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29 December 21
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The forces undermining our democracy, polluting our planet, and stoking hatred are counting on you to give up. But we must not let them.
They use their allies in political office to grind the gears of government to a halt, so people see government as the problem, not the solution. But if there’s one thing we learned from this wretched pandemic, it’s that government intervention can reduce poverty and suffering, and we can afford to pay for it.
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Donald Trump speaks during a farewell ceremony at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on 20 January this year. (photo: Rex/Shutterstock)
As a result, the committee won't be getting hundreds of pages of National Security Council records. But the documents may not have been all that helpful, anyway.
The revelation comes in a new round of letters about the status of Trump-era documents held by the National Archives. It's the first time the Biden administration appears to have pushed back significantly against the House select committee, as the National Archives works through thousands of pages of records from the Trump administration at the request of the House committee.
At least some of the House's document requests appear to have gone too far, even for the Biden administration. Such a development isn't out of the ordinary during a congressional inquiry into West Wing affairs, but it hadn't emerged yet for the House select committee, which had been essentially aligned with the Biden White House on questions of access.
The curtailing of the House panel's request, however, may not affect its core mission of understanding then-President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential vote and the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6. That's because this latest round of documents over which Congress and the executive branch negotiated "appear to have no content that might be material to the Select Committee's investigation," the Biden White House said in a letter this month.
It said it wants to keep these records secret to preserve the confidentiality of discussions and advice around the presidency.
"President Biden recognizes that Congress has a compelling need, in service of its legislative functions, to understand the circumstances that led to the insurrection," wrote Jonathan Su, a lawyer for the Biden White House. "The documents for which the Select Committee has agreed to withdraw or defer its request do not appear to bear on the White House's preparations for or response to the events of January 6, or on efforts to overturn the election or otherwise obstruct the peaceful transfer of power."
The House is still seeking -- and the Biden administration is willing to release -- more than 700 pages of crucial Trump White House records documenting Trump's and top advisers' discussions, phone calls and visits up to and on January 6.
But Trump filed a lawsuit to block their release and continues to claim that several hundred pages should be kept private, under his assertions of executive privilege. He is asking the Supreme Court to hear his case, after losing at two lower courts.
Before this month, the National Archives had processed and weighed the positions of Trump and of the current White House on at least four separate collections of documents. As the review of records continued at the archives, the Biden administration in recent weeks looked at 511 pages from the National Security Council during Trump's presidency, as the House committee has been seeking a broad swath of documents from the former President's time in office.
"The Select Committee has agreed to withdraw or defer its request for a significant portion of those records," White House counsel Dana Remus wrote to the archives on December 17.
The committee issued a statement later Tuesday, making clear that it wasn't dropping parts of its pursuit.
"The Select Committee welcomes President Biden's decision to clear the way for the production of another set of records," a committee spokesperson said in the statement. "The committee has agreed to defer action on certain records as part of the accommodations process, as was the case with an earlier tranche of records. The Select Committee has not withdrawn its request for these records and will continue to engage with the executive branch to ensure the committee gets access to all the information relevant to our probe."
Even so, the committee could face a drawn-out negotiation with the Biden administration if it does still push for access to national security records, either because of potential standoffs over executive privilege or issues related to classified or law-enforcement sensitive material, the White House suggested in its letter.
There was a previous situation in October where the House committee backed off pursuing a much smaller collection of January 6 documents, as it headed to court against Trump, and without the same level of public pushback from the Biden White House.
Senator Harry Reid in 2014. In his three-decade Senate tenure he oversaw the passage of landmark legislation, including a sweeping economic stimulus, a new set of rules for Wall Street and the Affordable Care Act. (photo: Stephen Crowley/NYT)
The death was confirmed by David Krone, a former chief of staff. Mr. Reid was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2018.
A combative but soft-spoken former amateur boxer, Mr. Reid displayed an economy of personal magnetism and embraced the art of the scrappy insult. Columnist Molly Ivins called him “charismatically challenged.” Obama, a friend and political ally, euphemistically remarked on his “curmudgeonly charm.”
Mr. Reid was never a commanding presence before a crowd or on television. Sometimes he was barely audible, and he tended to litter his speeches with awkward pauses. But he was the consummate inside player, exercising his political and legislative skills behind the scenes.
He was Senate majority leader from 2007 through 2014. Since the position’s creation in the 1920s, only two senators have held it longer: Democrats Mike Mansfield of Montana, from 1961 through 1976, and Alben W. Barkley of Kentucky, from 1937 through 1946.
After overcoming long odds to achieve political leadership, Mr. Reid was not one to apologize for being who he was.
“I didn’t make it in life because of my athletic prowess,” he said in his 2016 retirement speech, at the end of five terms in the Senate. “I didn’t make it because of my good looks. I didn’t make it because I’m a genius. I made it because I worked hard.”
Acknowledged even by Republican adversaries as a wily tactician and master of the Senate’s arcane rules, Mr. Reid notched his greatest legislative achievement in 2009, when he steered a landmark health-care bill through the Senate over solid GOP opposition.
In an effort to secure a filibuster-proof 60 votes, Mr. Reid spent hours behind closed doors, massaging the complex legislation and cutting deals with moderate Democrats. To ease the concerns of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), for example, Mr. Reid agreed to a generous Medicaid reimbursement provision, specifically for Nebraska — a deal critics labeled the “Cornhusker kickback.”
Washington Post columnist David Broder called Mr. Reid’s dealmaking “crass and parochial,” but it worked. On Dec. 24, 2009, the Senate’s 58 Democrats and two independents voted to approve the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare. After it passed the House of Representatives, Obama signed the bill into law in 2010.
As Senate minority leader under Bush, Mr. Reid was instrumental in blocking one of the president’s major second-term domestic initiatives, the partial privatization of Social Security. Although his animosity toward Bush was undisguised — he once called him a “loser,” for which he later apologized, and a “liar,” for which he did not — Mr. Reid as majority leader worked with the administration in 2008 to pass the $700 billion Emergency Economic Stabilization Act to shore up banks and other financial institutions threatened by the subprime mortgage crisis.
In the first two years of the Obama presidency, Mr. Reid shepherded a raft of major legislation through the Senate, including the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, to stimulate spending and job growth in the aftermath of the recession, and the Dodd-Frank law, to strengthen regulation of Wall Street and bolster consumer protection.
Mr. Reid’s legislative achievements tended to be overshadowed by the partisan rancor that increasingly gripped Congress during his time as majority leader. But despite the acrimony and gridlock, Post congressional reporter Paul Kane wrote in 2015, “His legacy will be defined just as much by his deft parliamentary maneuvers to push forward sweeping laws that might not have passed under different leadership.”
A trial lawyer, lieutenant governor and two-term member of the U.S. House before winning his Senate seat in 1986, he was certainly a competitor. But the trim, slightly stooped Mr. Reid was low-key in demeanor, and he professed a desire for bipartisan collaboration.
He liked to refer to his days in the ring, where he fought more than a dozen amateur middleweight matches while in college. “I know how to dance. I know how to fight,” he said when he was elected Democratic leader in 2004. “I’d rather dance than fight.”
But there was more Rocky Marciano than Fred Astaire in his political methods. As majority leader, he kept an increasingly tight rein on Senate proceedings, and his tactics drew angry criticism from Republicans that he abused his authority and smothered the rights of the minority.
One complaint was that instead of allowing Senate committees to write legislation, Mr. Reid too often oversaw the drafting process in his office and brought a measure to the floor as a take-it-or-leave-it package, using a parliamentary maneuver to prevent unwanted amendments.
He defended his tightly controlled approach as necessary to counter what he described as Republicans’ “mindless, knee-jerk obstruction” of the Obama agenda. His tactics also enabled Democrats to avoid casting votes on controversial measures that could be troublesome at election time.
“I was never running to be popular with Republicans,” he told reporters at the end of his Senate tenure. “I’ve had a job to do with President Obama. I’ve done the best that I can.”
In a letter Obama wrote to Reid before his death and released Tuesday evening, the former president said: “I wouldn’t have been president had it not been for your encouragement and support, and I wouldn’t have got most of what I got done without your skill and determination.”
Former Senate historian Donald Ritchie said Mr. Reid exercised as much influence as he could under Senate rules, a strategy aided by an increasing concentration of power in the majority leader’s office that began in the 1990s.
Mr. Reid’s most controversial — and arguably most consequential — move came in 2013, after Republicans filibustered a series of Obama nominees. Under his guidance, Democrats pushed through a rules change lowering the threshold for confirmation (except for Supreme Court nominees) from 60 votes to a simple majority. Republicans railed against what Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) called a “complete and total power grab,” but Mr. Reid insisted that GOP intransigence left no other option.
Whatever the merits, Mr. Reid’s use of the “nuclear option” shifted power from the minority to the majority — and four years later allowed the Trump administration to move contested Cabinet and judicial picks through the GOP-controlled Senate. While Mr. Reid exempted Supreme Court nominees from the lowered threshold, the Republican majority, citing his rule change as precedent, extended the simple-majority requirement to the high court, leaving Democrats powerless to block the nominations of Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. “God bless Harry M. Reid,” the late conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, a Gorsuch supporter, wrote in 2017.
Adding Mr. Reid’s two stints as minority leader (2005 through 2006 and 2015 through 2016) to his eight years as majority leader, he led Senate Democrats for a dozen years. Some members of his party bristled at his strict management style. But he got high marks for keeping his fractious caucus united, and his hold on the leadership of the Democratic caucus was never seriously challenged.
To outsiders, he may not have been an obvious choice for the position. He lacked the smooth manner that plays well on Sunday TV talk shows, and although he moved leftward during his leadership years, he stood to the right of many in his party, especially on social issues. He opposed the 1994 assault weapons ban, favored outlawing so-called partial-birth abortions and voted to authorize the 1991 and 2003 U.S. wars against Iraq.
But in six years as whip under Senate party leader Thomas A. Daschle of South Dakota, he had forged strong ties with fellow Democrats. After Daschle lost his 2004 reelection race, Mr. Reid moved quickly to succeed him as leader, nailing down enough support that his only potential competitor, Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, dropped out before the balloting.
A bleak upbringing
Harry Mason Reid was born Dec. 2, 1939, in Searchlight, Nev., about 60 miles south of Las Vegas. The town was once a thriving gold-mining center but later depended on prostitution as its main industry.
His father, who had not finished eighth grade, took mining jobs wherever he could find them. His mother did laundry for the brothels. They lived in a house built of railroad ties, with no indoor toilet, and went without medical care no matter how severe the need. His father — described by Mr. Reid as a brooding, reclusive binge drinker — fatally shot himself in 1972.
The town’s only school had one teacher and ended in the eighth grade. Mr. Reid’s class had six students, and “I graduated in the top third,” he quipped. For high school, he hitchhiked 45 miles to the city of Henderson, outside Las Vegas, living with relatives during the week and returning home on weekends.
In high school he met Landra Gould, a student one class behind him. To the chagrin of her parents, who were observant Jews, Landra and the “goy with no religion” fell in love, as Mr. Reid recounted in his 2008 memoir, “The Good Fight: Hard Lessons From Searchlight to Washington,” written with Mark Warren.
Mr. Reid was just shy of his 20th birthday when he and Landra eloped. In Utah, where they lived while he finished college, the couple converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but they also observed Jewish holidays in deference to her parents.
The Reids had a daughter, Lana Barringer, and four sons, Rory, Leif, Josh and Key Reid. Rory Reid, a past chairman of the powerful governing body of Clark County, Nev., which includes Las Vegas, was the Democratic nominee for Nevada governor in 2010. In addition to his wife and children, survivors include a brother; 19 grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.
Mr. Reid forged another important relationship in high school, with social studies teacher Mike O’Callaghan, who taught him to box and became his political mentor. O’Callaghan, a Democrat, later served two terms as governor of Nevada.
Mr. Reid received an associate’s degree in 1959 from what is now Southern Utah University, and he graduated from Utah State University two years later with a bachelor’s degree in history and political science. While in law school at George Washington University, he supported his growing family by working full time as a U.S. Capitol Police officer.
After graduating from law school in 1964, Mr. Reid returned to Nevada. In 1968 he was elected to the State Assembly, where he attracted notice with a flurry of legislative proposals. Two years later, the year O’Callaghan won the governorship, Mr. Reid was elected lieutenant governor.
In 1974 — the year of a Democratic electoral wave that followed the Watergate scandal — he ran for an open U.S. Senate seat convinced that he could not lose. He did, by 624 votes, to former governor Paul Laxalt (R). Mr. Reid then made what he later acknowledged was a foolhardy run for mayor of Las Vegas. He lost that race, too, and was now, as he put it, a “35-year-old has-been.”
In 1977, O’Callaghan appointed him to a four-year term as chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission, which regulates the state’s lucrative gambling industry. Mr. Reid, who never gambled, knew little about casinos but soon learned about the business, especially its underside.
When a Las Vegas businessman tried to bribe him to support new gambling devices, Mr. Reid participated in an FBI sting that sent the man to prison. He received frequent death threats, and one day his wife discovered the family station wagon rigged with a bomb that had failed to explode.
In 1982, congressional reapportionment gave Nevada a second U.S. House district, and Mr. Reid easily won the new Las Vegas-based seat. Four years later, when Laxalt retired, Mr. Reid moved up to the Senate, where he became an aggressive defender of the state’s gambling industry and other interests. As a member of the Appropriations Committee, he secured for his state millions of federal dollars for roads, airports, military facilities, recreation and environmental improvements. In December, the Las Vegas airport was renamed in his honor.
One of his biggest efforts was fending off a long-standing federal plan to store the nation’s spent nuclear fuel at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain — a plan backed by Bush that did much to stoke Mr. Reid’s ill will toward him. (The Obama administration, sensitive to Mr. Reid’s political needs, blocked the Yucca Mountain project, and it has not been revived in the years since.)
Given Nevada’s swing-state status, Mr. Reid’s reelection was not guaranteed. In 2010, his leadership role and close identification with the Obama administration made him especially vulnerable. His GOP opponent, former state legislator Sharron Angle, led in early polling. But her hard-right views and campaign missteps cost her support even among Republicans, and Mr. Reid ended up winning by a comfortable margin.
No 'bloody nose'
In Washington, the Reids lived in a condo at the tony Ritz-Carlton hotel, and at the end of his Senate career, the couple owned real estate, mining claims, securities and other assets worth between $3.3 million and $7.3 million, according to the senator’s 2015 financial disclosure report.
From time to time during his Senate career, news reports suggested that Mr. Reid’s public role and private interests overlapped. In 2003, for example, the Los Angeles Times disclosed that the senator had pushed legislation benefiting Nevada entities that paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying fees to his sons’ and son-in-law’s firms. He denied any impropriety, and the episode quickly faded away, his leadership position undamaged. (Mr. Reid said he was helping his home state, not his family, though he subsequently barred relatives from lobbying his office.)
The Democrats’ loss of the Senate in 2014 demoted Mr. Reid to minority leader. The following New Year’s Day, he suffered broken ribs and serious eye and facial injuries in an accident while exercising in his home. Not long afterward, he announced he would not seek reelection in 2016.
After leaving the Senate, Mr. Reid was a fellow at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas law school. He also was co-chair, with former House speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), of a public policy institute at UNLV funded by MGM Resorts International, a major player in Nevada gambling.
In his autobiography, Mr. Reid described his abilities as a boxer in words that could also serve as commentary on his public life.
“I could assess situations well, and I learned to recognize and exploit an opposing fighter’s weaknesses,” he wrote. “I could hit hard, and I could take a punch. But I never had a bloody nose.”
A view shows the damage in a container storage area, after Syrian state media reported an Israeli air strike on the Syrian port of Latakia, Syria, in this handout picture released by SANA on December 7, 2021. (photo: SANA/Reuters)
Second attack on cargo hub this month reported to have caused ‘significant material damage’
Since the outbreak of Syria’s civil war in 2011, Israel has routinely carried out airstrikes on its neighbour, mostly targeting Syrian government troops as well as allied Iran-backed forces and Hezbollah fighters.
But it is only the second time it has hit Latakia port, in the heartland of President Bashar al-Assad’s minority Alawite community.
“At around 3:21 am [0121 GMT], the Israeli enemy carried out an aerial aggression with several missiles from the direction of the Mediterranean ... targeting the container yard in Latakia port,” the Syrian state news agency, Sana, cited a military source as saying. The strike caused “significant material damage”, it added.
Asked about the strike, an Israeli army spokesperson said: “We don’t comment on reports in foreign media.”
Pictures released by Sana showed firefighters hosing stacks of blazing containers that lit up the night sky. The news agency said the containers were carrying “engine oil and spare parts for cars and other vehicles”.
But the British-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said the cargo was “arms and munitions” that had detonated in “powerful explosions that were felt across the city of Latakia and its suburbs”.
It said it was unclear whether the arms were from Iran or another supplier.
The Latakia governor, Ismail Hilal, said firefighters had brought the blaze under control by midday and were dousing the embers, Sana reported.
The Syrian government’s other major ally, Russia, operates a naval base in the port of Tartus, 53 miles (85km) to the south.
So far this year, Israel has targeted Syria nearly 30 times, killing 130 people including five civilians and 125 loyalist fighters, according to SOHR figures. On 7 December it carried out a strike targeting an Iranian arms shipment in Latakia, its first on the port since the start of the civil war.
While Israel rarely comments on individual strikes it carries out on its northern neighbour, it has acknowledged mounting hundreds since 2011. According to a report by the Israeli army, it hit about 50 targets in Syria in 2020.
In the deadliest operation since the strikes began, Israel killed 57 government troops and allied fighters in eastern Syria in January this year.
The Israeli military has defended the strikes as a necessary measure to prevent its arch-foe Iran from gaining a foothold on its doorstep.
Israel’s head of military intelligence, Maj Gen Aharon Haliva, has accused Iran of “continuing to promote subversion and terror” in the Middle East.
In a shadow war, Israel has targeted suspected Iranian military facilities in Syria and mounted a sabotage campaign against Iran’s nuclear programme.
Iran has been a key supporter of the Syrian government in the decade-old conflict. It finances, arms and commands a number of Syrian and foreign militia groups fighting alongside the regular armed forces, chief among them Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah.
The conflict in Syria has killed nearly 500,000 people since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of peaceful demonstrations.
In this Aug. 5, 2006, file photo, former Oakland Raiders coach John Madden gestures toward a bust of himself during his enshrinement into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. (photo: Mark Duncan/AP)
The league said he died unexpectedly and did not detail a cause.
Madden gained fame in a decadelong stint as the coach of the renegade Oakland Raiders, making it to seven AFC title games and winning the Super Bowl following the 1976 season. He compiled a 103-32-7 regular-season record, and his .759 winning percentage is the best among NFL coaches with more than 100 games.
"Few individuals meant as much to the growth and popularity of professional football as Coach Madden, whose impact on the game both on and off the field was immeasurable," the Raiders said in a statement, hours before team owner Mark Davis lit the Al Davis Torch in honor of Madden, the first person to ever light the torch on Oct. 16, 2011.
"Tonight I light the torch in honor of and tribute to John Madden and Al Davis, who declared that the fire that burns the brightest in the Raiders Organization is the will to win," Mark Davis said.
It was Madden's work after retiring from coaching at age 42 that made him truly a household name. He educated a football nation with his use of the telestrator on broadcasts; entertained millions with his interjections of "Boom!" and "Doink!" throughout games; was an omnipresent pitchman selling restaurants, hardware stores and beer; and became the face of Madden NFL Football, one of the most successful sports video games of all time.
"Today, we lost a hero. John Madden was synonymous with the sport of football for more than 50 years," EA Sports, the brand behind the Madden franchise, said in a statement. "His knowledge of the game was second only to his love for it, and his appreciation for everyone that stepped on the gridiron. A humble champion, a willing teacher, and forever a coach. Our hearts and sympathies go out to John's family, friends, and millions of fans. He will be greatly missed, always remembered, and never forgotten."
Thanks, Coach pic.twitter.com/wnv8W1pIjJ
— EA SPORTS (@EASPORTS) December 29, 2021
Madden was the preeminent television sports analyst for most of his three decades calling games, winning an unprecedented 16 Emmy Awards for outstanding sports analyst/personality and covering 11 Super Bowls for four networks from 1979 to 2009.
"People always ask, 'Are you a coach or a broadcaster or a video game guy?'" Madden said when was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2006. "I'm a coach, always been a coach."
It was a sentiment echoed by Hall of Fame president Jim Porter in his statement Tuesday night.
"He was first and foremost a coach," Porter said. "He was a coach on the field, a coach in the broadcast booth and a coach in life.
"The Hall of Fame will forever guard Coach Madden's legacy. The Hall of Fame flag will be flown at half-staff in his memory."
Madden started his broadcasting career at CBS after leaving coaching in great part because of his fear of flying. He and Pat Summerall became the network's top announcing duo. Madden then helped give Fox credibility as a major network when he moved there in 1994, and he went on to call prime-time games at ABC and NBC before retiring after the Pittsburgh Steelers' thrilling 27-23 win over the Arizona Cardinals in the 2009 Super Bowl.
"John Madden was an iconic figure, transitioning from a successful coach to one of the most impactful and distinctive broadcasters in history, across all genres. His love of football was only matched by the fans' admiration for him. He will forever be synonymous with the game," said James Pitaro, chairman of ESPN and sports content for The Walt Disney Company. Madden worked for ABC Sports from 2002 to 2005 as an analyst for Monday Night Football.
Burly and a little unkempt, Madden earned a place in America's heart with a likable, unpretentious style that was refreshing in a sports world of spiraling salaries and prima donna stars. He rode from game to game in his own bus because he was claustrophobic and had stopped flying. For a time, Madden gave out a "turducken" -- a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey -- to the outstanding player in the Thanksgiving game that he called.
"Nobody loved football more than Coach. He was football," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. "He was an incredible sounding board to me and so many others. There will never be another John Madden, and we will forever be indebted to him for all he did to make football and the NFL what it is today."
As Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said, "I am not aware of anyone who has made a more meaningful impact on the National Football League than John Madden, and I know of no one who loved the game more."
When Madden retired from the broadcast booth, leaving NBC's "Sunday Night Football," colleagues universally praised his passion for the sport, his preparation and his ability to explain an often-complicated game in down-to-earth terms.
Al Michaels, Madden's broadcast partner for seven years on ABC and NBC, said working with him "was like hitting the lottery."
"He was so much more than just football -- a keen observer of everything around him and a man who could carry on a smart conversation about hundreds and hundreds of topics," Michaels said. "The term 'Renaissance man' is tossed around a little too loosely these days, but John was as close as you can come."
For anyone who heard Madden exclaim "Boom!" while breaking down a play, his love of the game was obvious.
"For me, TV is really an extension of coaching," Madden, who also became a best-selling author, wrote in "Hey, Wait a Minute! (I Wrote a Book!)."
"My knowledge of football has come from coaching," he said. "And on TV, all I'm trying to do is pass on some of that knowledge to viewers."
Madden was raised in Daly City, California. He played on both the offensive line and defensive line for Cal Poly in 1957 and 1958 and earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the school.
He was selected to the all-conference team and was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles, but a knee injury ended his hopes of a professional playing career. Instead, Madden got into coaching, first at California's Hancock Junior College then as defensive coordinator at San Diego State.
Al Davis brought him to the Raiders as a linebackers coach in 1967, and Oakland went to the Super Bowl in Madden's first year in the pros. He replaced John Rauch as head coach after the 1968 season at age 32, beginning a remarkable 10-year run.
With his demonstrative demeanor on the sideline and disheveled look, Madden was the ideal coach for the collection of castoffs and misfits that made up those Raiders teams.
"Sometimes guys were disciplinarians in things that didn't make any difference," Madden once said. "I was a disciplinarian in jumping offsides; I hated that. Being in bad position and missing tackles, those things. I wasn't, 'Your hair has to be combed.'"
The Raiders responded.
"I always thought his strong suit was his style of coaching," quarterback Ken Stabler once said. "John just had a great knack for letting us be what we wanted to be, on the field and off the field. ... How do you repay him for being that way? You win for him."
And boy, did they ever. Many years, the only problem was the playoffs.
Madden went 12-1-1 in his first season, losing the AFL title game 17-7 to the Kansas City Chiefs. That pattern repeated itself during his tenure; the Raiders won the division title in seven of his first eight seasons but went 1-6 in conference title games during that span.
Still, Madden's Raiders played in some of the sport's most memorable games of the 1970s, games that helped change rules in the NFL. There was the "Holy Roller" in 1978, when Stabler purposely fumbled forward before being sacked on the final play. The ball rolled and was batted to the end zone before Dave Casper recovered it for the winning touchdown against the San Diego Chargers.
The most famous of those games went against the Raiders in the 1972 playoffs at Pittsburgh. With the Raiders leading 7-6 and 22 seconds left, the Steelers had a fourth-and-10 from their 40. Terry Bradshaw's desperation pass deflected off either Oakland's Jack Tatum or Pittsburgh's Frenchy Fuqua to Franco Harris, who caught it at his shoe tops and ran in for a Steelers touchdown.
In those days, a pass that bounced off an offensive player directly to a teammate was illegal, and the debate continues to this day over which player it hit. The catch, of course, was dubbed the "Immaculate Reception."
Oakland finally broke through with a loaded team in 1976 that had Stabler at quarterback; Fred Biletnikoff and Cliff Branch at wide receiver; tight end Dave Casper; Hall of Fame offensive linemen Gene Upshaw and Art Shell; and a defense that included Willie Brown, Ted Hendricks, Tatum, John Matuszak, Otis Sistrunk and George Atkinson.
The Raiders went 13-1, losing only a blowout at the New England Patriots in Week 4. They paid the Patriots back with a 24-21 win in their first playoff game and got over the AFC title game hump with a 24-7 win over the hated Steelers, who were hampered by injuries.
Oakland won it all with a 32-14 Super Bowl romp against the Minnesota Vikings.
"Players loved playing for him," Shell said. "He made it fun for us in camp and fun for us in the regular season. All he asked is that we be on time and play like hell when it was time to play."
Madden battled an ulcer the following season, when the Raiders once again lost in the AFC title game. He retired from coaching at age 42 after a 9-7 season in 1978.
Madden was a longtime resident of Pleasanton, California, a Bay Area suburb.
A 90-minute documentary on his coaching and broadcasting career, "All Madden," debuted on Fox on Christmas Day. The film featured extensive interviews that Madden sat for this year. His wife, Virginia, and sons, Joseph and Michael, also were interviewed for the documentary.
John and Virginia Madden's 62nd wedding anniversary was two days before his death.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, announcing the new Taliban government of Afghanistan at a press conference in Kabul in September. (photo: Victor J. Blue/NYT)
More Afghan people may die from sanctions than from 20 years of war.
As commerce ground to a halt, food and fuel prices skyrocketed, in large part due to economic sanctions placed on the Taliban by the U.S. As many as 300,000 Afghans have fled to neighboring Pakistan, and many more refugees may soon leave the country. There are even reports that some Afghans have resorted to selling their children in order to feed their families.
The Biden administration defends the sanctions by pointing to a series of exemptions designed to allow humanitarian aid. The Treasury Department has touted its role as a leading humanitarian donor to the people of Afghanistan and its work to ensure that funds flow “through legitimate and transparent channels” via official sanction exemption licenses.
But those humanitarian exemptions, overseen by the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, are nowhere near enough, according to experts who spoke to The Intercept. The OFAC licenses, including new licenses released December 22, have not curbed the global chilling effect of the sanctions and are ineffective in preventing a spiraling disaster that could kill more Afghan people than nearly 20 years of U.S.-backed war and occupation.
Businesses and individuals that violate U.S. sanctions on the Taliban risk steep fines and criminal penalties. The broad sanctions imposed by the U.S. lack specificity and raise the possibility that routine commercial activities in Afghanistan could fall under sanctions policy.
“None of these OFAC licenses, none of them, addresses the issue of international banks in their dealing with Afghan banks, hesitancy to deal with Afghan taxes, banking transactions for commercial imports,” said Shah Mehrabi, a member of Afghanistan’s central bank board. “The sanctions have created a lot of fear in the minds of those who do not want to go ahead and engage in taking this particular risk.”
OFAC has issued licenses for medicine, remittances, education salaries, and other forms of humanitarian assistance. Additional licenses released last week allow exemptions for education funds and expand the scope of U.S. funds to aid organizations in Afghanistan. Mehrabi, who teaches economics at Montgomery College in Maryland, noted that much of Afghanistan’s domestic economy faces impending failure, a problem that cannot be solved by “merely allowing humanitarian aid to flow.”
The Treasury Department, added Mehrabi, has focused on piecemeal humanitarian exemptions and has not addressed the central issue of how Afghanistan can import and export goods, collect taxes, and pay salaries. “We’re talking about an economy that’s going to collapse if Treasury does not clarify what could be done to the liquidity issue,” said Mehrabi.
When the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in August, U.S. sanctions imposed since 2002 that criminalize any form of support for the Taliban as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group suddenly meant that penalties could apply to leaders of a sovereign state. As U.S. forces withdrew, American law firms quickly alerted international institutions across the globe that any business transaction in Afghanistan could risk violating sanctions. Any routine tax payment or duty paid to an Afghan bureaucrat could be construed as aiding and abetting the Taliban.
“Even if the Secretary of the Treasury does not specifically designate the entire Government of Afghanistan, it will be very difficult for contractors and grantees to know whether standard transactions with the Government of Afghanistan, such as paying taxes, permit fees, utility fees, import duties, or other routine payments will result in funds passing to the Taliban or its leaders in control of various branches of the Afghan government,” noted a client alert from the law firm Nichols Liu.
Contractors and businesses, the firm noted, can expect banks to “de-risk from Afghanistan,” meaning that fund transfers to or from Afghanistan “will be intercepted by intermediary banks and blocked until the contractor or grantee can demonstrate that the specific transfer to and the use of funds in Afghanistan will comply with U.S. sanctions.”
“The banking industry is reading [the sanctions] as, ‘The entire government is now the Taliban,’” a former U.S. Treasury Department official told the Crisis Group.
The far-reaching sanctions, along with a Biden administration decision to freeze nearly $10 billion of Afghanistan’s central bank national reserves, sent the economy into free fall. Payments to doctors and police stopped. Hospitals ran out of medicine. Residents could not withdraw bank deposits. Even a printing press in Poland contracted to print afghanis, the local currency, could not deliver its shipment.
Rajeev Agarwal, the chief financial officer of KEC International, an Indian firm tapped to build electric utility transmission lines in Afghanistan, told investors in October that its five projects in the country suddenly ceased payments in August. The “U.S. has choked all the funding lines to Afghanistan,” reported Agarwal, according to a transcript of the call.
“Sanctions are intended to have a chilling effect, in that sanctions will always go beyond the face of the text,” said Adam Weinstein, a research fellow with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “No bank or business wants to walk right up to the line when it comes to compliance with U.S. sanctions policy, given that these are risk-averse institutions.”
Last week, 40 members of the House of Representatives wrote to President Joe Biden urging him to ease sanctions and release Afghanistan central bank funds controlled by the U.S. government. “No increase in food and medical aid can compensate for the macroeconomic harm of soaring prices of basic commodities, a banking collapse, a balance-of-payments crisis, a freeze on civil servants’ salaries, and other severe consequences that are rippling throughout Afghan society, harming the most vulnerable,” noted the letter, led by Reps. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.; Sara Jacobs, D-Calif.; and Jesús G. “Chuy” García, D-Ill.
The letter also called on the administration to provide clarity to financial institutions, including what’s known as “comfort letters” from the Treasury Department to reassure banks that they may engage in commerce without risk of violating sanctions.
The Intercept asked the Treasury Department for comment about the concerns raised by the congressional letter, including whether the agency has provided comfort letters to reassure banks that they would not violate U.S. sanctions while facilitating transactions in Afghanistan. Morgan Finkelstein, a spokesperson for the Treasury Department, did not respond directly to the question about the comfort letters and pointed to the existence of the OFAC exemption licenses to respond to questions about concerns that U.S. sanctions are damaging the Afghanistan economy.
“In contrast to sanctions programs administered and enforced by OFAC with regard to North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Syria, and the Crimea region of Ukraine, there are no comprehensive sanctions on Afghanistan,” reads an FAQ on the Treasury site that Finkelstein sent. “Therefore, there are no OFAC-administered sanctions that prohibit the export or reexport of goods or services to Afghanistan, moving or sending money into and out of Afghanistan, or activities in Afghanistan, provided that such transactions or activities do not involve sanctioned individuals, entities, or property in which sanctioned individuals and entities have an interest.”
Kevin Schumacher, deputy executive director of the nonprofit Women for Afghan Women, noted that banks and other multinational firms are reluctant to pay large legal fees to review hundreds of pages of Treasury Department guidelines with each client just to engage in commerce with Afghanistan. The problem, he said, is that the U.S. government “doesn’t really understand who they are going after.”
“That fear of the unknown,” said Shumacher, “is what prompts this massive blanket sanction regime that has resulted in the tragedy that we are seeing.”
“The OFAC licenses never work, never will,” added Shumacher. “The moment that the banks see any sanction or any sort of restriction, they just walk away from doing any transactions. That’s what’s happening now with Afghanistan. The banks are not willing to take our business, and no amount of OFAC licenses is going to satisfy their needs.”
In the past, multinational corporations and banks have over-complied with U.S. sanctions, ignoring OFAC licenses. Schumacher pointed out the history with Iran: The U.S., while imposing stringent sanctions on Iran, released OFAC licenses for the delivery of medicine and other medical products. But banks, in fear of violating the U.S. sanctions, ignored OFAC licenses and routinely blocked the trade of medicine and other health care products to Iran.
The Washington Post reported in 2012 that despite OFAC licenses allowing the exports of medicine to Iran, exports of medicine quickly dwindled. “The exemption of medicine from sanctions is only in theory,” one Iranian importer told the Post. “International banks do not accept Iran’s money for fear of facing U.S. punishment.”
There is little appetite among politicians in Washington, D.C., to radically reverse course. The Biden administration, facing low public approval ratings following the exit from Afghanistan and a tough forecast for the 2022 midterm elections, may be continuing sanctions for political reasons. Releasing the sanctions could be viewed as recognition of the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan, a symbolism that could cement negative attitudes about the administration and its Afghanistan policy. Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, have released demands that the administration go even further in sanctioning the Taliban, including any foreign governments that provide support to Afghanistan.
Earlier this month, the Intercept attempted to speak to a number of senators, Democrats and Republicans, about U.S. sanctions fueling widespread famine in Afghanistan. Many refused to talk about the issue.
“I think we need to get aid to the Afghan people, but also I think it’s the responsibility of the Taliban government to comply with what needs to be done,” said Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., without elaborating. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said any questions about Afghanistan should be posed to Democrats and the Biden administration, not Republicans.
The Intercept also reached out to the offices of Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., two vocal opponents of sanctions overreach in the past, to comment on Biden administration sanctions on Afghanistan. Neither responded.
Sanctions are often held up as a politically and morally viable alternative to war. Not many Democrats want to revisit the issue of Afghanistan, and few politicians on either side of the aisle would recommend direct military engagement with the Taliban. But the ongoing famine crisis and the destruction of what remains of the Afghan economy could result in the deaths of millions of people.
The glib attitude among many in Washington toward the destruction wrought by sanctions was captured in a memorable exchange with the Clinton administration about its heavy-handed policies against Iraq.
In 1996, CBS “60 Minutes” anchor Lesley Stahl asked then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright about the half-million children in Iraq who died from malnutrition because of U.S. sanctions against Saddam Hussein’s government. “Is the price worth it?” asked Stahl. “I think this is a very hard choice,” replied Albright. “But the price — we think the price is worth it.”
“We’ve deluded ourselves into thinking that sanctions are precise,” said the Quincy Institute’s Weinstein. “They’re not. They’re not a precision weapon. They’re a blunt force, economic weapon that essentially kills civilians.”
Cattle ranching is one of the biggest drivers of deforestation in the Amazon. (photo: Rhett Butler/Mongabay)
The Terra do Meio reserve is a federally protected area spanning 3.37 million hectares (8.3 million acres) across the Amazon state of Pará. It is home to hundreds of species, including some of which, such as the margay (Leopardus wiedii) – a small, nocturnal wild cat native to Central and South America – are threatened with extinction. The reserve is also part of the Xingu Basin, an ecologically rich mosaic made up of 28 conservation areas and 18 Indigenous territories.
But, despite its protected status, the Terra do Meio reserve has come under growing pressure. Between Jan. 1 and Dec. 14, some 25,943 deforestation alerts were confirmed in primary forest within it, according to satellite data from the University of Maryland visualized on Global Forest Watch. And data from Brazil’s space research agency, INPE, showed that some 2,963 hectares of forest were cleared within the reserve this year, nearly double the area deforested in 2020.
“This is a region that should be completely preserved,” said Rômulo Batista, campaigner with Greenpeace Brazil. “There should be zero deforestation there. But instead, we are seeing rampant forest destruction, which is really worrying.”
As deforestation advances within the Terra do Meio reserve, the plots being razed are becoming larger too, according to Edenise Garcia, science director at The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit monitoring deforestation in the region. The biggest patch of land deforested in the reserve totaled some 463 hectares this year, up from about 280 hectares the year before, Garcia said.
“The deforestation is becoming more and more noticeable – in other words, they’re becoming bolder,” she told Mongabay in a phone interview. “It’s a warning that these people are going in to clear larger and larger plots of land.”
Swaths of the reserve have also been burned this year, and satellite data from NASA show fire alerts coinciding with deforestation alerts. Most of these occurred in August and September, the dry season when most illegal burning takes place across the Amazon.
Environmentalists say the destruction within Terra do Meio is being driven by illegal loggers, cattle ranchers and land speculators. And they warn that much of the deforestation is spilling over from the neighboring Área de Proteção Ambiental (APA) Triunfo do Xingu, a sustainable use reserve that has become the most deforested slice of the Brazilian Amazon in recent years.
“It should be serving as a buffer shielding the areas that are under stricter protection,” said Larissa Amorim, a researcher at Imazon, an NGO monitoring the forest clearing. “But unfortunately, deforestation has already practically taken over the Triunfo do Xingu. And, now, it’s advancing beyond it.”
Advocates warn that the invasions are threatening Terra do Meio’s biodiversity, while also opening up the broader ecological mosaic to deforestation and destruction. Other protected areas that lie beyond the reserve, like the Kayapo and Kararaô Indigenous Territories, are already coming under attack.
“These are regions that have the greatest ecological importance and that must be protected to ensure the integrity of the rainforest as a whole, ” Batista said. “And this is what we are ultimately losing with this surge in deforestation.”
Destruction next door
The Terra do Meio reserve is nestled deep in Brazil’s cattle heartland, straddling the municipalities of Altamira and São Félix do Xingu. In this corner of the Amazon, the economy is fueled by ranching: São Félix do Xingu is home to some 2.3 million head of cattle, Brazil’s largest herd.
Much of this cattle ranching is clustered within the APA Triunfo do Xingu, where authorities allow land-holders to deforest and develop a fifth of their land if they promise to preserve the rest. When it was created over a decade ago, Triunfo do Xingu was intended as a shield for vulnerable areas beyond its boundaries, like the Apyterewa Indigenous Territory and the Terra do Meio Ecological Station.
But, amid lax monitoring and enforcement, large-scale deforestation within Triunfo do Xingu has skyrocketed, with most of the land turned into pasture. This year alone, it was responsible for a tenth of Pará’s deforestation, with about half of the destruction driven by just 10 large property-holders, according to Garcia. About 40% of Triunfo do Xingu’s forests have already been cleared and it now tops Brazil’s list of most deforested protected reserves.
“The Triunfo do Xingu APA was created to allow some kind of human activity in a sustainable way,” Amorim said. “But we see that it is not sustainable at all. And the illegal activities that are taking place there end up spilling beyond it.”
The destruction next door has had a devastating impact on the Terra do Meio reserve, environmentalists say. As forest is converted to pasture, reserves beyond the Triunfo do Xingu – including the Terra do Meio – are becoming more easily accessible to outsiders, allowing them to invade deeper into the forest.
This seems to be echoed by the pattern of deforestation seen within the Terra do Meio reserve. At least half a dozen roads have been carved into the territory so far, according to satellite images. And much of the fresh clearing this year has been clustered around one clandestine road halting at the APA’s doorstep, according to Garcia.
“What we may be seeing is an opening for selective timber extraction, which is the first step towards deforestation,” she said. “And as the forest becomes more degraded, people come in and cut the rest to put cattle there.”
As the buffer zone retreats, the ecological corridor that the Terra do Meio reserve is part of is left more vulnerable too. With the dense forest in this reserve thinning, invaders in search of new areas to exploit can more easily reach other protected areas like the Xipaya, Baú, and Cachoeira Seca do Iriri Indigenous Reserves.
“The illegal loggers and land speculators are taking advantage of this opportunity to make inroads, to make this particular area more accessible,” Amorim said.
Environmental advocates also worry that the deforestation slicing through Terra do Meio on the west could soon join a wave of forest clearing advancing from the southeast through the Iriri State Forest. That frontier of deforestation is being driven by clearing along the BR-163 highway, according to environmentalists.
Scientists warn that if the habitat corridor continues to fragment, some species may struggle to survive in the remaining slivers of rainforest, dealing a blow to biodiversity. The splintering of the forest may also make it more difficult for Indigenous and traditional people who rely on hunting in large swaths of the Amazon for their survival.
The fragmentation of the rainforest in this region will also likely lead to a shift in local climate patterns, resulting in less rainfall and dwindling water sources, said Thaise Rodrigues, a researcher with the Rede Xingu+, a network of environmental and Indigenous groups working in the Xingu Basin.
“We are already seeing that the forest is getting drier,” Rodrigues told Mongabay in a phone interview. “This will influence the water quality in the region. And this is the same water that Indigenous people and traditional communities in the forest use to bathe, to drink, to fish.”
Promise of amnesty
Environmental advocates blame the surge in invasions ravaging the Terra do Meio reserve on a series of friendly signals from the federal government, which they say has encouraged invaders to encroach on protected areas without fear of punishment.
“When you have a fragile system of command and control, you are not curbing deforestation, you’re not curbing illicit activities,” Garcia said. “On the contrary – these opportunistic groups end up realizing that it is easy to deforest within conservation areas.”
President Jair Bolsonaro has repeatedly promised to open up protected areas and Indigenous reserves to mining, ranching and agriculture. Under his watch, cumulative deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon hit its highest level since 2006 this year. Protected areas such as Terra do Meio have come under particularly heavy pressure from invasions. Forest destruction within reserves has jumped by nearly one-third.
A long-time proponent of developing the Amazon, Bolsonaro has slashed budgets for environmental policing, fired top agents at federal enforcement agencies, and moved to obstruct the system of environmental fines by allowing offenders to dispute them. Fines punishing such crimes have plunged to their lowest level in 24 years.
“On the one hand, you have a discourse that favors and encourages land-grabbing,” said Rodrigues. “And on the other hand, you have the weakening of the institutions responsible for controlling this. So, it’s only natural that deforestation in protected areas has increased really dramatically.”
Under pressure from the international community, Bolsonaro recently softened his tone and vowed to eliminate illegal deforestation in less than a decade. The federal government has pointed to a 19% drop in deforestation for the month of November as proof that it is moving in the right direction.
This month, Brazil’s environmental ministry also told Mongabay that a larger budget in 2021 allowed it to double its spending on enforcement, including the purchase of equipment, vehicles and navigation systems. It said it is “strengthening the fight against illegal deforestation” and it is in the process of hiring 739 new inspection officers at Ibama and ICMBio, Brazil’s two federal enforcement agencies.
Still, environmentalists say the government’s efforts have fallen short in curbing forest destruction, claiming that enforcement efforts have focused on ineffective large-scale crackdowns rather than consistent policing.
“Enforcement must be more rigorous in these areas,” Amorim said. “Policing is taking place in the Amazon, we cannot say it doesn’t occur. But it hasn’t been intense and persistent enough to tackle the scale of the deforestation problem.”
Between August 2019 and July 2021, the federal government spent some R$550 million ($97.7 million) on massive military operations aimed at combating deforestation in the Amazon. During its high-profile Operation Green Brazil 2, which ended this year, agents carried out 105,000 inspections, seizing 506,000 cubic meters of illegal timber and handing out 5,480 fines totaling some R$3.3 billion ($583.6 million), according to government figures.
The head of the military recently touted these operations as a major success, crediting them with reducing deforestation in the Amazon dramatically. Yet, according to official INPE data, forest destruction actually rose 22% over the course of the operations.
Meanwhile, environmentalists say a pair of legislative proposals currently moving through Brazil’s Senate have also undermined efforts to stop incursions into the forest. If approved, these two land reform bills could make it easier to legalize illegitimate land claims.
This has bolstered hopes among land speculators and cattle ranchers that they could soon receive land titles for land they have deforested and occupied illegally, Batista said, fueling invasions of reserves like Terra do Meio.
“This legislation could mean those who invaded areas illegally end up winning amnesty for it,” he said. “When they invade, this is what they are betting on.”
This article was originally published on Mongabay.
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