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most significant assertions: Mr. Shahzad, a Paki- stani-born, naturalized U.S. citizen, received bomb training in Waziristan when he traveled to Pakistan late last year and has confessed to being responsible for making and trying to detonate the makeshift bomb.
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trouble started with an errant announcement by Israel of new housing construction in East Jeru- salem; President Obama chose to escalate what could have been a blip into a public quarrel, in the apparent hope of extracting a series of con- cessions from Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The tactic failed. The “proximity” talks, with former senator George J. Mitchell as a go- between, are starting up on pretty much the same terms established two months ago. Mr. Netanya- hu predictably refused Mr. Obama’s demand for a freeze on building in East Jerusalem — but, as be- fore, Israel has promised to avoid provocative ac- tions. Mr. Mitchell managed to establish that the discussions will cover all of the fundamental is- sues involved in creating a Palestinian state, but Israel has made it clear that substantive progress cannot take place until the two sides begin talk- ing to each other directly. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas seem- ingly wants to postpone that day as long as pos- sible. He has insisted on indirect talks even though he has participated in direct negotiations with Israeli leaders for two decades; in 2008, he refused to take up a far-reaching peace offer from former prime minister Ehud Olmert. The Pales- tinian leader now appears to be counting on the Obama administration to do his negotiating. Sec- onding some of the president’s advisers, he re- cently called on the United States to put forward its own solution. That could mean he is ready to passively accept some of the terms that would likely be part of any U.S. plan, such as the perma- nent exclusion of Palestinian refugees from Is- rael. But Mr. Abbas no doubt anticipates that
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But much is still not known about the adminis-
tration’s handling of this case. For example, how long was Mr. Shahzad questioned before he was read his Miranda rights? And what triggered the
Back to proximity
Israelis and Palestinians are finally to begin talking — sort of.
NDIRECT TALKS between Israelis and Pales- tinians appear finally set to begin, after a two-month delay that showed the Obama ad- ministration’s diplomacy at its worst. The
The administration should explain fully how it handled a bomb plot suspect.
N THE PAST two days, the Obama adminis- tration has released significant amounts of information about its arrest of Faisal Shah- zad, the man accused of trying to detonate a car bomb in New York’s Times Square. The
Justice Department’s decision to suspend the “ticking time bomb” exception in case law that gives law enforcement officers an opportunity to gather information before advising a suspect of his right to remain silent? The administration has also not publicly addressed whether it consulted with intelligence officials on the best way to deal with Mr. Shahzad. Nor has it said whether its High Value Interrogation Group (HIG)— a group of law enforcement and intelligence experts spe- cially trained for terrorism cases — was up and running and deployed in the Shahzad case. The administration rightly came under fire for its handling of the case of Umar Farouk Ab- dulmutallab, a Nigerian citizen who tried to ig-
nite explosives on a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day. In that case, the Justice Depart- ment failed to adequately consult its intelligence partners and rashly embraced a law enforcement approach without fully considering other op- tions, including holding Mr. Abdulmutallab as an enemy combatant. The Shahzad case is different, primarily be- cause Mr. Shahzad is an American citizen. The de- cisions the administration has made in this case may have been well considered by all responsible parties and well founded. But the public is enti- tled to understand in greater detail what choices the administration made, through what process, and why.
TOM TOLES
WEDNESDAY,MAY 5, 2010
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
dletters@washpost.com
Brooks Laich and other good sports
The April 30 front-page article “Deflated fans re- ceive an unlikely assist” prompts one to ask: Who are these Washington Capitals anyway? Here is Brooks Laich, on the heels of what was probably the worst defeat in his life, stopping on the Roosevelt Bridge to help a motorist change a tire. I am sure Mr. Laich did not do this to get good press; clearly, he did it because it was the right thing to do and because he sees himself as a member of this com- munity. He even apologized for the game but stood by his team and its (truly) wonderful season, voicing the hope that the players can stay together. Mr. Laich’s home town — Wawota, Saskatchewan
— is a long way away. But obviously he learned how to treat neighbors. And that is what these Capitals are. They are our neighbors and are part of our com- munity. Let us treat them with the respect that neighbors deserve.
ROGER SEKERA, Potomac
That Capitals forward Brooks Laich managed to help a stranded motorist on what was probably one of the most devastating nights of his hockey career provided some much-needed cheer to area Caps fans. Not only did he score the only goal of Game 7, but his commendable action on the Roosevelt Bridge just a few hours later was a bright spot in an otherwise dis- mal week for Washington hockey. It also helped re- mind all of us who had such high expectations of these young men that, in Mr. Laich’s own words, “We’re just people, too.”
PATRICIAWEILCOATES AND LIAMCOATES,
Frederick
My heart goes out to all Capitals fans. What a crushing way to end the season. But maybe they can ease the pain a bit by coming out to see the other win- ning D.C. team, the Washington Nationals. The tick- ets are cheaper (and more available), the team is bet- ter (right now) than Pittsburgh and Boston, and Caps fans can cheer on the league-leading closer with the Nats fans’ favorite rally cry: “Let’s go, Capps!”
JOHNREYNOLDS, Alexandria
The story “Deflated fans receive an unlikely assist” reminded me of my own run-in with a couple of tire- changing good Samaritans. A few weeks ago, my mother, who was visiting from Wisconsin, offered to drive me home after we enjoyed dinner at Clyde’s of Georgetown. She had hardly gone one block before a jolting noise — which we soon learned was a flat tire — caused her to pull over on M Street. Before we could even turn to each other to develop a plan of action, a man appeared at my mom’s window. “Want us to change your tire?” he asked. My mom turned to me with skepticism and said,
“Is he serious?” It was almost too good to be true. But, in fact, it was true, and the man (Tom) and his friend (also Tom) cheerfully changed our tire, and even documented the whole experience on camera. Tom No. 1 e-mailed us the following day with the photos of our adventure. Tom and Tom may not have been celebrities, but
my mom and I will always remember their generosi- ty, good humor and stellar example of humanity.
ANNAMILLER, Washington
How to handle ‘too big to fail’
In his April 30 op-ed “Time to bridle the mega-
American intervention would lead to more clash- es with Mr. Netanyahu’s government, which Pal- estinians can watch from the sidelines. It’s true that Mr. Netanyahu’s current right- wing coalition is unlikely to accept some of the terms that would be necessary for peace, such as Palestinian sovereignty over part of Jerusalem. Even his current defense minister says Mr. Ne- tanyahu needs to form a more centrist govern- ment. But the Obama administration should rec-
ognize that blunt pressure on Israel won’t pro- duce a Middle East deal. Instead, the administration needs to methodically press both sides to negotiate seriously. Steps toward peace in the Middle East have always begun with initia- tives by Israelis and Arabs. Mr. Obama himself re- cently quoted former secretary of state James A. Baker III’s maxim that “we can’t want it more than they do.” He would be wise to be guided by those words.
A standard and poor remedy
There’s no shortage of ideas for reforming the credit rating agencies — except in Congress.
Fitch generally get paid by the same companies whose securities they are evaluating. Familiar as this issue is, however, it was still a bit stunning to see it so bluntly described in internal e-mails re- cently released by a Senate subcommittee. One employee wrote that his mortgage-backed securi- ty ratings unit had “become so beholden to their top issuers for revenue they have all developed a kind of Stockholm syndrome which they mistak- enly tag as Customer Value creation.” Given the role that misbegotten ratings played
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in inflating the now-burst bubble, credit-rating reform should be central to the financial overhaul effort underway in Congress. Yet the Senate ver- sion of the legislation doesn’t do much more than tweak the status quo. It would create a new ratings-agency office within the Securities and Ex- change Commission, require the agencies to dis- close their methodologies and expose them to lawsuits when they knowingly or recklessly fail at
Y NOW, the conflict of incentives em- bedded in the Wall Street credit ratings agencies’ business model is well under- stood. Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and
due diligence. The Senate bill, which is even more tepid than the House-passed bill, would require a study of conflicts of interest, which would em- power the SEC to force disclosure of any conflicts. This is especially disappointing because there is no shortage of creative ideas for shaking up the ratings business. Professors Matthew Richardson and Lawrence White of New York University’s Stern School of Business have called for an inde- pendent clearinghouse to assign rating jobs ran- domly and collect fees on behalf of agencies. We have previously discussed British financial ana- lyst George Cooper’s idea of requiring agencies to grade securities “on a curve,” rather than passing out unlimited AAA ratings. This would reduce the incentive to “sell” favorable ratings, because an upgrade would require an offsetting downgrade. But even that suggestion does not address the
agencies’ quasi-official status as “Nationally Rec- ognized Statistical Ratings Organizations,” em- powered by the SEC to determine what securities are solid enough for pension funds and other in- stitutional investors. The result of this policy, as SEC commissioner Paul Atkins put it in 2008, is
that “credit ratings have become a crutch,” which investors lean on instead of their own analysis. Professor Frank Partnoy of the University of San Diego School of Law has urged ending the agen- cies’ privileged position and requiring institu- tional investors to rely on market signals about creditworthiness, such as a periodically updated average of prices for default insurance. Neither the House bill nor the Senate proposal embraces that position — though the House goes much fur- ther than the Senate, which merely calls for a Gov- ernment Accountability Office study and federal agency review of the issue. If the financial meltdown has taught us any-
thing, it is that there’s no such thing as perfect in- formation. But it also demonstrated that those who flourished in the crisis were those investors — famed mortgage “short” John Paulson comes to mind — who constantly questioned conventional wisdom of the kind often peddled by ratings agen- cies and relied on truly independent analysis. The more Congress can do to encourage everyone to behave that way, the safer and fairer the system will be.
banks,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) stated the case for his proposal to limit the size of our country’s fi- nancial institutions. “Too big to fail is simply too big,” he wrote. The problem of “too big to fail” is not that some institutions are large; the problem is that there is no statutory authority to wind down a failing financial conglomerate the way that the FDIC can wind down a bank. Congress must act to provide the legal au- thority and procedural protocol for seizing and winding down even the largest, most interconnect- ed and complex entities. Large financial institutions provide significant
value and stability to our economy. Lawrence H. Summers, director of President Obama’s National Economic Council, recently said that “to try to break banks up into a lot of little pieces would hurt our ability to serve large companies and hurt the com- petitiveness of the United States.” More effective supervision, coupled with the au-
thority to seize and wind down failing institutions, is the most appropriate way to end “too big to fail” — not arbitrarily and preemptively breaking up healthy companies.
ROBNICHOLS, Chevy Chase
The writer is president and chief operating officer of the Financial Services Forum, a nonpartisan economic policy organization.
Dollar coins fit the bill
Kudos to Thomas E. McMahon [“Dollar coins can lead the way,” letters, April 30]. I support the idea to replace the old, tattered dollar bills with coins. For all the church money-counters out there, who spend countless hours unwadding the paper bills and counting the thousands of one-dollar bills, we wholeheartedly agree. The state of these one-dollar bills after being in a parishoner’s fist for an hour is mind-boggling. We pray for the opportunity to send dollar coins directly to the bank’s money machines. Let us rejoice!
PHILIP J. DOERR, Derwood
TAKING EXCEPTION
How space exploration helps us on Earth
The April 23 editorial “Mr. Obama’s starry-
eyed vision” implied that the “romantic attrac- tion of human spaceflight” is why policymakers support our nation’s leadership in space explo- ration. That premise is wrong. We engage in manned exploration of space because it enhanc- es quality of life on Earth through space-based research. Spaceflight activity also leads to tech- nology breakthroughs ranging from dialysis and heart pumps to enhancements in MRI technology. The international space station’s research ca- pabilities are now available after years of con- struction and $100 billion of investment. It of- fers opportunities to conduct research in an en- vironment unavailable on Earth and it must be sustained, but not just for the sake of science. One problem in the president’s proposal is that it does not address the risk to the station that
will result from retiring the space shuttle and canceling the Constellation replacement pro- gram at the same time. A healthy and viable space station is critical to the emergence of the commercial space industry that the president’s proposal relies on. If the space station is lost, the primary reason to send humans into space in the next decade will be lost. That is a blow that would probably eliminate
any business case for the commercial market and would cripple the future of manned space exploration in this country. We send humans into space to advance science and technology, not for vanity.
KAY BAILEYHUTCHISON AND SUZANNEKOSMAS,Washington
The writers are members, respectively, of the U.S. Senate (R-Tex.) and U.S. House of Representatives (D-Fla.).
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Good news: Too fat to fight
Regarding the April 30 op-ed “The new national
security threat: obesity,” by John M. Shalikashvili and Hugh Shelton, former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: This old hippie was thrilled to learn that the cur- rent obesity epidemic has a tremendous benefit: Young Americans are no longer fit for military serv- ice. Perhaps in the near future, when our politicians vote to remake some other hapless country in Amer- ica’s image, they’ll have to grab their own guns, risk their own lives and do it themselves. The new bumper sticker: Pizza for Peace!
GENE FELLNER, Derwood
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