmit the virus.

Some models estimate as many as 200 million people live in areas that might be conducive to the spread of Zika during summer months — including the East and West coasts and much of the Midwest. That makes for a huge target as researchers scramble to determine how the virus manifests itself in the human body, who is particularly at risk, and why.

Their urgency comes amid reports from Brazil, the epicenter of Zika, of thousands of newborns with microcephaly. The rare condition involves an abnormally small head and brain. Brazilian doctors have also seen a surge in another rare syndrome, GuillainBarré, which can lead to paralysis.

With both issues, a link to Zika is suspected.

On Thursday, the World Health Organization announced it will convene an emergency meeting on how to stop transmission of the virus, which officials said is “spreading explosively” in the Americas.

“The level of alarm is extremely high, as is the level of uncertainty,” said Margaret Chan, WHO’s director-general. Chan has called the circumstantial evidence connecting Zika to microcephaly “extremely worrisome.”

Already, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador and Jamaica have urged women to postpone pregnancy.

The Centers for Disease Control

The mosquitoes behind the Zika virus Aedes aegypti is considered the most important vector for Zika virus transmission to humans, but Aedes albopictus has been identified as a potential vector as well.

Known occurrences of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus from 1960 to 2014.*

Aedes aegypti

Aedes albopictus

* Maps depict presence rather than abundance; Occurrence includes adults, pupae, larvae or eggs.

Source: Kraemer, M. U. G. et al. The global compendium of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus occurrence LARIS KARKLIS/THE WASHINGTON POST

and Prevention has an everexpanding advisory urging U.S. women who are pregnant to avoid traveling to those 24 countries and territories in the Caribbean and Central and South America that have local transmission.

President Obama received a briefing Tuesday about the situation from his health and national security teams, including Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

So far, experts are divided about what lies ahead for the United States. Nearly three dozen cases had been confirmed as of Thursday morning in 11 states and the District of Columbia, but the CDC acknowledges that the number is growing rapidly. In each, the person was believed to have been infected while out of the country.

Fauci is playing down the potential for a significant eruption of Zika here. He notes that dengue and chikungunya, diseases transmitted by the same kinds of mosquitoes, are widespread in Latin America. But their foothold in the United States has been controlled, with only small clusters of cases.

“It is unlikely that we will have a majoroutbreakofZikainthis country,” Fauci said.

Yet, Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, has fears. He recalls spending much of

2014 insisting that the Ebola outbreak would not become a significant problem in the United States.

Buthegivesnosuchassurancenow.

“I think we’re in for real trouble in the United States,” he said, considering how swiftly Zika can spread. He focuses on conditions throughout the Gulf Coast, where stagnant water sources — in uncollected garbage, discarded tires, untended bird baths — can be ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes much of the year.

“You’ve got to assume the worstcase scenario,” Hotez said.

Aedes albopictus, the Asian tiger mosquito, which can transmit the virus, is present from Florida to Connecticut and as far west as Illinois, said Laura Harrington, chair of Cornell University’s entomology department. It bites people as well as animals. A second species, Aedes aegypti, the yellowfever mosquito, has a more limited geographic footprint and bites only people. But it is the primary “vector” for Zika’s transmission.

Taken together, “there are many parts of the United States that are vulnerable because of where the mosquito populations are,” Harrington said.

The experts acknowledge that projections are hampered by a limited knowledge about the disease.

It takes 10 to 11 days for a mosquito to become fully infected and able to pass on the virus, according to

Nikos Vasilakis, an arbovirologist at University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, where researchers are working in collaboration with scientists at Yale’s School of Public Health in Brazil.

They don’t yet know what the risk is for pregnant women who are bitten by an infected mosquito and contract the virus, much less what the risk is for their fetuses.

The CDC has issued guidelines for pregnant women and newborns. For example, it recommends testing for the virus when babies have microcephaly and their mothers traveled to or lived in Zika-virus regions while pregnant. On Tuesday, agency officials held a televised briefing with clinicians nationwide to go over guidelines as part of increased vigilance and public education.

In the Brazilian cases, most of the exposure to Zika appears to have been during the first trimester of pregnancy. But CDC officials have said there is also evidence that a fetus can be in danger into the second trimester.

There is no drug to treat Zika or a vaccine to prevent it, although Fauci said researchers are working on the latter. Common symptoms of infection are fever, rash, joint pain and red, itchy eyes. Symptoms are usually mild and last several days to a week.

One of the biggest problems in researching the possible link between Zika and cases of birth defects has to do with the widespread presence of dengue disease in the countries with high Zika infection, said Lyle Petersen, director of CDC’s vector-borne disease division. Humans produce antibodies in response to both viruses, but current tests cannot differentiate between them.

In Harris County, Tex., which includes Houston, mosquito control director Mustapha Debboun said that if local transmission of Zika occurred, workers with handheld equipment would probably begin “target spraying” small areas where mosquitoes breed.

“We all have to do something.

This darn virus is spreading fast,” he said. “We don’t want it to get established in the United States.” n

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Young Web addicts get a reboot A NNA F IFIELD Muju, South Korea BY

S

ince he arrived at the camp, Yoon Yong-won had recurrent nightmares. He was playing a game on his phone, and the image of the phone in his hands was so vivid. But then he woke up with a fright and stared at his hands: empty.

Yoon was in day six of a 27-day camp aimed at teenagers like him: state-certified Internet addicts.

The first day he arrived and had to turn over his devices was a day of despair. “I thought, ‘My future is pitch-black,’ ” he said over a lunch of spaghetti Bolognese and kimchi on a recent day. “I’m so frustrated.

I feel like I’m being held captive.”

South Korea is the most wired country on the planet, a country where it’s entirely unremarkable for elementary school students to carry smartphones, where the cell network is so good that people live-stream TV on the subway. The flip side: South Korea is grappling with a growing number of digital natives who don’t know how to live an analog life.

“The government has been promoting I.T. and these kinds of devices, so the government helped create this problem,” said Shim Yongchool, the director of the National Center for Youth Internet Addiction Treatment camp at a converted school near Muju, in the center of the country. “Now, the government’s trying to help solve it.”

Surveys have suggested that about 10 percent of Korean teenagers are Internet addicts, and the government has tried to counter this through measures such as the “Cinderella law,” which denies access after midnight to gamers younger than 16, although many have figured out ways to get around it.

Then there are camps such as this one, offering three- or fourweek courses of stress-reduction classes and wholesome activities that include hiking, rock-climbing and learning to play guitar.

Almost 5,000 teenagers came through the camp last year, the first full year it was open. All were sent here by their parents or their

JUN MICHAEL PARK FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

South Korea is using camps to try to help thousands of teens learn to interact offline teachers and were assessed for Internet addiction before arriving. Checklists include statements such as “I lie about the number of hours I spend online” and “I find it more fun to be on my phone than to be with family and friends.”

Most of the teenagers here measure in the “danger zone,” where they are obsessive about using the Internet, often cutting class as a result, and have trouble interacting with people offline.

Many also become withdrawn or feel lonely, or they show aggressiveness and impulsiveness.

“We consider Internet addiction the same as other material addictions like alcohol,” Shim said in the common space of the center.

A strong smell of liniment hung in the air, olfactory evidence of young muscles not used to physical activity.

Going cold turkey isn’t easy.

Some teenagers have been busted for having a secret phone in their belongings, while others have at-

tempted to break out of the camp, trying to walk or hitch-hike to the nearest town, three miles away, in search of an Internet cafe.

Yoon, an 18-year-old high school student from Pocheon, north of Seoul,endedupatthiscampduring his winter break because of what he did during his summer holidays: He played computer games for at least14hoursaday.Evenduringthe semester, he was spending more than 12 hours a day playing games or using chatting apps.

He thought it was fine. “I wasn’t getting headaches or anything,” he said. His parents, however, did not. They applied to send him to the camp during his winter break.

On day six of the camp, one group of boys — and this intake was all boys, there are separate camps for girls — was coloring pictures of animals that were meant to represent their family members. Yoon, wearing a blond curly wig reminiscent of Christina Aguilera, ate a lollipop and talked

A counseling session is held at the National Center for Youth Internet Addiction Treatment near Muju, South Korea. Surveys suggest that about 10 percent of Korean teens are Internet addicts.

to his friends about online gaming strategies the entire time.

“Families not only cause you stress, but they can help you deal with stress, too,” said Kim Taejoon, the instructor, as the boys characterized their parents as scorpions, gorillas or snakes.

Down the hall, another group was trying to build towers with dry spaghetti and marshmallows. “Use your heads,” said the teacher, Sun Jin-sook, as peppy Korean pop music played — ironically through her laptop computer. “Even though it takes time, don’t give up.”

Some of the boys worked on their towers, while others just ate the marshmallows.

On the walls of the classrooms were forms the boys had filled out on their first day. “Programmer” was often listed as their desired profession, and many answered the question of why they were here with variations of “I was forced.”

“My mom told me to come here, and I don’t even get any reward for it,” said Yoon Suk-ho, a 14-year-old middle school student from Daegu. He acknowledged, however, that he might need help.

“I was actually kind of thinking that I might have a problem with my smartphone,” he said, adding that he played games on it nonstop.

“When I came here and they made me hand it in, I was thinking, ‘How am I going to live without it?’ ” But somehow, they were surviving. During breaks, the boys went out to play in the snow or sat on the floor playing board games or card games — without a screen in sight.

On the shelves were box sets of Harry Potter books and comic books on old-fashioned paper.

On their last day of the course, the campers will be assessed for addictionagain.Afterthat,theywill receive periodic visits from school counselors to check up on them.

Numbers on recidivism are hard to come by — because the camp is too new, said Shim, the director.

At least while they’re here, some boys found that they could live without technology. “It’s better than I thought it would be,” said Kim Sung-min, a 14-year-old. “At home, I just used to play games.

But here, we talk to each other.” n

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A monument to years of bloodshed M ICHAEL E . M ILLER Kabul BY

T

o understand the terror the Taliban has wreaked upon Afghanistan, head to the outskirts of the capital, down a lane of shin-deep mud, through mounds of garbage picked over by sheep and street urchins, over a putrid moat and past armed guards.

There you will find Shahrak police station — the final resting place for the wrecks that carried Kabul’s car bombs.

Here lie the charred husks of more than a dozen vehicles. Like exhibits in a macabre museum, the ruined cars recall the violence that has consumed the city in recent years. To one side sits the skeleton of a Taliban truck bomb that targeted the Afghan parliament. Nearby, a suicide bomber’s scorched turban slowly fades in the sunlight.

Years of pain are piled up at Shahrak.

“We are used to it by now,” said police officer Miragha Gulbahari, holding the turban up for a reporter to see. “We have seen a lot of terrible things.”

Afghans are hoping the terror ends soon. On Jan. 18, officials from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States met for the second time to plan a tentative peace process. Afterward, the four countries said in a statement that they had “made progress on a road map toward initiating peace talks with Taliban groups.”

But Shahrak stands as a stark reminder of how far Afghanistan has to go and how hard it will be to strike a deal with the Taliban.

In contrast to several cities overrun by the Islamists in 2015, Kabul has remained firmly under government control since the Taliban fled in 2001. Yet a glance around this vehicular graveyard shows that even the capital is now well within the Taliban’s deadly reach.

“This one happened about a week ago,” said a young police officer, pointing to a shredded white Toyota Corolla. The driver detonated his suicide vest Jan. 4

MICHAEL E. MILLER/THE WASHINGTON POST

In Kabul, a car-bomb graveyard of sorts serves as a reminder of the lingering Taliban threat near the Kabul airport but managed to kill only himself. A few hours later in almost exactly the same spot, a powerful Taliban truck bomb proved deadlier, killing one bystander, injuring dozens, shattering concrete blast walls and leaving a 15-foot crater in the road.

The double blasts brought the week’s tally of car bombs to four, including another Taliban attack near the airport and a Taliban siege of an upscale restaurant frequented by foreigners and Afghan officials. Authorities said the string of attacks was both seasonal and a “negotiating tactic” ahead of potential peace talks.

“Whenever the summer is gone we have a decrease in attacks in the provinces, and then the cities become the target,” said Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi. “And whenever you hear about peace talks, you also see an

increase in attacks.”

But the recent uptick in suicide attacks in Kabul has left officials and analysts concerned.

“We have witnessed far more suicide attacks than in the past,” said Atiqullah Amarkhail, a retired general who is now a security analyst in Kabul. “The security situation is deteriorating.”

Sediqqi said having four carbomb attacks in one week was “worrying.”

“There is a big possibility that they make these bombs in some areas surrounding Kabul,” he said, “but we do not know exactly where they come from or how they get here.”

Wherever they come from, many of the cars eventually end up here in Shahrak. So, too, do the vehicles that were on the streets near the explosions.

“If the car bomb goes off inside the city, they bring the wreckage

Vehicles damaged in bomb attacks sit at the Shahrak police station on the outskirts of Kabul.

here so it doesn’t disturb people,” Gulbahari said. “If it happens outside the city, they just throw it on the side of the road.”

Bystanders lucky enough to survive suicide bombings sometimes come to Shahrak to claim their damaged cars, he said. A blue delivery truck with its windows shattered and back blown off awaited its owner, a load of charcoal still visible inside.

Cars belonging to the suicide bombers normally arrive in much worse shape. The twisted mounds of metal look more like avantgarde sculptures than automobiles, but they are stained with blood.

“Sometimes, when the cars arrive here, they still have human bits inside, usually belonging to the suicide bombers,” said Gulbahari, a veteran traffic officer with a thick mustache and blunt delivery.

“In Afghanistan, police officers have to be like doctors. We don’t get affected by the bloodshed anymore.”

Gulbahari gave a reporter a tour of the torched debris. He began with the Corolla that was blown up near the airport, then pointed to an unrecognizable chunk of metal: the remnants of a car bomb that had been used to target Shukria Barakzai, an outspoken member of parliament who ran a secret school for girls during the Taliban’s reign. Three civilians died in the November 2014 blast, and Barakzai survived “only by magic,” she told The Washington Post at the time.

A mix of anxiety and resignation washed over Najib Ullah as he stood in Shahrak’s muck-filled lot.

The 25-year-old taxi driver had come here to retrieve his red Corolla station wagon only to discover it was boxed in by an abandoned bus.

As he waited for help, his eyes fell on the mangled wreckage of the airport bombing. Najib Ullah had often passed the smoldering aftermath of car bombs while driving passengers on the highway, but he had never seen one so close up.

“Everywhere we go,” he said, “we have to be careful.” n

U.S. AIR FORCE

FAILING AND FALLING The Air Force has seen a record number of drone crashes, some caused by a mysterious electrical malfunction.

Severe U.S. military drone crashes since 2001 26

Operated by Air Force

By Army, Navy or Marine Corps 12 6

21 16

12

23

23

24 21 18

14

9

7 4

1 ’01

’04

’07

’10

’13

’16

Note: Data as of Jan. 7. These accidents are categorized by the military as Class A: mishaps that destroyed the aircraft or caused at least $2 million in damage.

Sources: Staff reports

THE WASHINGTON POST

A

BY CRAIG WHITLOCK record number of Air Force drones crashed in major accidents last year, documents show, straining the U.S. military’s fleet of robotic aircraft when it is in more demand than ever for counterterrorism missions in an expanding array of war zones.

Driving the increase was a mysterious surge in mishaps involving the Air Force’s newest and most advanced “hunter-killer” drone, the Reaper, which has become the Pentagon’s favored weapon for conducting surveillance and airstrikes against the Islamic State, alQaeda and other militant groups.

The Reaper has been bedeviled by a rash of sudden electrical failures that have caused the 21/2-ton drone to lose power and drop from the sky, according to accident-investigation documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Investigators have traced the problem to a faulty starter-generator but have

been unable to pinpoint why it goes haywire or devise a permanent fix.

All told, 20 large Air Force drones were destroyed or sustained at least $2 million in damage in accidents last year, the worst annual toll ever, according to a Washington Post investigation. The Pentagon has shrouded the extent of the problem and kept details of most of the crashes a secret.

The aircraft losses pose another challenge for the Air Force as it struggles to provide sufficient drone coverage for counterterrorism operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Mali and Cameroon, among other countries.

Despite a surge in requests from field commanders, the Air Force last year had to curtail its drone combat missions by 8 percent because of an acute shortage of pilots for the remotecontrolled aircraft. Things have gotten so bad that the Air Force is offering retention bonuses of up to $125,000 to its drone pilots, who have long complained of overwork.

The Air Force also has contracted out more

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U.S. AIR FORCE

drone missions to private companies to meet what one general called “a virtually insatiable appetite” from military commanders for airborne surveillance.

While Air Force leaders have publicly bemoaned a lack of personnel and resources, they have said little about the high number of drone crashes, a long-standing vulnerability that worsened substantially last year. Ten Reapers were badly damaged or destroyed in 2015, at least twice as many as in any previous year, according to Air Force safety data.

The Reaper’s mishap rate — the number of major crashes per 100,000 hours flown — more than doubled compared with 2014. The aircraft, when fully equipped, cost about $14 million each to replace.

The Air Force’s other primary drone model, the Predator, also suffered heavy loss rates.

An older and less-capable version of the Reaper, the Predator was involved in 10 major accidents last year. That’s the most since 2011, when the U.S. military was simultaneously surging troops into Afghanistan and with-

drawing ground forces from Iraq.

Although the Defense Department has a policy of disclosing all major aircraft mishaps, it did not publicly report half of the 20 Reaper and Predator accidents last year.

In five other cases, U.S. military officials provided confirmation only after local authorities reported the crashes or enemy fighters posted photos of the wreckage on social media.

According to the military, only one drone was downed by hostile forces: a Predator that was hit

by Syrian air defenses near Latakia on March 17.

All but one of the 20 Air Force drone accidents last year occurred overseas. Six drones crashed in Afghanistan. Four crashed in the Horn of Africa, near a U.S. military base in Djibouti. Three crashed in Iraq. There were also crashes in Kuwait, Turkey, Syria and Libya.

In two cases, Air Force officials would not identify the country where the mishaps occurred.

In addition to the Air Force, the Army operates its own drone fleet. It is preparing to expand the number of combat missions it flies

to help compensate for the Air Force’s cutbacks.

Last year, the Army reported four major drone crashes, each involving the Gray Eagle — a model identical to the Predator. Three of the Army’s accidents occurred in Afghanistan.

One happened in Iraq.

Although the military’s drone programs are largely unclassified, the Obama administration rarely discusses details of the key role they fill in its counterterrorism strategy. The CIA runs its own drone operations on a covert basis, and the secrecy surrounding those missions often seeps into the Pentagon.

Lt. Gen. Robert P. Otto, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence and surveillance programs, acknowledged in an interview that there has been a spike in Reaper accidents.

Many cases remain under investigation, but Otto and other Air Force officials blamed the Reaper’s flawed starter-generator for causing at least six major crashes since December 2014.

“We’re looking closely at that to determine continues on next page

Opposite page: An investigation found that pilot error caused this Reaper to crash in Niger in October 2014. Above right: Pilot error also was blamed in a Reaper crash in Nevada in December 2014.

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from previous page

what is the core issue there,” Otto said.

Although the drone pilot shortage has compelled the Air Force to reduce the number of combat missions, Otto said the aircraft mishaps have not forced additional cuts. The Air Force has enough replacement drones on hand, he said, and already had orders in place to buy dozens more Reapers over the next few years.

“Any impact to operations has been negligible to barely noticeable,” he said.

Field commanders, however, have long complained of a drone deficit. In March, the four-star commanders of U.S. forces in the Middle East and Africa both told Congress that the Pentagon has provided less than one-quarter of the drones, other aircraft and satellites that they need for reconnaissance and surveillance missions.

“The Predator has been our most effective weapon in our campaign against the global jihadists,” said Michael G. Vickers, the Pentagon’s former top civilian intelligence official, at a House Armed Services Committee hearing Jan. 12. But he cautioned that the size of the drone fleet “will remain a critical limiting factor in the conduct of our campaign.”

Drones going ‘stupid’ Military drones have been dogged by persistent safety and reliability problems since the first Predator was deployed to the Balkans on a combat mission two decades ago.

Of the 269 Predators purchased by the Air Force since then, about half have been destroyed or badly damaged in accidents, records show.

Air Force officials describe the Predator as an experimental aircraft that was rushed into war zones, particularly after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. They say it has lasted much longer than expected and that, at a cost of $4 million apiece, is relatively expendable in the event of a crash.

The Air Force has about 140 Predators left and plans to retire them all by 2018. They are gradually being replaced by the Reaper.

Introduced in 2007, the Reaper can fly twice as far as the Predator and carry more bombs and missiles. Until recently, it also had a much better safety record.

Over the past three years, however, some production models of the Reaper have been hobbled by an outbreak of electrical failures.

Investigators and engineers have traced the problem to the starter-generator. It powers the drone but is prone to conking out, for reasons that remain unclear.

The Reaper carries an emergency battery backup system. But the batteries last only for about one hour. If a malfunctioning drone needs more time than that to reach an airfield, it is in trouble.

In such emergencies, the drone pilot has no choice but to intentionally crash the aircraft in a remote area, such as a mountainside or a waterway, to avoid striking people on the ground.

Two types of drones account for bulk of crashes Of the 237 major U.S. military drone crashes since 2001 — mishaps that destroyed the aircraft or caused at least $2 million in damage — 66 percent involved either Predator or Reaper drones flown by the Air Force.

MQ-1 Predator 120 crashes

Air Force

55 feet

MQ-9 Reaper 37 crashes

6-foot man to scale

First flown in 1994, the Predator later became the first weaponized drone. Designed to conduct surveillance with powerful cameras and sensors, it can be armed with laser-guided Hellfire missiles. It often stays aloft on missions for more than 20 hours at a time and can reach an altitude of 25,000 feet.

66 feet

Air Force

The bigger, faster and more reliable successor to the Predator. It can fly as high as 50,000 feet and carry four Hellfire missiles, twice as many as the Predator. The Air Force expects to replace all its Predators with Reapers by 2018. The civilian version of the MQ-9 is called the Predator B.

Sources: Air Force, Army, Navy accident-investigation reports; Defense Department records; General Atomics Aeronautical Systems; Northrop Grumman

ALBERTO CUADRA/THE WASHINGTON POST

“I AM PLEASED TO REPORT THAT WE MAY HAVE LIGHT “Once the battery’s gone, the airplane goes stupid and you lose it,” said Col. Brandon Baker, chief of the Air Force’s remotely piloted aircraft capabilities division. “Quite frankly, we don’t have the root cause ironed out just yet.”

The Reaper and the Predator are both manufactured by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, a San Diego-based defense contractor. In addition to the Air Force, other customers that have purchased the Reaper include the Department of Homeland Security, NASA, and the British, French and Italian armed forces. The CIA also flies Reapers.

General Atomics officials declined requests for an interview or to provide data on the Reaper’s history of starter-generator failures.

In an emailed statement, General Atomics spokeswoman Kimberly Kasitz said the firm “stands behind the proven reliability” of the Reaper. She added that Reapers have recorded more than 2.2 million flight hours and have

$4 million

Air Force officials describe the Predator as an experimental aircraft that was rushed into war zones, particularly after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

They say it has lasted much longer than expected and that, at a cost of $4 million apiece, it is relatively expendable in the event of a crash.

“been very effective for multiple customers.”

The Reaper’s starter-generator is built by Skurka Aerospace of Camarillo, Calif.

Skurka executives referred requests for comment to their parent corporation, Transdigm Group of Cleveland. A Transdigm spokesman did not respond to phone calls or emails.

Averting disaster Government agencies other than the Pentagon have also run into problems with their Reapers.

Shortly before midnight Jan. 27, 2014, an unarmed Reaper was flying a surveillance mission near San Diego for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Suddenly, an alarm sounded, signaling that the starter-generator had stopped working.

The crew flying the drone from a remotecontrol ground station in Corpus Christi, Tex., transmitted commands to restart the genera-

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The bulletin, however, did not apply to combat missions.

ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES

AT THE END OF THIS DARK TUNNEL.” — Col. William S. Leister tor, but their attempt failed. The pilot made quick calculations and concluded that the Reaper lacked enough battery power to make it back to its launch point, at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., according to an aircraft accident report

by Customs and Border Protection.

Worried that the Reaper might otherwise crash into a heavily populated part of Southern California, the pilot commanded the drone to head out to sea, where it was ditched about 23 miles west of Point Loma, Calif.

The drone sank about 4,200 feet to the ocean floor. Ten days later, most of the wreckage, including the intact starter-generator, was recovered from the depths by a Navy salvage team.

According to the accident investigation report, it was the 18th time in nine months that a starter-generator had failed on a Reaper. Disaster was averted in most cases, but in three of the incidents, the drones crashed.

Working with engineers from General

Atomics, investigators identified three parts of the starter-generator that were susceptible to breakdowns. But they couldn’t figure out why they were failing.

No pattern was apparent. Older units had failed, but so had new ones. There was no correlation with operating locations or conditions. The Customs and Border Protection investigation blamed an “unknown factor” that was “likely external.”

The report noted that, unlike most aircraft, the Reaper lacked a backup, or redundant, power supply system. Calling it a “design weakness,” the report recommended that Reapers be equipped with a permanent backup electrical supply.

Two days after the crash near San Diego, General Atomics issued an alert to its customers, advising them to limit “non-essential” Reaper operations to keep the drones within one hour’s flight of an air base in case of an emergency.

Air Force Maj. Casey Tidgewell inspects an MQ-9 Reaper as he performs a preflight check in 2007 at Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs, Nev.

Crashes pile up General Atomics engineers made little headway in identifying the mechanical gremlin that was plaguing the starter-generators.

Meanwhile, Reapers kept crashing.

On Dec. 12, 2014, a Reaper armed with missiles and bombs experienced a startergenerator failure about 90 minutes after it took off from Kandahar Air Base in Afghanistan.

As the batteries drained, the crew intentionally flew the drone into a mountain. The wreckage was not recovered.

“I thought it was a very prudent place to ditch it, onto a high mountain top,” the unidentified mission crew commander told Air Force investigators, according to the accident investigation report. “Our deal is we try to do it into high mountain tops.”

Less than two months later, on Feb. 4, 2015, an Air Force Reaper had to cut short a surveillance mission over Somalia when its startergenerator died.

The flight crew tried to rush the drone back to its base in Djibouti. But with about 30 miles to go, the battery ran out and the Reaper was ditched in the sea, according to the Air Force’s accident investigation report.

In an appendix to the report, General Atomics noted that it had completed the development of a “more robust” starter-generator in response to the string of mishaps. The appendix, which was heavily redacted, did not give further details.

In March, the Air Force’s program manager for its Reaper fleet filed a report with the Pentagon noting that there had been “a dramatic increase” in starter-generator failures since 2013.

Col. William S. Leister informed Pentagon officials that investigators from the Air Force, General Atomics and Skurka had investigated the problem for more than a year. The team, he said, had identified “numerous manufacturing quality issues” yet had been unable to determine the exact cause of the failures.

“But, I am pleased to report that we may have light at the end of this dark tunnel,” he added, promising unspecified “corrective actions in the very near term.” He declined to comment further for this article.

Other Air Force officials said the service began installing a secondary generator on its Reapers in July that can provide up to 10 extra hours of electricity in case the first one fails.

The Air Force determined that 60 Reapers in its fleet were carrying the buggy startergenerators. So far, the new backup part has been installed on 47 of those aircraft, according to Baker, the colonel in charge of the drone capabilities division.

Since then, Baker said, there have been 17 “saves” — or incidents in which the primary generator failed mid-flight. In each case, he added, the backup generator kicked in and the drone was able to land safely. n

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HEALTH

To eat less, don’t trust your gut BY

R OBERTO A . F ERDMAN

A

lmost 20 years ago, psychology professor and biologist Paul Rozin tested a theory about food. Many people believed their bodies were good at telling them when to start and stop eating, but he wasn’t so sure.

“A lot of things that control what and how much people eat have nothing to do with the state of nutrition,” Rozin told The New York Times in 1998.

His experiment, published in the journal Psychological Science, was simple, but ingenious. He worked with two severely amnesic patients, whose memory had been damaged by illness and who had difficulty recalling things that happened more than a minute before, and fed them a meal. At least 1o minutes later, he fed them another.

And at least 10 minutes after that, he fed them a third. He repeated the experiment on three separate occasions, and each time the same thing happened: they eagerly ate the food that was served to them.

“Without their memory, what theyhadeatenpreviouslyhadabsolutely no impact on how much they ate a second and even third time,” said David Just, a professor of behavioral economics at Cornell who studies consumer food choices. “It was fascinating; this widely held assumption didn’t really hold up.”

The part of the patients’ brains that triggered satiety and hunger didn’t seem to function without the patients actually remembering having eaten. Rozin didn’t respond to a request for comment. In the study, he wrote that memory was likely “a substantial contributor to the onset or cessation of eating of a meal.”

Today, despite Rozin’s work, and other research that suggests our bodies aren’t the masterful eating compasses we want them to be, the misconception persists — people still like to believe that their stomachs are good at telling them when to eat and when to stop.

“We aren’t rigged like that,” said Just, who believes the misunderstanding plays an important role

AMY CAVENAILE/THE WASHINGTON POST; ISTOCKPHOTO

in the prevalence of overeating.

It’s natural that our eating patterns ebb and flow, depending on circumstance. Some days we eat more than others, and that’s fine so long as we adjust for the stints of gluttony. But adjusting is less a matter of responding to feelings of fullness than it is one of remembering what we had earlier in the day, or week, and our memories aren’t reliable in this way.

We might not eat three meals in close succession like Rozin’s test participants, but the fried chicken we had for lunch isn’t as likely to change what we eat later that day or week as we might think.

Memory is just one of the subtle but powerful factors that affect eating habits. Some of these are simple and fairly straight forward, like the size of the plates we use, which have been shown to change how much we eat, or the presence of a television, which has been shown to do the same.

“I don’t think people are totally unaware of these sorts of things, but I’m not convinced they realize how much they influence the amount they eat,” said Traci Mann, who teaches psychology at the University of Minnesota and has been studying eating habits, self-control and dieting for more than 20 years.

Subtle social cues, meanwhile, have an effect, too. A separate study, published last month, found that diners who were served

by overweight waiters tended to “order significantly more items.”

Yet another, published in 2014, found the size of the people someone eats with alters the quantity and quality of the food they choose — when accompanied by an overweight friend, people tend to opt for more and less healthy food.

“Our natural impulse is to fit in, and fitting in often means eating more than we should or would otherwise want to,” Just said.

But our natural impulse is also, quite simply, to eat. When we eat, Mann said, it’s not our stomachs that make us stop. That, she explained, happens later, after we’re finished. And it’s part of why convenience can be such a dangerous thing.

“The easier it is to eat, the more you’re going to eat—it’s that simple,” said Mann, author of “Secrets from the Eating Lab,” a look at why diets don’t work. “If you’ve just gone grocery shopping, you’re going to eat more; if you’re at a buffet, you’re going to eat more; if food is sitting within an arms reach, you’re going to eat more.”

The good news is that there are ways to counteract our tendency to put too much food into our faces.

One of the simplest is putting barriers in between ourselves and our food — placing cereal boxes inside cabinets, sweets in less easily accessible places, and snacks at more than an arm’s distance.

Research indicates that memory plays a more important role in how much food we consume

But there are others, some of which have been shown to be surprisingly effective. One of the most useful of these, according to Mann, is what is often referred to as mindful eating. “When people start to eat with more focus or attention, they tend to eat less,” she said. “It helps to track not just every meal, but every bite. When people are mindful of everything they put in your mouth, they’re more in touch with each meal.”

Another approach, unlikely as it sounds, is committing to eat things that taste better. “I know it’s counterintuitive, but when things are more delicious you tend to eat less because you’re satisfied more quickly,” Just explained. “Whereas when something is acceptable but doesn’t taste all that great, you’ll end up eating more to achieve the same level of satisfaction. There is ample evidence for this.”

All of the tricks, maneuvers and annoying adjustments we need to make in order to watch our waistlines, however, are the result of an uncomfortable truth that Rozin helped shed light on almost two decades ago.

“We like to think that we’re rigged to think about and control what we eat and how much we eat,” Just said. “But the truth is that we’re rigged to eat whenever the opportunity rises.”

“In that sense, we’re really no different than dogs,” he added. n

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TRAVEL

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At U.S. airports, more dogs on patrol BY

A NDREA S ACHS

O

n a recent morning at Reagan National Airport, a traveler dressed casually in jeans, a striped shirt and winter boots passed a black dog sniffing a rack of potato chips.

Seconds later, she heard the sound of toenails clicking against the floor. The noise grew closer and faster. She felt a wet nose against her hand and watched a rubber toy roll by. An exuberant Labrador bounded past her, retrieving his prize for a job well done.

Blue, a member of the Transportation Security Administration’s K-9 passenger-screening team, had uncovered explosives strapped to the stranger’s back.

Potential disaster diverted.

“Dogs live in a world of smell.

This is their primary sense,” said Douglas Timberlake, a TSA canine handler who was overseeing the day’s training session. “They have the innate ability to keep the public safe.”

Government and local law enforcement agencies have employed canines — and their superpower snouts — for decades. The TSA, for instance, uses dogs to inspect cargo, aircraft, parked cars, abandoned bags and other stationary objects found in and around airports. Canines working for Customs and Border Protection snuffle around luggage coming off baggage carousels, searching for such banned goods as fresh produce, exotic wildlife, undeclared currency and illicit drugs.

And four-legged soldiers with the Department of Defense scour war zones for improvised explosive devices and other deadly contraptions.

Five years ago, the TSA put its dogs on a new beat: passenger screening. More than 140 of the canines preside over security checkpoints at over 35 airports. By year’s end, the agency aims to more than double the number of furry participants and expand the program to more than 40 facilities.

The canines’ job is twofold.

They seek out bomb-making materials on moving targets (fedspeak for “people”), a gotcha that

JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST

TSA aims to double the number of canines at security checkpoints screening passengers could require further investigation by TSA officials. They also help clear passengers for PreCheck, the TSA program for lowrisk travelers.

“We have cut back on general, random real-time threat assessment,” said Timberlake, referring to the previously arbitrary selection of passengers for the fast lane.

“These dogs are helping people get expedited screening.”

The dogs typically work the line during heavy travel days and times, such as the winter holiday period, and punch the clock for eight-hour shifts. To keep them on their noses, the handlers test the canines’ skills several times a week. They hide suspicious substances in trash cans, wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs and all manner of bags as well as under several layers of clothing. They also place the dangerous matter on civilian decoys.

“They’re finding stuff all the time,” said Timberlake, who wore

a black shirt with a TSA K-9 logo, “so we know they’re working and not just looking cute.”

The ongoing canine training program is open to all federal employees — plus a few invited guests — who have a free morning or afternoon and no fear of dogs or hazardous materials.

I fit the profile. So for several hours, I played the wily fox in an airport-wide hunt led by GI Dogs.

For security reasons, Timberlake could not specify the type of substance or amount used in the tests, but he would say that the agency samples dozens of explosives, including ones involved in recent terrorist attacks and attempts. For reassurance, however, he said that my chance of blowing up was nil.

“You are wearing a fraction of what an actual device would be,” he said.

Before the outing, I had imagined a muscular guard dog with razor-sharp teeth tackling me like

A bomb-sniffing dog finds a decoy package on a reporter under the watchful eye of his handler, Douglas Timberlake, at Reagan National Airport in Virginia.

a rabid linebacker. However, Timberlake told me that the K-9 team is filled with “floppy-eared dogs that don’t intimidate,” such as golden retrievers, German shorthaired pointers, vizslas and Labradors — breeds often found with Frisbees or sticks in their mouths.

The four canines at DCA, for example, are all Labradors.

I set out solo, blending in with other travelers waiting for their flights. I passed a deli with an open cooler stocked with meat sandwiches. A rack of snacks stood within easy licking distance of a dog’s tongue. At the end of the terminal, I turned around and noticed “Blue” sniffing around bags of kettle chips. I passed him nonchalantly — nothing to smell here.

A few steps later, I was busted.

If this had been a real scenario, two behavior detection officers accompanying the canine and the handler would help assess the risk.

Many finds are innocent. For instance, the dogs might stumble upon an armed air marshal, a traveler on medication containing a sensitive substance or a sportsman dusted with gun powder residue from a recent foray at the range. Big takedowns are rare.

“No finds yesterday,” said Joe Havens, Blue’s partner. “It was a boring day.”

The dogs patrol all sections of the airport, including the secured areas (to catch insider scofflaws).

“Rufus,” the youngest pup in the pack, was covering the security line. A sign notified passengers that K-9s were on the job. The 4-year-old stood inside a long rectangle cordoned off by ropes. I approached the entrance at the same time as a hippie-ish guy carrying a backpack. My residue floated onto his pant leg. Rufus gravitated toward his ankles before discovering that he was one person off.

The dogs had started their workday at 6:30 a.m. and were ready for a break at noon. I watched Rufus disappear past security, his eyes fixed on the ball in his supervisor’s hand. I asked Timberlake about another of the dog’s whereabouts.

“He’s napping,” he said. “That lazy bum.” n

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BOOKS

An exploration of life amid sorrow F ICTION

l

REVIEWED BY

R ON C HARLES

P THE HIGH MOUNTAINS OF PORTUGAL

By Yann Martel Spiegel & Grau.

332 pp. $27

ack your bags: Fifteen years after “The Life of Pi,” Yann Martel is taking us on another long journey. Fans of his Man Booker Prize-winning novel will recognize familiar themes from that seafaring phenomenon, but the itinerary in this imaginative new book is entirely fresh.

In fact, “The High Mountains of Portugal” is actually a set of three delicately connected novellas that take place decades apart. With Martel’s signature mixture of humor and pathos, these three stories explore the rugged terrain of grief.

But they also contain the author’s reflections on the connection between storytelling and faith.

The first part, “Homeless,” is the longest and the most itinerant. It opens in Lisbon in 1904, a place and time cast in Old World elegance. A young man named Tomás has recently lost his son, his lover and his father, a trifecta of death that’s left him so turned around by sorrow that he walks backward. “Some people never laugh again. Others take to drink,” Martel writes.

“Walking backwards, his back to the world, his back to God, he is not grieving. He is objecting. Because when everything cherished by you in life has been taken away, what else is there to do but object?”

The gaping maw of Tomás’s desolation would seem to swallow the story whole, but Martel constantly pushes back with light, arch humor: “Should one trip,” he writes, “what safer way to do so than backwards, the cushioned buttocks blunting one’s fall?”

This slapstick comedy, which, frankly, runs on too long, is punctuated by the grim nature of Tomás’s quest. He’s inspired by the diary of a 17th-century priest who ministered to the slaves in Portuguese Angola. Tomás’s grief resonates with the horror of that hell hole, and his imagination is captured by an iconoclastic crucifix that the priest created and must have left somewhere in Portugal. Tomás begins to glow with madness, deter-

ALLA DREYVITSER/THE WASHINGTON POST

mined to find that old crucifix and strike back at God. Although some readers will grow impatient with Martel’s circuitous patter, when the conclusion arrives, the whole story snaps into focus for a vision of despair that’s almost unbearably poignant.

That same tonal shift takes place again in the second story, “Homeward,” but it’s a wholly different kind of tale. Instead of driving across Portugal for days, we’re trapped for a single strange night in the office of Dr. Lozora, a pathologist in Braganca, Portugal, in the late 1930s. Dr. Lozora’s beloved wife interrupts him during an au-

topsy to explain her curious theory about the connection between the Gospels and Agatha Christie.

“Humour and religion do not mix well,” she admits to her husband, but they’re well mixed in this story, which is largely a dissertation on the allegorical structure of Jesus’s life. “Why,” she asks, “would Jesus speak in parables? Why would he both tell stories and let himself be presented through stories? Why would Truth use the tools of fiction?” This, of course, is a question close to the heart of Martel’s ownwork. Butthe doctor’s wife wrylycomparestheJesus’scrucifixion to one of Hercule Poirot’s mur-

der mysteries, suggesting that the real meaning of the Gospels — a marrying of reason and faith — is found only in literary interpretation.

This might all sound a bit pedantic — it almost is — but it quickly turns out to be a kind of training session for us to read about the good doctor’s second guest that evening. Before we know it, Dr. Lozora finds himself folded into a bizarre allegory of sorrow that’s impossibly beautiful and sad.

One of the peripheral pleasures of this book, and this section in particular, is the way it demonstrates that Martel can handle symbolic material far more effectively than his 2010 novel, “Beatrice and Virgil.” That ill-conceived story conflated cute humor and stuffed animals for a cringe-inducing allegory about the Holocaust. In “The High Mountains of Portugal,” he has recalibrated the fragile balance of histonesandprovidedafar more evocative exploration of our ability to persist — and even thrive — in a world of sorrow.

That theme receives its most effective treatment in the final novella called “Home,” which involves a Canadian politician who loses his wife. Lethargic with grief and an embarrassment to his colleagues, Sen. Peter Tovy agrees to take a junket to a chimp refuge in Oklahoma, just to get him out of Parliament for a few days. But there, in a laboratory filled with screaming apes, he connects with a most-surprising new friend.

The story that develops remains tinged with sadness, but it gradually inflates with a strange species of mirth. Martel’s writing has never been more charming, a rich mixture of sweetness that’s not cloying and tragedy that’s not melodramatic. When Peter Tovy’s life is finally knitted into the two previous stories, “The High Mountains of Portugal” attains an altitude from which we can see something quietly miraculous. n

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BOOKS

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Bite-size stories of celebs and food

Listening to those who live in fear

N ON-FICTION

N ON-FICTION

I

l

REVIEWED BY

J ENNIFER R EESE

n her sparkling, if somewhat frenetic, “Dining With the Famous and Infamous,” Fiona Ross informs us that Cary Grant was a skinflint who presented his dates with turkey sandwiches on TV trays while Truman Capote tried to pass off storebought pie as homemade (Andy Warhol ratted him out), and Alfred Hitchcock once served a dinner in which all the food was blue, including the soup. If you were dining alone with Salvador Dali and he ordered lobster in chocolate sauce, he wanted to sleep with you.

Based on extensive research at the Bodleian Library at Oxford and close reading of the works of Kitty Kelley, the 42 biographical essays in Ross’s cheeky collection are built on the eating lives of icons of Hollywood and the arts, mostly from the 20th century.

They yield, as one might expect, a bumper crop of gossipy trivia.

More surprising is just how astute and affecting some of the brief portraits manage to be. “What we are is revealed in what we eat,” Ross writes in the introduction, and goes on to prove her point in the pages that follow.

“Food was about nostalgia, friendship, romance and domination for Frank,” Ross begins the essay on Sinatra, who once threw a plate of pasta at the wall of a restaurant, offended that it was soggy. Elizabeth Taylor was a more polite pasta aficionado, who liked her spaghetti swimming in whiskey cream sauce, preceded perhaps by a chocolate martini.

“Food,” writes Ross, “was the great, unspoken, unacknowledged love of her life.” (After reading about Taylor’s marital fiascoes, you will agree.)

Ross, who doesn’t hesitate to find fault with her subjects, shows compassion for mid-century female sex symbols. When Marilyn Monroe’s then-husband Arthur Miller strong-armed her into making “Some Like It Hot” “for the bucks,” she tried to gorge her

way out of the role. “Call me Baby Elephant,” Monroe said, “but I’m going to get so fat they won’t let me be in this awful picture.” One day of Monroe’s (futile) protest included “toast with three burgers, three eggs, three plates of home fries, a veal cutlet, two chocolate milkshakes, two helpings of aubergine parmigiana, and four bowls of chocolate pudding.”

Ross, a teacher in England who moonlights as a food writer and “gastro-detective,” is determined never to bore readers; instead she comes close to exhausting them.

She is witty, sometimes relentlessly so, and jumps from saucy anecdote to saucy anecdote, rarely wasting time on anything so tedious as context. The accomplishments of these celebrities away from the table are mentioned only in passing, if they are mentioned at all, and while that makes for snappy reading, Ross occasionally glosses over details that would make some of her stories more accessible to readers who don’t share her comprehensive knowledge.

More problematic are the recipes. Is anyone really going to make lobster with chocolate sauce in homage to Dali, or whip up a “cowboy stew” of heart, kidney and liver such as Woody Guthrie used to feast on? Moreover, with a few notable exceptions, virtually all the recipes are Ross’s facsimiles of what these people cooked or ate, not their actual recipes. They yield mixed results. The “rice pudding fit for Picasso” would indeed have been fit for Picasso, but only if he needed glue for a collage. (Trust me, I made it.) That said, by the end of this particularly lively and scathing essay, you may not think Picasso — a genius to be sure, but also portrayed here as a vain and manipulative Lothario — deserved much better. n Reese, author of “Make the Bread, Buy the Butter,” writes the food blog The Tipsy Baker and lives in Mill Valley, Calif.

I DINING WITH THE FAMOUS AND INFAMOUS

By Fiona Ross Rowman & Littlefield.

258 pp. $38

BAD NEWS Last Journalists in a Dictatorship

By Anjan Sundaram Doubleday.

192 pp. $25.95

l

REVIEWED BY

A DITI S RIRAM

n “Bad News,” Anjan Sundaram writes that a story’s first paragraph should “contain the essential information and grab the reader, yet be brief.”

His own first sentence does just that: “I felt swallowed by the wide road, the odd car hurtling uphill, the people hissing on the sidewalk bathed in sodium-vapor orange — a tick-tock had gone off in my mind since the bomb.”

Its succinct eloquence shows more than it tells. Writing of his experience running a journalists’ training program in Kigali, Rwanda, Sundaram captures the quiet menace of his surroundings: The wide roads indicate progress but are in fact devoid of any life. The people scurry out of the perfectly sculpted streetlights’ sodiumvapor glare, afraid of attracting attention. And the bombs are immediatelyhushedupbythegovernment, too quickly for anyone to notice, let alone write about in a newspaper.

Sundaram, an award-winning reporter focused on Africa, is ideally placed to refute a narrative of harmony. He begins his book by following the journalists in his classroom who are, in turn, following various stories in Rwanda: genocide memorials, presidential campaigns.

About halfway through the book, the sequence eerily reverses; the stories are now following the journalists — and silencing them. The effect is haunting. As one journalist, named Gibson, laments, “You need to look differently in a dictatorship, you need to think about how to listen to people who live in fear.”

Gibson’s journey demonstrates the tragic arc of free speech in a country where expression is stifled. In a span of 180 pages, the talented journalist starts a magazine, irritates the government, loses his home, is betrayed by his best friend, goes into hiding and, by the final pages of the book, is a destroyed man. “The government had not needed to kill him,” Sundaram writes. “They had just made

him useless, ruined his mind, with the paranoia, by turning on him those he loved and trusted most, so that he had become a victim of that double world he had showed me, in the lights.”

Sundaram is no longer the naive Ivy League graduate who landed in Congo nearly a decade ago to give a voice to the voiceless. His first book, “Stringer: A Reporter’s Journey in the Congo” (2014), was visceral, emotional reportage; “Bad News” feels measured, even mildly resigned, in comparison, the work of a journalist more inured to life under a corrupt regime.

Sundaram’s exposé is courageous and heartfelt. When he stumbles upon a village where all the grass roofs have been torn off the huts, he looks for signs of violence but finds none. It turns out that the people destroyed their own homes because of a presidential order to modernize. Many elderly Rwandans and children have since contracted malaria, but the villagers are so filled with fear that they praise the government nonetheless — “the president was a visionary for destroying these roofs,” one woman says. “It must have required a humiliation of some sort to say those words,” Sundaram observes sympathetically.

Sundaram is thorough, even when the news is bad, and includes a 13-page appendix documenting “journalists who have faced difficulties after criticizing the government of Rwanda.” But he leaves little space for self-reflection, and readers may wonder if Sundaram himself fears for his life, as his students stop attending his class, go into hiding or are arrested. In writing this book Sundaram surely put himself at risk, and it is a testament to his bravery that he did so without drawing undue attention to its personal cost. n Sriram teaches at the State University of New York at Purchase. She is writing a biography of Pondicherry, a South Indian city that was colonized by the French.

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OPINIONS

It’s time to rethink solitary confinement BARACK OBAMA is president of the United States.

In 2010, a 16­year­old named Kalief Browder from the Bronx was accused of stealing a backpack. He was sent to Rikers Island to await trial, where he reportedly endured unspeakable violence at the hands of inmates and guards — and spent nearly two years in solitary confinement.

In 2013, Kalief was released, having never stood trial. He completed a successful semester at Bronx Community College.

But life was a constant struggle to recover from the trauma of being locked up alone for 23 hours a day. One Saturday, he committed suicide at home. He was just 22 years old.

Solitary confinement gained popularity in the United States in the early 1800s, and the rationale for its use has varied over time.

Today, it’s increasingly overused on people such as Kalief, with heartbreaking results — which is why my administration is taking steps to address this problem.

There are as many as 100,000 people held in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons — including juveniles and people with mental illnesses. As many as 25,000 inmates are serving months, even years, of their sentences alone in a tiny cell, with almost no human contact.

Research suggests that solitary confinement has the potential to lead to devastating, lasting psychological consequences. It has been linked to depression, alienation, withdrawal, a reduced ability to interact with others and the potential for violent behavior.

Some studies indicate that it can worsen existing mental illnesses and even trigger new ones.

Prisoners in solitary are more likely to commit suicide, especially juveniles and people with mental illnesses.

The United States is a nation of second chances, but the experience of solitary confinement too often undercuts that second chance. Those who do make it out often have trouble holding down jobs, reuniting with

family and becoming productive members of society. Imagine having served your time and then being unable to hand change over to a customer or look your wife in the eye or hug your children.

As president, my most important job is to keep the American people safe. And since I took office, overall crime rates have decreased by more than 15 percent. In our criminal justice system, the punishment should fit the crime — and those who have served their time should leave prison ready to become productive members of society.

How can we subject prisoners to unnecessary solitary confinement, knowing its effects, and then expect them to return to our communities as whole people? It doesn’t make us safer.

It’s an affront to our common humanity.

That’s why last summer, I directed Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and the Justice Department to review the overuse of solitary confinement across U.S. prisons. They found that there are circumstances when solitary is a necessary tool, such as when certain prisoners must be isolated for their own protection or in order to protect staff and other inmates. In those cases, the practice should be limited, applied with constraints and used only as a measure of last

JAMES STEIDL/ISTOCKPHOTO

resort. They have identified common-sense principles that should guide the use of solitary confinement in our criminal justice system.

The Justice Department has completed its review, and I am adopting its recommendations to reform the federal prison system.

These include banning solitary confinement for juveniles and as a response to low-level infractions, expanding treatment for the mentally ill and increasing the amount of time inmates in solitary can spend outside of their cells. These steps will affect some 10,000 federal prisoners held in solitary confinement — and hopefully serve as a model for state and local corrections systems. And I will direct all relevant federal agencies to review these principles and report back to me with a plan to address their use of solitary confinement.

States that have led the way are already seeing positive results.

Colorado cut the number of people in solitary confinement, and assaults against staff are the lowest they’ve been since 2006.

New Mexico implemented reforms and has seen a drop in solitary confinement, with more prisoners engaging in promising rehabilitation programs. And since 2012, federal prisons have cut the use of solitary confinement by 25 percent and significantly reduced assaults on staff.

Reforming solitary confinement is just one part of a broader bipartisan push for criminal justice reform. Every year, we spend $80 billion to keep 2.2 million people incarcerated.

Many criminals belong behind bars. But too many others, especially nonviolent drug offenders, are serving unnecessarily long sentences.

That’s why members of Congress in both parties are pushing for change, from reforming sentencing laws to expanding reentry programs to give those who have paid their debt to society the tools they need to become productive members of their communities. And I hope they will send me legislation as soon as possible that makes our criminal justice system smarter, fairer, less expensive and more effective.

In America, we believe in redemption. We believe, in the words of Pope Francis, that “every human person is endowed with an inalienable dignity, and society can only benefit from the rehabilitation of those convicted of crimes.” We believe that when people make mistakes, they deserve the opportunity to remake their lives. And if we can give them the hope of a better future, and a way to get back on their feet, then we will leave our children with a country that is safer, stronger and worthy of our highest ideals. n

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OPINIONS

KLMNO WEEKLY

TOM TOLES

A new chapter for public libraries ESTHER J. CEPEDA is a columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group.

WAUKEGAN, Ill. — Forty miles from downtown Chicago, in the birthplace of Ray Bradbury, sits one of the nation’s most striking examples of the American library’s evolving role from book repository to community shelter.

It’s a well-accepted fact that law enforcement is the de facto front line of mental health services for the poor. So too, in struggling cities — like Waukegan, which decades ago was a white, middle-class enclave — the library is the social worker of first and last resort.

Stroll onto the Waukegan Public Library’s airy main floor and you’ll see gaggles of people entranced at banks of computers or getting counseled for the Affordable Care Act enrollment process. Kids are upstairs on overstuffed chairs looking through graphic novels or playing make-believe in the children’s resource room. And homeless people are warming their bones on a day when the mercury might not get above 2 degrees.

A state-of-the-art classroom anchors the bulk of the first floor.

There, people gather to learn rudimentary English, study for the GED high school equivalency test, apply for temporary driver’s licenses, learn Microsoft Word, fill out applications for U.S. citizenship, prep for the ACT or get information on how to call the suicide hotline.

The books are, effectively, beside the point at an institution where the mission isn’t merely to promote literacy but to improve the lives of its community members.

“Demographics are shifting, and the perception of the library is shifting — if we don’t shift along with it, we’re at risk of no longer being relevant,” said Carmen Patlan, the Waukegan library’s community engagement and outreach manager. “As books and readers go online, people wonder if libraries will still exist.

What will they be for? Libraries are beginning to feel this need to shift toward addressing the underlying needs of a community, because if the people are in crisis, these 250,000 books mean nothing.”

Patlan is a veteran of the tumult Waukegan has

experienced as a hot spot of immigration anxieties. Hispanics have come to constitute over half the population, and in June 2007 the Waukegan City Council voted to apply for federal funds, through the now-defunct 287(g) program, to certify two police officers to initiate deportation proceedings against illegal immigrants who committed crimes. The decision caused an uproar in a town already anxious about the influx of Spanishspeaking immigrants fleeing Chicago and oftentimes arriving straight from Mexico.

But long before outreach programs began cultivating Hispanic patrons by teaching them what a library is for — many immigrants, with little background knowledge about libraries, believe them to be either bookstores or specialized academic organizations that are not open to the public — much of the older, white patron base had either moved away or their children had grown up and made family trips to the library a broken habit.

Today, with 19 percent of Waukegan residents living in poverty, the library operates with a specific customer in mind: a low-income, white, Hispanic or black single mom with three children and no high school

diploma. In order for her and her children to reach their true potential, they’ll need help with reading skills, with understanding the basics of staying physically healthy, and resources to help them address issues like food insufficiency, mental illness, domestic violence and college scholarships.

The library offers all of these, sometimes with the help of certified social workers and nurses. And in addition to more standard fare, such as a screening and discussion of Francois Truffaut’s film adaptation of “Fahrenheit 451” and preschool story time, the library provides tours of the book collection so that, someday, the books can be the main draw for these patrons.

“Our children are in survival mode because their parents are in survival mode,” Patlan said. “But if we can make our community successful, we will be successful.

Not only in circulating books, but in making sure parents are reading more, children are reading more and they have access to the tools they need to lead self-actualized lives.”

If self-actualization seems like too huge a responsibility for a humble library, just ask yourself: If the library doesn’t designate itself a community’s social worker, who will? n

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OPINIONS

BY ROGERS FOR THE PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE

Be excited about America’s future VIVEK WADHWA is a fellow at Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University and director of research at Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke.

Every 30 or 40 years, Americans become incredibly pessimistic. They begin to believe the nation is falling behind in competitiveness and innovation, that their children will not be as well off as they themselves have been, and that some other country will own the future. They fear that the United States will go the way of the British Empire in the 20th century.

This may be the country’s greatest advantage, because it causes it to maintain a level of humility and to constantly reinvent itself. But the fears are completely unfounded.

The United States is in fact in the middle of a dramatic revival and rejuvenation, propelled by a wave of technological innovations. These breakthroughs are delivering the enormous productivity gains and dramatic cost savings needed to sustain economic growth and prosperity. And they are enabling entrepreneurs to solve the grand challenges of humanity, the problems that have always bedeviled the human race: disease, hunger, clean water, energy, education, and security.

Through advances in computing, faster computers are being used to design faster computers. And these faster computers, in turn, are making it possible to design new forms of energy, smaller and more powerful sensors, artificial-

intelligence software that can interpret the massive amounts of information that we are gathering, and robots that can do the mundane work of humans. It is even becoming possible to redesign human cells and other organisms. Almost all fields of science are becoming digitized, enabling them to start advancing at exponential rates.

The really good news is that the world will share in the prosperity that this American reinvention is creating.

There are 1.2 billion people with no connection to a power grid, for example, and another 2.5 billion who can get power only intermittently and so use fuels such as kerosene for lamps.

Kerosene is a dirty fuel that, according to the Economist, costs as much as $10 per kilowatt-hour

KLMNO WEEKLY

BY DARRIN BELL

— which is about 50 times more than Americans pay for their energy. Worse, kerosene fires are epidemic in Africa, and their toxic fumes cause respiratory ailments that kill hundreds of thousands per year. This is all about to change: Within a decade and a half, we will have the ability to harness the power of the sun and wind to provide 100 percent of the planet’s energy needs. The cost of clean energy will fall to the point that it seems free. We will be able to light up every corner of the globe and allow children in Africa to be able to study when they get home, to equip all homes with heating and air conditioning, and to produce unlimited food and clean water.

Desalination plants have so far struggled to get funded, because they are power hungry. This makes water production through desalination prohibitively expensive. When power costs decline by 30 to 40 percent, desalination will become an economical option; when they approach zero, which will happen, coastal zones will become water-rich regions. We will be able to remove environmentally damaging dams and transport water everywhere.

Affordable smartphones are also becoming available worldwide, connecting the human

race as never before. When Silicon Valley companies succeed in perfecting their drones, balloons, and microsatellites later in this decade, they will be able to blanket the Earth with Internet access, thereby providing everyone with access to a sea of knowledge.

Communities across the globe will be able to learn from each other, participate in the global economy, and uplift themselves.

With the advances in genomics and with health sensors that connect to smartphones, our entire health care system is about to be upended. We are moving into an era of data-driven, crowdsourced, participatory, genomics-based medicine.

Artificial-intelligence-based applications will prescribe medicines or lifestyle changes holistically, on the basis of our full medical history, habits, and genetic makeup.

America is leading the world in technology advances, but innovation is happening everywhere. It is an unstoppable force — one that will create great opportunities and disruptions.

Anything is possible, and that is why we need to change the national dialogue now from one that is bogged down in pessimism to one in which we discuss how we make the most of the amazing opportunities ahead. n

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FIVE MYTHS

Reconstruction BY

J AMES W . L OEWEN

The United States is entering the sesquicentennial of Reconstruc­ tion, that period after the Civil War when African Americans briefly enjoyed full civil and political rights. It is still true, as W.E.B. Du Bois put it in “Black Reconstruction” 80 years ago, that “one cannot study Reconstruction without first frankly facing the facts of universal ly­ ing.” Here are five common fallacies that Americans still tell them­ selves about this formative period.

1

Reconstruction was a failure.

On the contrary, former Confederates saw Reconstruction as a problem precisely because it was succeeding. New Republican state administrations passed popular measures such as homestead exemption laws that abated taxes on residences, making it harder for people to lose their homes. They also repaired roads and bridges and built new schools and hospitals.

Soon, Republicans were drawing 20 percent and even 40 percent of the white vote and almost all the black vote.

Democrats grew desperate. After abortive attempts to win black votes, they resorted to intimidation and violence. These tactics were central to the restoration of white Democratic rule across the South by 1877. And thus Reconstruction ended, but not because it failed.

2

African Americans took over the South during Reconstruction.

This alleged black dominance supposedly made Reconstruction a time of terror and travail for white Southerners.

But in fact, the terror and travail during Reconstruction happened mostly to African Americans and their white Republican allies. In Louisiana in the summer and fall of 1868, white Democrats killed 1,081 people, mostly African Americans and white Republicans. Around the same time in Hinds County,

Miss., whites killed an average of one African American a day, especially targeting servicemen.

Whites mounted similar attacks across the South.

Far from suffering under black dominance, all of the Southern states had white governors throughout Reconstruction. All but one (South Carolina) had white legislative majorities.

Mississippi’s Constitutional Convention of 1868 is still called the “Black and Tan Convention,” but only 16 of its 94 delegates were black. Of course, a government that is 17 percent black looks “black” to people used to the all-white governments before and after.

3

Northerners used Reconstruction to take advantage of the South and get rich.

The first clue that this view might be far-fetched comes from the fact that the economies of most Southern states were in ruins. Fortune-seekers will go where the money is, and it was not in the postwar South.

Instead, immigrants from the North were mostly of four types: missionaries bringing Christianity (and often literacy) to newly freed people; teachers eager to help black children and adults learn to read and write; Union soldiers and seamen who were stationed in Mississippi and liked the place or fell in love; and would-be political leaders, black and white, determined to make interracial government work.

PHOTOS FROM W.E.B. DU BOIS/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION

Photographs collected by W.E.B. Du Bois and Thomas J. Calloway for the “American Negro Exhibit” at the Paris Exposition of 1900.

4

Republicans “waved the bloody shirt” to hide their lack of substantive policies.

“Waving the bloody shirt” has come to mean trying to win votes through demagoguery — blaming opponents for things they didn’t do or did long ago. Its first use of this sort refers to Republicans blaming Democrats for the carnage of the Civil War years after it ended.

Actually, the bloody shirt was a real shirt, owned by a white Republican, A.P. Huggins. He was superintendent of the Monroe County Public Schools, a majority-black school system in Aberdeen, Miss., and took his job seriously. White supremacist Democrats warned him to leave the state, but he refused. On a March evening in 1870, they went to his home, rousted him from bed in his nightshirt and whipped him nearly to death. His bloody shirt was taken to Washington as proof of Democratic terrorism against Republicans in the South.

The violence decried happened during Reconstruction, not the Civil War, so it was not anachronistic. Nor was it demagogic to use the phrase (or wave the shirt); violence at Southern polls posed a real issue.

5

Republicans gave up on black rights in 1877.

Republicans did eventually abandon civil rights, but not right after the Compromise of 1877 effectively ended Reconstruction. As late as 1890, Republicans in Congress almost passed the Federal Elections Act, which might have given some force to the 15th Amendment’s voting rights.

After that, each succeeding Republican president was worse on civil rights than his predecessor. With the nomination of Barry Goldwater for president in 1964, the GOP switched sides entirely, appealing now to conservative white Southerners.

Today, we have a black president, but in some ways, we still have not surpassed the level of interracial cooperation we attained during Reconstruction. Republicans make it harder for African Americans (and students and poor people) to vote, just as Democrats did after 1890, albeit on a smaller scale.

The tragedy of Reconstruction is not that it failed but that its successes were curtailed and later reversed. n Loewen, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Vermont, is the author of “The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader.”

SUNDAY, JANUARY 31, 2016

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