The Washington Post National Weekly - March 26, 2017

SUNDAY, MARCH 26, 2017

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IN COLLABORATION WITH

ABCDE NATIONAL WEEKLY

A new face rises among Democrats Al Franken may be the perfect senator for the Trump era PAGE 12

Politics Trump’s loyalty monitors 4

World No justice for one Salvadoran 10

5 Myths Turkey 23

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SUNDAY, MARCH 26, 2017

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THE FIX

A risky war is declared BY

A MBER P HILLIPS

J

udge Neil Gorsuch is about to have the dubious distinction of being the first Supreme Court nominee in modern history to be filibustered entirely by one party.

That’s thanks to Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who announced Thursday he’ll block Gorsuch’s nomination.

It’s a notable marker in the ongoing saga of just how far Democrats in Congress are willing to go to try to stick it to President Trump.

But, here’s the but: Schumer is launching into a battle he probably can’t win.

His filibuster is laying the tripwire for Republicans to just simply get rid of the minority party’s ability to require 60 votes on any nominee. And that means Democrats are disarming their future selves from their best tool to block Supreme Court nominees down the road — say, when moderate and liberal vacancies open up and give Trump a chance to change the balance of power in the court for decades.

“The chance of success of this are basically zero,” said Robert David Johnson, a Brooklyn College history professor.

Republicans have only 52 members, which means they’re faced with a choice: scramble to find eight red-state Democrats to join them to support Gorsuch, or blow up the filibuster for nominees. (In 2013, Senate Democrats got rid of the filibuster for Cabinet and lower-court nominees.)

Trump has expressed little qualms with getting rid of the filibuster, urging his party in the Senate to “go nuclear,” as the move is dubbed. Senate Majority Leader

Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a practiced student of Senate procedure, is more hesitant. But he’s indicated getting Gorsuch on the bench is his top priority.

Schumer’s filibuster vow comes as a surprise to basically no one in Washington.

Senate Democrats, under Schumer’s leadership, have delayed Trump’s Cabinet nominees, even going so far as to boycott hearings. They’ve forced Vice President Pence to come to the Capitol and cast a rare tiebreaking vote to get Education Secretary Betsy DeVos through. A former top Senate Democratic aide argued in the pages of The Washington Post recently that Senate Democrats should just stall everything, nominees and legislation.

Democrats are under enormous pressure on the left to be a roadblock to Trump. And

liberal activists see this Supreme Court vacancy as one of the best ways to do it.

Bonus: They’ll be getting vengeance after Republicans held up President Barack Obama’s pick for the same seat for more than a year.

It’s even more fascinating that Schumer’s filibuster announcement came when Gorsuch was basically at his strongest. He had just wrapped up three marathon days of hearings, and Democrats failed to stick him with one single, overarching judicial reason to oppose him.

Schumer’s rationale for opposing Gorsuch comes down to this: The past six or so Supreme Court nominees have received 60 votes in the Senate.

But as The Post’s Fact Checker team points out, that’s misleading language. There is no “standard” for Supreme Court nominees needing 60 votes. And for much of the past century, senators often gave the president deference in his or her Cabinet and Supreme Court picks, even if they didn’t politically align with the pick.

There is no longer any pretense a president will get bipartisan support for a Supreme Court nominee, so one party was going to have to blow the filibuster eventually. And eventually, Democrats will be back in power and it will be their turn to try to tilt the balance of power of the court.

But as we will probably see unfold over the next few weeks or months, what the base wants is a risky thing to do. n

©The Washington Post

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) says Democrats will filibuster the Supreme Court nomination of Neil Gorsuch.

YURI GRIPAS/REUTERS

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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. © 2017 The Washington Post / Year 3, No. 24

CONTENTS POLITICS THE NATION THE WORLD COVER STORY REAL ESTATE BOOKS OPINION FIVE MYTHS

4 8 10 12 16 18 20 23

ON THE COVER At a time when the Democratic Party is trying to find its voice, former comedian Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) may be having a breakout moment as a political star. Photo by MELINA MARA/The Washington Post.

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POLITICS

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST

White House extends its eyes and ears BY

L ISA R EIN AND J ULIET E ILPERIN

T

he political appointee charged with keeping watch over Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and his aides has offered unsolicited advice so often that after just four weeks on the job, Pruitt has shut him out of many staff meetings, according to two senior administration officials.

At the Pentagon, they’re privately calling the former Marine officer and fighter pilot who’s supposed to keep his eye on Defense Secretary Jim Mattis “the commissar,” according to a high-ranking defense official with knowledge of the situation. It’s a reference to Soviet-era Communist Party officials who were assigned

Political aides are embedded into Cabinet agencies to be advisers but also to monitor loyalty, some officials say The political advisers embedded at various agencies report to the office of Rick Dearborn, left, a White House deputy chief of staff, according to administration officials.

to military units to ensure their commanders remained loyal.

Most members of President Trump’s Cabinet do not yet have leadership teams in place or even nominees for top deputies. But they do have an influential coterie of senior aides installed by the White House who are charged — above all — with monitoring the secretaries’ loyalty, according to eight officials in and outside the administration.

This shadow government of political appointees with the title of senior White House adviser is embedded at every Cabinet agency, with offices in or just outside the secretary’s suite. The White House has installed at least 16 of the advisers at departments including Energy and Health and Human Services and at some smaller agencies such as NASA, according

to records first obtained by ProPublica through a Freedom of Information Act request.

These aides report not to the secretary, but to Rick Dearborn, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, according to administration officials. A top Dearborn aide, John Mashburn, leads a weekly conference call with the advisers, who are in constant contact with the White House.

The aides act as a go-between on policy matters for the agencies and the White House. Behind the scenes, though, they’re on another mission: to monitor Cabinet leaders and their top staffs to make sure they carry out the president’s agenda and don’t stray too far from the White House’s talking points, said several officials with knowledge of the arrangement.

“Especially when you’re starting a gov-

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POLITICS ernment and you have a changeover of parties when policies are going to be dramatically different, I think it’s something that’s smart,” said Barry Bennett, a former Trump campaign adviser. “Somebody needs to be there as the White House’s man on the scene. Because there’s no senior staff yet, they’re functioning as the White House’s voice and ears in these departments.”

The arrangement is unusual. It wasn’t used by Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush or Bill Clinton. And it’s also different from the traditional liaisons who shepherd the White House’s political appointees to the various agencies. Critics say the competing chains of command eventually will breed mistrust, chaos and inefficiency — especially as new department heads build their staffs.

“It’s healthy when there is some daylight between the president’s Cabinet and the White House, with room for some disagreement,” said Kevin Knobloch, who was chief of staff under Obama to then-Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.

“That can only happen when agency secretaries have their own team, who report directly to them,” he said. “Otherwise it comes off as not a ringing vote of confidence in the Cabinet.”

The White House declined to comment about the appointees on the record, citing the confidentiality of personnel matters and internal operations. But a White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, contested their mission of holding agencies accountable and said they technically report to each department’s chief of staff or to the secretaries themselves.

“The advisers were a main point of contact in the early transition process as the agencies were being set up,” the official said in an email. “Like every White House, this one is in frequent contact with agencies and departments.”

The advisers’ power may be heightened by the lack of complete leadership teams at many departments.

The long delay in getting Trump’s nominee for agriculture secretary, former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue (R), confirmed means that Sam Clovis, who was a Trump campaign adviser, and transition team leader Brian Klippenstein continue to serve as the agency’s top political appointees.

“He and Brian Klippenstein are just a handful of appointees on the ground and they’re doing a big part of the day-to-day work,” said Dale Moore, the American Farm Bureau Federation’s public policy executive director.

Every president tries to assert authority over the executive branch, with varying degrees of success.

The Obama White House kept tight control over agencies, telling senior offi-

MICHAEL ROBINSON CHAVEZ/THE WASHINGTON POST

“If you drain the swamp, you better have someone who watches over the alligators. These people are actively trying to undermine the new government. And they think it’s their moral obligation to do so.”

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, seen above at the 2016 GOP convention

cials what they could publicly disclose about their own department’s operations.

Foreign policy became so centralized that State Department and Defense Department officials complained privately that they felt micromanaged on key decisions.

After then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. made some political gaffes, Obama aides wanted to install a political aide at the Justice Department to monitor him. But Holder was furious about the intrusion and blocked the plan. Former defense secretary Robert M. Gates pushed back against a top official the White House wanted at the Pentagon to guide Asia policy, wary of someone so close to the president in his orbit.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), a Trump adviser, said the president needs to dispatch political allies to the agencies to monitor a bureaucracy that’s being targeted for reduction.

“If you drain the swamp, you better have someone who watches over the alligators,” Gingrich said. “These people are actively trying to undermine the new government. And they think it’s their moral obligation to do so.”

At the Transportation Department, former Pennsylvania lobbyist Anthony Pugliese shuttles back and forth between the White House and DOT headquarters on New Jersey Avenue, according to an agency official. His office is just 20 paces from

Secretary Elaine Chao, the official said.

Day to day, Pugliese and his counterparts inform Cabinet officials of priorities the White House wants them to keep on their radar. They oversee the arrival of new political appointees and coordinate with the West Wing on the agency’s direction.

The arrangement is collegial in some offices, including at Transportation and Interior, where aides to Chao and Secretary Ryan Zinke insisted that the White House advisers work as part of the team, attending meetings, helping form an infrastructure task force and designing policy on public lands.

Trump does not have long-standing relationships or close personal ties with most leaders in his Cabinet. That’s why gauging their loyalty is so important, said officials who described the structure.

“A lot of these [Cabinet heads] have come from roles where they’re the executive,” said a senior administration official not authorized to publicly discuss the White House advisers. “But when you become head of an agency, you’re no longer your own person. It’s a hard change for a lot of these people: They’re not completely autonomous anymore.”

Many of the senior advisers lack expertise in their agency’s mission and came from the business or political world. They include Trump campaign aides, former Republican National Committee staffers,

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conservative activists, lobbyists and entrepreneurs.

At Homeland Security, for example, is Frank Wuco, a former security consultant whose blog Red Wire describes the terrorist threat as rooted in Islam. To explain the threat, he appears on YouTube as a fictional jihadist.

Many of the advisers arrived from the White House with the small groups known as “beachhead teams” that started work on Jan. 20. One of the mandates at the top of their to-do list now, Bennett said, is making sure the agencies are identifying regulations the administration wants to roll back and vetting any new ones.

At the Pentagon, Brett Byers acts as a go-between between Mattis’s team and the White House, largely on “bureaucratic” matters, said an official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel issues.

Career officials who work near the “E” ring offices occupied by senior Pentagon staff, suspicious that Byers is not directly on Mattis’s team, came up with the Sovietera moniker “commissar” to describe him, someone familiar with their thinking said.

Elsewhere, resentment has built up.

Pruitt is bristling at the presence of former Washington state senator Don Benton, who ran the president’s Washington state campaign and is now the EPA’s senior White House adviser, said two senior administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.

These officials said Benton piped up so frequently during policy discussions that he had been disinvited from many of them. One of the officials described the situation as akin to an episode of the HBO comedy series “Veep.”

Trump’s approach may not be so different than Abraham Lincoln’s. Coming into the White House after more than a half-century of Democrats in power, Lincoln worked swiftly to oust hostile bureaucrats and appoint allies. But he still had to deal with an Army led by many senior officers who sympathized with the South, as well as a government beset by internal divisions.

Gettysburg College professor Allen C. Guelzo described Lincoln as “surrounded by smiling enemies,” which prompted him to embed his friends into army camps as well as some federal departments.

“I think that presidents actually do this more than it appears,” said Guelzo, adding that Lincoln dispatched Quartermaster General of the U.S. Army Montgomery Meigs to circulate among the Army of the Potomac to pick up any negative “doggerel” or insults officers made about him. n ©The Washington Post

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POLITICS

The rising cost of protecting Trump

BY D REW H ARWELL AND A MY B RITTAIN

T

he U.S. Secret Service requested $60 million in additional funding for the next year, offering the most precise estimate yet of the escalating costs for travel and protection resulting from the unusually complicated lifestyle of the Trump family, according to internal agency documents reviewed

by The Washington Post.

Nearly half of the additional money, $26.8 million, would pay to protect President Trump’s family and private home in New York’s Trump Tower, the documents show, while $33 million would be spent on travel costs incurred by “the president, vice president and other visiting heads of state.”

The documents, part of the Secret Service’s request for the fiscal 2018 budget, reflect the costly surprise facing Secret Service agents tasked with guarding the president’s large and far-flung family, accommodating their ambitious travel schedules and fortifying the three-floor Manhattan penthouse where first lady Melania Trump and son Barron live.

Trump has spent most weekends since the inauguration at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, and his sons have traveled the world to promote Trump properties with Secret Service agents in tow.

The documents reviewed by The Post did not show how the new budget requests compare to the funding needs for past presidents. Such figures are not public information. The Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the protective agency, declined to provide cost breakdowns and have said in the past that such figures are confidential, citing security concerns.

A person familiar with internal Secret Service budget discussions said the requests for additional funding, prepared in late February, were rejected by the Office of Management and Budget, an arm of the White House. That means the agency will probably have to divert other spending to handle the additional burden.

MANUEL BALCE CENETA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Secret Service asked for $60 million more to cover the first family’s travel and Trump Tower Some public funds could potentially become revenue for Trump’s private company, the Trump Organization, which owns Trump Tower. The Defense Department and Secret Service have sought to rent space in Trump Tower but have not said how much space they’re interested in, or at what cost. Neither the Secret Service nor the Trump Organization have disclosed how much public money, if any, is being spent toward Trump Tower space or other costs.

The Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment.

The Secret Service would not provide any details on the typical budget for protecting the first family. The agency requested $734 million for its fiscal 2017 “operations and support” protection budget, which would include the expenses for all protected individuals and foreign heads of state, DHS budget documents show.

The $26.8 million funding re-

quest says it is needed for “residence security operations at the president’s private residence in Trump Tower,” with roughly $12.5 million earmarked to cover “personnel related costs in New York.”

The money would also go toward protective assignments for the president’s children and grandchildren, as well as costs for “protective advances and protective intelligence activities.” The request also sought six additional full-time-equivalent positions for the Trump security details.

Before taking office, Trump repeatedly criticized the cost of President Barack Obama’s travel, saying the fact that Obama’s trips were “costing taxpayers millions of dollars” was “unbelievable.”

During the campaign, Trump pledged to save public money by working diligently in Washington and skipping expensive travel.

“There’s no time for vacation.

We’re not going to be big on vaca-

President Trump's motorcade drives through West Palm Beach on its way to Mar-a-Lago, where the president spends most weekends.

Palm Beach County officials say their sheriff’s office has spent more than $1.5 million on overtime for deputies guarding the resort.

tions,” Trump said at a campaign rally last year. “The White House is this incredible place. It represents so much, and you’re there for a limited period of time. If you’re at the White House and you have so much work to do, why do you fly?

Why do you leave so much?”

The conservative group Judicial Watch, which closely tracked Obama’s family travel, estimated the Obamas’ vacation expenses totaled $97 million over eight years.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer last week countered criticism of Trump’s frequent travel to Mar-a-Lago, saying, “The president is very clear that he works seven days a week. This is where he goes to see his family. He brings people down there. This is part of being president.”

The Secret Service’s protection costs are only a fraction of the total public spending devoted to safeguarding Trump properties. New York police spent roughly $24 million toward security costs at Trump Tower between the election and inauguration, according to figures provided to The Post.

The agency is seeking federal reimbursement for the security costs. When the president is in town, New York police expect to spend about $300,000 a day safeguarding Trump Tower. On days when only the first lady and their son are in town, police expect security costs will drop to between $127,000 and $145,000 a day.

At Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach County officials say their sheriff’s office has spent more than $1.5 million toward overtime for deputies guarding the exclusive resort Trump has taken to calling “the southern White House” and “winter White House.”

County officials have proposed levying a special fee on the resort, saying they would have to otherwise raise local taxes on residents to help cover its high security costs.

The Coast Guard has also paid to provide round-the-clock patrols of the resort’s two coastlines, including through the use of a gunmounted response boat that, according to agency budget documents, costs $1,500 an hour. n ©The Washington Post

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POLITICS

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The other Russian connection BY

T OM H AMBURGER

T

he White House this past week sought to again distance itself from President Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who is under increasing scrutiny over his connections to Russian business interests.

But even as Trump officials downplay Manafort’s role, his decade-long business associate Rick Gates remains entrenched in the president’s operation. Gates is one of four people leading a Trump-blessed group that defends the president’s agenda. As recently as the other week, he was at the White House to meet with officials as part of that work.

Through Manafort, Gates is tied to many of the same business titans from Ukraine and Russia, including Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with strong ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that Manafort had a multimillion-dollar contract with Deripaska between at least 2005 and 2009 that was aimed at helping the political interests of Putin.

Manafort has acknowledged the contract with Deripaska but denied that it or any other of their dealings had anything to do with the Russian government. On Friday, he offered to testify before the House Intelligence Committee in its investigation of alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. In a brief interview, Gates described his work as being focused on “supporting the private equity fund started by the firm and democracy building and party building in Ukraine.”

Gates also acknowledged a role in at least two controversial deals involving separate Putinconnected oligarchs, including one other with Deripaska. Both led to lawsuits in which Gates was listed as Manafort’s partner, though Gates said he holds no equity interest in the firm.

Potential connections between Trump’s associates and the Russian government gained renewed interest after FBI Director James

WIN MCNAMEE/REUTERS

As the White House seeks to distance itself from Paul Manafort, his business partner’s ties remain B. Comey publicly confirmed Monday that his agency is actively investigating whether there was collusion between the two sides.

Manafort and Gates said they had not been contacted by the FBI or other law enforcement agencies.

Gates and Manafort are two of many Trump associates with connections to Russia, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn; Carter Page, a former Trump foreign policy adviser; and Roger Stone, a Trump ally who claimed to have communicated indirectly with WikiLeaks before emails hacked by Russian agents were published last summer. All have denied any wrongdoing and said their alleged ties to Russia are being exaggerated to undermine the president.

Manafort’s role in potential dealings with Russia gained new attention Wednesday when the AP reported that Manafort proposed in 2005 a plan to influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and the former Soviet republics to benefit the

Putin government. Gates did not join the firm until the following year.

Manafort said Wednesday that his work for Deripaska was designed to benefit the Russian business executive’s company, Rusal, not the government.

“I have always publicly acknowledged that I worked for Mr. Deripaska and his company,” Manafort said in a statement. “I did not work for the Russian government. Once again, smear and innuendo are being used to paint a false picture.”

In the mid-1990s, Manafort and Richard H. Davis, a longtime Republican political consultant, formed Davis Manafort. Gates joined the firm in 2006.

That year, the firm wooed Deripaska as a client, telling him that their goal was to set up a $200 million fund to make private equity investments and acquisitions, primarily in Russia and Ukraine, according to documents in the suit. The partnership making the investments was created in the Cayman Islands in 2007.

Paul Manafort, the former chairman of President Trump’s 2016 campaign, is seen last year at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Rick Gates, a decade-long business associate of Manafort’s, is tied to many of the same business titans from Ukraine and Russia.

Gates is one of four people leading a President Trumpblessed group that defends the president’s agenda.

By 2014, relations between Manafort and Gates and Derispaska had soured considerably.

That year, Gates and Manafort were sued by Deripaska, who accused them in a Cayman Islands court of taking nearly $19 million intended for investments, then failing to account for the funds, return them or respond to numerous inquiries about exactly how the money was used.

At one point, attorneys for Deripaska claimed that they could not locate Manafort or Gates. The Russian tycoon hired a private investigator to track them down, according to a 2014 petition that Deripaska’s attorneys filed in a Cayman Islands court seeking recovery of the money.

A spokeswoman for Deripaska issued a statement this past week in Moscow indicating that the suit may still be pending. Vera Kurochkina, the spokeswoman, said that Deripaska did not pay Manafort for Russia-related work but instead paid him for investment consulting that is “the subject of legal claims.”

Manafort’s attorney, Richard Hibey, did not respond to requests for comment on the status of the Cayman Islands dispute.

Deripaska’s ties to Putin are so close that Russia’s foreign minister has asked U.S. secretary of states for more than a decade to help Deripaska secure a visa to enter the United States. According to a 2007 account in the Wall Street Journal, Deripaska had been denied admission by the Justice Department because of alleged ties to organized crime.

In 2014, Manafort and Gates were also named in a different lawsuit alleging that they were helping a Ukrainian oligarch named Dmitry Firtash, who has ties to Putin. In attempting to put together an $850 million deal to build luxury housing on the site of the Drake Hotel in New York City, the legal complaint alleged, Manafort and Gates were investing ill-gotten gains Firtash received for an energy deal he had done with a Russian firm. That lawsuit was dismissed. n ©The Washington Post

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NATION

After epic crimes, Navy still pays BY

C RAIG W HITLOCK

R

obert Gilbeau is in a heap of legal trouble. In June, he became the first active-duty Navy admiral in modern history to be convicted of a felony. Next month, he faces sentencing and could land in federal prison for up to five years.

Yet the disgraced 56-year-old officer can count on one thing: a military pension that pays him about $10,000 a month. He collected his first check last fall.

Gilbeau is one of seven current or former Navy officers who have pleaded guilty in an epic corruption and bribery scandal but are still eligible for generous retirement benefits, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.

The Navy has yet to make a final determination on how much the other convicted officers will receive.

How the Navy decides to act could have repercussions for dozens of others who remain under investigation for their entanglements with Leonard Glenn Francis, a Singapore-based defense contractor who resupplied U.S. warships in Asia for a quartercentury.

Known as “Fat Leonard” for his 350-pound physique, Francis has pleaded guilty to bribing “scores” of Navy officials over a decade with prostitutes, cash, hedonistic parties and other gifts. In exchange, according to federal prosecutors, the officials provided Francis with classified or inside information that enabled his firm, Glenn Marine Defense Asia, to gouge the Navy out of tens of millions of dollars.

Twenty-seven people have been charged with crimes since the investigation became public in 2013, including eight Navy officers indicted this month. Authorities say the case is still unfolding and that more than 200 people — including 30 admirals — have come under scrutiny.

Navy officials declined to comment on specific cases but said they are reviewing conditions of discharge, including potential retirement benefits, for those con-

victed in the investigation.

“These are serious matters, and the Navy engages in the diligence demanded in considering each case individually,” said Capt. Amy Derrick, a Navy spokeswoman at the Pentagon.

Retirement perks for veterans can be substantial. Troops qualify for pensions after 20 years of service; annual payouts can exceed $150,000 for generals and admirals. Military retirees are also entitled to heavily subsidized health insurance.

Traditionally, the armed forces have been reluctant to eliminate benefits for felons, according to experts on military law. They said the services view pensions as sacrosanct partly because they don’t want to penalize spouses or other family members who made their own sacrifices for the military.

Military personnel found guilty of serious misconduct are usually demoted and forced to retire. Because pension values are based on rank, losing a star or a stripe leads to a partial reduction in retirement income.

In exceptionally rare cases, military officers who are sentenced to prison or classified as deserters can be “dropped from the rolls” — the harshest category of discharge — and their rank, privileges and benefits erased completely.

Over the past decade, the Navy has dropped just four reserve officers from the rolls. Among them were a murderer, a drug dealer and a child pornographer.

But Gary R. Myers, a New Hampshire-based military defense attorney, said the Navy would probably consider applying the unusual punishment to officers convicted in the Fat Leonard scandal, given their abuse of the public trust.

“It would be a response to the egregious nature of what was done and the breach of faith with the American people by Navy personnel,” Myers said. “This is a monumental embarrassment to the Navy, and the Navy does not like to be embarrassed.”

David P. Sheldon, a defense attorney from Washington, said

LENNY IGNELZI/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Officers convicted in a major bribery case are still eligible to collect large pensions there are few guidelines for when the penalty should be imposed.

He once represented a Marine major who was dropped from the rolls for a comparatively mild crime: concealing financial transactions.

“The bottom line is it’s very, very rare, but it’s really up to their discretion,” Sheldon said of the military leadership. “You have officers who have committed very, very serious misconduct but are not dropped from the rolls.”

Derrick, the Navy spokeswoman, declined to say whether the Navy was considering dropping officers from the rolls for their connections to Fat Leonard. She said she would not comment on “internal decision-making and deliberative processes.”

Two senior Navy officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said then-Navy Secre-

Robert Gilbeau appears last year in federal court in San Diego to plead guilty in the “Fat Leonard” corruption and bribery scandal.

Navy officials said the dog was a therapy animal to help Gilbeau with his post-traumatic stress. He is collecting a pension of about $10,000 a month.

tary Ray Mabus considered dropping Gilbeau from the rolls after his conviction last year.

But the officials said Mabus was advised by Navy lawyers to wait and see if Gilbeau was sentenced to prison.

Gilbeau’s sentencing has since been postponed three times; his lawyers have said in court filings that he is recovering from back surgery. A hearing is scheduled for next month.

In his plea deal, Gilbeau admitted to lying to investigators about his contacts with Francis and concealing the nature of their relationship.

He agreed to pay $150,000 in fines and restitution.

Prosecutors have said they will reveal more about Gilbeau’s misconduct at his sentencing. They have indicated they will seek between 12 and 18 months of prison.

Gilbeau’s attorney, David Benowitz, has said he will ask a judge to spare Gilbeau time behind bars. He did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

When Gilbeau appeared in federal court in San Diego to plead guilty last year, he carried a little white dog, named Bella, who was wearing a vest with “Navy” emblazoned on it. Navy officials said the pooch was a therapy animal to treat Gilbeau for post-traumatic stress.

Navy officials said that, unlike other officers convicted in the case, Gilbeau was allowed to retire in October because he had filed papers to leave the service years ago as part of a disability claim.

The Navy granted the request, but not before demoting him from rear admiral to captain. As an officer with 33 years of service, that reduced his pension by about $1,000 a month, according to Defense Department retirement data.

The Navy also slapped him with an “other than honorable” discharge — a black mark on his military record, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. n ©The Washington Post

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NATION

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Obstacles for building a border wall BY

T RACY J AN

T

he order has been issued for the immediate construction of a Mexico border wall. The specs have been outlined: 30 feet high and “aesthetically pleasing.” The next thing on President Trump’s to-do list for building his “big, beautiful wall”: Hire more lawyers for a long and expensive battle over private land.

The wall will cost a lot more — politically and economically — than Trump has publicly acknowledged. To build the wall along the nearly 2,000-mile border — and fulfill a key campaign promise — Trump will need to wield the power of government to forcibly take private properties, including those belonging to his supporters.

Much of the border, especially in Texas, snakes through farms, ranches, orchards, golf courses, and other private property dating back to centuries-old Spanish land grants. As a signpost to the troubles ahead, the government has still not finished the process from the last such undertaking a decade ago.

“It's going to be time consuming and costly,” said Tony Martinez, an attorney who is mayor of the border town of Brownsville, Tex. “From a political perspective, you have a lot of rich landowners who were his supporters.”

The battle has been fought before. The last wave of eminent domain cases over southern border properties dates back to the 2006 Secure Fence Act authorizing President George W. Bush to erect 700 miles of fencing.

Of the roughly 400 condemnation cases stemming from that era, about 90 remain open a decade later, according to the Justice Department. Nearly all are in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.

The U.S. government has already spent $78 million compensating private landowners for 600 tracts of property for the construction of the existing pedestrian and vehicle fence, according to Customs and Border Protection.

The agency estimates that it will spend another $21 million in real

SHANNON STAPLETON/REUTERS

Some landowners are still fighting cases from the last attempt to take private land for a barrier estate expenses associated with the remaining condemnation cases — not including about $4 million in Justice Department litigation costs.

A 2009 Homeland Security inspector general report highlighted the difficulties in acquiring the necessary land: “Gaining access rights . . . delayed the completion of fence construction and may increase the cost beyond available funding.”

The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley became embroiled in the land dispute in 2007 when the federal government sought to build an 18-foot-high wall that would have divided the campus in two. Students would have had to obtain land crossing cards to go back and forth across campus, even though they were still in the United States, said Terence Garrett, a security studies and public affairs professor at the university.

The university and government ended up compromising on a “pleasant looking” 10-foot-high fence that cut off the city golf course adjacent to campus, said

Garrett, who served as a strategist for the university president during the lawsuits. The golf course ended up going out of business.

“All the grass has grown up around it and it’s, in a sense, ceded back to nature,” Garrett said.

But the fence provides a “false sense of security,” he said. People can easily climb over it. And it’s not continuous.

About 10 miles west of the university is another golf course — the River Bend Resort & Golf Club that at the time managed to persuade the Bush administration not to build on its property.

The existing rust-colored border fence abuts the golf club’s eastern and western edges, but leaves a 1.7-mile gap in between.

The golf course’s new owners, who bought the club in 2015, say a wall running through the course would be disastrous for business.

Fifteen of its 18 holes — and more than 200 homes — would be on the south side of the levee, where the wall would be constructed, said Jeremy Barnard, River Bend’s general manager whose

After a George W. Bush-era drive to build 700 miles of fence a decade ago, landowners near Brownsville, Tex., could face another fight.

father and uncle own the resort.

If the wall were to be built following its existing path along the levee, 70 percent of the 319acre resort would be relegated to a sort of no man’s land between the levee and the natural border of the Rio Grande River, he said.

“My goal would be to get Trump out to play the course, appealing to the golf course owner and business side of him, and say, ‘Look, what would you do?’ ” Barnard said. “Seven of our holes are on the Rio Grande. You can hit your ball into Mexico, and it comes back into the United States. The beauty that comes with that, the natural landscape, 30-year-old oak trees — this is not a Walmart that I could just go reproduce on any other corner.”

Barnard, who voted for Trump, said he does not want to fight the Trump administration.

“We realize it’s a security issue.

We are willing to work with them,” he said. “But we are not just going to hand over our land and say, ‘Here you go!’ ” Thus far, the government has yet to approach the family about the land. If and when it does, Barnard plans to convey the cooperative relationship the club has developed with Border Patrol and immigration officials in the past two years.

When his family first took over the club, Barnard said, he would witness narcotics activity daily.

There’s been a dramatic decrease in drug trafficking since the club hired a full-time security guard and cleared the river banks of weeds where drug runners hid.

Border Patrol also uses the club’s boat ramp to launch patrol boats and protect the river.

“It’s not like if you build a wall your problem is gone. We need more boots on the ground. More boats, more sensors, more drones that would be more efficient and more productive.”

It remains an open question how much sympathy Trump would have for Barnard’s situation — or that of any other private landowner standing in the way of his wall. n ©The Washington Post

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KLMNO WEEKLY

WORLD

‘Prisoners who were literally rotting’ S ARAH E STHER M ASLIN San Juan Talpa, El Salvador BY

O

n a dusky evening last spring, Jorge Alberto Martínez Chávez was tossed into the hell that is El Salvador’s prison system: a holding cell barely bigger than the bed of a pickup, where more than 50 prisoners were crammed together, some on the sweatsoaked floor and others spilling out of thin hammocks crisscrossed from ground to ceiling.

The air was hot and humid, and prisoners’ half-naked bodies reeked of urine and ulcers from a recent outbreak of bacteria, according to a guard. A few weeks later, Martínez collapsed, foaming at the mouth. He was the fifth inmate from that cell to die in four months.

He never should have been there in the first place. Police, prosecutors and a judge mistook him for a different Jorge Alberto Martínez Chávez, a man eight years younger with a gang tattoo across his chest and a criminal history that includes charges of extortion, illegal gun possession and murder.

Martínez’s death exposes deep flaws in El Salvador’s justice system, with implications that go well beyond this tiny nation of 6 million. At a time when thousands of Central Americans are fleeing toward the United States, and border control is at the top of President Trump’s agenda, the weaknesses of this region’s courts and cops have assumed outsize importance. The same institutions that allowed an innocent man to die have failed to prevent street gangs from turning the country into one of the most violent in the hemisphere.

The U.S. government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to help Central American countries capture and prosecute gang leaders and corrupt officials. Although there have been some advances, the system remains dysfunctional.

Police in El Salvador frequently don’t use forensic evidence, prosecutors handle several hundred

GILES CLARKE/GETTY IMAGES

In El Salvador’s justice system, an innocent man died after being left in a crammed, infested cell cases at once, and prisons are so bad that the Supreme Court has ruled them unconstitutional.

The combination of these failings — during a crackdown in the streets and a lockdown in the prisons — was fatal for Jorge Alberto Martínez Chávez, 37, a bus dispatcher, volunteer firstresponder and father of two with little in common with the fugitive authorities sought.

“His only sin was having the same name,” said public defender Saúl Sánchez.

The crime that would land Martínez in jail occurred in October 2014 in San Pedro Masahuat, a town with cobblestone streets in the region of La Paz an hour southeast of San Salvador. Five men with guns ambushed a sixth man, who ducked behind cars to avoid the bullets. He survived, and later described his assailants to prosecutor Guillermo Molina: four low-level gang members and a leader called “Wisper.”

The victim knew Wisper’s name: Jorge Chávez. He had an

idea where he lived — a sheetmetal shack on the edge of town — and his age: about 26. Chávez was covered in gang tattoos, including “MS” (for “Mara Salvatrucha”) across his chest and an eagle on his back.

The prosecutor’s investigation was based almost entirely on the victim’s testimony. This is common in El Salvador. Despite U.S.-led efforts to introduce scientific evidence to the judicial system, reform has been sluggish, according to legal scholars and watchdog groups.

“The legal system was created to serve the oligarchy, and continues to favor the rich and powerful,” said anthropologist Juan José Martínez. These days, corrupt business executives and politicians often escape scrutiny while gang violence overwhelms police and prosecutors.

Authorities in San Pedro Masahuat caught the four lower-level gang members but couldn’t find the notorious Wisper. They photographed his house but, accord-

Jorge Alberto Martínez Chávez, 37, a bus dispatcher, volunteer firstresponder and father of two, died in jail May 25 after he was mistaken for a gang member with the same name.

From January to June 2016, at least 25 inmates died in Salvadoran holding cells like the one at top in a police station in San Salvador.

ing to the case file, didn’t do much else to locate him.

Prosecutors needed more details, so they consulted a federal database of citizens and learned of a 37-year-old man named Jorge Alberto Martínez Chávez. A week later, on Dec. 17, prosecutors checked online prison records and found another, 29-year-old man with the same name.

The differences between the two men were sweeping: Not only were they eight years apart but they hailed from different towns.

The younger man was a Mara Salvatrucha gang member who had been imprisoned for extortion in 2010 and was wanted in connection with several slayings.

He went by Jorge Chávez — the same name offered by the victim.

The older man was known as Jorge Martínez. He had no criminal record.

Despite the disparities, prosecutors filed charges against 37year-old Jorge Martínez. Molina said the witness identified Martínez in a photo lineup. However, the same witness later identified the other man, Jorge Chávez, in another photo reel.

This was the start of the chain that ended in Martínez’s death.

In early 2015, Wisper was accused of killing two young men in San Pedro Masahuat. After a series of blunders, these charges, too, would end up following the other Jorge Alberto Martínez Chávez to the grave.

Until April 25, 2016, he had no idea about any of this.

That day, a typical scorcher in San Salvador, capital police stopped Martínez at the gas station where he worked dispatching buses; they later said he had looked suspicious. They ran his name through a database and couldn’t believe their luck. They thought they had stumbled upon Wisper, a gang leader and one of the 100 most sought-after criminals in the country, and promptly detained him.

Although Martínez was arrested on a single, erroneous warrant, when Judge Daniel Ortiz in San Pedro Masahuat received news that “Wisper” had been

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WORLD captured, he tacked on the double murder. He didn’t notice the discrepancies with the description of that suspect.

“We judges aren’t investigators,” Ortiz said. He never saw Martínez in person but sent him to jail anyway. With heavy caseloads, judges often don’t see prisoners until they have spent weeks or months locked up — in Martínez’s case, in a disease-ridden, gang-controlled police holding cell in the nearby town of San Juan Talpa.

Martínez kept insisting he was innocent. He swore to his public defender, Sánchez, that he was not a gang member, stripping off his shirt to show he had no tattoos. His job as a bus dispatcher required him to travel through territory dominated by the 18th Street gang, which would have been impossible if he were a Mara Salvatrucha member.

Everything might have been settled by a police lineup, in which the victim would have to identify Martínez as the man who tried to kill him. That was postponed twice, first on May 16 because the judge called in sick, and then on May 23 because the prosecutor’s office forgot to arrange transportation for the victim.

And then time ran out. Martínez, who had spent a month in jail without ever seeing a judge, died May 25 in a San Salvador hospital.

On July 11, Judge Ortiz archived the attempted murder case, citing a police report that “Wisper” had died.

When Martínez arrived in San Juan Talpa in late April, the holding cells built for 20 people housed more than 110. The jail had become a petri dish for outbreaks of scabies, pneumonia and tuberculosis. In one instance, after 50 sick inmates were quarantined with an unidentified virus, police scrubbed the cells with bleach. Then the inmates were moved right back in.

In April, two prisoners died in the cell in the span of 48 hours.

Investigators from the national human rights office suspect the men were beaten to death by their fellow prisoners. One was covered in bruises; the other had deep scars on his wrists and ankles. They were among at least 25 inmates who died in Salvadoran police holding cells between January and June 2016. Ninety-

six more died in the same period in prisons, hospitals and transport vehicles; nearly one-third were murdered, and the rest died of illness or suicide.

According to the Institute for Criminal Policy Research, El Salvador’s prisons are the most jampacked in the Western Hemisphere except for Haiti’s. The populations began to swell in the mid-2000s as a result of President Francisco Flores’s “Strong Hand” policy, a series of toughon-crime measures that included increased police raids and longer sentences. Now a prison system built for 10,000 inmates houses more than 37,000, not including about 5,000 held in police jails.

“The ‘Strong Hand’ policy didn’t consider what would happen when all these people got locked up,” said Rodil Hernández, the national prisons director.

Gangs are using the prison system as a rent-free corporate office, directing murders and extortion rings with phones sneaked in by guards and visitors.

Human rights advocates have documented a spike in tuberculosis and other contagious diseases.

“We found prisoners who were literally rotting,” said Gerardo Alegría of the human rights office, describing oozing ulcers, infected gunshot wounds and limbs that needed to be amputated.

El Salvador’s Supreme Court found in an investigation that prisoners have as little as three square feet of space, lack adequate food, water and medical care, and could spend months or years locked up without trial.

The police report listed “suspected tuberculosis” as the cause of Martínez’s death. The autopsy reported pneumonia, although it found that Martínez had a burst liver. Autopsies in El Salvador are often unreliable, according to international forensic experts.

Police at the San Juan Talpa holding cell suspect Martínez was poisoned. Imprisoned gang members sometimes kill non-gang cellmates as a way to ensure they don’t tattle once they leave jail.

Deputy Commissioner of Police José Luis Mancía claims officers acted correctly in detaining Martínez, because there was a warrant for his arrest. The address on the warrant, however, belongs to the other man.

Wisper is still at large. n ©The Washington Post

KLMNO WEEKLY

British gun laws lauded after attack A DAM T AYLOR London BY

B

ritain was rocked by a terrorist attack at the center of its capital last week, but there was also a widespread sense that things could have been worse. Four people, including the perpetrator, were killed in the attack, and 29 more were wounded.

But the toll was lower than in other similar recent attacks.

To some Britons, there was one obvious reason for this: Britain's strict gun laws. James Cracknell, a former rower and Olympic gold medalist for Britain, wrote on Twitter about how differently things might have turned out if Britain had a more gun-friendly culture: “Reflecting on the heinous events at Westminster, how much worse would it have been if UK had different gun culture, armed police etc?”

Many other Brits expressed similar sentiments on social media after Wednesday’s atack.

Firearm ownership is heavily restricted in Britain. After a horrific mass shooting at a school killed 15 children and their teacher in 1996, the British government pursued legislative bans on assault rifles and handguns and dramatically tightened background checks for other types of firearms.

“In terms of the types of gun that can be legally owned, background checks and the penalties for illegal possession and use, we are one of the strictest in Europe,” Helen Poole, a researcher with the University of Coventry who recently studied firearms across the European Union, told The Washington Post last year.

These measures have had a clear effect. As The Washington Post reported in 2013, a total of 200,000 guns and 700 tons of ammunition had been taken off the streets in the 17 years since the 1996 school attack. Legal gun ownership, which was always relatively low, is now dramatically lower than gun ownership in the United States.

Illicit gun ownership is also low

STEFAN WERMUTH/REUTERS

Armed police respond to Britain’s Parliament after the attack.

in Britain, which does not have the porous land borders of many of its European neighbors.

Such gun measures seem to be popular in Britain. A 2010 poll from YouGov found just 4 percent of the country wanted gun control relaxed, a figure dwarfed by the 31 percent who thought all guns should be completely banned.

Some figures on the right, such as former United Kingdom Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, have called for laws to be relaxed in recent years.

Gun crime is relatively low in the country, although it hasn’t been eradicated. There have been some cases of domestic terrorism in which firearms were used — just last year, a British member of Parliament was shot and stabbed to death by a licensed firearm holder.

But the lack of firearms, and in particular weapons such as assault rifles, limits the options of would-be terrorists. The Westminster attacker’s choice of weapons — a more readily available knife and a rental SUV — seemed to be born out of limited options.

However, while the death count in London may have been relatively low, other vehicle-based attacks in France and Germany have shown how deadly the tactic can be. And other observers noted that the police officer killed in the attack, Constable Keith Palmer, was unarmed when he confronted a knife-wielding attacker — and that the attacker was ultimately stopped by another officer carrying a firearm. n ©The Washington Post

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COVER STORY

Al Franken hits his stride Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) rushes out of his office to go vote on the Senate floor on March 15. The former comedian may be having a breakout moment as a political star.

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After forging a serious reputation as a senator, the ex-comedian lightens up

I BY

K AREN T UMULTY // PHOTOS BY M ELINA M ARA

t was a half-hour before one of the sparsely attended committee hearings that take place almost every day on Capitol Hill — in this case, a session on energy infrastructure so dry it would not merit even the presence of a C-SPAN camera.

But in Al Franken’s suite of offices in the Hart Senate Office Building, the man still known best as one of the early stars of “Saturday Night Live” was going through an intense rehearsal with four aides.

How much, Franken wanted to know, are the Chinese spending on clean technology research? Where do things stand on the University of Minnesota’s study of torrefaction, a roasting process that produces better fuel for biomass energy production? And might there be a chance to ask a question about one of his favorite causes, loan guarantees for Native American reservations?

“I just want to keep bringing it up, so they keep hearing it,” Franken said, with a trace of a sigh.

Everyone is hearing a lot more from Minnesota’s junior senator these days.

At the dawn of a presidency that stretches the limits of late-night parody, and at a moment when an out-of-power Democratic Party is trying to find its voice, the former comedian and satirist may be having a breakout moment as a political star.

He is also finding it safe to be funny again.

A slim victory in 2008 Franken, now 65, barely made it to the Senate, taking his oath in July 2009 after a ballot recount that took eight months to resolve. So he spent his first term trying to prove he was not a joke — buttoning up his wit, buckling down on esoteric issues and sidestepping all but his home-state media.

“I won by 312 votes, right?” he said in an interview. “I had to show people that I was taking the job seriously, and I had come here for serious purposes, and I am still here for serious purposes. So I think I just felt like I was on probation.”

That diligence paid off in 2014, a disastrous year for Democrats nationally, when Franken was reelected with a double-digit margin.

In between, he developed a reputation on Capitol Hill for policy chops and penetrating questions — skills that have been on display during confirmation hearings of President Trump’s Cabinet nominees.

Franken “had an instinct for the legislative process, but the one talent that surprised me a little bit beyond that was his talent for crossexamination,” said political scientist Norman Ornstein, a close friend. “He has that Perry Mason quality.”

An exchange with Franken tripped up Jeff Sessions, then a fellow senator and now the attorney general, during his appearance before the Judiciary Committee.

Franken inquired what Sessions would do if he learned that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign had communicated with the Russian government in 2016.

He was trying to nudge Sessions into recusing himself, and he was startled when the Alabama senator offered information he had not asked for.

“I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I did not have communications with the Russians,” Sessions said.

After The Washington Post revealed that Sessions had met with the Russian ambassador twice last year, the attorney general did indeed have to promise to step aside from any Justice Department investigations of the 2016 presidential campaign.

In his grilling of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Franken revealed her lack of familiarity with one of the big debates in the education field, which is whether student achievement should be measured by proficiency or growth.

Franken later declared it “one the most embarrassing performances by a nominee in the history of the United States Senate.”

“We wouldn’t accept a secretary of defense who couldn’t name the branches of the military,” he argued as the Senate prepared to vote.

“We wouldn’t accept a secretary of state who couldn’t find Europe on a map. We wouldn’t accept a treasury secretary who doesn’t understand multiplication.”

Although one had to withdraw (Andrew Puzder, Trump’s first nominee for labor secretary), all of Trump’s other nominees have been approved by the Senate, a reflection of two realities: Republicans have 52 votes, and Democrats, when they had the majority in 2013, did away with the power to filibuster Cabinet picks, a procedure that requires 60 votes to surmount.

But Franken’s questions have left a mark. He was at it again this past week, when Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch went before the Judiciary Committee.

When he met privately with Gorsuch, Francontinues on next page

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) has spent the past eight years proving himself in Congress. At top, he talks to colleagues in the Senate train.

At middle, he attends a committee hearing, and, above, he meets with doctors from Minnesota. “I had to show people that I was taking the job seriously, and I had come here for serious purposes,” Franken said, “and I am still here for serious purposes.”

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from previous page

ken said, the nominee “seemed evasive, on pretty much everything I asked him.”

So given the chance to grill Gorsuch publicly, “I’m really going to be going to certain areas that serve what I consider his pro-corporate bias, which I think has been the bias of the court, the Roberts court,” Franken said.

He questioned Gorsuch’s ruling in the case of a trucker who was fired after unhitching his trailer in subzero weather and driving away in search of warmth and safety. Gorsuch was the lone dissenter in saying a federal law did not protect the driver, but Franken said the judge could have ruled that a strict interpretation of the law would lead to an absurd result.

“I had a career in identifying absurdity, and I know it when I see it,” Franken said.

Legislative improv Nearing the halfway mark of his second

term, Franken said, he feels “a little freer to be myself, and so every once in awhile, something comes out.”

At the end of May, Franken has a book coming out — part memoir, part policy prescriptive — that he has wryly titled: “Al Franken, Giant of the Senate.”

Franken has a laugh that bursts like a Tommy gun, and it does not take much to get it going. His staff keeps track of him on the Senate floor by listening for eruptions on their office televisions.

But the best stage to see Franken-style legislative improv is the hearing room. One recent exchange went viral.

“Governor, thank you so much for coming into my office. Did you enjoy meeting me?” he asked former Texas governor Rick Perry, who was up for confirmation as energy secretary.

“I hope you are as much fun on that dais as you were on your couch,” Perry replied. In the

awkward laughter that followed, Perry added: “May I rephrase that?”

“Please,” Franken said, shuddering. “Oh my lord.”

Those moments aside, and with Donald Trump in the White House, “I don’t think my role to play here has anything to do with humor,” Franken said. “I don’t think humor is the tool I’m supposed to be using.”

A celebrity becomes a senator By one measure, Franken’s career has come full circle. In a 1991 “Saturday Night Live” skit, he played a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. A week ago, on an episode of SNL’s “Weekend Update,” cast member Alex Moffat portrayed Franken in what is now a real-life role on that panel.

He has many sides. During slow periods in committee hearings, Franken sometimes sketches elaborate portraits on a notepad. If he

“I don’t think my role to play here has anything to do with humor,” said Sen. Al Franken, above.

“I don’t think humor is the tool I’m supposed to be using.”

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COVER STORY

“I like this job,” Franken said. “I really like this job. I like representing the people of Minnesota. I feel like I’m really beginning to know this job.” does not take them when he leaves, Senate staffers scoop up the Franken doodles as collector’s items.

But celebrity is a tricky thing in the Senate chamber, a place already well stocked with ego and ambition.

Franken said he found an early mentor in Tamera Luzzatto, who was Hillary Clinton’s Senate chief of staff at the time. Luzzatto had previously worked for Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), another famous name.

Luzzatto advised Franken to keep a low profile, take care of his state and always show up well prepared.

“What we really talked about is, there is still an opportunity in the Senate to get to know each other, and impress one another with your work ethic,” Luzzatto recalled. “The way one handles fame as an elected official — senators in particular — can help or harm you.”

When Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), then the minority leader, made a speech on the Senate floor in 2010 opposing the confirmation of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, he noticed Franken rolling his eyes. The impropriety was made worse by the fact that Franken was presiding over the Senate at the time.

“This isn’t ‘Saturday Night Live,’ Al,” McConnell said.

Franken apologized.

Starting at the pinnacle As it happens, Franken’s arrival in Washington marked the very moment that Democratic power reached a pinnacle.

His belated arrival in 2009 gave the party its 60th vote in the Senate, the one that made their agenda filibuster-proof and opened, among other things, the possibility of passing President Obama’s health-care law on Democratic support alone.

But that dominance did not last long. The following January, Republicans picked up a Massachusetts Senate seat and began a long march back to the majority, which they won in 2014, the year Franken was reelected.

And with Trump’s election, the party is shut out of power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Franken brings a set of skills for navigating the wilderness they are in, Ornstein said. “It’s clear they need focused champions who can use the tools available to the minority to make points and frame issues and put people on the defensive and unmask things that need to be unmasked.”

Where it took Franken nearly six years to agree to his first Sunday show appearance as a senator, he now shows up on them frequently.

There has even been talk of his potential as a

presidential candidate.

“No. No,” he said. “I like this job. I really like this job. I like representing the people of Minnesota. I feel like I’m really beginning to know this job.”

Voters in Minnesota — a traditionally Democratic state that Trump lost by only a point and a half — also are paying attention to Franken’s emergence.

With another celebrity in the White House, “the context has completely changed,” said Kathryn L. Pearson, a political-science professor at the University of Minnesota. “There’s no question that his Democratic constituents are enthusiastic about his high-level role at the national level, but it certainly is riskier [with] Republicans in Minnesota, and even independents.”

Prepping for a battle The night before a hearing, Franken takes the prepared testimony of witnesses home and pores over it for weaknesses and inaccuracies.

If a study is cited in a footnote, he will read that too, he said.

“Very often, when I think someone isn’t being truthful, that gets my ire up,” Franken said. He cited a skirmish in the Sessions confirmation hearing over a questionnaire in which the Alabama senator claimed to have “personally” litigated several important civil rights cases when he was a U.S. attorney. Other lawyers involved said Sessions’s role had actually been minimal.

Pressing Sessions on the discrepancy, Franken got him to admit that his role in some of the cases had consisted of “assistance and guidance” and that he “had been supportive of them.”

Republican senators objected to such rough treatment of one of their own. “It is unfortunate to see members of this body impugn the integrity of a fellow senator with whom we have served for years,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said.

But for Franken, the moment was sweet: “That was fun for me.”

But he is also part of the club. When the bells rang for a vote on a recent afternoon, Franken and four colleagues crowded onto a Senate subway car.

“We have Franken here to make us laugh!”

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) announced.

Which they all did.

“The first time Franken presided,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told them, “I was sitting and looking at his profile, and all I could think was ‘Saturday Night Live.’ ” Franken smiled. All that seemed like a long time ago. n ©The Washington Post

During a “Breakfast With Al” constituent event on March 15, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) speaks to and meets with Minnesotans on Capitol Hill in Washington. He was sworn in after an eight-month-long ballot recount, but he won reelection in 2014 by a double-digit margin.

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KLMNO WEEKLY

REAL ESTATE

One job the Internet hasn’t disrupted BY

T ODD C . F RANKEL

S

teve Murray sometimes gets together with other old-timers in the real estate industry, shares some wine and inevitably gets around to remarking, “I sure would’ve thought it would’ve changed more by now.”

Murray, president of consulting firm Real Trends, has been tracking for 40 years how U.S. real estate agents do their jobs. And over the past decade, the Internet has disrupted almost every aspect of a transaction that sits at the core of the American Dream. Everyone now has free access to information that used to be impossible to find or required an agent’s help.

But as a new home-buying season kicks off, one thing remains mostly unchanged: the traditional 5-to-6-percent commission paid to real estate agents when a home sells.

While the Internet has pummeled the middlemen in many industries — decimating travel agents, stomping stock-trading fees, cracking open the heavily regulated taxi industry — the average commission paid to real estate agents has gone up slightly since 2005, according to Real Trends. In 2016, it stood at 5.12 percent.

“There’s not a shred of evidence that the Internet is having an impact,” Murray said, sounding like he almost can’t believe it himself.

The stickiness of the real estate commission is a source of fascination for economists and curiosity for consumers who are doing an increasing share of the homebuying legwork themselves online. It also offers potential lessons for workers in other industries worried about the Internet’s destructive powers. The Web has changed how agents hustle for a share of the estimated $60 billion paid each year in residential real estate commissions. But it hasn’t taken their jobs. In fact, the number of agents has grown 60 percent in the past two decades.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

LARRY DOWNING/REUTERS

Experts have been predicting the demise of real estate agents for years. Consider the title of a 1997 article in the Journal of Real Estate Portfolio Management: “The Coming Downsizing of Real Estate: The Implications of Technology.”

In the mid-2000s, the arrival of real estate tech start-ups like Zillow, Redfin and Trulia spurred a fresh dose of anticipation. Jeff Jarvis, a City University of New York professor who examines the Internet’s effects, wrote a 2006 blog post predicting, “Real estate agents are next.”

Agents thought so, too.

“The industry was fearful of the Internet. They didn’t think they’d have jobs,” said Leonard Zumpano, a retired finance professor who for years ran the University of Alabama’s Real Estate Research Center.

The Web automated and simplified huge swaths of a process that once was complicated and time-consuming. With a few taps on a smartphone, home buyers and sellers now can find information that once required digging through musky deed books at the county recorder’s office. And the new technology has made agents more efficient. In many ways, their job is easier now.

After the arrival of real estate tech start-ups such as Zillow, Redfin and Trulia, many predicted agents would become extinct.

Instead, in the past two decades, the number of agents has grown

60%

Yet agents stand to earn more in commissions today than in the pre-Internet era because of stable commission rates and surging home values.

In 1997, the typical commission on a median-priced U.S. home, adjusted for inflation, was $16,600.

Today, that commission is $20,131.

“It’s a mystery to me,” Zumpano said. “I would’ve expected commissions to go down.”

In a typical home sale, the commission is paid out of the seller’s proceeds and split between the seller’s and buyer’s agent. The rate is negotiable. But the traditional rate has held firm, even as an agent’s main advantage — information — has been eroded by the Internet.

Experts don’t have a good answer for why these commissions have survived the Internet’s onslaught. They point to several potential factors. A home sale is a massive financial transaction. It’s complicated. And it doesn’t happen often, with home buyers staying put for an average of 12 to 13 years. So intimidated consumers keep turning to agents for help.

Regulations may have slowed the pace of change. Twenty states and Washington, D.C., set minimum levels of service for agents,

dissuading brokers willing to do less for lower fees. Ten states also ban agents from rebating a portion of the commission to their clients. But commission rates do not vary wildly among these states, analysts say.

The National Association of Realtors also has worked to reinforce the role of agents through lobbying and advertising.

The efforts appear to be working. The association reports 89 percent of home sellers used an agent in 2016 — on par with the previous five years. At the same time, for-sale-by-owner transactions fell to their lowest rate — 8 percent — since the association began tracking the data in 1981.

“Who is going to write a contract? Fill out a disclosure statement? Anticipate what’s coming on the market?” asked association President Bill Brown.

“There’s a human element to buying and selling a home that can’t be replaced.”

But the Internet is expert at discounting that human element.

That was the worry that greeted Zillow when it was launched in 2006 with executives from Expedia and Hotwire, travel sites that were on their way to pushing out human travel agents.

“There was fear in the beginning,” Zillow chief marketing officer Jeremy Wacksman said.

Agents fought to keep Zillow from accessing private databases known as the multiple listing service — where agents post homes for sale and which many considered an agent’s ultimate advantage. Zillow eventually tapped those listings. But it decided not to challenge the industry head-on, opting to focus on real estate ads.

The reception was harsher for Redfin, a tech-heavy broker in Seattle that tried to cut agent commissions. It started out selling homes for a flat $3,000 fee and rebated part of the home buyer agent’s commission.

“Competing agents have threatened us with violence, intimidated our customers and tried to block their offers,” Redfin

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WELL-BEING chief executive Glenn Kelman said in testimony before Congress in 2006.

Redfin changed course. Today, Redfin more closely resembles a traditional broker. It has its own local agents. It sells homes for a 1 to 1.5 percent commission. Redfin agents are paid a salary and a bonus tied to customer satisfaction.

Kelman said he believes Redfin will continue to grow as a new generation of buyers and sellers enters the market.

“Kids who grew up buying textbooks on Amazon are now buying houses on Redfin,” Kelman said.

Other agents are not standing still. They have adopted technology, too.

A peek at Samina Chowdhury’s smartphone shows how.

A veteran agent in Ellicott City, Md., Chowdhury has one app that scans closing documents and one that writes contracts. Another accepts digital signatures. She has an app that allows her to keep tabs on sales leads and another to unlock residential lockboxes. She uses an online video editor for making home tour videos. And while Chowdhury speaks five languages, if she runs into trouble she can call up a translation program.

“None of these technologies were here 10 years ago,” she said.

Chowdhury has seen other agents struggle with the pace of change. But she’s done well. She estimates that she made $300,000 last year.

Murray, of Real Trends, found that commission rates tend to fluctuate with the health of the housing market — almost as if the Internet hadn’t happened.

Murray does see one way the Internet could attack commissions: It could consolidate the highly fragmented market for agents. Today, two-thirds of consumers still find their agents through knowing them or by a personal referral. But if the Internet weakens that bond, popular agents could win more market share.

“And they’re going to cut rates,” Murray said. “They can be more productive now, so they’ll do volume instead. They’ll be more prone to discounting.”

It will be agents doing what the Internet hasn’t. n ©The Washington Post

KLMNO WEEKLY

In World Happiness Report, U.S. results are . . . sad BY

A MY B W ANG

I

n Norway, oil prices have fallen, a threat to one of its main industries. Across much of the country, average daytime temperatures still hover around the freezing point.

And yet, Norway is the happiest country on Earth, according to the 2017 World Happiness Report, an annual ranking of 155 countries published by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a United Nations initiative. The Scandinavian country unseated Denmark for the top spot on this year’s list, published last week in conjunction with the U.N.’s International Day of Happiness.

Not far behind Norway are Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland and Finland. Tied for ninth are the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Sweden.

The Central African Republic, a landlocked nation that has seen increasing violence between warring factions, came in last.

The United States fell in at No. 14, down a spot from last year.

The United States has never cracked the top 10 since the rankings were first published in 2012, when it came in at No. 11.

Why measure happiness? Some experts say that it is a better measure of a nation’s progress and that using social well-being as a goal drives better public policy, according to the report.

“It’s the human things that matter. If the riches make it harder to have frequent and trustworthy relationship between people, is it worth it?” asked John Helliwell, lead author of the report and an economist at the University of British Columbia, according to the Associated Press. “The material can stand in the way of the human.”

The World Happiness Report rankings are based on data from the Gallup World Poll, which uses a simple measure called the “Cantril ladder.” People are asked to envision a ladder, with their “best possible life” being a 10 on the top rung, and the worst possi-

SVEIN NORDRUM/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

People relax on the roof of the Opera House in Oslo. The nation was deemed the happiest country in the world in a report.

ble life being a 0. Where does their life fall on that ladder?

Six key variables are then used to explain those happiness scores, according to the report: “income, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on in times of trouble, generosity, freedom and trust, with the latter measured by the absence of corruption in business and government.”

All the countries in the top 10 scored highly in those six areas, with Norway as the leading example of how those factors contribute to the happiness of their residents.

“It is sometimes said that Norway achieves and maintains its high happiness not because of its oil wealth, but in spite of it,” the report states. “By choosing to produce its oil slowly, and investing the proceeds for the future rather than spending them in the present, Norway has insulated itself from the boom and bust cycle of many other resource-rich economies. To do this successfully requires high levels of mutual trust, shared purpose, generosity and good governance, all factors that help to keep Norway and other top countries where they are in the happiness rankings.”

Americans, on the other hand, have been reporting declining happiness over the past decade, according to the report. While the United States has improved in two

of the six variables used to calculate happiness — GDP per capita and healthy life expectancy — it has suffered when it comes to the four social variables. American citizens are reporting less social support, less sense of personal freedom, lower donations and more perceived corruption of government and business.

This is also the first year the report has included a chapter called “Restoring American Happiness.” The author of that chapter, economist and Columbia University professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, states that America’s declining happiness is “a social crisis, not an economic crisis.”

The United States, he concluded in the report, is looking for happiness “in all the wrong places.”

“The country is mired in a roiling social crisis that is getting worse,” Sachs wrote. “Yet the dominant political discourse is all about raising the rate of economic growth. And the prescriptions for faster growth — mainly deregulation and tax cuts — are likely to exacerbate, not reduce social tensions. Almost surely, further tax cuts will increase inequality, social tensions, and the social and economic divide between those with a college degree and those without.” n ©The Washington Post

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BOOKS

Career advice for youths from an Obama aide N ONFICTION

W

WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA? And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Work in the White House

By Alyssa Mastromonaco with Lauren Oyler Twelve.

248 pp. $27.

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REVIEWED BY

C AITLIN F LANAGAN

e’re two months out from the peaceful transition of power, and right on schedule, here come the staffer memoirs from the Obama White House. Alyssa Mastromonaco — who worked for the president for more than a decade, including as his deputy chief of staff — has written one for a particular audience and with an appealing slant. “Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?” is intended for young people starting their professional lives, and it is a combination memoir and compendium of very good suggestions about how to get ahead — very far ahead — at an early age.

A self-described “townie” from pre-posh Rhinebeck, N.Y., Mastromonaco worked as a grocery checker in a supermarket, one of many jobs at which she excelled at excelling — loving double-coupon day as well as the Wednesday before Thanksgiving because it “put my bag-packing skills to the ultimate test.” A “good (-ish)” student, she graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and then found work as a paralegal at a Manhattan law firm, a job known for neither excitement nor glamour. Yet she vowed to give it her all, leading her roommate to call her the “Super Para,” which she thought at the time was a compliment. After that, she went to work as the assistant to a high-end real estate broker at Sotheby’s. “Instead of mocking his love of luxury property I went with it,” she reports. “I liked making brochures and talking to clients; I had my favorite properties. It was really pretty fun.”

The Sotheby’s experience, to many young, left-leaning jobseekers (in particular those who had interned for Bernie Sanders, as Mastromonaco had), might have seemed so impossibly unhip and 1 percent-ish as to make another year in the childhood bedroom seem preferable. But as Mastromonaco explains, it proved invaluable to her later success.

When she decided she wanted to work in politics and interviewed

PETE SOUZA/THE WHITE HOUSE

Alyssa Mastromonaco, second from left, was deputy chief of staff to President Barack Obama, “helping run the country, in a small way.”

for a staff position on John F. Kerry’s presidential campaign, she didn’t think she had much hope. But after her interview, she overheard someone talking about her: “She worked at Sotheby’s — she must be good,” which leads her to impart an important piece of advice about work: “Forward motion is always better than no motion.”

So it is that our heroine goes from the checkout aisle of a Rhinebeck supermarket to the indescribably mismanaged Kerry campaign, then to Obama’s finely tuned Senate office, then to his presidential campaign, and then to the White House — and to what our author might describe as a “s--ton” of responsibility.

And now: a word about the tone and style of the book. Among the many celebrities she met during her White House years, one who became a close friend was Mindy Kaling, whose two very appealing books — “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?” and “Why Not Me?” — seem to have been major stylistic influences. While there is a strong, feminist “own your own power” through-line, there is also a clear intention to present herself

as a cheerful, chubby everygirl.

She is part Moneypenny (her chaste, consuming ardor for her dreamy boss), part unembarrassed oversharer (splitting a skirt with her “fat campaign ass”), part always-the-bridesmaid (her livein boyfriend has three life rules: rent, don’t own; no pets; and never get married). There is also a good bit of information about her mishaps with irritable bowel syndrome. We are not in the hands of Jane Austen; but Jane Austen never wrote a book advising young people to treat all informational interviews “as the real deal, because you never know,” which is why I preordered a copy of this book — and not “Northanger Abbey” — to give to my teenage sons.

(It’s intended for young women, but anyone who wants to tell young people that “hard work and a good attitude can take you further than you could ever dream” is getting my 27 bucks.)

Mastromonaco (who wrote the book with the help of Lauren Oyler, who offered “a millennial POV”) is a woman of great achievements, and although she is committed to the cartoon version of herself, she makes no pretense of

hiding her accomplishment. During her White House years, she had two secure phone lines in her apartment; the White House response to Hurricane Sandy required her to “become a quasi expert on transportation infrastructure and refined fuel in a handful of days”; and her assessment that she was “helping run the country, in a small way” is patently true. She was included on a list of “Washington’s most powerful, least famous people.”

Throughout her tenure, she had to wrestle with something most people at the start of their careers do not: the particular complexities of holding “such a weighty job when you’re really young.”

This may be a story of career success and empowerment, but like more conventional girl books of yore, it has a marriage plot. Her reluctant boyfriend finally surprises her with a proposal, and the next day, in true rom-com fashion, she is sharing a champagne toast with Michelle Obama on Air Force One. Not long after, she resigned from the high-stress job, and her teary farewell — to the president and to the White House itself — is moving.

Mastromonaco’s guidebook/ memoir has a powerful if unplanned secondary theme: the profound respect that the previous administration held for the office of the presidency and for the White House itself. On her first day’s orientation in the building, Mastromonaco and a co-worker are taken to see the Oval Office: “The door was open, but we were so nervous we just stood there at the threshold. We were being such tools, but we knew no other way to be. Finally, they coaxed us in,” she says.

“He never yelled or demeaned people,” she writes of Obama; his most common way of expressing displeasure with a staffer was a raised eyebrow. Goodbye to all that. n Flanagan is the author of “Girl Land” and a contributing editor to the Atlantic.

She wrote this for The Washington Post.

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KLMNO WEEKLY

Smart, rich and on trial for murder

Science in the service of Soviets

F ICTION

N ONFICTION

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REVIEWED BY

“Q

P ATRICK A NDERSON

uicksand,” a remarkable new novel from Sweden, takes us deep into the life of Maja Norburg, who is 18, blessed with beauty, brains and rich parents — and on trial for mass murder.

The novel, arriving here after success in Europe, in some ways recalls “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” but because Maja narrates her own story, we come to know her more intimately than we do Lisbeth Salander. What we don’t know is whether the story will end with Maja going to prison.

The book opens with Maja in court, charged with carrying out several murders with her lover, Sebastian Fagerman, the handsome and charismatic but unstable son of the richest man in Sweden. They are said to have killed Sebastian’s father in his home and then moved on to their school to kill a teacher and several of their classmates. The outburst of violence ends with Maja fatally shooting Sebastian — possibly in self-defense — and left to face justice alone.

As the prosecution presents its case, Maja thinks disdainfully about almost everyone. She scorns the prosecutor for her “tacky earrings . . . uneven bangs and eyebrows that look like they were drawn on with a ballpoint pen.” She says the teacher who was shot to death “thought rock concerts could save the world from war, famine and disease.”

Her own mother “has always been inexplicably clueless,” and her best friend, Amanda, another victim, is mocked for being superficial: “When she watched YouTube videos about the world’s fattest man leaving his house for the first time in thirty years she would say ‘Shh! Not now! I’m watching the news.’ ” Readers deficient in the milk of human kindness may warm to tart-tongued Maja.

The story alternates between courtroom scenes and Maja’s richly detailed memories. She recalls

losing her virginity at 15 to a boy who smoked hash, played bass and wrote poetry. But her great love is Sebastian, who gives the wildest parties, uses the coolest drugs and jets off to New York and Paris for weekends. Soon after they meet, she joins him for a voyage to Capri on his father’s yacht. The author, Malin Persson Giolito, carries us deep into the lives of these starcrossed lovers and the decadent society that shaped them.

Once Sebastian is gone, Maja is left loving no one except her 5-year-old sister, whom she hasn’t seen since she was sent to jail to await trial. Except for missing her sister, Maja doesn’t mind jail, because it’s quiet and private and she’s safe from all the people taught to hate her.

Giolito, who practiced law before she turned to fiction, writes with exceptional skill. She seems to know everything about Stockholm’s rich and the ways of teenage girls. Her story examines the corrosive effects of vast wealth.

Even the novel’s title, “Quicksand,” suggests a world that will suck in, swallow and devour the unwary.

Giolito always shows sympathy for Maja, who is variously brave, confused, self-destructive and beset by problems she doesn’t understand: “Why did Sebastian choose me? There had to be a reason! Why did he come to me at the hotel that night? Why did he track me down in Nice? Why did he stay? Why did he try to kill himself when I broke up with him?” Of course, after he failed to kill himself she went back to him, to try to save him, and disaster followed.

It’s a long novel, perhaps a little too long, but always smart and engrossing. We race along to learn whether Maja’s lawyer can save her. Or whether, in fact, prison may be where she belongs.

Giolito keeps us guessing a long time and the outcome, when it arrives, is just as it should be. n Anderson regularly reviews mysteries and thrillers for The Washington Post.

I QUICKSAND

By Malin Persson Giolito Translated from Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles Other Press.

498 pp. $25.

STALIN AND THE SCIENTISTS A History of Triumph and Tragedy, 1905-1953

By Simon Ings Atlantic Monthly.

508 pp. $28.

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REVIEWED BY

J . P . O ’ M ALLEY

n the final chapter of “Stalin and the Scientists,” Simon Ings recalls how by the mid1980s, the Soviet Union boasted twice as many scientists as the United States and Western Europe combined. Decades after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the ambitious dream of a truly scientific-atheist Soviet superstate had finally been achieved.

At least in theory.

As Ings shows, a great paradox lay at the heart of the Soviet state: While rapid scientific progress was needed on a mass scale to advance the cause of a utopian socialist nation, the Soviet regime didn’t want to grant the science community within Russia any intellectual freedom or autonomy, fearing that it might end up undermining the socalled science of Marxism.

The Bolsheviks regularly made public pronouncements on the importance of scientific matters for the advancement of world socialism, which Ings reproduces here in some detail. Leon Trotsky, founder of the Red Army and one of the leading intellectual voices of the revolution in its early days, prophesied in 1922, for instance, how “man will put forward a goal [to] raise himself to a new level to create a higher socio-biological type.” Six years later, the mass murderer, paranoid dictator and then-leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, declared that young people “must seize” the fortress of science “if they want to truly replace the old guard.”

And yet, as Ings explains, just as Stalin was publicly championing science in the name of the coming communist utopia and setting up a number of institutes and prizes, he was also arranging the sacking, imprisonment and murder of individual scientists who dared to question the official party line on Soviet science.

Ings details how top Russian scientists had to deny the works of Newton, Einstein, Mendel and

others if they wanted to avoid arrest, the gulag or death.

The author provides two excellent examples of Stalinist-type purges relating to science that were typical of the era. In 1927, Trotsky, always more internationalist and cosmopolitan in outlook than Stalin, published “Culture and Socialism,” which strongly made the case for understanding the work of Sigmund Freud. But three years later, the Russian Psychoanalytic Society was disbanded, and Freud’s work ceased to be published in Russian. Trotsky eventually was murdered in Mexico on Stalin’s instructions.

Russian physicist Boris Hessen also suffered. Hessen, who publicly argued that scientists had to defend their work beyond simple philosophical conclusions, was arrested in 1935 and died in a Soviet prison in 1938.

Ings underscores the brutal human cost that accompanied scientific advancement in the Soviet Union in the early 20th century. And yet, the author shows that despite the oppressive conditions, Soviet science did manage to produce some achievements. In particular, the Soviet Union transformed a backward peasant society into a giant superpower at the forefront of global technological advancement. It was the Soviet Union, after all, that sent the first satellite — Sputnik 1 — into space in 1957.

Ings’s finely crafted and informative book is a must read for understanding how the ideas of scientific knowledge and technology were distorted and subverted for decades across the Soviet Union, all in the service of the most ambitious experiment in social engineering the world has ever witnessed. n O’Malley is a journalist based in Budapest. He wrote this for The Washington Post.

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OPINIONS

He risks his life to hold Putin accountable JACKSON DIEHL is deputy editorial page editor of The Washington Post. He is an editorial writer specializing in foreign affairs.

On Jan. 9, the Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza celebrated a signal victory in a long campaign to hold Vladimir Putin’s regime accountable for its human rights crimes. The outgoing Obama administration announced sanctions against Gen. Alexander Bastrykin, a close Putin confidant who heads the state investigative committee — the instrument used to persecute opposition activists with trumped-up criminal charges.

Kara-Murza, who divides his time between Moscow and Washington, had long campaigned for the designation of Bastrykin, just as he had pushed for passage of the law under which the general was targeted — the Sergei Magnitsky Act, which mandates sanctions on Russians involved in repression and corruption. For years, Bastrykin “seemed too powerful to be sanctioned,” Kara-Murza exulted in a Jan. 12 blog post. “That ceiling is now gone.”

Exactly three weeks later, back in Russia, Kara-Murza felt a horrific and all-toofamiliar sensation: His organs were beginning to shut down.

He concluded immediately that he had been poisoned, just as he had been once before, in May 2015. His family rushed him to a hospital, where a doctor who helped save his life in the previous instance was waiting. Within hours he was in a coma, where he remained for a week.

Last week, Kara-Murza met me in Washington, visibly frail and short of breath, but alive.

He believes he somehow survived two attempts to murder him with a sophisticated and virtually untraceable poison — the same kind of attack that has killed a host of other Putin opponents in the past decade.

He was also pretty sure why

he was targeted: because of his work on the Magnitsky sanctions.

“It’s revenge for the Magnitsky law, pure and simple,” Kara-Murza told me.

“It’s the main thing they are afraid of. They have mastered the ways of silencing the opposition at home. For now the only thing they are really afraid of is Western countries closing the havens where they stash their money and send their families.”

To the extent that it still exists, the opposition to Putin inside Russia is led by Alexei Navalny, the nationalist anticorruption crusader. This month, he posted a video allegedly documenting the vast trove of mansions, villas and vineyards accumulated by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. By last week, it had been viewed 9.7 million times on YouTube — proving that a lot of Russians are still interested in learning the ugly truth about their rulers.

Kara-Murza, however, may be regarded by the Kremlin as an equally dangerous opponent.

Educated at Cambridge, he spent nearly a decade working as a journalist in Washington before becoming active in the opposition. A gifted speaker, he has deep connections in Congress: His hospitalization produced statements of concern from Republican senators John

AARON P. BERNSTEIN/REUTERS

Vladimir Kara-Murza pushed for passage of a U.S. law that mandates sanctions on Russians involved in repression and corruption.

McCain, Marco Rubio and Ron Johnson and Democrats Chris Murphy and Benjamin L. Cardin, among others. At 35, he carries the legacy of Boris Nemtsov, the liberal opposition leader who was gunned down outside the Kremlin in 2015. A film Kara-Murza made about Nemtsov (between hospitalizations) is touring Russia.

How is it possible to oppose Putin, other than by posting videos on the Internet and lobbying Congress for more sanctions? Kara-Murza spent much of 2016 in the Russian provinces, recruiting young people to stage hopeless runs for office in local and parliamentary elections. Two dozen signed up; collectively they were credited with receiving a little over 100,000 votes. None came close to winning.

But Kara-Murza and his sponsor, the exiled former oilmagnate-turned-politicalprisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky, see themselves as seeding the next generation of Russian democratic politicians. “There has been an entire generation that has grown up without democracy or fair elections,” Kara-Murza says. “We want to

give them some kind of political experience.”

For the same reason, the opposition coalition plans to nominate a candidate to run against Putin in next year’s election. “We have no illusions.

We know it’s not a real election,” Kara-Murza says. “But we will show that there is an alternative — because one of the founding myths of the Putin regime is that there is no alternative.”

The prospect that President Trump will embrace Putin and his regime elicits little more than a shrug from this dissident.

“It’s only our job to effect political change in Russia,” he says. “It’s not the job of Trump or [Angela] Merkel.” But, he says, “what we would ask is not to be helping Putin by treating him as a worthy player on the global stage — or allowing his cronies to use Western countries to stash the wealth they have stolen.”

That’s where the Magnitsky Act comes in. Bank account freezes and travel bans are poison for Putin’s corrupt inner circle. Congress, with the prodding of brave Russians such as Kara-Murza, can do more to spread it. n

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OPINIONS

KLMNO WEEKLY

TOM TOLES

How to wrangle Medicaid costs ROBERT J. SAMUELSON writes about business and economics issues for The Washington Post.

It’s time to take control of Medicaid before it takes control of us.

Unless we act — and there is little evidence that we will — Medicaid increasingly becomes another mechanism by which government skews spending toward the old and away from the young. In the raging debate over the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), this is a subject that neither Republicans nor Democrats dare touch. It’s an ominous omission that obscures the overhaul Medicaid really needs.

Medicaid is the sleeping giant of U.S. health care. Created in 1965, it provides health insurance for the very poor. Here are some basic Medicaid facts: It is the nation’s largest health insurance program by beneficiaries, with 68 million recipients compared with Medicare’s 55 million. (Medicare provides insurance for the 65 and older population.)

Medicaid’s costs are shared between the federal government (roughly 60 percent) and state governments (40 percent). In 2015, Medicaid spending totaled $545 billion compared with Medicare’s $646 billion, reports the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Although the Obamacare debate has focused on private insurance subsidized through health exchanges, the expansion of Medicaid — adopting more liberal eligibility requirements — resulted in the largest gain of insurance coverage, about

11 million people.

But the most significant Medicaid fact is this: Although three-quarters of Medicaid recipients are either children or young adults, they account for only one-third of costs. The elderly and disabled constitute the other one-quarter of recipients, but they represent two-thirds of costs.

How could this be? Doesn’t Medicare — not Medicaid — cover the elderly and disabled?

Well, yes, but there’s a giant omission: nursing home and other long-term care. Medicaid covers these for the poor elderly and disabled.

Here’s where the past and future collide. As the population ages, the people needing longterm care will soar. From 2015 to

2030, the number of Americans 85 and older will rise about 50 percent to 9 million, projects the Census Bureau. Many will end up in nursing homes, with high costs.

At the federal level, spending on the elderly — mainly for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — is already crowding out nonelderly spending, as the Trump administration’s 2018 budget shows. Now pressures are tightening on states.

Because they pay 40 percent of Medicaid, its escalating costs compete directly with state and local services — schools, roads, police, parks, sanitation.

Medicaid’s “entitlement” nature means that anyone who qualifies for support must get it. By contrast, schools and other state services get what seems affordable. Slowly, Medicaid is usurping state priorities.

Medicaid now claims nearly onefifth of states’ general revenues, reports Robin Rudowitz of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Under present law, the squeeze will worsen.

Fortunately, there’s a sensible solution to this problem. We should transfer Medicaid’s longterm care to the federal government, which would pay all costs, probably by merging with Medicare. In return, the states

would assume all Medicaid’s costs for children and younger adults, give up some or all of their federal aid for K-12 schools and, if needed, trim other federal grants to ensure financial neutrality.

Over time, this swap of responsibilities would make sense for everyone. It would concentrate oversight for the young at the state and local levels while aid to the elderly and disabled would be firmly lodged at the federal level.

For states, spending would no longer be tied to demographic trends they can’t change.

Controlling schools and a childcentered Medicaid, they would be in the best position to fight child poverty.

As for the federal government, it would control all major programs for the elderly and disabled. The present splintering is undesirable. It means that a fifth of Medicare recipients are “dual eligibles,” belonging also to Medicaid. This raises costs and complicates caregiving. If benefits for the elderly are to be cut (say, by raising eligibility ages), that job is best done if the federal government can choose from all programs for the old.

Unfortunately, there is little support for this sort of swap.

National politicians prefer instead to bleed the states. n

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OPINIONS

BY MIKE SMITH FOR THE LAS VEGAS SUN

Sally Hemings’s room of her own SALLY CABOT GUNNING is the author of “Monticello: A Daughter and Her Father; A Novel” and “Benjamin Franklin’s Bastard.” She wrote this for The Washington Post.

Having spent the past five years immersed in research on the Jefferson and Hemings families for two historical novels I wrote, I was thrilled to learn that Sally Hemings’s room at Monticello will be reopened. I’d grown tired of hearing her described within the confines of two roles: “Jefferson’s concubine,” as her son called her, and “slave.”

Other words could and should be applied to Hemings.

When Hemings was 14, she was assigned to accompany Thomas Jefferson’s youngest daughter, Maria, to France, where Jefferson was serving as American envoy. According to Hemings’s son Madison Hemings, at 16, Sally was pregnant with Jefferson’s child, a son who didn’t live long.

When Jefferson prepared to return to the United States, Hemings and her brother James made bold plans to stay behind in slave-free France as full citizens of that country.

This was no fool’s fancy.

Hemings was intelligent — she quickly mastered the French language and, as a skilled seamstress, would have been readily employed. Her brother was equally employable, having been trained by Jefferson in the art of “French cookery.”

But in addition to being intelligent and bold, Hemings was savvy; when Jefferson argued for the Hemingses’ return to the United States, Hemings negotiated freedom for her children and “extraordinary privileges” for herself, as her son described them. If she returned with Jefferson, their children would be set free once they reached 21, and Hemings would never again do the work of the other enslaved women at Monticello.

Around the plantation, Hemings was known to black and white alike as “dashing Sally.” She was described by others as “very handsome,” “decidedly good-looking,” “intelligent,” “very special,” “extraordinary.” She must also be described as confident to assume that she could hold

BY DARKOW FOR THE COLUMBIA DAILY TRIBUNE

Jefferson to a promise for more than 21 years.

Hemings might have remained free in France with her brother. Instead, she agreed to return with Jefferson, where for every enslaved woman the concept of consent could never be. Why? Perhaps she believed, as Hemings’s greatgranddaughter did, that “Jefferson loved her very dearly.”

Perhaps there was some real feeling between the pair. But acknowledging the truth of Earl E. Thorpe’s statement that “a central tragedy of the slavewhite relationship was that neither side could love or hate in anything like fullness of dimension,” I have to wonder whether there were other reasons.

Hemings also had a loved and loving daughter, sister, aunt and cousin. We know she chose to return to Monticello with Jefferson, and we also know that, once there, she leveraged her position into something that allowed her relatives advantages that other enslaved people didn’t have. In addition to freeing Hemings’s brother James, as he had promised to do in France, Jefferson granted requests for purchase or sale to five of Hemings’s brothers and

sisters, uniting their families.

Hemings’s brothers were granted freedom of movement seldom given to the enslaved and were sometimes paid for work or given spending money.

Several were taught to read and write. At least one of her nephews was allowed to “run away.” Hemings’s mother was retired to a cabin of her own that was 10 times larger than the ordinary slave cabin.

Archaeologists have found remnants of glass windows and a set of English china in that cabin, unusual items to find in the cabin of an enslaved woman.

Perhaps 16-year-old Sally Hemings was simply outmatched in a debate with a persuasive, powerful, 46-yearold man. Or perhaps she saw a chance to improve life for her family. Perhaps she just missed her family. We’ll never know what she thought or felt.

But opening up the room where she lived at Monticello will force us to acknowledge her as a person who did think and feel, who lived her own extraordinary life and left her mark on our history beyond the role she’s thus far been assigned, as merely a footnote to a scandal. n

SUNDAY, MARCH 26, 2017

23

KLMNO WEEKLY

FIVE MYTHS

Turkey BY

S TEVEN A . C OOK

Turkey has long been an important ally of the West, but despite all the diplomatic, political and military links, Americans understand very little about the country. What they do know seems to be based on gauzy no­ tions that were either never accurate or have become false over time.

MYTH NO. 1 Turkey has been a democracy.

The country has never been a democracy, despite having continuous free and fair multiparty elections since 1946.

Between 1960 and 1997, Turkey’s senior military command disposed of four governments it did not like. The General Staff oversaw anti-democratic constitutional changes, including a 1982 constitution geared more toward protecting the Turkish state from the people than guaranteeing political and civil rights. In 1997, the military ousted Turkey’s first Islamist-led government because the prime minister refused to implement rules that undermined freedom of expression, weakened the independence of the press and criminalized thought.

When President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AK Party) came to power in 2002, it reduced the role of the military in politics, promised Turks personal freedoms, and made it harder to close political parties and ban politicians. But Turkish leaders soon began to backslide on reforms, and Erdogan has used the bureaucracy to undermine his political opponents and resurrect something akin to the state security courts.

MYTH NO. 2 The president is a dictator.

Erdogan — who served as prime minister from 2003 until 2014, when he became head of state — has a more complicated relationship with Turkish citizens than tin-pot dictators like Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. The AK Party has prevailed in 10

consecutive elections because Erdogan has delivered. Turks are wealthier, healthier and more mobile than ever before. Erdogan has made it possible for Turks to explore their religious identities in ways they were never permitted under previous governments. For his supporters, his time in office represents a revolution in rights and personal liberties. Turkish women are free to wear the hijab in places where it was previously banned; it is safe for pious Turks to participate in politics. If election results are any indication, about half the Turkish electorate dislikes Erdogan for his corruption, arrogance and power grabs, while the other half reveres him for the freedoms he has given them.

MYTH NO. 3 Turkey is secular.

Turkey never was secular in the way Americans think about secularism, embodied in the First Amendment’s establishment clause, which prohibits Congress from making laws establishing a state religion or abridging the free exercise of one’s faith. In Turkey, the government has long controlled the expression of religious beliefs in the public sphere. There is an entire government apparatus dedicated to the production of statesanctioned religious interpretation. Turkish leaders even use faith to advance their political agendas. The governing AK Party is an Islamist party.

MYTH NO. 4 It has a Kurdish problem.

The Kurds are a minority that does not share the ethnonationalist myths of the dominant Turkish ethnic group. The

MURAD SEZER/REUTERS

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, seen on a banner in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, has been called a dictator — and even embraced the label.

decades-long war between the government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) only reinforces the idea that there is a problem with the Kurds.

But while 20 percent of the country’s population is ethnically Kurdish, the overwhelming majority of them consider themselves Turks. Ankara’s problem is with the PKK and an offshoot of that group called the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK). The PKK was originally a separatist Marxist group with affinities for the Soviet Union; it began waging war against Turkey in 1984. In those 33 years, somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 people have been killed.

The TAK, too, has recently been responsible for a variety of attacks in Ankara and Istanbul. In response, the Turkish government has used the full force of the military and police to crush the low-level insurgency in the country’s southeast. The horrifying violence has not yet drawn in Turkey’s broader Kurdish population.

MYTH NO. 5 Turkey is an ancient power.

It’s true that Europeans did not conjure Turkey by drawing it on a map. But the country is a product

of the imagination of one man: Mustafa Kemal, known more commonly as Atatürk, or Father Turk. He created an ethnonational state where one had never existed in a central part of what had been a multiethnic and multicultural Ottoman Empire.

To be successful, Atatürk and his associates had to alter the values and allegiances of the inhabitants of Anatolia. In place of a predominantly Muslim community loyal to leaders who derived their political and religious legitimacy from Islam, Atatürk suffused his statebuilding project with myths about Turkish ethnicity, language, and the linkage between Turks and the land.

Over the past nine decades, Turks have developed a sense of Turkishness. But this sense is vulnerable to destabilization and fragmentation in ways more commonly associated with countries in other parts of the Middle East. n Cook, the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of “False Dawn: Protest, Democracy, and Violence in the New Middle East.” He wrote this for The Washington Post.

SUNDAY, MARCH 26, 2017

24

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