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Politics & The Nation


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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2010 Administration hunts for GOP backers of arms treaty


Senators express concerns, offer advice about New START


BY WALTER PINCUS


AND MARY BETH SHERIDAN While trying to satisfy a law-


maker’s concerns, the Obama administration is working around Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) in an attempt to gather the nine Republican votes needed to pass the ratification resolution for the strategic arms treaty with Russia this year. Kyl, who has acted as the


Republican negotiator on the issue, surprised the administra- tion recently by saying the lame- duck session did not allow enough time to debate the treaty. Then last week he circulated a


memo asking for guarantees that future presidents and congresses will allocate funds for upgrades of nuclear weapons facilities,


something administration offi- cials say cannot be done. President Obama and his top


aides have said they think Kyl is sincere in his concerns, but they also say they have been talking independently with other Re- publicans about the treaty. Some of the Republican sena-


torswho seemmost likely to vote for the New START pact say that Obama must do more to build public support if the document is to be ratified before a new Con- gress is sworn in. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine),


who has reserved judgment on how she will vote until the reso- lution comes to the floor, said it could make a difference if Obama could get George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, both former presidents, to appear with him in support of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START. Neither Bush has taken a pub-


lic position on the pact, which would continue trends they es- tablished with the original


START agreement signed in 1991 by the elder Bush and the Mos- cow Treaty approved by the younger Bush in 2002. TheNewSTART treaty contin-


uesmost verification procedures established in the 1991 agree- ment that ended last December while adding new ones; it also lowers slightly to 1,550 the de- ployed warheads allowed under the 2002 pact, which were 1,700 to 2,200. “Itwould bewonderful if Pres-


ident [George H.W.] Bush would come out for the treaty. That would be so powerful and defi- nitely help,” Collins said in a telephone interview last week. Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-


Ind.), the leading GOP member supporting the treaty, has sug- gested that the administration employ the same tactics Presi- dent Bill Clinton employed in getting Senate approval for rati- fication of the Chemical Weap- ons Convention in 1997. At that time, former president George H.W. Bush, whose administra-


tion had signed the convention, publicly urged senators to vote for it at a news conference with Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s secretary of state. “The Clinton administration


set up a war room, in a sense, in the Capitol,wherewe had a team of peoplewho spent all their time slapping down all the arguments against the treaty, coming up with floor statements, organiz- ing the proponents against the opponents,” saidMarkHelmke, a senior adviser to Lugar. “We’ve been telling the administration all along you have to do all this.” The White House is planning


events that it is not prepared to announce, a senior administra- tion official said. He added, “We have always targeted a group of [Republican] senators other than Kyl and remain optimistic theywill support the treatywhen it comes to a vote.” At least eight Republicans,


beyond Lugar and Collins, have publicly said they have concerns about issues that have been


Failed attack targeted ‘families celebrating’ oregon from A1


Portland attack. There were no indications of any U.S. collabora- tors,andofficials emphasizedthat Mohamud’s scheme posed no real danger to thepublic. But authorities saidthe chilling


details ofMohamud’s alleged plot underscored the need for aggres- sive tactics against jihadis.Moha- mudexpressedastronginterest in violent jihad, chose the target and mailed bomb components to peo- ple he thought were assembling the device but were instead FBI operatives, court documents said. The documents indicate that he believes ina radical formof Islam. Cautioned that children would


attend the tree lighting, Moham- ud is quoted as telling an under- cover FBI operative that he was seeking a “hugemass that will . . . be attacked in their own element with their families celebrating the holidays. . . . I want whoever is attending that event to leave, to leave eitherdeador injured.” “The threat was very real,” said


Arthur Balizan, special agent in charge of the FBI inOregon. “Mo- hamudwas absolutely committed to carrying out an attack on a very grand scale.” He added that the bureau carefully “denied him the ability to actually carry out the attack.’’ Those efforts reached their cli-


max Friday. About noon,Moham- ud met at a Portland hotel with two undercover FBI operatives, court documents said. They walked to a white van parked nearby,whereMohamudis saidto have admired the handiwork in- side: six 55-gallon drums contain- ing inert material, a detonation cord, blasting caps and a gallon of diesel fuel. Inthefrontseatwasacellphone


that was to detonate the bomb. Mohamud smiled and said the phonydevicewas “beautiful,’’doc- uments said. Nearly five hours later,Moham-


ud and one of the operatives drove the van to the target: Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square. Known locally as the city’s “living room,’’ it is a tree-lined open plaza intheheartofdowntownthathosts more than300events eachyear. Portland police officials said


thousands of peoplewould attend the tree-lighting ceremony that night,which featured the popular musical groupPinkMartini. Mohamud attached a blasting


cap to the fake bomb, and the FBI operativeturnedonthecellphone, court documents said. They left the van on the southeast corner of the square, near a bank and the federal courthouse, and drove to Union Station, a train station less than amile away, according to an FBI affidavit. Intheparking lot, theFBI oper-


ative gave Mohamud the cell- phone and read the number he needed to dial to detonate the bomb, the affidavit said. “Mohamud appeared so eager,


thathe startedtoreadanddial the number off the paper (the opera- tive) was holding faster than (the operative) could recite it,’’ the affi- davit said. Thecallwent through.Nothing. The operative suggestedMoha-


mud step outside to get a better signal, according to the affidavit. He dialed the number again and was grabbed by authorities and arrested, officials said. Mohamud was born in the So-


mali capital ofMogadishu in 1991, the year that country’sdeadly civil war began. It is unclear when he arrivedintheUnitedStates,but at some point, he joined Portland’s fast-growing Somali population andbecame aU.S. citizen. Todd Simmons, a spokesman


for Oregon State University, said Mohamud graduated from high


Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, was arrested after he dialed a cellphone he thought would blow up a van.


school in Portland and began at- tendingtheuniversityasanon-de- gree student last fall. He has not beenenrolledsinceOct. 6. Mohamud told the FBI that he


became radicalized at age 15 and had been thinking about violent jihadever since,documents said. According to the affidavit, he


began taking action last year whenhe exchangede-mailswitha co-conspirator who had terrorist ties and was in Pakistan’s north- west province, a haven for radical groups.An FBI undercover opera- tive sent Mohamud an e-mail in June saying hewas an associate of that co-conspirator. An elaborate set of encounters


ensued, in which Mohamud met with two FBI operatives. At the first meeting in Portland, in July, Mohamudsaidhewantedto carry out an “explosion” but needed help, courtpapers said. At a secondmeeting, inAugust,


he identified the square as a tar- get, the documents said. Over the past three months, Mohamud workedcloselywiththeoperatives andgave thema thumbdrivewith detailed instructions for the at- tack, officials said. On Nov. 4, Mohamud and his


FBI collaborators detonated a bombconcealedinabackpackina remote Oregon location as a trial run. That same day, he recorded a video, wearing a white robe and white andredheaddress, inwhich


he offered his rationale for the attack, courtdocuments said. “Explodeonthese (infidels),’’he


concluded, according to the docu- ments. “Alleviate ourpain.’’


markonj@washpost.com


StaffwriterKelly Johnson and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.


raised but have not yet said they oppose approval of the treaty. For example, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) said last week in a statement, “It is . . . my duty as a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee to care- fully review such concerns until a vote is scheduled.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alas-


ka) said she has not decided to vote against it. “I have been a little bit preoccupied in these last two months,” she said. “So now I’ll be able to focus full-time on my responsibilities in the Senate. . . . And part of that will be figuring out exactlywherewe are with the New START treaty.” Some of the undecided sena-


tors have been called by attend- ees of the Nov. 18 White House bipartisan meeting on START , which included such former offi- cials in Republican administra- tions as Brent Scowcroft, Henry Kissinger and James Baker III. The treaty resolution of ratifi-


cation is a privileged piece of legislation that does not need 60


votes to reach the Senate floor for debate and a vote. It also is not subject to amendments on the floor. But it does need 67 votes for approval, which means nine Republicans are required. Private sessions are underway


for last-minute changes to the resolution, a negotiation with Republicans being directed by Vice President Biden, according to administration sources. Kyl and Sen. Bob Corker (R-


Tenn.) co-authored a memo cir- culated last week calling for a commitment in Obama’s 2012 budget to update the U.S. nucle- ar weapons complex through 2020 or later. It also says com- mitments from congressional authorizers and appropriators “must be obtained” for the five- year budget figures proposed by the administration in its most recent plan for the complex. But administration officials say Obama cannot bind future pres- idents and congresses to the funding.


pincusw@washpost.com


Black Friday sales up slightly at stores


BY EILEEN AJ CONNELLY


new york—Shoppers crowded stores on Black Friday, but they spent just a little more than last year on the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, according to data released Satur- day by a research firm. Retail spending rose a slight


0.3 percent, to $10.69 billion, compared with $10.66 billion on the day after Thanksgiving last year, according to ShopperTrak. Two factors behind the slim


sales increase—which came as a disappointment after bullish re- ports from stores Friday — were heavy discounts earlier in No- vember and online shopping, which had a big gain. ShopperTrak, a Chicago firm


that tallies sales in more than 70,000 retail outlets across the country, said the total was still a record for the day. It stood behind its prediction that spend- ing will rise 3.2 percent for the


Day. “The season’s off to a great


start,” said John Squire, Corem- etrics vice president of strategy. “It really shows really strong consumer sentiment for buying and for going online.” Meanwhile, PayPal reported


an increase of about 27 percent in payment volume on Black Friday compared with last year. The eBay unit did not release a dollar amount for the sales it processed. Lots of shoppers made it an


all-nighter online. “Even at 1 a.m. Pacific, there was still very strong buying across the U.S.,” Squire said. Shopping on smartphones re-


mained a small, though growing, piece of the pie. Coremetrics said 5.6 percent of online shoppers logged onto a retailer’s Web site using amobile device. That com- pares with less than 1 percent on the previous Black Friday, Squire said. More dollars have shifted to


“It’s hard to say Black Friday wasn’t a success. It’s just not the success we saw in the mid- 2000s, when the day really became a phenomenon.”


—Bill Martin, founder of research firm ShopperTrak, commenting on this year’s modest increase in Black Friday spending at stores.


season. “It’s hard to say Black Friday


TORSTEN KJELLSTRAND/THE OREGONIAN The tree is lit on Pioneer Courthouse Square shortly after an averted bomb attack on the event Friday.


wasn’t a success. It’s just not the success we saw in the mid- 2000s, when the day really be- came a phenomenon,” Shopper- Trak founder BillMartin said. The sales increase did not


keep pace with a 2.2 percent boost in store traffic, which Martin said suggests that con- sumers were in the stores searching for deals. “Thismeans the American shopper has adapted to the economic climate over the last couple of years and is possibly spendingmore wisely as the holiday season begins,” Martin said. ShopperTrak said spending in


the first two weeks of the month rose 6.1 percent fromlast year as retailers promoted the sort of doorbuster deals that normally didn’t appear until after the turkey dinner was finished. Traf- fic in stores during the two weeks that ended Nov. 13 jumped 6.2 percent. “Retailerswere very conscious


of driving traffic early in Novem- ber, and in doing so, somemight have thinned Black Friday spending a bit,” Martin said. “The reality is, we have a deal- driven consumer in 2010 and that consumer responded to some of the earliest deep dis- counts we’ve even seen for the holidays.” Many retailers also offered


discounts and promotions on their Web sites. Online mer- chants’ Black Friday revenue increased 16 percent from the year before, according to re- search company Coremetrics. That increase was partly attrib- utable to shoppers who spent more per purchase online, the Web research company said. The average order rose to $190.80. That’s a 12 percent increase from $170.19 on the same day last year. The Black Friday increase in


online spending followed a 33 percent surge on Thanksgiving


online shopping over the years, but it’s still a relatively small share of holiday spending, be- tween 8 and 10 percent. But many shoppers have become ac- customed to the comfort and convenience of browsing the Web for gifts. Kelly Hager, 30, of Baltimore


is shopping exclusively online for the fourth year in a row. “It’s nice to not have to fight


for a parking spot and deal with 3 billion people who are all trying to get the same thing I’m trying to get,” she said. Hager used to work at a mall, so she’s seen Black Friday from both sides. Retailers and analysts also


were encouraged that people seemed to be buying more items for themselves, a sign that they are feeling confident enough to spend more money in general. Thanksgiving weekend is


prime time for retailers. In re- cent years, Black Friday—called that because the many shoppers could lift retailers into profit- ability, or “the black,” for the year — has been the busiest shopping day of the year, accord- ing to ShopperTrak data. Black Friday is generally not


as big for online retailers as the Monday after Thanksgiving, known as Cyber Monday, which Coremetrics predicts will be the busiest online shopping day of the year, driven by heavy online promotions. The Black Friday blitz does


not make or break the holiday season, and shoppers seemto be procrastinatingmore every year. That gives retailers some tense moments in the last few days before Christmas. “I wait for the last minute,”


said LindaMajkowski ofQueens, N.Y., who visited a Costco in Melville, N.Y., on Saturday but said she had not started her holiday shopping. “I just found out what everybody wants on Thanksgiving.”


— Associated Press


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