The Washington Post National Weekly - October 9, 2016

Politics Before his ‘Aleppo’ moment 4

Nation A Marine’s long road back 8

Movies Time for important film 16

5 Myths Nuclear weapons 23

ABCDE NATIONAL WEEKLY SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2016

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A key ingredient in laptops and cellphones may have come from deadly, handdug mines in Congo. PAGE 10

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POWERPOST

McCain backs off veterans issue BY

L ISA R EIN

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en. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has abandoned a proposal he pushed through the Senate that would knock out a key advantage for veterans applying for federal jobs, after pressure from the powerful veterans lobby.

The senator, locked in his toughest reelection fight in two decades in a state filled with former service members, told the American Legion late Tuesday that he will remove language from a military policy bill that would have taken away a veteran’s right to go to the head of the federal hiring queue not once but twice.

Veterans get preference over civilian applicants not just when they are applying for their first positions — but also when they move between agencies or seek promotion.

The leg up the second time around will now stay in place.

The about-face from the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman concerned one of the most sensitive issues facing the federal government as it seeks to replace a wave of retirees. It came after a three-month campaign by leading service organizations to stop the change, which was under negotiation with the House as part of the vast defense bill. The House version did not include changes to veterans preference.

“Given your [The American Legion] and others’ concerns, I will ensure that this provision, which is not included in the House bill, is not included in the NDAA conference report,” McCain wrote in a letter to the Legion, referring to the National Defense Authorization Act. McCain is the solid favorite to beat Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D) in November. But veter-

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ans’ care has been a prominent issue in the race, and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has criticized McCain for not doing enough to help veterans. In that environment, a change to hiring laws appeared politically toxic.

McCain, who spent 51/2 years in a North Vietnamese prison cell during the Vietnam War, is a longtime champion for veterans but

SUSAN WALSH/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had wanted to drop a policy that gives veterans preference in promotions and interagency job switches.

has at times been at odds with their advocacy organizations on issues concerning government benefits. He has been sensitive to concerns about a five-year-old Obama administration policy that is boosting the hiring of veterans across government.

Top Defense Department officials had urged the senator and his colleagues to weaken the preference policy. They argued that bumping veterans to the top of the hiring list for some specialized and hard-to-fill jobs was making it impossible for qualified nonveterans to get hired. The change would

This publication was prepared by editors at The Washington Post for printing and distribution by our partner publications across the country. All articles and columns have previously appeared in The Post or on washingtonpost.com and have been edited to fit this format. For questions or comments regarding content, please e-mail weekly@washpost.com. If you have a question about printing quality, wish to subscribe, or would like to place a hold on delivery, please contact your local newspaper’s circulation department. © 2016 The Washington Post / Year 2, No. 52

have applied government-wide.

In June, McCain told The Washington Post, “We must balance the goals of rewarding those who are eligible for a federal hiring advantage with the needs of the federal government . . . and hire the best talent for a variety of important national security jobs.”

He said the defense bill “achieves this balance by ensuring veterans still have the ability to get a foot in the door for federal civilian employment, after which they stand on merit.”

“A lot of politicians throw things on the wall to see if they’ll stick,” said Joe Davis, a spokesman for Veterans of Foreign Wars.

“Obviously, this particular suggestion did not stick.”

The VFW, working with the Legion and other groups, energized its base with a letterwriting campaign to members of Congress to oppose the change, which had flown under the radar even after it passed the Senate. The letters opposed eroding any benefit for former service members who lost valuable time developing their civilian careers while they served their country.

“We appreciate Sen. McCain’s stalwart defense of an important benefit for all veterans who’ve served and sacrificed for their country,” American Legion National Commander Charles E. Schmidt said in a statement.

The Legion said that research conducted

by VetAdvisor and Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families shows that about two-thirds of veterans are likely to change jobs in the first two years of employment.

Almost 1 in 2 people hired to permanent, nonseasonal federal jobs in fiscal 2014 were veterans, with former service members making up 47.4 percent of new hires to full-time positions. n

CONTENTS POLITICS THE NATION COVER STORY HEALTH BOOKS OPINION FIVE MYTHS

4 8 10 17 18 20 23

ON THE COVER A “creuseur,” or digger, descends into a copper and cobalt mine in Kawama, Congo, on June 8. Photograph by MICHAEL ROBINSON CHAVEZ, The Washington Post

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POLITICS

A history of not sweating the details

BRYAN R. SMITH/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE VIA GETTY IMAGES

Those who worked with Johnson in N.M. say he had little interest in minutiae of governing R OBERT S AMUELS Santa Fe, N.M. BY

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or state lawmakers here who used to work with Gary Johnson, something is familiar about the former governor’s baffled looks, which have turned into an embarrassment for his third-party presidential campaign.

Longtime state Sen. Stuart Ingle (R) recalled how Johnson, soon after taking office in 1995, mostly shrugged and stared during their first meeting together. As Ingle asked Johnson questions about his agenda, Ingle said, Johnson’s most common refrain was “I don’t know.”

At the end of the meeting, Ingle said, Johnson revealed the one

position on which he would hold firm: The state’s budget should not grow. And if legislation to do so passed, the new governor added, “I will veto it.”

Over the next eight years, New Mexico lawmakers would struggle to work with a governor who paid little attention to details. Those who worked closely with Johnson, then a Republican elected as a political novice vowing to shake up the established order, recall a chief executive who would speed through meetings and often preferred to discuss his fitness routine than focus on the minutiae of policymaking.

Today, people here are not surprised that Johnson’s lack of interest in the fine points of governing has led to some high-profile stum-

bles in his Libertarian candidacy for president, such as his inability to name his favorite foreign leader, or when a question about the warravaged city at the center of the Syrian refugee crisis prompted him to ask, “What is Aleppo?”

Johnson dismisses the notion that a president must be immersed in the particulars.

“It’s amazing that somehow because you dot the i’s and cross the t’s that somehow you’re immune,” Johnson told The Washington Post in a recent interview, “and judgments are being made on me that I’m not qualified because I didn’t know something that could be answered in five seconds on an iPad.” In a year of widespread discontent with the major-party con-

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson speaks to supporters at a rally on Sept. 10 in New York.

tenders, Johnson pitches himself as a logical alternative who can bridge divisions by embracing conservative fiscal policy and leftleaning social policy.

That pitch has proved attractive to a small but significant sliver of voters, particularly young people, peeling support away from Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump. Both campaigns fret that Johnson’s presence on the ballot could tilt a tight race.

At the center of Johnson’s candidacy is his tenure in Santa Fe, where he was quick to use his veto pen and argued that government should provide only the most basic of services, such as building highways.

But Johnson ended up unnerv-

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POLITICS ing lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, who complained that he rarely took their ideas seriously.

When the vetoes started to pile up that first year, legislators tried to make amends by inviting him to participate in discussions about how they should spend money, according to legislative notes in the state Capitol. Johnson’s reply, again, was “no.”

“It is easy to make simple decisions when you don’t spend time learning about the nuances of policy,” said state Sen. Mimi Stewart (D), who joined the legislature in 1995, when Johnson was elected.

Stewart said Johnson was never vindictive or mean, but he just did not focus when she sought to talk with him about policies such as improving education. Knowing that Johnson was a triathlete and extreme-sports enthusiast, Stewart hoped to build a rapport with him through running. Twice, she participated in the same local marathon as the governor and hoped she would slip in some talk about the job. It was fruitless.

“He would just nod his head and change the subject,” Stewart said.

“If I saw him in the halls, he’d ask, ‘How’s the running?’ ” Johnson’s seemingly dismissive approach garnered him the nickname “Governor No.” In his first year in office, he vetoed 47 percent of the bills the legislature passed.

Lawmakers took Johnson to court at least three times for overstepping his bounds — and won.

“A know-it-all dictator” is how the late state representative Jerry Lee Alwin, a conservative Republican, described Johnson to the news media at the time. “He just doesn’t listen.”

Johnson shrugged off the criticism. He said that any lawmaker was able to come speak with him during his “Open Door After Four” sessions, which offered any member of the public — not just politicians — a chance to make an appointment.

Those sessions were held once a month. Meetings lasted no longer than five minutes — a sufficient amount of time, Johnson said, for him to grasp the issues.

“I can figure things out; I have good instincts,” he told The Post. “I think I was born with an overdose of common sense.”

Johnson, 63, the son of a public school teacher and a government worker who built a construction company that made him a million-

ERIC DRAPER/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Johnson’s seemingly dismissive approach garnered him the nickname “Governor No.” aire, jumped into politics largely as an experiment, say people who worked with him at the time.

The question he told friends he wanted to answer: Could an honest man enter politics and remain honest?

So one night in 1994, he drove to the Albuquerque home of Kelly Ward, a 26-year-old entrepreneur Johnson had met at a banquet. He told Ward he wanted to run for governor — and he wanted him to be his campaign manager.

“I don’t know anything about government,” Ward recalled saying.

“That makes us perfect for it,” Johnson said, according to Ward.

Johnson spent about $500,000 on his campaign. In a one-day blitz, he bought advertising on the sides of all the buses in Albuquerque with a close-up of his face and the words “JOHNSON” to build name recognition. Then came radio and television. His slogan was “People Before Politics.” He promised to run government like a business, pulling a checkbook out of his pocket during campaign appearances and telling voters, “You’ll have a lot more money in here if you vote for me.”

As governor, he imposed sched-

ule discipline. His Cabinet would meet precisely at 8 a.m. every Monday, power bars and water at the table. Each member had only two minutes to deliver a report.

“If you can’t explain it in two minutes, it doesn’t need to be done,” said Diane Kinderwater, Johnson’s former communications director.

The approach was a stark difference from that of the previous governor, a cowboy-boot-wearing, backslapping Democrat who loved to linger. Some lawmakers appreciated it.

“With [Johnson], it was always, ‘Yes,’ ‘No’ or ‘I’ll think about it,’ ” said Ingle, the state senator. “It would take five or six minutes. He had an agenda and he knew what he wanted to figure out.”

The first time the legislature sent a budget to Johnson’s desk, Ingle said, lawmakers thought they had done well by allotting only “a couple hundred-thousand dollars” more than Johnson’s goal of $2.8 billion.

Johnson vetoed it.

“We couldn’t believe it,” Ingle said. “But I said, at least he told us what he was going to do. This man is honest.”

Annual summaries compiled by

Gary Johnson, then governor of New Mexico, explains his position on the legalization of drugs during a radio show in Albuquerque in 1999.

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nonpartisan legislative aides during that time describe Johnson’s relationship with the legislature as “rocky” and “strained.” Over eight years, he vetoed more than 700 bills.

An examination of eight years of legislation showed that Johnson vetoed a bill to create specialized license plates because he thought it was too costly. He vetoed the formation of an African American affairs committee and a task force examining how to get equal pay for women because he thought they were a waste of time and money.

Although he describes himself as a social liberal, Johnson angered many on the left when he ended collective bargaining for state employees and cut off Medicaid funding for abortions that doctors deemed medically necessary.

Johnson now says he regrets the Medicaid decision.

In his second term, Johnson became more comfortable with the limits of his executive power, his staff members said. And the legislature got accustomed to his frequent vetoes, state Rep. Larry Larrañaga (R) said.

But Johnson alienated his fellow Republicans with a push to legalize marijuana use. He referred to the war on drugs as a “miserable failure.”

It was a rare break from tradition for Johnson. Rather than simply issuing directives, he had to work with the legislature to try to get his way. He could not get legalization through the legislature but persuaded lawmakers to increase funding for drug treatment. He also won approval for a measure that allowed the release of nonviolent, low- level drug offenders if prisons became overcrowded.

By the end, Johnson praised himself for delivering a tax cut worth at least $60 million, expanding the highway system and repealing a gas tax. He left with a $1 billion state surplus and, according to the Albuquerque Journal, a 45 percent approval rating.

Johnson is now armed with endorsements from the Detroit News and the Chicago Tribune, but his New Mexico record remains his biggest boast.

“I don’t think you would find anyone who would say I wasn’t thoughtful about every decision I made,” he added. “I gave a reason, I had logic and a process. Would I be any different as president? No.” n

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POLITICS

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Bigger role for big donors this year

BY M ATEA G OLD AND A NU N ARAYANSWAMY

S

uper PACs seeking to influence the 2016 elections have collected more than $1 billion, a record haul driven by jumbo-sized contributions from rich donors on both sides of the aisle.

Just 10 mega-donor individuals and couples contributed nearly 20 percent of the $1.1 billion raised by super PACs by the end of August, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal campaign finance reports. The total exceeds the $853 million that super PACs collected in the entire 2012 cycle.

In a reflection of how oncereluctant Democrats have fully embraced the big-money system, the top givers were split roughly equally along party lines, with five Republicans, four Democrats and one independent, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.

On the left, large check writers have pumped millions into Priorities USA Action, the top super PAC allied with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who has struggled to demonstrate her independence from her wealthy supporters.

On the Republican side, the big money has largely flowed into super PACs working to keep GOP control of the Senate rather than to the muddled collection of competing groups supporting presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Together, super PACs seeking to sway the White House and congressional races have pumped more than $674 million into TV ads and other outreach through September, filings show. By the end of the 2012 elections, such groups had spent $608 million.

The figures illustrate how American campaigns have been reordered by the ability to give unlimited sums to political committees. In the six years since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision created new paths for massive contributions to flow into elections, a tiny sliver of donors with immense financial capacity have rushed to participate.

ANDREW GOMBERT/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

TONI L. SANDYS/THE WASHINGTON POST

STEVE MARCUS /REUTERS

JULIA SCHMALZ/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Super PACs have collected $1.1 billion this election — 20 percent of it from just 10 donors Along with the $1.1 billion raised by super PACs, hundreds of millions more has been directed into politically active nonprofits on both sides of the aisle that can keep the names of their contributors secret.

The huge sums washing through campaigns are contributing to a growing estrangement between voters and the political system, critics said.

“The big picture is that it just continues to rest the political system on the wallets of the wealthiest Americans, and that defies the basic American belief in ‘we the people,’ ” said Nick Penniman, executive director of Issue One, a bipartisan group working to reduce the influence of wealthy interests on politics. “If you’re a regular voter and you felt less relevant in the political system 10 years ago, you feel even less relevant today.”

There are already signs that more waves of cash are coming

before Election Day. Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam — who jumped in late this year, giving $21.5 million in August to GOP super PACs defending Senate candidates — are directing millions into a group that has launched a new anti-Clinton effort.

And hedge fund founder Tom Steyer, who had given $38 million through August to groups working to mobilize young voters, Latinos and union members, said last month that he was putting in at least $15 million more.

In an interview with The Post, the billionaire environmentalist — who ranks as the biggest super PAC donor of the cycle so far — called Citizens United a “terrible decision.” And he said he agrees with those who believe “money is corrupting our politics.”

“I think it’s actually a significant threat to our democracy if our citizens don’t believe that our democracy is fair and it plays to

Clockwise from top left, mega-donors to super PACs include casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam; former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg; hedge fund founder Tom Steyer; and hedge fund executive Paul Singer.

special interests,” Steyer said.

But he said he was shelling out massive sums because “the other side is going always to have a ton more money than us.”

“This is the system we have, and we’re trying to participate as transparently as we can within that system,” Steyer said.

In second place on the top donor list through August was another hedge fund founder, Donald Sussman, who has plowed more than $23 million into groups allied with Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates.

The Adelsons were in third place, followed by conservative billionaire Robert Mercer, who has given $20.2 million so far, largely to back Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in the GOP presidential primaries.

Since Cruz bowed out, Mercer and one of his daughters, Rebekah, have emerged as the most dominant donors in Trump’s orbit.

Bloomberg, the billionaire media mogul, was in fifth place, with $20.1 million, most of which went to his super PAC, Independence USA, which is backing GOP Sen. Patrick J. Toomey in Pennsylvania and Democratic Senate contender Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire.

Rounding out the top 10 list were Chicago media company owner and Democratic donor Fred Eychaner ($20 million), conservative hedge fund executive Paul Singer ($17.3 million), liberal investor George Soros ($16.5 million), former AIG head and Republican financier Maurice “Hank” Greenberg ($15.1 million) and conservative shipping magnates Elizabeth and Richard Uihlein ($14 million).

David Keating, the conservative activist who launched the federal appellate case that created super PACs, said he is not surprised by the size of the contributions flowing to the groups, which can accept unlimited amounts from both individuals and corporations.

And he noted that money is no guarantee of success, pointing out that former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s presidential bid fizzled, despite the backing of a well-funded super PAC. n

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POLITICS

‘Head and heart’ get a town-hall test BY

K AREN T UMULTY

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our years ago, President Obama was in somewhat the same position that Donald Trump is in now.

Obama’s first debate against GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney had gone badly, and advice was flooding in from all directions. But one suggestion really hit home, recalled Jon Favreau, who was then Obama’s chief speechwriter.

“You don’t win the second debate,” former president Bill Clinton told Obama, “by relitigating the first one.”

Trump might also do well to heed that counsel — especially because the next debate, on Sunday night in St. Louis, will be conducted in a town-hall style format.

Half the questions will come from an audience of undecided voters, selected to be there by the Gallup Organization.

After he was bested by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the first debate, Trump said, “I may hit her harder” in the second one.

“Trump is easily baited, and he refuses to let these things go,” Favreau said.

But settling scores may be exactly the wrong approach in a town-hall debate, where the candidates will be responding to the specific concerns of individual Americans, and where voters will be studying the candidates for their ability to relate to those concerns.

At the first town-hall-style presidential debate in 1992, one man in the audience implored the candidates, “Can we focus on the issues and not the personalities and the mud?”

That event is also remembered for the most infamous example of what not to do when voters are posing the questions. The camera caught then-President George H.W. Bush checking his watch as a woman asked him how the national debt had affected him personally.

The history of presidential debates done in this style suggests

POOL PHOTO BY JOE RAEDLE VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

In Sunday’s second debate, Trump and Clinton face fresh challenges taking audience questions that stagecraft, body language and empathy matter more than they do in conventional settings, where the candidates tend to stand at lecterns and spar.

“We should expect a different kind of question, and we should expect that we are going to see a different facet of the candidate,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a political communication expert at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center. “The average person watching the debate should be able to see him or herself in the questioning process.”

While combativeness may backfire on Trump, there are challenges for Hillary Clinton as well.

Jamieson noticed, for instance, that the Democratic nominee goes into “lawyer mode” when she has been confronted by hostile or skeptical questions in previous encounters with audiences.

“That’s when you get the careful statements, the careful parsing of

words.”

Lanhee Chen, who was an adviser to GOP nominee Mitt Romney in 2012, said: “Being able to demonstrate an understanding of the person’s question in a nonsterile way is important. When you’re responding to a moderator, you can do it in a clinical way.

Connecting is really important in a town-hall format.”

Nor does a candidate want to hand an opponent an opportunity to do so. Obama in 2012 had been looking for chances to remind the audience of Romney’s wealth, and the GOP nominee gave him one when he demanded: “Mr. President, have you looked at your pension?”

“You know, I don’t look at my pension,” Obama replied. “It’s not as big as yours, so it doesn’t take as long.”

Town halls “test two things at once: the depth of your substantive knowledge and also your capacity for empathy. They test your head and your heart,” said

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump shake hands during the first presidential debate Sept. 26 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. Their second debate, a town-hall forum, is Sunday night.

Paul Begala, who advised Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign.

Clinton’s 1992 campaign was the first to propose putting the candidates in a town-hall setting for one of the debates. His team was surprised when Bush agreed to it.

The Arkansas governor was comfortable with the format, having employed it often during his presidential bid.

“It is what we did with Clinton in the primaries, when it was all collapsing around us in New Hampshire,” Begala recalled. “I do think they helped save him. In fact, we spent our own campaign money to broadcast them.”

It turned out that Americans at home loved watching that first town-hall faceoff, according to focus groups that the Commission on Presidential Debates had set up in cities around the country.

“The public identifies with the citizens who are there asking questions,” said Janet H. Brown, the commission’s executive director.

Voters watch town halls differently.

In 2012, for instance, the first debate, which had a traditional format, drew a slightly bigger audience, but the town hall that followed it held viewers’ attention longer, according to an Annenberg Center study of Nielsen data.

The center’s subsequent surveys found that young adults in particular deemed town halls more helpful than conventional debates in making up their minds on how to vote.

As the candidates give their answers, they may be shown on a split screen with the audience member who asked the question.

Facial expressions often reveal whether the person who posed the question is satisfied with what they are hearing.

In the end, Begala said, the likely winner of Sunday’s town hall will be the candidate who comes up with the best answer to the real question that voters will be asking: “Are you one of us?” n

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NATION

Amputee gets new arms and new life M ICHAEL E . R UANE Boston BY

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etired Marine Corps Sgt. John Peck is crying as he lies on the operating table, the stumps of his arms anesthetized, the room filled with lights and figures in blue scrubs.

He’s been praying since his plane left Virginia the night before, asking for strength. And a nurse keeps trying to comfort him.

But the enormity of what’s happening has hit him, and for the moment he is overcome.

It’s been six years since he stepped on an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan and became a quadruple amputee. Almost two years since he got on the waiting list for a double arm transplant. Less than 24 hours since the urgent summons from the hospital here.

Now, Peck, 31, is under a white blanket with an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, unnerved that a dying man’s limbs are headed for the operating room, and not really sure that he will make it through the surgery.

He’s breathing heavily. The nurse, Jocelyn Lim, appears, leans in close and tells him to calm down, everything will be okay. After that, he remembers little: “I’m gone . . . knocked out.”

‘I have hands’ On Wednesday morning, Peck made his first public appearance with his new arms at a media briefing at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

He is thought to be the second quadruple amputee from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to get a double arm transplant.

The 13-hour surgery was performed in August by a team headed by Simon G. Talbot, the hospital’s director of upper extremity transplantation.

It was a complex procedure that required good timing, surgeons at two medical facilities, the help of the New England Organ Bank, and a large plastic cooler to transport the donor’s limbs.

The family of the donor, a young man whose arms were an ideal

NIKKI KAHN/THE WASHINGTON POST

Six years ago, he lost four limbs in an explosion in Afghanistan match for Peck’s, did not want to be identified, the hospital said.

But an emotional Peck expressed his gratitude Wednesday to the donor’s family.

“Your loved one’s death will not be for nothing,” he said at the briefing. “Every day that I look down at our new arms, I will drive on . . . and I will never give up. I will remember his selflessness and his gift until the day I die.”

The donor’s right arm was attached to Peck’s right arm just above the elbow, and the donor’s left arm was attached below Peck’s left elbow, cutting through one of Peck’s old tattoos.

Some of the surgery was done under a microscope, Talbot said, and some of the stitches were as thin as a human hair.

During several interviews recetnly, Peck said he was doing well, aside from a frightening but temporary episode of rejection, which the hospital said often happens in

such cases.

He said his arms feel good, but they do not yet feel like his. “They will,” he said. He already has some faint sensation in them. But he will probably not see significant results for months, his doctors said.

He can lift the new arms, but must be careful because the bone, muscles, blood vessels and skin are healing. Swelling remains where the donor limbs are attached.

But for the first time Peck has been able to wear the black wristband he got to honor a buddy, Marine Corps Cpl. Larry D. Harris Jr., who was killed in combat in Afghanistan a few months after Peck was injured.

After the surgery, as the sedation was wearing off, Peck, still groggy, said over and over to his fiancee, Jessica Paker, 29, who was at his bedside: “I have hands. I have hands. I did it.”

Retired Marine Sgt. John Peck, 31, laughs with his fiancee, Jessica Paker, 29, during an appointment at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston on Sept. 30.

Peck had a double arm transplant in August.

Big-time dreams On a day in early August before the transplant, Peck was in the rehabilitation gym at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., with his mother, Lisa Peck, helping him put on his prosthetic legs and arms.

His job was to practice walking with the legs — “shorties,” they’re called, because they’re not full size — and the crutch arms, which are like metal canes.

“I don’t think I’ve fallen yet,” he said as his mother strapped on the support belt for the legs.

He eased himself out of his motorized wheelchair and steadied himself on the prosthetics. “All right, I’m good,” he said.

At that point, Peck had no idea when he might get arms.

He said he learned that arm transplants were an option when doctors from Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore came to Walter Reed while he was recovering. He

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NATION first contacted Brigham and Women’s in the fall of 2013. He went for a week of rigorous tests — physical and psychological — in January 2014 and was put on the wait list that August.

It had been more than two years since he began. The big black suitcase he had bought to be prepared was gathering dust in a closet. He was still making regular visits to the hospital in Bethesda for physical therapy.

“My nerves,” he said, as he began walking laps around the room. “I’m mentally exhausted. . . .

Everywhere I go, even here, even right now, I have to have a game plan on how I’m going to get there.”

Sweat beaded on his forehead as he walked, his prosthetics clanking quietly on the floor. “I am unwilling to accept this until the day I die,” he said.

His ultimate dream is to be a big-time chef, he said.

“My goal is to do arm transplants, do some traveling, learn different types of food, take like cooking courses across seas, like Tokyo, China . . . Florence, places like Paris,” he said. Then become a Food Network star.

“That’s all I want to do,” he said.

“It could be easily accomplished.

Well, not easily, but it could be accomplished. It’s just up to me.

How hard I try. How successful the arm transplant is.”

‘I don’t want to die here!’

On May 24, 2010, Peck was on patrol in a small village in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. The Marines were entering compounds, meeting residents and looking for weapons or the Taliban.

The last place they visited that Monday was a compound were nobody seemed to be home. He said the Marines had been warned: If no one’s home, don’t go in. But his commander was suspicious and decided to poke around.

Peck, who was handling a metal detector, entered the compound first and swept the area for IEDs. “Everything was clear,” he said.

“I went to go tell my sergeant I was going to go outside,” he said. “I went to go turn around, and that’s when I took my step forward, and got flung through the air.”

Peck had been in the Marines since 2005. He was the son of an Army nurse and grew up in Rockford, Ill. He had served in Iraq in

2007, and said he suffered a traumatic brain injury in an explosion there that August. He was manning a machine gun atop an armored truck when the truck hit an IED. The blast threw him in the air, and when he came down he struck his head on the machine gun.

He had suffered a concussion, and after further evaluation was sent home to his base in the United States. He underwent treatment, recovered, and reenlisted in April 2009.

A year later he was in Helmand.

As the blast tossed him that day, he felt a blow to his head, which he thinks may have been from one of his amputated legs. He doesn’t recall hearing or feeling anything.

“My system was already in shock,” he said. “There was no pain at all.”

He remembers screaming, “I don’t want to die here!”

He had instantly lost both legs above the knees, and his right arm above the elbow. His left arm was all but gone, and was later amputated below the elbow.

As he told the story, he paused.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s still . . . like a fantasy. Sometimes I just can’t believe it. . . . I think about it and I recall this, and it surprises even myself. ” Successful surgery A few weeks later, he was lounging alone on his living-room couch watching television when his cellphone rang. He glanced at the screen, saw that it was from a doctor, and knew that this was the call.

It was Talbot, the transplant surgeon in Boston.

An ambulance would be waiting for Peck at Boston’s Logan International Airport as soon as he could get there.

Peck was overjoyed, but then realized somebody was dying to enable his transplant. “I felt terrible,” he said.

But he was about to join former Army Sgt. Brendan Marrocco, who is thought to be the only other military quadruple amputee to get a double arm transplant.

The operation began at 12:33 p.m. and concluded at 1:56 the following morning.

Many hours later, when Peck’s head cleared and he realized he had new arms, he was filled with gratitude.

“It was just pure love,” he said.

“And it will remain like that.” n

KLMNO WEEKLY

How medical pot may help boomers BY

9.4 % increase in the probability of employment for individuals 50 and older, if a medical marijuana law is passed. There is also a 4.6 percent to 4.9 percent increase in hours worked per week.

C HRISTOPHER I NGRAHAM

S

tates that passed medical marijuana laws saw a significant boost to older Americans’ workforce participation, according to a new working paper from researchers at Johns Hopkins and Temple University. States with medical marijuana laws also saw improvements in overall health for older men, although the health effects for older women were more mixed.

Like many recent studies examining the effects of marijuana laws, this one compared what happened in medical marijuana states before and after the passage of medical pot provisions, and compared them to trajectories in similar states that did not implement medical marijuana. The data come from the Health and Retirement study, a long-running survey of the health and economic wellbeing of older American adults.

The study found that, among individuals age 50 and older, “passage of [a medical marijuana law] leads to a 9.4 percent increase in the probability of employment and a 4.6 percent to 4.9 percent increase in hours worked per week.”

Why the boost to employment?

Simply put, overall health appeared to be better in states with medical marijuana laws. In those states, older men were 5 percent more likely to say they were in “very good” or “excellent” health. And part of the reason men rated their health better is because they were in less pain: the passage of a medical marijuana law led to roughly a 10 percent drop in the percent of men saying they experienced pain.

The health effect on women, however, appeared to be more mixed. “Surprisingly, among women we find evidence that passage of [a medical marijuana law] that provides legal access to the product increases the probability of reporting pain in the full sample by 1.3 percentage points (3.8 percent).”

Nonetheless, the study found that like men, older women were about 5 percent more likely to report “very

good” or “excellent” health after the passage of medical marijuana.

While the difference between men and women is puzzling, a recent Columbia University study offers a clue: Smoking marijuana provides more pain relief for men than for women, for reasons not yet fully understood.

Much of the debate around marijuana legalization centers on the potential effects on young people. This makes a certain amount of sense, as young, still-developing brains are at the highest risk for

ROBERT F. BUKATY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

adverse effects from the use of any drug. But a surprising amount of new research suggests that older Americans will be much more affected by changes to marijuana law than previously thought.

Middle-aged Americans are now more likely to use marijuana than their teenage children, and the fastest increases in marijuana use are being seen among Americans 55 and older.

The research is also starting to suggest that older marijuana users may benefit from better quality of life in their golden years. A study this year found that Medicare prescriptions for a variety of drugs, including painkillers, anti-anxiety medications and antinausea drugs, fell significantly in states that adopted medical marijuana laws.

Research has also shown that for older people medical marijuana laws appear to be linked to increased exercise and overall wellness, simply because when you hurt less, you feel better and exercise more. n

COVER STORY

T

he sun was rising over one of the richest mineral deposits on Earth, in one of the poorest countries, as Sidiki Mayamba got ready for work.

Mayamba is a cobalt miner.

And the red-dirt savanna stretching outside his door contains such an astonishing wealth of cobalt and other minerals that a geologist once described it as a “scandale geologique.”

This remote landscape in southern Africa lies at the heart of the world’s mad scramble for cheap cobalt, a mineral essential to the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power smartphones, laptops and electric vehicles made by companies such as Apple, Samsung and major automakers.

But Mayamba, 35, knew nothing about his role in this sprawling global supply chain. He grabbed his metal shovel and broken-headed hammer from a corner of the room he shares with his wife and child. He pulled on a duststained jacket. A proud man, he likes to wear a button-down shirt even to mine. And he planned to mine by hand all day and through

price of progress Workers, including children, toil to meet demand for lithium batteries STORY BY TODD C. FRANKEL in Kolwezi, Congo

Residents of Congo use hand tools and plastic headlamps to dig for cobalt, seen amid a handful of dirt at bottom left. There are an estimated 100,000 cobalt miners in the nation, which produces 60 percent of the world’s supply of the mineral.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL ROBINSON CHAVEZ

the night. He would nap in the underground tunnels. No industrial tools. Not even a hard hat. The risk of a cave-in is constant.

“Do you have enough money to buy flour today?” he asked his wife.

She did. But now a debt collector stood at the door. The family owed money for salt. Flour would have to wait.

Mayamba tried to reassure his wife. He said goodbye to his son. Then he slung his shovel over his shoulder. It was time.

The world’s soaring demand for cobalt is at times met by workers, including children, who labor in harsh and dangerous conditions. An estimated 100,000 cobalt miners in Congo use hand tools to dig hundreds of feet underground with little oversight and few safety measures, according to workers, government officials and evidence found by The Washington Post during visits to remote mines. Deaths and injuries are common. And the mining activity exposes local communities to levels of toxic metals that appear to be linked to ailments that include breathing problems and birth defects, health officials say.

The Post traced this cobalt pipeline and, for the first time, showed how cobalt mined in

these harsh conditions ends up in popular consumer products. It moves from small-scale Congolese mines to a single Chinese company — Congo DongFang International Mining, part of one of the world’s biggest cobalt producers, Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt — that for years has supplied some of the world’s largest battery makers. They, in turn, have produced the batteries found inside products such as Apple’s iPhones — a finding that calls into question corporate assertions that they are capable of monitoring their supply chains for human rights abuses or child labor.

Apple, in response to questions from The Post, acknowledged that this cobalt has made its way into its batteries. The Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant said that an estimated 20 percent of the cobalt it uses comes from Huayou Cobalt.

Paula Pyers, a senior director at Apple in charge of supply-chain social responsibility, said the company plans to increase scrutiny of how all its cobalt is obtained. Pyers also said Apple is committed to working with Huayou Cobalt to clean up the supply chain and to addressing the underlying issues, such as extreme poverty, that result in harsh work conditions and child labor.

Another Huayou customer, LG Chem, one of the world’s leading battery makers, told The Post it stopped buying Congo-sourced minerals late last year. Samsung SDI, another large battery maker, said that it is conducting an internal investigation but that “to the best of our knowledge,” while the company does use cobalt mined in Congo, it does not come from Huayou.

Few companies regularly track where their cobalt comes from. Following the path from mine to finished product is difficult but possible, The Post discovered. Armed guards block access to many of Congo’s mines. The cobalt then passes through several companies and travels thousands of miles.

Yet 60 percent of the world’s cobalt originates in Congo — a chaotic country rife with corruption and a long history of foreign exploitation of its natural resources. A century ago, companies plundered Congo’s rubber sap and elephant tusks while the country was a Belgian colony. Today, more than five decades after Congo gained its independence, it is minerals that attract foreign companies.

Scrutiny is heightened for a few of these minerals. A 2010 U.S. law requires American companies to attempt to verify that any tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold they use is obtained from mines free of militia control in the Congo region. The result is a system widely seen as preventing human rights abuses. Some say cobalt should be added to the conflict-minerals list, even if cobalt mines are not thought to be funding war. Apple told The Post that it now supports including cobalt in the law.

Congo’s cobalt trade has been the target of criticism for nearly a decade, mostly from advocacy groups. Even U.S. trade groups have acknowledged the problem. The Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition — whose members

COMPANIES ARE UNLIKELY TO ABANDON CONGO FOR A SIMPLE REASON: THE WORLD NEEDS HOW MUCH COBALT? WHAT CONGO HAS.

the past. Lighter and packing more energy than conventional lead-acid batteries, these cobaltrich batteries are seen as “green.” They are essential to plans for one day moving beyond smog-belching gasoline engines. Already these batteries have defined the world’s tech devices.

Smartphones would not fit in pockets without them. Laptops would not fit on laps. Electric vehicles would be impractical. In many ways, the current Silicon Valley gold rush — from mobile devices to driverless cars — is built on the power of lithium-ion batteries.

But this comes at an exceptional cost.

“It is true, there are children in these mines,” provincial governor Richard Muyej, the highestranking government official in Kolwezi, said in include companies such as Apple — raised conHow much an interview. He also acknowledged problems cerns in 2010 about the potential for human cobalt?

HOW MUCH COBALT? with mining-related deaths and pollution. rights abuses in the mining of minerals, includBut, he said, his government is too poor to ing cobalt, and the difficulty in tracking supply tackle these issues alone. chains. The U.S. Labor Department lists CongoSmartphone “The government is not a beggar,” Muyej HOW MUCH COBALT? lese cobalt as a product it has reason to think is said. “These companies have an obligation to 5 to 10 grams produced by child labor. create wealth in the area where they operate.”

Concern about how cobalt is mined “comes (as heavy as 2 to 4 pennies) Companies are unlikely to abandon Congo for to the fore every now and again,” said Guy a simple reason: The world needs what Congo Darby, a veteran cobalt analyst with Darton Smartphone Smartphone has.

Smartphone Commodities in London. “And it’s met with 5 to 10 grams Chen said he expected controversy sur5 to 10 grams to 10 much muttering and shaking of the head and (as heavy5 as 2 grams to 4 pennies) rounding how cobalt is mined in Congo to (as heavy as 2 to 4 pennies) (as heavy as 2 to 4 pennies) ripple far beyond Huayou Cobalt. tuttering — and goes away again.”

In the past year, a Dutch advocacy group “This issue, I believe, we are not the only called the Center for Research on Multinationones,” he said. “We believe there are many al Corporations, known as SOMO, and Amnescompanies in similar situations as us.” ty International have put out reports alleging improprieties including forced relocations of ‘Lungs of the Congo’ Laptop villages and water pollution. Amnesty’s report, The worst conditions affect Congo’s “artisanLaptop 1Laptop ounce which accused Congo DongFang of buying al” miners — a too-quaint name for the impover1 ounce (A slice of bread) 1 ounce materials mined by children, prompted a fresh (A slice of bread) ished workers who mine without pneumatic (a slice of bread) wave of companies to promise that their cobalt drills or diesel draglines. connections were being vetted.

This informal army is big business, responsiLaptop But the problems remained starkly evident ble for an estimated 10 to 25 percent of the 1 ounce when Post journalists visited mining operaworld’s cobalt production and about 17 to (A slice of bread) tions in Congo this summer.

40 percent of production in Congo. Artisanal In September, Chen Hongliang, the presiTypical electric car miners alone are responsible for more cobalt dent of Congo DongFang parent Huayou Co10 to 20 pounds than any nation other than Congo, ranking balt, told The Post that his company had never (2 to 3 gallons of milk) behind only Congo’s industrial mines.

Typical electric car questioned how its minerals were obtained, Typical electric car The industry should be a boon for a country to 20Pillot, pounds Source:10 Christophe a battery despite operating in Congo and cities such as that the United Nations ranks among the least consultant Avicenne Energy in France 20 pounds (210 to to 3at gallons of milk) Kolwezi for a decade. developed. But it hasn’t worked out that way.

“That is our shortcoming,” Chen said in an (2 to 3 gallons of milk) “We are challenged by the paradox of having interview in Seattle, in his first public comso many resource riches, but the population is Typical electric Source: Christophe Pillot, car a ments on the topic. “We didn’t realize.” very poor,” Muyej said. battery consultant at Avicenne Chen said Huayou planned to change how itSource: Christophe Francea battery 10Energy to 20inPillot, pounds Kolwezi is a remote city steeped in cobalt and buys cobalt, had hired an outside company toconsultant at Avicenne Energy in France copper, which are often found together. It is (2 to 3 gallons of milk) oversee the process and was working with sometimes called the “Lungs of the Congo” customers such as Apple to create a system for because of its economic importance. preventing abuse.

The city sits along a two-lane highway best But how such serious problems could persistSource: Christophe Pillot, a battery known for carrying tractor-trailers laden with consultant at Avicenne Energy in France for so long — despite frequent warning signs — minerals as they hurtle for the border with illustrates what can happen in hard-to- decipher Zambia 250 miles away. supply chains when they are mostly unregulatThen it’s on to seaports in Tanzania or South ed, low price is paramount and the trouble Africa. occurs in a distant, tumultuous part of the world.

From there, most of the cobalt floats by ship In fact, a small piece of Kolwezi cobalt could to Asia, home to the vast majority of the world’s be inside the smartphone you have on you right lithium-ion battery manufacturing. now.

About 90 percent of China’s cobalt originates Lithium-ion batteries were supposed to be different from the dirty, toxic technologies of continues on next page

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2016

12

in Congo, where Chinese firms dominate the mining industry.

The cobalt begins its journey at a mine such as Tilwezembe, a former industrial site turned artisanal operation on the outskirts of Kolwezi where hundreds of men scour the earth with hand tools.

These men call themselves “creuseurs,” French for “diggers.” They toil inside dozens of holes pockmarking the mine’s moonscape-like bottom. The tunnels are dug by hand and burrow deep underground, illuminated only by the toylike plastic lamps strapped to the miners’ heads.

During a visit in June, the scene looked preindustrial. Dozens of diggers were at work, but the only sound was the occasional muffled clink of metal on stone.

“We are suffering,” said one digger, Nathan Muyamba, 29. “And our suffering is for what?”

‘La fleur du cobalt’ Diggers don’t have mining maps or explor-

atory drills.

Instead, they rely on intuition.

“You travel with the faith believing that one day you can find good production,” said digger Andre Kabwita, 49.

Nature is said to be one guide. Yellow wildflowers are considered a sign of copper. A plant with tiny green flowers carries the telling name “la fleur du cobalt.”

With few formal sites to claim for themselves, artisanal miners dig anywhere they can. Along roads. Under railroad tracks. In back yards. When a major cobalt deposit was discovered a few years ago in the dense neighborhood of Kasulo, diggers tunneled right through their homes’ dirt floors, creating a labyrinth of underground caves.

Other diggers wait until dark to invade land owned by private mining companies, leading to deadly clashes with security guards and police.

The diggers are desperate, said Papy Nsenga, a digger and president of a fledgling diggers union.

Pay is based on what they find. No minerals, no money. And the money is meager — the

Clockwise from top left, cobalt digger Sidiki Mayamba dresses in the room he shares with his wife and their 2-year-old son in Kolwezi, Congo; a boy carries a bag used to transport cobalt-laden dirt; an Asian worker calculates a payment; and diggers get paid at the Musompo market.

equivalent of $2 to $3 on a good day, Nsenga said.

“We shouldn’t have to live like this,” he said.

And when accidents occur, diggers are on their own.

Last year, after one digger’s leg was crushed and another suffered a head wound in a mine collapse, Nsenga was left to raise the hundreds of dollars for treatment from other diggers. The companies that buy the minerals rarely help, Nsenga and other diggers said.

Deaths happen with regularity, too, diggers said. But only mass casualties seem to filter out to the scant local media, such as the U.N.- funded Radio Okapi. Thirteen cobalt miners were killed in September 2015 when a dirt tunnel collapsed in Mabaya, near the Zambia border. Two years ago, 16 diggers were killed by landslides in Kawama, followed months later by the deaths of 15 diggers in an underground fire in Kolwezi.

In Kolwezi, a provincial mine inspector frustrated by a recent run of accidents agreed to talk to The Post on the condition that he not be

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2016

from previous page

identified, because he was not permitted to talk to the media.

That morning, he said, he had helped rescue four artisanal miners nearly overcome by fumes from an underground fire in Kolwezi.

The day before, two men had died in a mining tunnel collapse, he said.

He said he had personally pulled 36 bodies from local artisanal mines in the past several years. The Post was not able to independently verify his claims, but they echoed stories from diggers about the frequency of mining accidents.

The inspector blamed companies such as Congo DongFang that buy the artisanal cobalt and ship it overseas.

“They don’t care,” he said. “To them, if you bring them minerals and you’re sick or hurt, they don’t care.”

Congo DongFang responded that it had incorrectly assumed that these issues were the concern of its trading partners, who buy the cobalt from the miners and pass it on to the mining company.

Child labor No one knows exactly how many children work in Congo’s mining industry. UNICEF in 2012 estimated that 40,000 boys and girls do so in the country’s south. A 2007 study funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development found 4,000 children worked at mining sites in Kolwezi alone.

Local government officials say they lack the resources to address the problem.

“We have a big challenge with the children, because it is difficult to take them out of the mines when there are no schools for these children to go to,” said Muyej, the provincial governor. “We have to find a solution for this.”

While officials and diggers acknowledge the problem of child labor, it remains a sensitive topic. Children work not just in underground mines, in violation of Congo’s mining code, but also on the fringes of the cobalt trade.

Guards prevented Post journalists from visiting areas where, according to local diggers, children often can be found working. At one point, The Post saw a boy in a red sweatshirt struggling to carry a half-full sack of mineral rocks. Another boy in a black soccer jersey ran up to help. Kabwita, the digger, watched them.

“They are just 10 or 12,” he said.

The Post also gave an iPhone to a digger to capture video of how women and children wash cobalt ores together.

One of these children is Delphin Mutela, a quiet boy who looks younger than his 13 years.

When he was about 8, his mother began taking Delphin with her on her trips to the river to clean cobalt ores. Washing minerals is a popular job for women here. At first, Delphin was tasked with keeping an eye on his siblings.

But he learned to distinguish the loose mineral pieces that fell into the water during

13

UNICEF IN 2012 ESTIMATED THAT 40,000 BOYS AND GIRLS WORK IN THE MINING INDUSTRY IN CONGO’S SOUTH. washing.

Copper carried a hint of green.

Cobalt looked like dark chocolate.

If he could collect enough bits, he could get paid, maybe $1.

“The money I get I use to buy notebooks and so I can pay school fees,” Delphin said.

His mother, Omba Kabwiza, said this is normal.

“There are many children there,” she said.

“That’s how we live.”

Skyrocketing demand Cobalt is the most expensive raw material inside a lithium-ion battery.

That has long presented a challenge for the big battery suppliers — and their customers, the computer and carmakers. Engineers have tried for years to craft cobalt-free batteries. But the mineral best known as a blue pigment has a unique ability to boost battery performance.

The price of refined cobalt has fluctuated in the past year from $20,000 to $26,000 a ton.

Worldwide, cobalt demand from the battery sector has tripled in the past five years and is projected to at least double again by 2020, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

This increase has mostly been driven by electric vehicles. Every major automaker is rushing to get its battery-powered car to market.

While a smartphone battery might contain five to 10 grams of refined cobalt, a single electric-car battery can contain up to 15,000 grams.

As demand has grown, so has artisanal cobalt’s importance in global markets. That became clear to everyone in the battery world two years ago, said Kurt Vandeputte, vice president of the rechargeable-battery materials unit at Belgiumbased Umicore, one of the world’s largest cobalt refiners.

The cobalt price was falling, even as battery demand shot up. The price of lithium, another key battery material, was skyrocketing.

“It got so clear that artisanal mining was taking a big place in the supply chain,” Vandeputte said, adding that Umicore buys only from industrial mines, including mines in Congo.

Artisanal cobalt is usually cheaper than product from industrial mines. Companies do

13

cobalt miners were killed in September 2015 when a dirt tunnel collapsed in Mabaya, Congo, near the Zambia border.

16

diggers were killed by landslides in Kawama two years ago.

15 diggers

died in an underground fire in Kolwezi months after the Kawama landslides.

not have to pay miners’ salaries or fund the operations of a large-scale mine.

With cheap cobalt flooding the market, some international traders canceled contracts for industrial ores, opting to scoop up artisanal ones.

“Everyone knew something was going on,” said Christophe Pillot, a battery consultant at Avicenne Energy in France.

At the same time, companies face growing scrutiny of their supply chains.

Consumers demand accountability; companies respond with promises of “ethical sourcing” and “supply chain due diligence.”

One result of this increased scrutiny can be found in Congo.

In 2010, the United States passed a conflictminerals law to stem the flow of money to Congo’s murderous militias, focusing on the artisanal mining of four minerals.

But this same diligence is not required when it comes to cobalt.

While cobalt mining is not thought to be funding wars, many activists and some industry analysts say cobalt miners could benefit from the law’s protection from exploitation and human rights abuses. The law forces companies to attempt to trace their supply chains and opens up the entire route to inspection by independent auditors.

But while Congo is a minor supplier of the four designated conflict minerals, the world depends on Congo for cobalt.

Analyst Simon Moores at Benchmark said he thinks this is one reason that cobalt has so far been excluded.

Any crimp in the cobalt supply chain would devastate companies.

‘We sell this to the Chinese’ For most artisanal miners in Kolwezi, the global supply chain begins in a marketplace called Musompo.

The 70 or so small shops, known as “comptoirs,” are stacked cheek by jowl along the highway that leads to the border. Shop names are painted on cement walls: Maison Saha, Depot Grand Tony, Depot Sarah. Each shop has a handwritten board listing the going rate for cobalt and copper.

At a shop named Louis 14, the price list offered the equivalent of $881 for a ton of 16 percent cobalt rock. Rock with 3 percent cobalt was worth $55.

Nearby, minibuses pulled up with white sacks of freshly mined cobalt to sell. More sacks arrived on bicycles loaded down like pack animals.

Each load was tested by a radar-gun-like device called a Metorex, which detects mineral content. Some of the miners said they do not trust the machines, believing them to be rigged, but they have no alternative. Muyej, the governor, said he was looking for funds to buy a continues on next page

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2016

14

TRACING YOUR DEVICE’S COBALT The lithium-ion battery industry has a massively complicated supply chain. Each consumer company has dealt with multiple suppliers — and their suppliers have dealt with multiple suppliers. This shows some of the connections within the industry.

MINING

PROCESSING

Small-scale mining by hand

CDM and Huayou Cobalt

CATHODE MANUFACTURERS

Pulead

BATTERY MANUFACTURERS

CONSUMER PRODUCT MAKERS

They build batteries from cathodes, anodes and electrolyte solutions, all sourced from different companies.

They use the batteries in their cellphones, laptops, tablets and electric vehicles.

Amazon ATL

Shanshan

Apple Samsung SDI

Other cobalt processors

Industrial mines

Samsung

L&F

LG Chem

Cobalt is mined all over the world, but 60 percent comes from Congo.

LG

Sources: Public documents, interviews with company officials and industry analysts.

Other cathode makers

Anodes come from other manufacturers

TIM MEKO/THE WASHINGTON POST

from previous page

Metorex machine so diggers could independently test their minerals. There are many shops in Musompo, but diggers said the shops sold to the same company: Congo DongFang Mining.

“We sell this to the Chinese, and then the Chinese take it to CDM,” said Hubert Mukekwa, a shop worker shoveling cobalt.

In Congo, it is illegal for foreigners to own a comptoir. But not a single shop visited by Post journalists appeared to be run by Congolese.

Asian men operated the Metorex machines.

They punched up the tallies on oversize calculators. They handled the cash — thick wads of Congolese francs. And they often could be seen sitting in the back while Congolese men carried the 120-pound sacks. None of the comptoir bosses would talk to The Post.

Mukekwa finished filling up one sack.

“Once we have enough stock to take it to CDM,” he said, “we take it there.”

He pointed at a large blue-walled compound in the distance.

Later, The Post witnessed an orange truck loaded with cobalt sacks pulling away from Musompo and onto the main highway.

“C24” was painted in blue on the truck’s cab.

The Post followed C24 two miles up the highway, where it turned onto a dirt road running next to a tall brick wall. The truck continued on

the road until it reached an entrance with armed guards and turned inside.

The facility with big blue walls was clearly marked CDM. It was at these same gates that CDM says its inspection of its supply chain had stopped, never extending to the mines or marketplace, said Chen, the president of Huayou Cobalt, the parent company of CDM. “We, in fact, didn’t know that much” about who they bought cobalt from, Chen said. “Now, we do due diligence.”

What the companies say Companies, in response to The Post’s questions, sounded equally uncertain about their cobalt supply chain, illustrating how little is known about the sources of raw materials.

But expectations are different today, said Lara Smith of Johannesburg-based Core Consultants, a firm that helps mining companies with this problem.

“Companies can’t claim ignorance,” Smith said. “Because if they wanted to understand, they could understand. They don’t.”

Last year, CDM reported exporting 72,000 tons of industrial and artisanal cobalt from Congo, making it No. 3 on the list of the country’s largest mining companies, according to Congolese mining statistics.

At a shop named Louis 14, the price list offered the equivalent of

$881

for a ton of 16 percent cobalt rock. Rock with 3 percent cobalt was worth

$55.

And CDM is by far Congo’s top exporter of artisanal cobalt, according to analysts and the company.

CDM ships its cobalt to its parent company, Huayou, in China, where the ore is refined.

Among Huayou’s largest customers are battery cathode makers Hunan Shanshan, Pulead Technology Industry and L&F Material, according to financial documents and interviews.

These companies — which also buy refined minerals from other companies — make the cobalt-rich battery cathodes that play a critical role in lithium-ion batteries. These cathodes are sold to battery makers, including companies such as Amperex Technology Ltd. (ATL), Samsung SDI and LG Chem.

All of these battery makers supply Apple, providing power for iPhones, iPads and Macs.

Apple said its investigation revealed that its batteries from LG Chem and Samsung SDI contain cathodes from Umicore, which may contain cobalt from Congo but not from CDM. Apple said it thought its suspect cobalt was contained in ATL batteries with Pulead cathodes.

“I think the risks can be managed,” Pulead chief executive Yuan Gao told The Post, adding that he believes “the increased awareness is actually working, as everyone is monitoring everyone else along the supply chain.”

ATL also has supplied battery cells found in

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2016

some Amazon Kindles, according to analysis by IHS, the global information company. ATL declined to comment.

Amazon.com, the company founded by Post owner Jeffrey P. Bezos, did not directly answer The Post’s questions about potential connections to suspect cobalt. The company issued a statement, reading in part: “We work closely with our suppliers to ensure they meet our standards, and conduct a number of audits every year to ensure our manufacturing partners are in compliance with our policies.”

Samsung SDI, which supplies batteries for Samsung, Apple and automakers such as BMW, said that its own ongoing investigation “has not shown any presence” of suspect cobalt, although it does use cobalt from Congo.

Samsung, the phonemaker, provided The Post with a statement saying that it takes supply-chain issues seriously but not addressing a potential connection to CDM. Samsung buys batteries for its phones from Samsung SDI and ATL, among others, according to industry data.

BMW acknowledged that some of the cobalt in its Samsung SDI batteries comes from Congo but said The Post should ask Samsung SDI for more details.

LG Chem, the world’s largest supplier of electric-car batteries, said the company it buys cathodes from, L&F Material, stopped using Congo-sourced cobalt from Huayou last year.

Instead, it said, Huayou now supplies L&F Material with cobalt mined from the South Pacific island of New Caledonia. As proof, LG Chem provided a “certificate of origin” for a cobalt shipment in December 2015 for 212 tons.

But two minerals analysts were skeptical that LG Chem’s cathode supplier could switch from Congo cobalt to minerals from New Caledonia — or, at least, do so for long. LG Chem consumes more cobalt than the entire nation of New Caledonia produces, according to analysts and publicly available data. L&F Material did not respond to repeated requests for comment. When The Post asked LG Chem to “respond to claims that the numbers don’t add up,” LG Chem did not answer the question directly, responding that it checks certificates of origin on a routine basis.

LG Chem also runs a Michigan battery plant for one of its biggest customers, GM, which plans to start selling its electric Chevrolet Bolt later this year. LG Chem said the Michigan plant has never received Congolese cobalt.

Another LG Chem customer, Ford Motor, said it has been told by LG Chem that Ford batteries have no history of CDM cobalt.

Most Tesla models use batteries from Panasonic, which buys cobalt from Southeast Asia and Congo. Replacement batteries for Tesla are manufactured by LG Chem. Tesla told The Post it knows LG Chem’s Tesla batteries do not contain Congolese cobalt, but it did not say how it knows this.

Tesla, more than any other automaker, has staked its reputation on “ethically sourcing” every piece of its celebrated vehicles.

15

CLEANING UP THE COBALT SUPPLY CHAIN WILL NOT BE EASY FOR HUAYOU COBALT, EVEN WITH THE SUPPORT OF APPLE. “It is something we do take very seriously,” Kurt Kelty, Tesla’s director of battery technology, said in March at a battery conference in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “And we need to take it even more seriously. So we are going to send one of our guys there.”

Six months later, Tesla told The Post it is still working on sending someone to Congo.

Birth defects, illness In Lubumbashi, another center of Congo’s mining industry, 180 miles from Kolwezi, doctors have begun to unravel what has long been a mystery behind a range of health problems for local residents.

Their findings point to the mining industry as the problem.

These doctors at the University of Lubumbashi already know miners and residents are exposed to metals at levels many times higher than what is considered safe.

One of their studies found residents who live near mines or smelters in southern Congo had urinary concentrations of cobalt that were 43 times as high as that of a control group, lead levels five times as high, and cadmium and uranium levels four times as high. The levels were even higher in children.

Another study, published earlier this year, found elevated levels of metals in the mining region’s fish. A study of soil samples around mine-heavy Lubumbashi concluded the area was “among the ten most polluted areas in the world.”

Now the doctors are working to connect the dots.

“We are trying to draw a line between disease and metals,” said Eddy Mbuyu, a university chemist.

But they are cautious about their task.

“The mining business has the money, and that money means power,” said Tony Kayembe, an epidemiologist at the university’s hospital.

Current studies are looking at thyroid conditions and breathing problems. But doctors are most concerned by possible connections to birth defects. One study the university doctors published in 2012 found preliminary evidence of an increased risk of a baby being born with a visible birth defect if the father worked in Congo’s mining industry.

One study found residents who live near mines or smelters in southern Congo had:

43

times higher urinary concentrations of cobalt than that of a control group.

5

times higher lead levels.

4 times higher cadmium and uranium levels.

The levels were even higher in children.

The Lubumbashi doctors also have issued reports on birth defects so rare — one is called Mermaid syndrome — that they are the only cases ever known in Congo. All occurred in children born in heavy mining regions.

For Kayembe, the study that stood out most looked at babies born with holoprosencephaly, a usually fatal condition that causes severe, distinctive facial deformities. It is almost unheard of. Entire medical careers pass without seeing one. But last year, doctors in Lubumbashi recorded three cases in three months.

“This is not normal,” Kayembe said.

The ‘creuseurs’ wait For diggers such as Sidiki Mayamba, worried about affording flour for his family, the greatest concern is not safety or potential health problems. It is money. He needs the work. But he doesn’t want his 2-year-old son, Harold, to follow him into the mines.

“A digger is a hard job with many risks,” Mayamba said. “I cannot wish for my child to have this kind of job.”

Cleaning up the cobalt supply chain will not be easy for Huayou Cobalt, even with the support of a powerful company such as Apple.

But Chen, Huayou’s president, said it is the proper action, not only for the company but also for the Congolese miners.

“Some companies just want to get away from the problem,” Chen said. “But Congo’s problem is still there. The poverty is still there.”

The question is whether Huayou’s other customers, after years of buying cheap cobalt with no questions, will be supportive.

Pyers, the Apple senior director, said the company does not want to take steps aimed at just “making the supply chain look pretty.”

“If we all cut and run from the Democratic Republic of Congo, it would leave the Congolese people in a devastating position,” Pyers said.

“And we will not be a party to that here.”

Starting next year, Apple will internally treat cobalt like a conflict mineral, requiring all cobalt refiners to agree to outside supply-chain audits and conduct risk assessments.

Apple’s action could have major repercussions throughout the battery world. But change will be slow. Apple spent five years working to certify that its supply chain was free of conflict minerals — and that action was enforced by law.

None of these efforts change the fate of diggers such as Kandolo Mboma.

At the Tilwezembe mine this summer, Mboma sat on a boulder, seemingly catatonic, his blue jeans stained black, his bare feet dangling just above the red dirt. His eyes failed to register the other diggers filing past.

“He was working all night, and he has not eaten,” a fellow digger said.

Mboma, 35 and a father of three, was waiting for his cobalt to be weighed. Then, he hoped, he would get paid.

“You eat what you make,” Mboma said finally.

And eating would have to wait. n

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2016

16

KLMNO WEEKLY

MOVIES

Fall is season of Important Movies

CURT MERLO FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

BY

A NN H ORNADAY

A

t the Toronto International Film Festival last month, one word was heard more often than any other when writers, directors and actors appeared to publicize the movies they were in: Important.

“Snowden,” Oliver Stone’s portrait of National Security Agency leaker/whistleblower Edward Snowden, was important. “Denial,” about the efforts of scholar Deborah Lipstadt to fight Holocaust denial, was important, as were dozens of documentaries about everything from environmental degradation to the recent financial crisis.

No movie at Toronto was more important than “The Birth of a Nation,” Nate Parker’s dramatized

history of Nat Turner’s 1831 slave rebellion. “We are not creating a movie,” said Gabrielle Union, one of the film’s stars, at a news conference for the film. “We are creating a movement.”

As it does every year at Toronto, Important Movie season had officially gotten underway at a festival where serious, award-minded films make their first bids for credibility, and where filmgoers easily meet their daily minimum requirement of relevance and gravitas with each succeeding film.

For studios and publicists competing with literally hundreds of equally worthy films, calling a movie Important is a convenient way to guilt critics into seeing their films. But it also softens the ground for the run-up to the Academy Awards, which has become

Socially conscious films can move an audience — and with luck, Oscar voters

crucial in marketing movies that don’t have the ad dollars or preawareness of superhero spectacles or bestseller adaptations.

Important Movies have long been staples at Oscar time, when such socially conscious films as “In the Heat of the Night,” “Gandhi” and “Dances With Wolves” won best-picture awards rather than films that many critics and viewers considered more artistically worthy. The Important Movie narrative was refined by master marketer Harvey Weinstein, who most recently hinged the Oscar campaign for the drama “The Imitation Game” to a campaign to pardon nearly 50,000 gays who were convicted of indecency in Britain during the mid-20th century.

In Washington, it’s become commonplace for filmmakers and stars to make the obligatory midwinter trek to Capitol Hill with their movie and a newsworthy issue in tow, whether it’s David O. Russell touting the comedy “Silver Linings Playbook” as a way to explore mental health policy, or Adam McKay screening “The Big Short,” about the 2008 financial meltdown, to members of Congress.

It stands to reason that studios would seek any means necessary to separate their films from the pack.

With so much noise and so many movies to choose from, they’re hoping that filmgoers will deem an otherwise so-so movie a must-see, and that academy members will vote their social consciences, if not their artistic ones.

That’s certainly the case with “The Birth of a Nation,” which Parker made on a relative shoestring, in less than 30 days, and that often shows the awkward signs of being a first film. Surely one of the reasons Fox Searchlight acquired the film for a record sum after its premiere at Sundance was its potential as an Important Movie about slavery and resistance made during the era of #BlackLivesMatter and #OscarsSoWhite.

Of course, there are welcome instances when social and artistic significance intersect, when movies with potent real-world implications happen also to be virtuosic pieces of cinema. Steve McQueen’s

aesthetically groundbreaking “12 Years a Slave” was just such a movie, as were “Spotlight” and “Son of Saul,” which won best picture and best foreign language Oscars this year.

Plenty of movies this year are poised to be sold as Important at awards time. Barry Jenkins’s “Moonlight,” about a young African American man coming of age in Miami, and Jeff Nichols’s “Loving,” about the Supreme Court case that struck down laws against interracial marriage, manage to be both socially aware and artistically astute, eschewing the usual Important Movie tropes of billboarded messages, heroically righteous protagonists and grandiose set pieces for intimate, understated portraits of love, life and struggle.

“Hell or High Water” this summer’s Western sleeper hit, can easily stake a claim for Importance based on its backdrop of postrecession economic despair, but it deserves Oscar attention simply for its sharp writing, assured direction and exemplary performances. It was understandable why Taraji P. Henson called “Hidden Figures” important at a press event for that film, about a group of African American mathematicians — all female — who were instrumental in NASA’s early space programs. But from the clips that were on offer, “Hidden Figures” looked like a success on its own terms as pure, crowd-pleasing entertainment.

Then there are the movies with no pressing real-world relevance beyond their own ingenuity and storytelling prowess: the domestic dramas “Manchester by the Sea” and “Paterson,” the sci-fi thriller “Arrival” and the old-fashioned musical “La La Land” are just a few upcoming movies that elevate their respective genres by being original, superbly crafted and deeply affecting. They’re not about issues, they’re about people and emotion and beauty and loss.

With luck, more movies will emerge in coming months that succeed by virtue of sensitivity and sheer excellence. That should be important enough, whether the “i” is capitalized or not. n

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2016

17

HEALTH

KLMNO WEEKLY

Cool new trend gets into hot water BY

K ERRY L AUERMAN

A

new ice age is here. And it’s making amazing promises of pain-free joints and sculpted abs.

Cryotherapy — a freezing treatment turned piping-hot health trend — is being hyped by spas across the country, many of which sprang up within the past year.

Among them, NYC Cryo in New York promises that cryotherapy leads to “quicker surgical recovery time.” Atlanta’s Cryo Elite Therapy said it “has been proven to improve peak levels of performance.”

Omaha’s Ice Out CryoSpa boasts “alleviation of depression, anxiety, fatigue, insomnia.” CryoSF in San Francisco says the treatment “helps increase testosterone in men” and “helps reduce signs of aging, increase collagen production, improve skin condition and reduce cellulite.”

The problem: There’s no solid evidence to back any of it up. And the Food and Drug Administration is warning spas to stop making such claims.

There’s actually very little research on cryotherapy at all. “The evidence is lacking for me to say yes, it’s effective, or no, it’s not effective,” says Joseph Costello, a lecturer in exercise physiology at the University of Portsmouth, in England, who wrote a much-cited review of all the available research on whole-body cryotherapy last year.

That isn’t stopping untold thousands from lining up every week to follow the likes of LeBron James, Tony Robbins, sundry celebrities and “Real Housewives” into cylindrical cryotherapy chambers, where they get blasted from the neck down with abominably cold air.

What does cryotherapy do, exactly? Advocates like to say that the cold air forces blood to your core, tricking the body into thinking it’s experiencing hypothermia.

From there, the claims get a bit fuzzy. Believers in whole-body cryotherapy say it acts as a supercharged ice bath, allowing muscles and tendons to more quickly recover from heavy training or

BILL O’LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST

Spas hype health benefits of cryotherapy, but FDA says evidence doesn’t support those claims pain, reducing inflammation. And many just claim, in the most unscientific of terms, that they feel energized by the treatment.

To find out what it feels like, I visited DistrictCryo, a new spa, for a three-minute session with air pouring in at minus-215 degrees.

(Mine was a “warmer” treatment; the air temperature can drop to minus-275 degrees.) I wore socks, slippers and gloves they gave me (men are also asked to keep their briefs on) and a robe, which I removed and handed over once I was entombed in the chamber.

Moments in, there was a burning sensation on my forearms — minor perspiration turning to ice? — that disappeared within seconds.

It felt unnaturally cold, as it should, since the air dropped well below earthly temperatures. (The lowest ever recorded at ground level is minus-128.6.)

My teeth chattered. I shivered.

It was unpleasant but not intolera-

ble. And afterward, I experienced a giddy surge of endorphins that lifted me for about an hour.

But I couldn’t discern whether any of it was caused by the cryotherapy or my own nerves, jangled from the peculiar experience. Was it cold-induced “vasodilation,” as cryo-experts would tell you, or just adrenaline-fueled relief?

Following the oversize claims made by some cryotherapy providers — and after the death of one person in a cryotherapy chamber last year — the FDA issued a strongly worded warning against whole-body cryotherapy in July.

“Consumers may incorrectly believe that the FDA has cleared or approved [whole-body cryotherapy] devices as safe and effective to treat medical conditions,” Aron Yustein, a medical officer in the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in the FDA warning. “That is not the case.”

The FDA recently released let-

Antwain Coward opens up a cryotherapy chamber for Meredith Santora.

With little research having been done on the process, the Food and Drug Administration issued a strongly worded warning against whole-body cryotherapy.

ters it sent to two California cryotherapy businesses advising them that the health claims they were making about cryotherapy “may be considered false and misleading.” Deborah Kotz, an FDA spokeswoman, said that, beyond warning letters and recalls, the FDA can take “further enforcement action to protect public health, including conducting and coordinating criminal investigations.”

The allure of cold therapies has been around for a long time. The Greeks promoted cold baths as a healthy tonic; the Romans celebrated in their frigidariums. But whole-body cryotherapy was specifically developed in 1978 by a physician, Toshima Yamauchi, as an experimental way to treat rheumatoid arthritis. By the 1990s, it began to become popular in various European spas as an alternative treatment for chronic pain.

It started drawing public attention here in 2011, when U.S. athletes followed the lead of U.K. soccer teams and embraced it as a restorative, post-competition therapy.

Cryotherapy spread to the celebrity set, with Jennifer Aniston, Daniel Craig and Jessica Alba reportedly booking appointments.

All that Hollywood sizzle slowed last year after 24-year-old Chelsea Ake-Salvacion was found dead in a cryotherapy unit in the Las Vegas area spa where she worked. An autopsy later ruled that she had suffocated. She may have lost consciousness when she ducked her head down into the unit, possibly to retrieve her cellphone, and succumbed to the liquid-nitrogen-cooled air.

For Matt Bellina, 33, who was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, five years ago, whole-body cryotherapy has become a daily ritual for the past six months at the Newtown Athletic Club in Newtown, Pa. “It’s definitely not a cure, but it’s definitely helping. I’m in a lot less pain, I’m sleeping better at night, I have a lot more energy,” Bellina said. And he says his doctor cautiously endorses his sessions — “if I think it’s helping.” n

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2016

18

KLMNO WEEKLY

BOOKS

The woman in Eleanor Roosevelt’s life N ONFICTION l REVIEWED

‘T ELEANOR AND HICK The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady

By Susan Quinn Penguin Press. 404 pp. $30

BY

S TACY S CHIFF

he dame has enormous dignity, she’s a person,” star Associated Press reporter Lorena Hickok wired her boss after the 1932 Democratic convention. She had had her eye for some time on Eleanor Roosevelt, who, she believed, would make better copy than a traditional first lady. Hickok lobbied hard for the White House beat; she wound up with more than she anticipated. Months later, on the eve of his inauguration, Franklin Roosevelt submitted his speech to Eleanor, in the hotel room next door, for her approval.

She read those pages — she was among the first to hear that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” — aloud to Hickok, in Eleanor’s dressing gown, soon to be asleep in Eleanor’s bedroom. From the White House two nights later, the first lady apologized by letter to “Hick,” as she called her, after a phone conversation. As she had not been alone, it had not been possible to end the call with the customary “je t’aime et je t’adore.”

We have come a long way since a 1980 biography of Hickok that bypassed the women’s massive correspondence and dismissed the friendship as a “belated schoolgirl crush.” Today the relationship startles less for its intricate choreography than for its blithe simplicity: Six months into FDR’s first term, Hick and Eleanor escaped in Eleanor’s light-blue convertible for a three-week tour of New England and Canada. They traveled with remarkable anonymity and without escorts. It was unlikely, Eleanor and Hick had assured the Secret Service, that they would be kidnapped. Indeed, the Buick proved the primary attraction; only in a small Maine town, at the end of the trip, were the travelers recognized. Afterward they filled FDR in on the adventure over a three-person White House dinner.

To answer the question: No one knows precisely. Certainly it was a romance. As Quinn concedes midbook, it may or may not have been

ASSOCIATED PRESS

First lady Eleanor Roosevelt, in the white hat, and Lorena Hickok, with the long scarf, survey living conditions in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1934.

an erotic one. For the next 12 years, Hick mostly lived at the White House; she sent her laundry there when on the road. Early on, Eleanor arranged for her to travel the country to take the pulse of Depression America for a federal agency. She pelted Hick with letters, to the point that her correspondent called for a moratorium on ostentatious White House stationery. The two women thought of each other in church, before they fell asleep, all day long. Hick wrote to Eleanor: “I want to put my arms around you and kiss you at the corner of your mouth.” Eleanor yearned to lie with Hick in her arms. She wore a ring Hick gave her. The two made a point of spending Christmas together, if not always on Dec. 25. The arrangement nearly fell apart only in 1941, when an annoyed Eleanor rescheduled at the last minute. No one had told her Winston Churchill was coming.

Eleanor did not strike relatives as a woman much given to physical intimacy; the mother of six would warn a daughter that sex was an ordeal.Having discovered her husband’s infidelity, Eleanor had agreed to remain in the marriage but not in FDR’s bed. She later maintained that mutual in-

terests meant more to a marriage than sexual satisfaction. Ultimately with Hick, the form of intimacy mattered little: The ex-reporter was for years Eleanor’s emotional anchor, her most trusted correspondent, her eyes, ears and spine.

It was in her that Eleanor confided her dislike of politics, the infighting and adulation, the scrutiny and scheming.

Quinn is not the first to examine the two women’s romance, but she is the first to devote a full volume to the relationship, however, detailing its ramifications for the White House and for Eleanor.

Hick’s reports from the field informed New Deal policy. She taught the first lady how to handle the press; she encouraged her to write her syndicated column, which grew from their correspondence. Quinn argues that Hick — who could turn out seven political speeches in 48 hours — made Eleanor a better writer. Certainly Eleanor got the better deal. She arranged several positions for Hick, including one at the Works Progress Administration, but essentially ruined her reportorial career, “the only thing I ever was really good at,” as Hick sighed later.

Quinn has produced an intimate book, tender and wise. She is

strangely silent on only one count: She offers no sense of what, if anything, FDR knew or whether it mattered.

With the war years, Quinn’s account resists her bold subtitle, which uneasily accommodates the two women’s diverging paths and fortunes. Eleanor moves on without Hick, who is nowhere in sight when, late in life, Eleanor falls for a dashing younger physician. We are left to flinch when she assures him, at 72: “I love you as . . . I have never loved anyone else.” He will marry — in Eleanor’s apartment.

She goes on to share a New York townhouse with the newlyweds.

Triangles seemed to suit her.

Eleanor shaped Hick’s later decades as much as Hick had shaped her White House years. Ailing and broke, Hick agreed to co-author a book with the former first lady.

Eleanor persuaded Helen Keller to meet with Hick, who wrote a bestselling account of her life. Both Eleanor and Hick produced memoirs: Hick’s irreverent, moody pages never found a home. Eleanor’s dutiful, bland account of the White House years met with lavish praise. n Schiff is the author, most recently, of “The Witches: Salem, 1692.”

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2016

19

BOOKS

KLMNO WEEKLY

A crime novel that deserves respect

A son’s portrait of murderous father

F ICTION

N ONFICTION

I

l

REVIEWED BY

P ATRICK A NDERSON

t has become increasingly clear that U.S.-born, Dublinbased Tana French is the most interesting, most important crime novelist to emerge in the past 10 years. Now, with the publication of her sixth novel, “The Trespasser,” it’s time to recognize that French’s work renders absurd the lingering distinction between genre and literary fiction — the notion that although crime novels might be better plotted and more readable, only literary fiction, supposedly blessed with superior writing, characterizations and intellectual firepower, deserves the respect of serious readers.

French pointedly rejects that dichotomy. “I’ve never been much for the artificial divide between ‘literary’ fiction and ‘genre’ fiction,” she said in a recent interview. “I’ve never seen why audiences should be expected to be satisfied with either gripping plots or good writing. Why shouldn’t they be offered both at once?” All she is asking, for herself and other of the best crime writers, is that they not be denied critical recognition simply because they write about murders.

For God’s sake, “Hamlet” is about a murder.

French’s new novel brings back the two young detectives from the Dublin Murder Squad, Antoinette Conway and Stephen Moran, who solved the prep-school slaying in her 2014 offering, “The Secret Place.” Conway narrates “The Trespasser,” and with her anger, intelligence and toughness emerges as French’s finest character yet. (Or would that still be Frank Mackey from “Faithful Place”? Hard to say.)

Conway and Moran are assigned to investigate the murder of a young woman found dead in her Dublin home. Her boyfriend is the initial suspect, which leaves the two less than thrilled to have the case, because it looks like a routine domestic killing and solving those carries no glory. Because the case against the boyfriend is

circumstantial, Conway and Moran shift their attention to another suspect, only to have more senior detectives pressure them to arrest the boyfriend. The partners begin to fear that their colleagues have some agenda other than the truth.

Conway, the lone woman on the Murder Squad, has for months been a target for abuse. Her colleagues make ugly comments about her looks and presumed sex life; they steal documents from her desk; once she discovers that someone has spit in her coffee. She stubbornly refuses to bow to the sexism, because she loves being a detective. “When it’s right, this job is the hit that speed freaks throw their lives away hunting,” she says.

Still, the hazing is tough, and she’s starting to wonder if she should quit.

As the investigation continues, French increasingly focuses on the Murder Squad itself, on the kind of men the detectives are and how they do their jobs. Many fine writers have written well about police work, but I don’t recall any novel that digs more deeply into police culture, the tricks of the trade, the ugly side and the heroics, too, than French does here.

Starting in 2007 with “In the Woods,” which won an Edgar Award and a slew of other prizes, all of French’s novels have been international bestsellers. The books have achieved this success because they’re unfailingly intelligent and beautifully written, and because they are never lurid — there’s little sex or gratuitous gore in them. Their magic lies less in the crimes themselves than in the distinct new worlds French creates to showcase each of them.

Readers understand and embrace her work; it’s time for more of the people who review books and award prizes to rethink the cliches about genres and recognize the excellence — the literary excellence — of her work. n Anderson regularly reviews mysteries and thrillers for The Washington Post.

I THE TRESPASSER

By Tana French Viking. 449 pp. $27

PABLO ESCOBAR My Father

By Juan Pablo Escobar Thomas Dunne. 353 pp. $27.99

l

REVIEWED BY

K ONSTANTIN K AKAES

f this book were an isolated undertaking, it would be simple enough to ignore it. But even if it becomes only a marginal cultural artifact in the United States, it was a bestseller across Latin America. It is reflective of a more generalized whitewashing of the celebrity drug lord Pablo Escobar. There is a thriving business in Escobar-tourism in Medellin, the Colombian city that served as his stronghold. “Narcos,” a television series on Netflix that parallels many of the stories in the book, portrays Escobar as a lovable rogue. That show is an insult to the dead; suffering as entertainment only enables brutality.

Now the drug kingpin’s son Juan Pablo Escobar, who also uses the name Sebastián Marroquín, has written this moral train wreck of a memoir of his father’s life and times. Published in Spanish in 2014, “Pablo Escobar: My Father” has been newly translated into English. It is reasonable to ask why. The younger Escobar dwells on the indignities of his own life, and revels in the luxuries of his adolescence (a $10,000 wristwatch he wore when he was 13), although he claims not to want to brag. He glides over the deaths his father orchestrated; if Juan Pablo, the man, feels the tragic weight of his inheritance, Juan Pablo, the writer, lacks the skill to convey it.

Juan Pablo Escobar’s father made the Forbes magazine list of the world’s richest people on the strength of his expertise in cocaine arbitrage. That expertise was realized in the form of an organized campaign of violence against rival drug traffickers, the Colombian state and the Colombian people.

The elder Escobar was killed in a shootout with Colombian police in 1993. Nobody, to my knowledge, has tallied up the total death toll that he was personally responsible for. Any reasonable estimate would reach into the tens of thousands.

Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, a Colombian minister of justice, was killed

at his orders. So, too was Luis Carlos Galán, who probably would have been elected president had he not been gunned down in 1989.

Avianca Flight 203, from Bogota to Cali, was bombed at his orders, killing more than 100 people on board. His men detonated a truck bomb outside of Colombia’s Administrative Department of Security, a sort of analogue to the FBI, killing dozens.

Juan Pablo Escobar delineates his view of his father in the opening pages of the book: “From the day I was born till the day he died, my father was my friend, my guide, my teacher, and my trusted advisor.” This does not square with his ostensible intention to honor the memories of his father’s victims, “with all my heart.” There is no honor in this book; sprinkling pro forma clichés of regret into the text at random intervals is a lazy, abortive attempt at absolution.

The younger Escobar was 17 when his father died. Although that couldn’t have been easy, it is not an excuse for the narrative decision he made as a grown man to segue directly from a promise to honor his father’s victims to a blow-by-blow account of a dispute with his father’s siblings about his inheritance. This acute dislocation recurs repeatedly in the book.

Pablo Escobar consciously aimed to portray himself as a sort of Robin Hood-esque figure, erratically dispersing alms around Medellin and surrounding areas.

Ought that real, if scattershot, charity atone for some share of his numerous sins? This indolent and immature book sheds little light on this question. A smattering of chintzy truisms about peace, forgiveness and reconciliation fail to obscure the basic truth that this book is an exercise in trading on Pablo Escobar’s celebrity that implicates the author in his father’s crimes, an accessory after the fact. n Kakaes is a fellow at New America and author of the “The Pioneer Detectives.”

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20

KLMNO WEEKLY

OPINIONS

I survived the train crash, no thanks to politicians KARL WARD is a site reliability engineer. He lives in Hillsdale, N.J.

I was in the lead car of the New Jersey Transit train that crashed Sept. 29 in Hoboken, N.J., sitting about eight rows from the front, on the left side, and as we entered the station the lights went out, I felt the car leave the rails and my first thought was: This is a train crash — duck and cover.

Thankfully, most of us survived. But I’m devastated for the family of the one woman who died, and I think about those hurt more seriously than me. And now that a few days have passed, another thought comes to mind. The whole thing should — and could — have been prevented.

The crash itself was chaos: Unlike the cliche, at no point did I feel like my life flashed before my eyes, but right before impact, I tucked my head down against the seat in front of me, put my hands over my head, closed my eyes and thought, “This is not something you get away from.”

My car’s roof and the roof of the station were destroyed, and the compartment was filled with sheet metal and insulation from both. My seat back was wrecked, but the seat in front of me was intact and I’m pretty sure that’s what shielded me from the worst damage. Sheet metal cut a deep gash in my knee and my forearm, sheared off my thumbnail and lacerated my neck from my ear to my throat.

Once I was away from the wreckage, I called my wife and told her that I’d survived the crash, but that I was injured and not yet sure how badly. I walked outside and found a NJ Transit police officer who told me to sit down and wait there for the EMTs. All things considered, most people were doing what they could to make the best of a bad situation, but I was unnerved by several people standing around taking pictures rather than offering to help — even in the midst of everything going on, I found myself wondering why

someone’s first instinct would be to document, rather than assist, in that type of situation. I’m grateful to the people who offered me water and to those who volunteered to make calls for me.

Eventually, a first responder named Bev arrived to take my contact information and wait with me until an ambulance arrived. At one point, I came close to passing out and laid down on the ground with my leg elevated on top of my backpack, thinking, “Oh . . . this is how you end up dying, bleeding to death on the ground waiting for the ambulance.” But at some point, more help arrived, and Bev and the others covered me with blankets and their own coats and talked with me, keeping me conscious throughout. Two doctors who were on their way to work stopped to help. They wrapped my leg and arm to slow the bleeding and then the ambulance arrived.

At the hospital, my blood pressure crashed from blood loss, but I recovered without a transfusion. It was like one of those TV-show emergency room scenes — I was shaking violently and surrounded by doctors and nurses. Again, I worried, thinking, “Of course, this is how you die . . . bleeding to death in the hospital.” But that was the last truly scary incident of the day. I

PANCHO BERNASCONI/GETTY IMAGES

Train personnel survey the NJ Transit train that crashed into the platform at the Hoboken Terminal on Sept. 29 in New Jersey.

remained conscious until they ultimately put me under for surgery. Doctors had to work on ligament, arterial and membrane damage in my knee, but afterward I was told that the surgery went well. I also got stitches on my neck, forearm, thumb and middle finger.

Bottom line: I’m happy to be home with my family — there were moments when I thought I might never see them again. And I still get choked up thinking about all of the first responders, transit workers, Good Samaritans and hospital staff who gave a little, or a lot, to save my life.

Other than a few bystanders taking pictures, what bothers — no, infuriates — me, is the thought that the crash might have been preventable. The cause is still undetermined, but “Federal investigators are looking at the lack of positive train control” as “a possible factor.” Positive train control is a safety feature that, by federal law, rail systems were supposed to implement by 2015 until the deadline was extended until 2018. Right now, only a few NJ Transit trains have been equipped with this system, and, reportedly, NJ Transit employees have yet to be trained in its use.

But instead of making transportation infrastructure a priority for his administration, Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) has feuded with the state’s

Democratic legislature over transportation funding, holding a gas tax increase hostage to get a repeal of the estate tax. Finally, the other week, in exchange for a sales tax cut and an eventual phasing-out of the estate tax, Christie agreed to a gas tax hike — one day after the crash. As far as I’m concerned as a taxpayer, that’s too late.

Of course, I’d prefer it if none of us who were on that train or at the station would have experienced that horrible crash. But if there’s any chance for that day’s events to go from senseless to somehow meaningful, it will only be if we hold Christie and the rest of our elected leaders accountable. We have to demand that public safety — implementing positive train control; upgrading trains, tracks, stations and other infrastructure; and making sure the state budget has necessary funds for properly staffed and equipped firstresponse services — is a nonpartisan issue that should come before a partisan agenda of tax cuts for the wealthy.

As far as I’m concerned, New Jersey’s government officials failed me and everyone else on that train by caring more about politics than safety.

The crash was terrifying. It’s terrifying to think we could have another one because our representatives won’t do their jobs. n

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2016

21

OPINIONS

KLMNO WEEKLY

TOM TOLES

‘Surrender and you can eat again’ DAVID IGNATIUS writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column and contributes to the PostPartisan blog.

“Catastrophic” is the word several U.S. officials use privately to discuss the latest developments in Syria, in which a savage Russian bombing campaign has brought Aleppo near the point of surrender. Yet even as members of the Obama administration acknowledge the horror, they remain wary of options that might counter the onslaught.

Whatever else U.S. officials say about Syria, they should begin with an admission that we are diminished, as individuals and as a nation, by watching the destruction of a city and its people. Russia may be wading further into a military quagmire, but the United States is deep in a moral one. The stain of Syria won’t leave our national consciousness for many years.

U.S. intelligence officials describe a Russian campaign to break the Syrian opposition’s will, much as the United States and its allies did in the incendiary bombing of German and Japanese cities in World War II. Russian weapons now include thermobaric bombs, incendiary munitions, cluster bombs and bunker busters. They are attempting to burn Aleppo alive.

As cease-fire talks collapsed recently, the Russians have struck hospitals, bread lines at bakeries, civilian neighborhoods. The

message, says one U.S. analyst, is: “Surrender and you can eat again.”

Here’s a U.S. intelligence official’s chilling assessment: “The Syrian regime and its Russian backers have adopted a calculated approach of exacerbating the dire humanitarian situation in Aleppo as a weapon of war. Their apparent goal is to make living conditions in the city so intolerable that the opposition has no choice but to capitulate.”

Think about those dry analytical words: The Russians have made civilian suffering “a weapon of war.”

U.S. analysts fear that Aleppo may fall in a few weeks, marking a significant turning point in the war. The analysts note that the city could hold out several months longer, given residents’ resilience.

If Aleppo does fall, what then?

The answer is a deeper, nastier civil

war. Explains the U.S. intelligence official: “Even if the regime is able to eke out a victory in Aleppo, the opposition will not be easily defeated. They are simply too large to defeat.” The opposition force totals about 100,000, including fighters from the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, analysts estimate.

(The group said recently that it was changing its name to the Front for the Conquest of Syria and splitting from al-Qaeda.)

U.S. officials see two possibilities if Aleppo surrenders.

Opposition fighters could disperse and harass Syrian and Russian troops behind the lines or they could concentrate forces in the rural areas of provinces such as Idlib, Homs, Hama and Daraa where the opposition is already strong. The United States and its coalition partners — such as Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia — could increase covert military support to these fighters.

Backing the opposition is a tricky problem. A U.S. official says Jabhat al-Nusra has been the “main beneficiary” (other than the Assad regime) of Russia’s onslaught. “Until Moscow stops bombing hospitals and aid workers, Nusra will continue to exploit the situation . . . and portray itself as the defender of the Syrian people,” the official explained.

“What’s ahead is not regime control, but guerrilla warfare,” predicts one analyst. For Russia, that can’t be an appetizing prospect.

White House caution about military options is reinforced by the Pentagon, as has been the case since the Syria conflict began.

Pentagon officials still cite a 2013 letter from Gen. Martin Dempsey, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warning Congress that a no-fly zone to protect civilians would cost $500 million initially and $1 billion a month thereafter, and would “require hundreds of ground and sea-based aircraft.”

The administration’s wariness has deepened since Russia’s intervention in 2015.

If military options are risky in Aleppo, what about humanitarian assistance? Here, there’s an opportunity for America to be bold — in a massive mobilization, organized as quickly as hurricane or earthquake relief, that could bring aid to suffering civilians.

Line the relief convoys up at the Turkish, Jordanian and Lebanese borders and dare the Russians to stop them. Air-drop supplies to a besieged, desperate city. Let the world see what Russia’s brutal policies have brought. These are inadequate, imperfect options, but they’re surely better than doing nothing. n

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2016

22

OPINIONS

KLMNO WEEKLY

BY HALL

BY NICK ANDERSON FOR THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Companies must be forces for good TOM WILSON is chairman and chief executive of the Allstate Corp. and vice chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

For decades, corporations have been expected to concentrate on one mission: maximizing profits for shareholders. While that might have been appropriate decades ago, it isn’t now. The emphasis on profits has widened the trust gap between corporations and society, resulting in an adversarial relationship between the private and public sectors. Let me be clear: Shareholders must get a good return, but at the same time, corporations must work to be a force for good in society.

This single-minded focus on profits is largely due to the late Milton Friedman, Nobel Prizewinning economist. In his 1962 book “Capitalism and Freedom,” Friedman declared, “There is one and only one social responsibility of business . . . to increase its profits.” That argument has shaped the thinking of business leaders and created the corporations we have today. But now it’s in danger of diminishing the very capitalist system Friedman promoted.

Corporations always have adapted to the times. They came into being 500 years ago to handle tasks beyond the abilities of sovereign states, such as facilitating trade between England and Asia. Over time, the roles of corporations evolved as society’s needs

changed — accumulating capital for mega-projects such as railways; introducing technological innovations and, in the process, creating the mass market; and rebuilding Europe after World War II. Society’s needs are changing yet again.

The role of corporations needs to change, too.

The corporation of the next 100 years must take on societal problems. On their own, governments, social service and charitable organizations simply do not have the capabilities and resources to solve the problems

of inadequate education, poverty or public fiscal insolvency. And most people agree: In a recent survey, 87 percent of young Americans said corporations should do more than just make money.

Corporations should be encouraged and rewarded for stepping up to solve society’s problems. That will require a change in mind-set. Today, corporate leaders are graded on stock price, not on the amount of good their companies do. We must broaden our evaluation of corporations beyond share prices to provide space, light and water for their role to grow.

Shareholders should be asking how corporations are building intangible assets such as customer relationships, their employee bases and their reputations, not just pushing for share buybacks. Shareholder activists who care only about short-term profits should be called out by the pension funds and endowments who, after all, have a vested interest in taking

Society’s needs are changing yet again. The role of corporations needs to change, too.

a long view of building a better America. Corporate leaders must have the fortitude to resist having their performance reduced to a single measure.

I certainly do not intend to gauge the success of my leadership at Allstate on one measure. Most other corporate leaders feel the same way. None of us want to be remembered as a “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap, a nowretired executive known for downsizing companies.

But no one has to, because fully integrating social good into a corporation’s purpose is also good for business. Helping communities raises a company’s reputation among customers, which supports growth and helps them attract, develop, motivate and retain the best workers.

This year, for example, we raised Allstate’s minimum starting wage to the equivalent of $15 per hour because it was good business to do so; stronger, more prosperous communities with better-educated workers and customers also provide a much better economic and business climate.

We must reject narrow definitions of what corporations can and should do — and get on with making the world a better place. n

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2016

23

KLMNO WEEKLY

FIVE MYTHS

Nuclear weapons BY

D AN Z AK

Nukes have been shrouded in myth since they were credited — im­ properly, many say — with ending World War II by destroying two Japanese cities. Seventy­one years later, and decades after the end of the Cold War, these weapons continue to bedevil diplomacy, dis­ course and the planet itself.

MYTH NO. 1 Nuclear weapons haven’t been used since World War II. Although nuclear weapons have not been used again in combat, they’ve been detonated 2,055 times since Aug. 9, 1945, mostly by the United States and the Soviet Union. These tests have been both demonstrations of force and experiments with weapon design and effectiveness.

From 1946 to 1958, for example, the United States exploded the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day in the Marshall Islands to study the weaponry and intimidate Moscow; the USSR wrought similar devastation near the Arctic Circle and in present-day Kazakhstan.

In September, North Korea — the only nation to test nuclear devices in the 21st century — conducted its fifth underground detonation to assert its position in geopolitics and to coerce its enemies. And although the United States doesn’t conduct full-scale testing, Pentagon officials like to say that American nukes are used every second of every day, as a deterrent.

MYTH NO.2 Nuclear weapons keep the peace.

Richard Nixon’s madman theory — that he should be viewed as crazy enough to unleash nuclear weapons during the Vietnam War — neither curbed bloodshed nor cowed Moscow and the Viet Cong. The Cuban Missile Crisis did not result in nuclear war, but John F. Kennedy made decisions that might have led to one: “If fear of nuclear war prevents

leaders from taking steps that might lead to nuclear war, and if Kennedy knew that blockading Cuba might result in nuclear war, then why wasn’t Kennedy deterred?” Ward Wilson wrote in his book “5 Myths about Nuclear Weapons.”

Indeed, nuclear weapons have helped instigate conflict without even existing. The mere rumor of a nuclear program in Iraq — and the thought of Saddam Hussein supplying his nukes to terrorists — was enough to send the United States into a costly war, now in its 14th year, that has upended the Middle East.

MYTH NO.3 Nuclear terrorism is likely to happen.

In reality, that’s a “highconsequence, low-probability event,” retired Los Alamos chemist Cheryl Rofer told the Arms Control Association this year. “ . . . In any case, if a terrorist group could get, say, sufficient enriched uranium to make a bomb, would they be able to make it? There are lots of things that can go wrong.”

A non-nuclear explosion laced with radioactive materials (a dirty bomb) is a more likely and far less destructive scenario: Since 1995, there have been 2,889 confirmed cases of lost, stolen or misused nuclear or radioactive material, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Also more likely: a major nuclear accident. From 1950 to 1968, at least 1,200 nuclear weapons were involved in “significant” incidents in the United States, according to Eric

AHN YOUNG-JOON/ASSOCIATED PRESS

A TV program talks about a North Korean missile launch in June. North Korea is the only nation to test nuclear devices in the 21st century.

Schlosser’s book “Command and Control,” which details a 1980 explosion at an Arkansas missile silo that threw a thermonuclear warhead into the sky.

And from 2009 to 2013, there were 1,500 reportable incidents involving U.S. nukes or the systems that manage them, according to the anti-nuclear nonprofit organization Global Zero.

MYTH NO. 4 The United States is not modernizing its nuclear forces.

This is not true. There are nine nuclear-armed nations — Israel has not acknowledged its arsenal but is alleged to have 80 warheads — and each one is modernizing its nuclear forces in some fashion. Russia and the United States have embarked on major modernization plans of their nuclear triad: the aircraft, submarines and missiles that launch or carry warheads to their targets.

Washington’s current and planned investment in nuclear forces is unrivaled, and will cost an estimated $1 trillion over the next 30 years, according to the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

MYTH NO. 5 Nuclear proliferation can only continue.

Yes, the number of countries with nuclear arsenals has grown over time, but the volume of warheads has been slashed over the past 30 years through intense negotiation by diplomats and hard work by nonproliferation experts. About 15,000 nuclear warheads are on the planet right now, down from a historical peak of more than 60,000 in the mid1980s. Material for nuclear weapons has been eliminated from 30 countries. Last year’s Iran deal has at least delayed the entry of a 10th member into the nuclear club. Recently, the Obama administration backed a U.N. resolution that reaffirms the ban on nuclear tests — a move to badger North Korea back into compliance.

So progress is possible. Just last month, six countries submitted a resolution to the United Nations that calls for the negotiation of a ban treaty next year — an attempt to turbocharge nonproliferation. n Zak is a reporter for The Washington Post and the author of “Almighty: Courage, Resistance and Existential Peril in the Nuclear Age.”

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2016

24

A & Q

ES T A D I D N A ASK THE C

THE RACE: Washington State Lands Commissioner THIS WEEK’S QUESTION: Does the state need to take a more aggressive approach to prescribed burning as a firefighting method?

CANDIDATES:

HILARY FRANZ

STEVE McLAUGHLIN

Environmental lawyer, executive director of Futurewise

Retired naval officer, security consultant and teacher

prefers Democratic Party

prefers Republican Party

Answer: As a state, we need to invest in prevention as well as response in managing wildfires. From 2010-2014, Washington spent about $200 million on wildfire suppression, but only $31 million on treating forests. Part of that treatment process must include increasing our application of prescribed burns — one of the most effective proactive wildfire management tools at our disposal.

As it stands, Washington currently carries out far fewer prescribed burns than neighboring Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and California. Prescribed burns limit the intensity of wildfires by reducing the fuel load, thereby minimizing the potential of some of the catastrophic fires we saw in 2015, such as the Okanogan fire complex, which burned 304,782 acres and killed three firefighters. It is my number one priority to invest in our forest resiliency in order to mitigate the impacts of climate change, and protect our most critical natural resource economy.

ANSWER: I am a strong advocate for prescribed burning to reduce fuels in areas with low to moderate fuel buildup. Prescribed burning is essential to improve forest health and a major element of fire prevention. My strategy for fire management includes a preventive aspect — removing dead branches from trees to avoid fuel laddering; removing fuel from the forest floor (woody biomass); prescribed burns to eliminate forest duff; and grazing to control seasonal fuel loading from grasses and other cattle/sheep feed. By burning off waste materials from the forest floor, snow melt and rainfall is allowed to percolate through mineral soils to recharge aquifers, thus enhancing spring, stream and water quality.

Last year carbon emissions from wildfire was the second highest level after transportation in the state. Reducing fuel loads gives us a better chance to keep fires small, lower the fire intensity, and reduce smoke emissions during burning.

If you have a question you’d like to ask the candidates in any race in North Central Washington please your suggestion to newsroom@wenatcheeworld.com.

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