NATION/WORLD
Thursday, July 16, 2015
BRIEFLY
Obama
vigorously
challenges critics
of Iran deal
WASHINGTON
(AP) — Vigorously
challenging his critics,
President Barack Obama
launched an aggressive
and detailed defense of a
landmark Iranian nuclear
accord Wednesday,
rejecting the idea that it
leaves Tehran on the brink
of a bomb and arguing
the only alternative to the
diplomatic deal is war.
“Either the issue of
Iran obtaining a nuclear
weapon is resolved
diplomatically through a
negotiation or it’s resolved
through force, through
war,” Obama said during a
lengthy White House news
conference. “Those are the
options.”
The president spoke
one day after Iran, the
8.S. and ¿ve other world
powers ¿nali]ed a historic,
yearslong agreement to
curb Tehran’s nuclear
program in exchange
for billions of dollars
in sanctions relief.
Opposition to the deal
has been ¿erce, both in
Washington and Israel.
Sunni Arab rivals of Shiite
Iran also express concerns.
Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu,
perhaps the ¿ercest critic
of Obama’s overtures
to Iran, showed no sign
he could be persuaded
to even tolerate the
agreement.
In remarks to Israel’s
parliament, Netanyahu
said he was not bound by
the terms of the deal and
could still take military
action against Iran.
In Congress, resistance
comes not only from
Republicans, but also
Obama’s own Democratic
Party. Vice President Joe
Biden spent the morning
on Capitol Hill meeting
privately with House
Democrats, and planned to
return Thursday to make a
similar pitch to Democrats
on the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee.
The president said
he welcomed a “robust”
debate with Congress, but
showed little patience for
what he cast as politically
motivated opposition.
Lawmakers can’t block
the nuclear deal, but they
can try to undermine it by
insisting U.S. sanctions
stay in place.
Justice Kennedy
compares gay
marriage uproar
to Àag burning
ATHENS, Greece
(AP) — Greek lawmakers
voted overwhelmingly
early Thursday to approve
a harsh austerity bill
demanded by bailout
creditors, despite
signi¿cant dissent from
members of Prime
Minister Alexis Tsipras’
own left-wing party.
The bill, which imposes
sweeping tax hikes and
spending cuts, fueled
anger in the governing
Syri]a party and led to
a revolt against Tsipras,
who has insisted the deal
forged after a marathon
weekend euro]one summit
was the best he could do
to prevent Greece from
catastrophically crashing
out of the euro, Europe’s
joint currency.
The legislation was
approved with 229 votes
in favor, 64 against and
six abstentions — and
won the support of three
pro-European opposition
parties.
Among Syri]a’s
38 dissenters were
prominent party members,
including Energy Minister
Panagiotis Lafa]anis and
former ¿nance minister
Yanis Varoufakis,
who many blame for
exacerbating tensions with
Greece’s creditors with
his abrasive style during
¿ve months of tortured
negotiations.
The post-midnight
vote might not pose
an immediate threat to
Tsipras’ government, but
it raised more doubts
over whether it could
implement the harsh
new austerity program
demanded by rescue
lenders.
WASHINGTON (AP)
— The brother of Ethel
Rosenberg, who was a star
trial witness against his
sister and brother-in-law
in a sensational Cold War
atomic spying case, never
implicated his sister in an
earlier appearance before
a grand jury and said that
they had never discussed
her role, according to
secret court records
unsealed Wednesday.
The revelation may
heighten public suspicion
that Ethel Rosenberg was
wrongly convicted and
executed in an espionage
case that captivated the
country at the height
of the McCarthy-era
fren]y about Communist
allegiances.
Rosenberg and her
husband Julius were put to
death in 1953 after being
convicted of conspiring
to pass secrets about
the atomic bomb to the
Soviet Union, though
they maintained their
innocence until the end.
Historians and lawyers
who reviewed the
transcript said it appears to
lend support to both sides
of a dueling narrative —
that Ethel Rosenberg was
framed in an over]ealous
prosecution even as her
husband appears to have
played a central role in a
sophisticated spy ring.
“You change a
black-and-white Cold
War narrative — framed,
or traitors — into a very
nuanced, gray area,” said
Tom Blanton, director
of the National Security
Archive at George
Washington University,
which fought for the
records.
SAN DIEGO (AP)
— U.S. Supreme Court
Justice Anthony Kennedy
on Wednesday likened
controversy over the
court’s decision to allow
gay marriage to public
reaction over the 1989
ruling that said burning
an American Àag was
protected free speech.
Kennedy, who was
the deciding vote in both
cases, described how the
reaction decades ago was
critical at ¿rst but changed
over time.
His remarks at the
9th Circuit Judicial
Conference were his ¿rst
public comments since
he wrote the decision last
month that put an end to
same-sex marriage bans
in 14 states. Kennedy
drew the comparison in
response to a moderator’s
question about how
justices weather reaction
to closely watched rulings.
“Eighty senators went
to the Àoor of the Senate
to denounce the court,”
he said of the 1989 ruling.
“President Bush took the
week off and visited Àag
factories, but I noticed that
after two or three months
people began thinking
about the issues.”
Kennedy went on to
say that a lawyer from
Northern California
approached him at a
restaurant after the Àag
burning decision to tell
him how his father, a
prisoner of war in Na]i
Germany, came around to
the decision.
The former prisoner
of war — who secretly
sewed red, white and
blue cloth together in
captivity — stormed into
his son’s of¿ce and said he
should be ashamed to be
an attorney, Kennedy said.
The lawyer, unsure how
to respond, gave his father
Kennedy’s concurring
opinion.
“He thought about it,
came back three days
later and said, ‘You can
be proud of being an
attorney,’” Kennedy said,
relaying the story.
Testimony from
Greek lawmakers Rosenberg brother
pass austerity bill released in famous
despite dissent
spy case
East Oregonian
Page 7A
First-hand look shows audacity
of drug lord’s escape tunnel
Associated Press
ALMOLOYA, Mexico — Mexico’s
most pri]ed prisoner paced his cell, ¿rst
to the latrine, then the shower, then the
bed. At every turn around the tiny room,
drug lord Joaquin ‘’El Chapo” Gu]man
checked the shower Àoor hidden by a half
wall, because even jailed criminals get
their privacy.
In his ¿nal sweep, Gu]man sat on
his bed and took off his shoes. Then he
walked back to the shower, stooped
behind the wall and disappeared.
It was the beginning of an escape
odyssey straight out of the pages of
¿ction, and the media were given a peek
Tuesday at the deep and sophisticated
tunnel that led the leader of the Sinaloa
cartel, whose illicit drug traf¿cking reach
includes Europe and Asia, swiftly to
freedom late Saturday.
On Wednesday, government of¿cials
gave media access to Gu]man’s cell. He
was housed in cell No. 20 in the Altiplano
prison’s highest security wing below
ground level. Twenty-two steel doors,
most opening only when the previous one
is closed, stood between Gu]man and the
outside. So he chose another exit.
The square of concrete in his shower
appeared to have been punched out, rather
than cut or chiseled. It was relatively thin,
just three or four inches in thickness. It
did not include rebar, but rather some thin
wire.
Speaking to reporters outside the
warehouse where the tunnel exited, leftist
Sen. Alejandro Encinas critici]ed the
prison’s construction standards.
“I was in charge of the construction
of two prisons in the Federal District and
that is not how you do it,” he said.
Government of¿cials have maintained
that the prison meets the highest interna-
tional security standards.
Video released by the authorities
showing Gu]man’s ¿nal moments in his
cell and journalists’ climb into the tunnel
put real dimensions to a high-tech engi-
neering feat three stories underground,
where planners and builders managed to
burrow through dirt and rock right to the
one spot in Gu]man’s cell that surveil-
lance cameras couldn’t see.
Mexico’s security commissioner
Monte Alejandro Rubido said Tuesday
that up to the moment Gu]man disap-
peared, his pacing was considered normal
AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo
The photo shows the opening of a tunnel, authorities claim was used by
drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, to escape from inside his cell at
the Altiplano maximum security prison, in Almoloya, west of Mexico City.
for someone who lives in about 60 square
feet with only an hour a day outside for
exercise. But there was nothing usual
after he lifted a slab of concrete shower
Àoor and descended into a warm and
humid man-made underworld, where a
motorcycle rigged to two carts on rails
waited to whisk him away.
Gu]man either rode on the bike or
in one of the carts for a mile in the dirt
tunnel built just high enough for a man
called “Shorty” to stand without hitting
his head. When he reached the other end,
he climbed a wooden ladder through a
large, wood-framed shaft with a winch
overhead that had been used to drop
construction supplies into the tunnel.
After pulling himself up 17 rungs, he
reached a small basement, where a blue
power generator the si]e of a compact
car provided the electricity to illuminate
and pump oxygen into the underground
escape route.
From there, Gu]man walked to a
shorter ladder and climbed one, two,
three steps as the air thinned and the
temperature dropped 10 degrees. As
Gu]man’s head poked above the dirt
Àoor, he climbed three more rungs to
stand inside the un¿nished bodega built
to hide the elaborate scheme.
Digging crews had discarded 4-by
4-inch wooden beams, 8-foot-tall coils
of steel mesh, gallons of hydraulic
Àuid, 10-foot lengths of PVC pipe and
an electric disc saw. A battered wheel
barrow full of ¿ne gray soil sat just above
the opening in the Àoor. A couple of
improvised wooden tables and a wooden
bench rounded out the bodega’s furniture,
along with shelves of assorted drill bits, a
circular wood saw blade, a jar of liquid
cement for pipe joining and a bottle of
motor oil.
Seven more strides and the man who
Mexico’s government said could not
possibly repeat his 2001 prison escape
stepped through a sliding steel door into
the chilly night on a high plain west of the
capital.
For the ¿rst time since his latest capture
on Feb. 22, 2014, Gu]man was free.
It was no slapdash project. It appeared
no expense was spared, though working
quickly was the priority.
A tunnel of such sophistication would
normally take 18 months to two years
to complete, said Jim Dinkins, former
head of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement’s Homeland Security
Investigations. But Gu]man was behind
bars barely 16 months.
“When it’s for the boss, you probably
put that on high speed,” Dinkins said.
Crews head out to plane wreckage
Teen survivor
returns home
SEATTLE
(AP)
—
Ground search crews recov-
ered two bodies Wednesday
from the wreckage of a small
airplane that crashed into a
Washington state mountain-
side over the weekend, forcing
a teenager who survived the
impact to hike her way off a
rugged slope to safety.
Deputies and volunteers
who reached the wreckage
found it burned out and smol-
dering.
The two victims haven’t
been formally identi¿ed,
but 16-year-old survivor
Autumn Veatch has said her
step-grandparents,
Leland
and Sharon Bowman of
Marion, Montana, were killed
in the crash.
The plane, piloted by
Leland
Bowman,
was
bringing Veatch home from
a Montana visit. A National
Transportation Safety Board
team was expected to arrive
Thursday to investigate.
The 16-year-old Veatch
was released from the hospital
Tuesday, and she provided
searchers with clues needed
to ¿nd the wreck.
A different set of searchers
on
Wednesday
located
what was believed to be the
wreckage of an airplane that
took off from Minnesota with
two people on board who were
scheduled to arrive at Orcas
Island on Saturday. Of¿cials
said they haven’t been able
to con¿rm the debris is from
the missing Àight, or ¿nd any
Newton Goss via AP
In this undated photo provided by Newton Goss, Goss’
girlfriend, Autumn Veatch plays a bass guitar.
signs of survivors. Barbara
LaBoe, a Washington state
Transportation Department
spokeswoman, also said there
was no evidence the two
Àights were related.
Veatch arrived home in
Bellingham shortly before
midnight. Family friends had
gathered in anticipation of a
happy homecoming, bringing
balloons and Àowers to the
apartment of her father, David
Veatch.
“We just want to show her
and her family that we care
and we love her,” said one
friend, Amber Shockey. She
added that Veatch had said
“she was happy to be coming
home.”
Bruised by the impact,
singed by the ¿re, fearing an
explosion and knowing she
couldn’t help her step-grand-
parents, Autumn Veatch
headed down the steep slope,
following a creek to a river.
She spent a night on a sand
bar and sipped small amounts
of water, worrying she might
get sick if she drank more.
She followed the river to a
trail, and the trail to a highway.
Two men driving by stopped
and picked her up Monday
afternoon, bringing her —
about two full days after the
crash — to the safety of a
general store in tiny Ma]ama,
near North Cascades National
Park.
Okanogan County Sheriff
Frank Rogers said the Beech-
craft A-35 was Àying over
north-central
Washington
on its way from Kalispell,
Montana, to Lynden, Wash-
ington, when it entered a
cloud bank. Then the clouds
suddenly parted, and from
her seat behind the cockpit,
Veatch could see the moun-
tain and trees ahead. Leland
Bowman tried to pull up — to
no avail.
They struck the trees and
the plane plummeted to the
ground and caught ¿re.
“When they came out of
the clouds, she said it was
obvious they were too low,”
Rogers said. “They crashed
right into the trees and hit
the ground. She tried to do
what she could to help her
grandparents, but she couldn’t
because of the ¿re.”
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