Two very, very different ways to prepare for a 2020 run: Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, has flirted with a presidential bid for nearly a quarter century. Though he hasn’t yet announced if he’ll make the plunge, Bloomberg is already pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into a data-centric operation to target and activate voters who could vote out Trump. Beto O’Rourke skyrocketed into a potential Democratic front-runner by raising record-breaking sums of money that brought him close to winning a Senate seat in Texas. But he’s stopped fundraising in recent months, which means he won’t have any cash to jump-start his campaign if he does decide to run.
After an Instagram user posted an image of, simply, a lone brown egg, it quickly became a quirky internet phenomenon and the most liked photo of all time on the site. Since then, the account behind the photo, which has accumulated nearly 10 million followers, has posted a series of photos of the egg with a crack that progressively grows in size. One marketing company is trying to turn the viral post into a branding opportunity, shopping around the idea that the egg could crack and reveal the name of a company, a cause, or even a presidential campaign. Staking claim to the soon-to-crack egg could cost tens of millions of dollars—so while the creator of the egg remains anonymous, it’s clear that the wacky posts will likely make this person very rich.
White Americans can often struggle to understand Black English, and that has consequences far beyond just serving as an impediment to casual conversation. An upcoming study finds that stenographers in Philadelphia, when presented with recordings of Black English, made transcription errors in nearly half of all sentences. Those errors, however innocent in intent, can prove enormously harmful, especially in the courtroom: African Americans are overrepresented in the criminal-justice system, and equality is elusive if they’re routinely misunderstood.
Evening Reads
(Elise Amendola / AP)
Nothing is certain in life but death and taxes—and, perhaps, that the New England Patriots will make it to the Super Bowl. The team will appear in the big game this weekend for the third year in a row, but one of its perennial stars, the tight end Rob Gronkowski, is finally showing the wear and tear of a long football career:
Gronkowski isn’t quite what he used to be—namely, a four-time All-Pro, Brady’s preferred crunch-time target, and one of the best players at his position of all time. Years of physical play and resultant injuries have piled up; even before this season, the 29-year-old was rumored to be considering leaving the game. So if Gronkowski remains a useful contributor in this diminished state—a smashmouth blocker and an occasional downfield game-breaker—he also gives the Patriots a needed narrative heft, and fans a reason to watch. Brady and Belichick make lasting look easy; Gronk stands as proof that it isn’t.
→ Read the rest.
(MRS / Getty)
Americans who are stuck at home during the polar vortex could soon start feeling the malaise of boredom and restlessness known as cabin fever.
How the body reacts to that stress seems to be key to how cabin fever rears its ugly head. In the years since I saw people pulling random sporting goods out of storage in Atlanta, I’ve also watched people ski down New York City’s streets during snowstorms and concoct ill-conceived makeshift transportation devices involving sheets of cardboard, garbage-can lids, and whatever else is lying around. Granted, some people might just find this fun, but many with cabin fever are very intent on getting out.
Urban Developments
(Kiichiro Sato / AP)
Our partner site CityLab explores the cities of the future and investigates the biggest ideas and issues facing urban dwellers around the world. Gracie McKenzie shares today’s top stories:
Should these train tracks be on fire? Actually, yes. The polar vortex is so cold that Chicago is lighting the Metra commuter-train rails on fire, but even 20 below won’t ward off these Minnesota bike commuters.
How do you incorporate the specific needs of homeless children into the design of a school? You ask them to “dream big”—like the designers of this new building in Oklahoma City.
“The way we plan cities may be undermining the desire of young couples to start families,” Nolan Gray and Lyman Stone write. A former Massachusetts state senator coined a term for this: vasectomy zoning. Here’s how it plays out.
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Concerns, comments, questions, typos? Email Shan Wang at swang@theatlantic.com.
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It’s Thursday, January 31. The Senate voted overwhelmingly to advance legislation that would express strong opposition to President Donald Trump’s proposed withdrawal of troops from Syria and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, at the White House, Trump was confident that the U.S. and China would reach a comprehensive trade deal, and said he would likely meet with President Xi Jinping next month.
Trump wasn’t so confident, however, that the lawmakers on the bipartisan conference committee tasked with reaching a deal on border security would be successful:
Over on the Hill: The legislators working on a border-security deal have until February 15 to reach a compromise. And at least one thing has become clear as they start the negotiation process: They’d like Trump to leave them alone.
In 2020 Land: The billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg hasn’t yet committed to a presidential bid. But he has already started work on a major 2020 project: a multimillion-dollar campaign to crush Donald Trump. And as Democratic candidates propose replacing the Affordable Care Act with a single-payer health-care system, they might run into the same problems that Republicans faced in 2017, when they tried to repeal the ACA, writes Ronald Brownstein.
Chris Christie’s New Book: In a wide-ranging interview, the former New Jersey governor defends his brand of confrontational politics, and attempts to explain the president’s operating style. “If he thinks you’re very loyal, he doesn’t pay any attention to you,” Christie told McKay Coppins. “He’s trying to win over the people who he doesn’t perceive as loyal.”
Snapshot
President Donald Trump listens as he meets with China's Vice Premier Liu He in the Oval Office of the White House on Thursday. (Jim Young / Reuters)
Could Black English Mean a Prison Sentence? (John McWhorter)
“A black man on the phone from a jail in San Francisco said, in 2015, ‘He come tell ’bout I’m gonna take the TV,’ which meant that this man was not going to do so. The transcriber listening in couldn’t understand the first part, apparently, and recorded the whole statement as ‘I’m gonna take the TV.’” → Read on.
The Threat of Threat Assessments (Peter Beinart)
“For all his lies and crimes, Trump over the past several years has asked some legitimate questions about America’s expansive role in the world, questions shared by many Americans in both parties. The threat assessment is a case study in how to evade them.” → Read on.
The Unstoppable Spread of Lethal Drones (Conor Friedersdorf)
“Drones capable of taking down a commercial aircraft are already easy to get. And even as non-state actors marshal the least sophisticated drones to mount attacks, state actors are pouring money into more sophisticated drones that will proliferate as surely as their predecessors.” → Read on.
◆ How Abortion Law in New York Will Change, and How It Won’t (Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker)
◆ A Black Legacy, Wrapped Up in Fur (Jasmine Sanders, The New York Times)
◆ How the Geography of Climate Change Could Make the Politics Less Polarizing (Mark Muro, David G. Victor, and Jacob Whiton, Brookings)
◆ The Deported Americans (Brooke Jarvis, The California Sunday Magazine)
We’re always looking for ways to improve The Politics & Policy Daily, and will be testing some formats throughout the new year. Concerns, comments, questions, typos? Let us know anytime here.
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“Old people are excluded from life,” says Inge Ginsberg, a 97-year-old Holocaust survivor, in Leah Galant’s short documentary. “You have to have a chance to be heard.”
Ginsberg found her chance through an unlikely avenue: heavy metal. Though her lyrics are actually about fighting fascism and saving the environment, Ginsberg shouts them into the mic to her millions of fans on YouTube with the requisite fervor that the genre demands. Death Metal Grandma is a lively portrait of the spunky woman, who refuses to be silenced by a society that she sees as patriarchal and youth-dominated. And she has a lot to say.
Originally from Vienna, Ginsberg, who is Jewish, was a spy during World War II. Facing the possibility of being sent to a concentration camp, she fled to Switzerland, where she landed in a refugee camp with her husband, Otto Kollmann. After the war, they immigrated to America to build new lives. They composed music for some of the most popular singers of their generation—including Nat King Cole, Doris Day, and Dean Martin.
“Getting to know Inge beneath her persona was my main goal of the film,” Galant told The Atlantic. “Elders—and especially elderly women—are rarely front and center in TV or film in a three-dimensional way. Inge shouldn’t have to be a ‘death metal grandma’ to be considered important.”
This film was supported by the Creative Culture Program at the Jacob Burns Film Center, Helen Gurley Brown’s Glassbreaker Films, and Bering Pictures.
Even after three decades of efforts to give men and women equal access to public toilets, Joe Pinsker reported last week, women still have to wait longer to use the restroom. Gender-neutral bathrooms present a possible solution. “One way to guarantee that men and women wait the same amount of time for a toilet,” Pinsker wrote, “is to make them wait for the same toilets.”
“From an economic standpoint, it doesn’t make much sense to increase the number of toilet fixtures if that’s going to decrease the amount of rentable area in a building,” says Christopher Chwedyk, a building-code consultant at the firm Burnham Nationwide. In other words, toilets don’t make money (and are quite expensive to install), so developers don’t have a financial reason to go beyond what the code requires.
I think the view that toilets don’t make money is false. I frequent certain coffee shops, restaurants, theaters, shopping areas, and event spaces in New York City because of their clean and accessible restroom facilities. I avoid other businesses that don’t meet my standards because I want to be comfortable and feel respected by the establishment. If I’m not comfortable and I don’t feel respected, you don’t get my money—or you won’t get it a second time.
Kati Neiheisel
New York, N.Y.
It is not a fundamental right to have equal waiting time. Why would any business need to account for the fact that it takes more time for women to use the bathroom? One could also say that more men attend hockey games and therefore should have more bathrooms there.
Robert WA Machuk
Alberta, Canada
I was in the Air Force in 1978 when I took a long leave and went to Europe. I flew back to the U.S. from Luxembourg, and remember using the toilet at the airport. It was simply labeled WC, with no gender given. I thought nothing of it at the time; I simply entered and found myself in a long room with about 10 urinals on the far end wall, approximately 15 stalls on the left, and a line of sinks on the right. I entered a stall; a few minutes later I heard a stall door open, and heard what sounded like stiletto heels crossing the floor. Huh, I thought. Shortly thereafter, upon exiting my stall, I saw a woman at one of the sinks applying lipstick, and a man at the far end of the room using a urinal. It was then that I realized that I had unwittingly stumbled into one of Europe’s unisex restrooms. A bit disconcerting at first, but then I thought, How sensible. The three of us wound up at the line of sinks at the same time. We exchanged perfunctory greetings, went our separate ways, and in the end, the sky didn’t fall.
Dave R. Atkinson
Carver, Mass.
Having been in long lines waiting at a women’s restroom, I heartily agree with efforts to create “potty parity.” The public facilities where men and women share the same restroom with lockable cubicles is a welcome change except for one thing. Too many men are sloppy at aiming, and I hate using a toilet and having the cubicle floor soiled with and smelling of urine. Perhaps shared toilets can have a sign asking that users take care to aim carefully and/or have sanitary wipes so that people can clean up after themselves.
Margaret Eaton
New Haven, Vt.
As a woman in my 50s who has had major urinary emergencies ever since I graduated out of diapers, I do take liberties like using the men’s facilities when the women’s has a line at event intermissions. After asking an exiting man if there is, indeed, an available stall, I enter the room saying, “I am not looking; I am not looking.” I wonder if these rooms are designed with the urinals by the door on purpose to discourage women from using their empty stalls. However, I understand that bathrooms full of rowdy men are intimidating.
I suggest a men’s room with only urinals, a women’s room with flimsy partitions that allow for quicker and better cleaning (fewer corners to deal with), and a co-ed space with stronger partitions.
Cécile Lagandré
Kansas City, Mo.
Just read your article on why long lines for women’s bathrooms still haven’t been eliminated, and cringed at the thought that gender-neutral bathrooms might be considered a solution. While I do support them, and they seem necessary for a completely different set of reasons, gender-neutral bathrooms do not address the problem sufficiently, and I hope we can do better than that.
Keep the gender-neutral bathrooms, but please do not take away the women’s rooms!
I currently work in a building where the adult restrooms (single-stall) are being used by individuals of any gender. I am asking (so far unsuccessfully) to again have some of them designated and observed as female-only. Why? Because of the number of times that I have gone into a restroom only to turn around again to look for another one—and sometimes another one after that—because a stand-up user has left urine drips and drops on the seat, the floor, and/or the front of the toilet. Since I have to move my clothes and my body and my shoes into and onto those areas, I find this disgusting. Walking out of a restroom with sticky feet is itself disgusting—even more so when the urine ends up on oneself and one’s clothes.
This could be addressed behaviorally. And utopia is just around the corner. Until then, I am firmly desirous of having access to women-only restrooms.
Barbara Lamay
Northampton, Mass.
As much of the United States remains in the clutches of the polar vortex, other parts of the Northern Hemisphere are also feeling the extremes of mid-winter. Collected below, images taken over the past week from countries across the North, where icy temperatures and snowfall have drastically changed the landscape.
In 1909, the Japanese scientist Kuniomi Ishimori collected spinal fluid from sleep-deprived dogs and injected it into active, rested pooches. Within hours, the latter fell into a deep sleep. By coincidence, a pair of French researchers did the same experiments a few years later and got the same results. These studies, and others like them, suggested that the blood of sleepy animals contains some kind of soporific secret sauce of chemicals. Ishimori called these “hypogenic substances.” Others labeled them “somnogens.”
The sources of these sleep-inducing chemicals have proved surprisingly elusive, and scientists have found only a few that fit the bill. Now Hirofumi Toda from the University of Pennsylvania has discovered another—a gene called nemuri that triggers sleep, at least in fruit flies. Unexpectedly, it also becomes active during infections and acts to kill incoming microbes. It seems to be part of a self-regulating system, analogous enough to an internal thermostat that we might call it a sleep-o-stat. It can send animals to sleep when they most need shut-eye, whether because they’re sick or because they just haven’t slept enough.
This sleep-o-stat works separately from the daily body clocks that make us feel more tired at night. And while the latter has been thoroughly scrutinized by scientists, the former is still largely mysterious. “What makes us sleepy when we’ve been awake for a long time?” asks Amita Sehgal, who led Toda’s project. “We still don’t really have answers to that.”
[Read: Sleep deprivation in hospitals is a real problem]
Toda began by looking for genes that, if switched on, would make flies sleepier. To that end, he worked with flies from 8,000 different strains that had each been engineered to activate a different gene when fed a triggering chemical. Toda placed these flies individually into tubes that were monitored with infrared beams. When awake and mobile, the insects regularly tripped the beams; when asleep and still, they did not. A computer monitored the entire captive swarm, recording their movements and noting any that were sleeping more than usual.
This monumental effort was successful—just. From 8,000 possible genes, Toda found only one that induced sleep. That was nemuri, which the team named after the Japanese word for sleep. It had never been thoroughly studied before. “When we first got it, we didn’t know what it was,” says Sehgal.
If flies are deprived of sleep, because the team was either regularly shaking their tubes or feeding them with caffeine, the nemuri gene becomes more active—but only in a single pair of neurons within the insects’ brains. When it whirs into action, it produces a protein (of the same name) that then acts on a fan-shaped part of the brain that’s known as a control center for sleep. If Toda switched nemuri on deliberately, flies slept 20 to 30 percent longer than normal peers. They slept more deeply, too: They were much less likely to wake up when their tubes were bumped, and the few that roused were slow and sluggish.
“It’s very interesting work,” says Chiara Cirelli from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She and others have identified genes in flies that are important for a good night’s rest and, when disabled, result in less sleep. But this is the first time anyone has done the reverse: increase the activity of a gene, and trigger more sleep.
“Until this study was conducted, relatively few somnogens were known,” says Susan Harbison from the National Institutes of Health. “This study also suggests that few such molecules may exist.” After all, if Toda tested 8,000 genes and found just one hit ... maybe there aren’t that many hits to find?
But there must be at least a few more, because nemuri can’t be the whole story. If it’s responsible for sending tired flies to sleep, then disabling it should disrupt sleep, says Cheryl van Buskirk at California State University at Northridge. And it didn’t. When Toda used the gene-editing technique called CRISPR to deactivate the gene, flies still slept, and for the usual amount of time. They were much easier to wake and took longer to nod off again. But “since sleep and sleep rebound are both largely intact, nemuri isn’t likely a major component of the sleep homeostat,” Van Buskirk says.
Sehgal thinks nemuri is probably a bit player when it comes to daily sleep, but becomes very important during times of stress, sleep deprivation, and sickness. Indeed, her team showed that the Nemuri protein is an antimicrobial peptide, or AMP—one of several small molecules that, as their name suggests, kill microbes.
This ability is intertwined with nemuri’s effects on sleep. Like us, flies sleep more when they get infections. The team found that these bouts of sickness-induced bed rest were longer when they deliberately switched nemuri on, and shorter if they disabled the gene. “There is an intimate link between sleep and the immune system,” Sehgal says.
Read: Why some people respond to stress by falling asleep
A few of the other possible somnogens also moonlight as part of the immune system. “This may represent the tip of the iceberg,” adds Van Buskirk, in terms of substances with dual roles, “directly combatting [infections] and promoting sleep while the battle ensues.”
It may seem strange to devote all this effort to understanding sleepy flies, especially when nemuri doesn’t have an obvious human equivalent. But Sehgal notes that humans do produce more than 100 AMPs, which might play a similar role. And she notes that there’s a long history of sleep researchers making discoveries in flies that later turn out to be important in humans.
Twenty-five years ago, while working in the lab of Michael Young, Sehgal helped to show that a gene called “timeless” controls the daily body clocks of flies. There wasn’t an obvious human equivalent of that either, and Sehgal says some researchers were skeptical that the discovery had any relevance. But in time, a human version was discovered, and it’s involved in several important diseases. For this work and others, Young won a Nobel Prize in 2017. “We have been down this road before a couple of times,” Sehgal says.
In the fall of 2010, Rowan Barrett was stuck. He needed a piece of land, one with plenty of mice, and after days of futile searching, he found himself at a motel bar in Valentine, Nebraska, doing what people do at bars: telling a total stranger about his problems.
A young evolutionary biologist, Barrett had come to Nebraska’s Sand Hills with a grand plan. He would build large outdoor enclosures in areas with light or dark soil, and fill them with captured mice. Over time, he would see how these rodents adapted to the different landscapes—a deliberate, real-world test of natural selection, on a scale that biologists rarely attempt.
But first, he had to find the right spots: flat terrain with the right color soil, an abundance of mice, and a willing owner. The last of these was proving especially elusive, Barrett bemoaned. Local farmers weren’t keen on giving up valuable agricultural land to some random out-of-towner. After knocking on door after door, he had come up empty. Hence: the bar.
Barrett’s drinking companion—Bill Ward, or Wild Bill to his friends—thought the idea was bizarre, but also fun. “He told me, ‘I’ve got this alfalfa field. You’re welcome to come by tomorrow. I’m okay with you building this thing,’” Barrett said to me. “I just about fell out of my chair.”
When researchers study evolution through natural selection, they typically focus on just one part of it. The essence of the process is this: Some genes confer beneficial traits. Those traits make their owners more likely to survive and reproduce in a given environment. Over time, those genes and traits become more common. So researchers might, for example, find genes behind certain traits (such as striped coats). Or they might link certain traits to success in a given environment (such as longer-legged lizards in hurricane-hit islands). Beyond some experiments with lab-grown microbes, they have rarely connected all the dots together.
That’s what Barrett accomplished. With hundreds of mice and years of research, he and his colleagues were able to show and measure, in the real world, “the full process of evolution by natural selection,” says Hopi Hoekstra of Harvard University, who led the study. “It’s all in one.”
It was also a pain in the ass. “Utter ignorance was a good thing,” said Barrett, who had, until this point, only ever worked with small fish. “Anyone who had worked with mice would have never attempted this.”
credit: Rowan BarrettOnce the team had Bill Ward on board, they ended up buying 30,000 pounds of stainless steel plates from a local hardware store, and carting them over to the farm using flatbeds and forklifts. There, they erected the plates in trenches two feet deep, creating square enclosures that were 164 feet across on each side. They built three such pens on light sand, and three on dark soil.
At first, the steel pens seemed to work. Mice could neither dig beneath the plates nor climb over them. They were, however, exceptionally good at sneaking through gaps where adjacent plates didn’t quite meet, so the team had to dig everything back up and pour concrete around the joints.
Nature itself seemed eager to select against the team. On one trip, high winds almost flipped the truck carrying the steel plates. Once, a team member fainted and cut himself on a piece of steel. During winter, ramps of snow would accumulate along the walls, so the team had to add an extra layer of mesh along the plates. They also had to catch all the rattlesnakes in the enclosures and throw them over the walls; Bill helped. “Everything goes wrong in the field,” Hoekstra says. “And we’re used to dealing with pipettes, not backhoes.”
When everything was finally set, the team evicted every mouse already inside the enclosures, and caught around 500 more from the surrounding hills. They photographed each rodent, took a DNA sample, implanted a tiny radio chip between its shoulders, and released it into one of the enclosures.
As time passed, many of the mice fell prey to owls, but after three months, the team returned and recaptured the ones that were left. Sure enough, they found that, compared with the average founding rodents, the average survivors were noticeably lighter in the light-sand enclosures, and darker in the dark-soil ones. Through the deaths of the most conspicuous individuals, the survivors from two initially identical populations had shifted in different directions thanks to their different environments. “It’s intuitive that if you match your background, you’re more likely to survive,” Hoekstra says. “But that’s been a just-so story for years.” This experiment showed that it matters—a lot.
A simpler study could have stopped here, but the team went deeper. Team member Stefan Laurent sequenced a gene called Agouti, which has been linked to fur color, in all 481 of the mice. He found seven mutations that had become more common in the light enclosures, and rarer in the dark ones.
One, known as delta-Ser, seemed to have an especially strong effect. And when another team member, Ricardo Mallarino, engineered that mutation into the Agouti genes of normal lab mice, the rodents grew up with noticeably lighter coats. What had happened?
The Agouti gene is known to affect fur color through the production of a yellow-brown pigment. But to do that, it needs to partner up with other genes. Mallarino found that the delta-Ser mutation disrupts the part of the gene that facilitates those partnerships. It forces Agouti to work alone, which means that it produces much less pigment. This one mutation had lightened the mice’s fur enough that a human eye could see the difference. “And now we know why,” Hoekstra says.
Credit: Rowan barrettIn the lab, scientists can poke Agouti and show that it controls fur color, notes Luisa Pallares of Princeton University, who also studies evolution. But does this mean that variations in the gene are actually driving color differences in the wild? That question would be very hard to address through more piecemeal experiments. But thanks to Hoekstra’s study, the answer is an unambiguous yes. At the start of the experiment, the delta-Ser mutation was equally common in all six enclosures. After three months, it had become more common in two of the light ones, and rarer in all the dark ones—and the rodents’ fur had shifted accordingly. It clearly provides the variation that natural selection sculpts. “The study is very ambitious, and the results totally paid off,” Pallares adds.
Just showing that color-matched mice were more likely to have survived, and finding mutations that were associated with that pattern, “would have been excellent, and actually very rare in the literature,” says Martha Muñoz, an evolutionary biologist at Virginia Tech. “But they dug even deeper. They took a very clear pattern of evolution and broke it down in several different layers. That’s unprecedented.”
After almost a decade, Barrett, Hoekstra, and their colleagues had shown that darker-furred mice were more likely to survive on the soils of Wild Bill’s alfalfa farm, while lighter-furred individuals thrived against the whiter sands of a nearby park. They found that these variations in fur color depend heavily on mutations in one particular gene. They uncovered exactly how one of these mutations changes the color of a mouse’s hair.
In other words, they showed that one mutation became more common over time because it creates a physical trait that makes its owners better suited to their environment. It’s the essence of evolution, measured comprehensively.
“It demonstrates how quickly natural selection can occur when there is variation present in a population, and how genetic changes can be tracked in real time in natural systems,” says Erica Bree Rosenblum from University of California, Berkeley.
The experiment is still ongoing. All the original mice have died, but not before spawning new generations that are now scurrying about their steel-walled pens. The team wants to see how these progenies differ from their parents, and look beyond the Agouti gene to analyze their entire genome.
It helps, Barrett said, that the people of Valentine have become so invested in the study. “They thought we were a little crazy at first,” he told me, “but we’ve made a lot of very good friends. Everyone in town knew about the experiment. People would go out between our trips to check on our enclosures. They call us the Mouseketeers.”
Roughly a third of Nebraskans believe that living things were created as they are now. Another third think that evolution occurs, but through God’s design. Given those beliefs, I asked Barrett whether he ever encountered resistance when talking to his new friends about his work. “In the early trips, when first meeting people, I would talk generally about genetics and natural selection. I wouldn’t use the E word,” he said. “It’s one of those trigger words where, in certain parts of the U.S., people just stop listening to you.”
But he added that all of them comprehended the essence of evolution, even if they explicitly rejected it. “A lot of them are farmers, who have a very good understanding of inheritance, and genetics,” he said. “A lot of them hunt, so they’ve got the survival-of-the-fittest thing down. They understand variation, and they know that a slow deer is easier to shoot than a fast deer. Inheritance, variation, fitness … all the pieces are there.”
“I’d never push too hard. I never explicitly said, ‘Do you believe in it or not? Have I now convinced you?’” he told me. “I just had some long conversations over beers at BBQs and high-school football games. And I found that in subsequent trips, I could use the E word and not get the flinch.”
Let us first establish that sea lions are supposed to live in the sea.
Since the 1990s, however, male sea lions—a handful at first, now dozens—have been captivated by the attractions of the Willamette River. They travel all the way from Southern California to Oregon and then swim up 100 miles of river to arrive at an expansive waterfall, the largest in the region. Here, salmon returning to spawn have to make an exhausting journey up the fish ladders of the Willamette Falls. And here, the sea lions have found a veritable feast.
“They’re kind of sitting ducks,” the wildlife biologist Sheanna Steingass told me, describing the salmon. She paused to consider the metaphor. “Or sitting fish.” Every sea lion eats three to five fish a day.
In another world, this could just be a story about the intelligence of sea lions and their adaptability to river life. But in this world—where salmon populations throughout North America have plummeted, and where the winter steelhead run at Willamette Falls has fallen from 25,000 fish in the 1970s to just hundreds in 2018—it’s a dire story for the fish. After spending years trying and failing to deter the sea lions by nonlethal means, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, where Steingass leads the marine-mammal program, started “lethal removal” of sea lions in December. As of mid-January, they have trapped and euthanized five sea lions at Willamette Falls.
Killing animals to save other animals is always controversial. Animal-rights groups like the Humane Society of the United States denounced the sea-lion killings, calling them a distraction from the salmon’s real problems. And it’s true that a long chain of human actions—overfishing, destruction of salmon habitats, dams blocking their migration, hatchery mistakes—have led to what everyone can admit is this nonoptimal situation.
“In a perfect world, in an unaltered world, this wasn’t a problem, because historically there were 16 million salmon in the Columbia River,” says Doug Hatch, a senior fisheries scientist at the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. The sea lion’s appetites would have barely made a dent. It’s only because humans have so unbalanced the natural world that as drastic an action as culling sea lions could appear to be the fix.
[Read: How climate change canceled the grizzly salmon run]
It’s not the first time this has happened, though. In the 1980s, a sea lion who earned the nickname Herschel began hanging out at the entrance to the Ballard Locks in Seattle. The locks forced all fish through a narrow channel, which was great for Herschel. He would linger by this stream of food, picking off steelheads at his leisure. (Steelheads are technically a type of rainbow trout, but they are similar enough to salmon to have been grouped with them in the past.) Soon, other sea lions started joining in.
The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 protects sea lions from killing, capture, and harassment. But the sea lions at Ballard Locks were eating so many salmon and steelhead—whose own populations were falling—that in 1995 wildlife managers applied for a federal exemption to remove the three most problematic animals, Hondo, Big Frank, and Bob. (Herschel had stopped coming to the locks by then, either because he died or because he found other hunting grounds.) The three fish eaters were taken to SeaWorld, and wildlife managers deemed the problem solved.
[Read: The fantastical vision for the original SeaWorld]
In the early 2000s, sea lions started showing up en masse at the Bonneville Dam, which, like Willamette Falls, is in Oregon and more than 100 miles upriver. And as at Ballard Locks, the fish have to funnel through one of about 16 entrances to the fish ladders, making them easy pickings for sea lions. Watch the dam for just 15 minutes, says Hatch, and you might witness three to 10 fish kills.
Here too, it was just a few sea lions at first. Perhaps the first one chased a salmon upriver and—what luck!—stumbled upon a buffet. Then he returned with his buddies, and they with their buddies. One hundred to 200 sea lions now hunt at Bonneville Dam. Scientists have actually studied how this specific learned behavior spread through the male sea lions. They compared the diffusion of information through sea-lion social networks to the spread of a disease and recommended intervening early, before an outbreak becomes an epidemic.
This is why, said Steingass, it’s important to address the situation at Willamette Falls quickly. If more sea lions find out about the easy hunting grounds, the fish-and-wildlife department might end up with hundreds of sea lions they have to kill, rather than the 40-odd creatures that currently hunt there. “We’re going to have a better outcome for the salmon but also for the sea lions,” she says. It’s a justification grounded in cold, hard math, but it’s also grounded in the recognition that sea lions are intelligent and social creatures.
And also persistent ones. At Willamette Falls and Bonneville Dam, the wildlife managers tried a number of ways to scare the sea lions off. They set off “seal bombs”—basically firecrackers that sink and go off underwater. They chased sea lions in a boat. Hatch says they have even trapped sea lions at Bonneville Dam and dropped them off in the ocean as far as 500 miles away. The same sea lions were back to gorging on salmon within days. “The truth is that the positive incentive to eat these fish is so great, it’s very difficult to think of a negative conditioning that would be great enough,” Steingass said.
In December, Congress passed a bipartisan bill that streamlines the lethal removal of sea lions. It hasn’t completely gone into effect yet, but once it does, fisheries managers will no longer need to observe an individual sea lion hunting salmon five times before euthanizing it. Both state and tribal fisheries managers in the Pacific Northwest will be able to apply for the lethal-removal permits. The culling of the sea lions had been one of the most visible and controversial parts of salmon conservation, but Steingass and Hatch both said they see it as one small part of the larger effort that also includes habitat remediation and dam removals. If sea lions are gobbling up all the salmon, it negates everything else.
Sea-lion populations were once declining, too, but they have rebounded under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Such is the challenge for humans trying to manage vast, interconnected ecosystems. Put a thumb on one part of the scale, and something somewhere else goes out of whack. Try to correct that, and you create another problem. Eventually, you end up with a policy of fisheries managers killing sea lions.
The sea lions feasting on salmon had found a clever way to thrive in the human-altered world—until the rules changed and they were on the wrong side.
Em meados de 2007, converti-me ao cristianismo, bastante influenciado por uma família de empresários, donos de alguns bazares no 3º Distrito de Duque de Caxias, no Rio, onde moro até hoje, para quem trabalhei no final da adolescência e início da vida adulta, e que depois viriam a se tornar bons amigos. Eu tinha 17 anos e muitas dúvidas existenciais. As clássicas perguntas “por que estamos aqui”?, “para onde vamos?” dominavam os meus pensamentos. Em termos práticos, também não sabia o que fazer profissionalmente.
Depois da entrada na igreja evangélica, a minha mudança de hábitos foi muito rápida. Fui movido por aquele fanatismo típico dos que encontram algo pelo qual são arrebatados. Até quis abandonar tudo para me tornar missionário. Mas minha mãe me dissuadiu da ideia – hoje, penso, ainda bem.
Em poucos meses, eu já havia decidido passar pelo batismo e estava absolutamente integrado à pequena congregação de denominação batista renovada, que era filial de uma igreja matriz localizada no bairro da Taquara, também em Duque de Caxias. Logo nos primeiros meses já havia lido toda a Bíblia e dedicava quase todo o meu tempo à releitura dela e de livros cristãos, bem como a ouvir gravações de sermões de pregadores famosos e a participar das atividades da igreja.
Sempre fui muito influenciado pelos artistas e pastores de ministérios famosos de Minas Gerais. Eu me identificava muito com a abordagem e interpretações dos textos bíblicos, principalmente do padre Gustavo Bessa (marido da cantora Ana Paula Valadão), que tem uma habilidade fantástica de contextualizar às passagens bíblicas com a época em que foram escritas, e extrair delas uma mensagem com foco no amor de Deus. Na música, era fã de Antônio Cirilo, Ricardo Robortella, do Diante do Trono e dos cantores que saíram de lá para fazer carreira solo, como Nívea Soares, André Valadão, Mariana Valadão.
Há cerca de dez anos, saí numa caravana de amigos rumo ao X Congresso Internacional de Louvor e Adoração do Diante do Trono, realizado na Igreja Batista da Lagoinha, em Belo Horizonte, onde, atualmente, a ministra Damares Alves exerce o seu sacerdócio.
E foi lá que descobri que, dois meses depois, mais precisamente em junho de 2009, aconteceria um outro evento, o Congresso Nacional dos 7 Montes, que tinha por objetivo reunir cristãos e lideranças de todos os lugares do Brasil para convocar uma grande mobilização em prol da necessidade de a Igreja ir além das suas quatro paredes para conquistar espaços para o Reino de Deus – o que eles chamaram de “7 montes da sociedade”, a saber: 1) artes e entretenimento, 2) mídia e comunicação, 3) governo e política, 4) economia e negócios, 5) educação e ciência, 6) família, 7) igreja e religião.
Não se pode acreditar que obras como as de Edir Macedo e Fernando Guillen sejam consideradas apenas literatura religiosa. Elas revelam a existência de um projeto de poder.O tema me pareceu muito interessante, e eu queria muito participar daquele evento também, mas a grana era curta demais e eu não poderia voltar a Minas dois meses depois. Mas o propósito para o qual as lideranças de diversos cantos do mundo se reuniram em Lagoinha estava num livro lançado naquele mesmo ano chamado “SE7E MONTES”, do apóstolo Fernando Guillen, que coordenou o evento.
O livro de Guillen é um manual que procura justificar e contextualizar o projeto de poder das igrejas evangélicas se utilizando de textos do Antigo Testamento, que, segundo o autor, revelariam um modelo ideal de sociedade pretendido por Deus, além de conter estratégias de atuação e oração para que a igreja conquiste cada um dos “7 montes”.
Importante ressaltar que esse movimento das igrejas evangélicas, principalmente as neopentecostais, tem origem em uma interpretação bíblica que alguns teólogos chamam de Teologia do Domínio. Segundo essa teoria, a igreja teria recebido as promessas divinas direcionadas ao povo de Israel no Antigo Testamento, que envolvem fartura, domínio e governo de territórios e lugares de destaque na Terra. Seria o modo de refletir aqui o que seria o Reino dos Céus prometido para os que creem no Cristo.
Daí, por exemplo, o grande avanço das campanhas por prosperidade financeira nas igrejas, principalmente vistos na Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus e nas neopentecostais, e a ascensão da bancada evangélica no Congresso e seu engajamento em relação aos valores e costumes na sociedade. Vale lembrar que esse tipo visão ganhou muito destaque às vésperas das eleições do ano passado, quando Edir Macedo lançou o livro “Plano de Poder”, cujo foco era o mesmo: mobilizar os evangélicos para que a igreja o Brasil no sentido literal da palavra.
Estima-se que os evangélicos já sejam mais de 40 milhões de brasileiros e que, em 10 anos, a maior parte da população fará parte do grupo que reúne ao menos uma vez por semana para serem orientados por seus líderes. Desse modo, não se pode ingenuamente acreditar que obras como essas do Edir Macedo e do Fernando Guillen sejam apenas consideradas literatura religiosa. Pelo contrário, elas revelam a existência de um projeto de poder político-religioso em curso – que está sendo bem-sucedido.
A igreja em célulasEu comecei a me dar conta disso alguns anos depois, quando a primeira igreja da qual fui membro iniciou uma transição para um modelo litúrgico e de evangelismo chamado MDA, sigla para Modelo de Discipulado Apostólico. Esse modelo é muito parecido ao que fazem as empresas de marketing multinível, conhecidas popularmente por pirâmide. De acordo com ele, a igreja deve ser dividida em pequenos grupos, chamados células, contendo cada uma um líder, que reúne seus liderados semanalmente na casa de um deles, para ensiná-los de acordo com um roteiro pré-estabelecido e, assim, formar novos líderes para que surjam novas células a partir dali.
Túlio Gustavo, autor do texto, em uma pregação.
Foto: Arquivo pessoal/Túlio Gustavo
Não é nenhuma novidade que ocorram reuniões de cristãos em suas casas. Sempre existiram cultos em lares na história da igreja evangélicas. A novidade é que o MDA – e modelos semelhantes como o G12, o Governo dos 12 – monta essa estrutura de evangelismo baseada numa necessidade de produção de resultados, sujeição de seus membros a rígidas regras de hierarquia e disciplina. Além disso, todos os líderes têm de participar de um retiro espiritual chamado Encontro com Deus.
No retiro, são realizadas técnicas com forte apelo emocional com estímulos ao arrependimento, perdão, “quebra de maldições”, prosperidade, libertação, cura interior e, ao final, quando todos estão absolutamente sensibilizados e comovidos, apresenta-se a visão MDA como o modelo de igreja a ser seguido.
Ninguém que participa tem autorização para revelar aos outros o que acontece no encontro. O que funciona, na verdade, como uma baita propaganda – quem participa apenas espalha para os outros que o que acontece nos retiros “é tremendo”, o que só desperta curiosidade. Assim, quando a transição já se afunilava demais e eu era um dos poucos que resistia à ideia, acabei topando participar. Ainda que de forma indireta, existia uma pressão para que todos participassem. Se eu não fizesse, chegaria o momento no qual eu não poderia estar mais nas atividades de púlpito (cantar e pregar), que eram coisas que eu amava fazer.
Antes de sair, disse aos pastores: “eu tenho certeza que isso vai ‘funcionar’. É uma excelente ferramenta de marketing e foi feito pra dar certo. Mas não acho que seja isso que Jesus queira que façamos.”De fato, pode ser uma experiência que impressione a quem se deixa envolver emocionalmente. No início do evento, existe um ritual de silêncio, que motiva uma certa introspecção e evita a troca de opiniões que possam distrair os participantes. O que é uma sacada inteligentíssima, principalmente para segurar os crentes mais “cascudos”, que estão sempre desconfiados. O evento se resume a palestras com forte apelo emocional, para no final te dizer: “viu como tudo isso foi legal? É a visão MDA que a gente tem que seguir e espalhar pra todo mundo!”
Por convicções pessoais, nunca acreditei que fosse aquele o jeito certo de fazer as coisas na igreja. Era tudo muito roteirizado e com muitas táticas que me faziam sentir estar vendendo alguma coisa ao invés de estar pregando a fé. Incomodava-me muito, principalmente, a rigorosa hierarquia criada entre discípulos e discipuladores. Resisti o quanto pude mas, por ser um membro influente na congregação, tendo acesso aos bastidores e a ministrar no púlpito, além de amigo de muita gente, larguei a igreja para evitar um mal-estar maior. Parei de ir aos cultos. Voltei à vida normal.
Mas antes de sair, lembro como fosse hoje o que disse aos pastores: “eu tenho certeza que isso vai ‘funcionar’. É uma excelente ferramenta de marketing e foi feito pra dar certo. Mas eu não acho que seja isso que Jesus queira que façamos”.
Tentei depois fazer parte de outra denominação mais tradicional, mas o rigor nos costumes, como o jeito de vestir e o excessivo conservadorismo do ponto de vista das estruturas sociais, em constante conflito com a minha visão e posicionamento político, foi me deixando cada vez mais distante, até que se tornou insuportável ouvir alguns discursos sem que aquilo me fizesse mal, ainda que também tivesse sido muito bem recebido por lá.
Como eu previa, as igrejas que se utilizam desses modelos de “discipulado” vêm crescendo cada vez mais, como é o caso da própria Igreja Batista da Lagoinha, e aumentado seu espectro de influência em diversos setores da sociedade. Somando os avanços desse movimento ao grande poder dos canais de comunicação religiosos, não há outro caminho senão considerar como verdadeiros atos políticos as manifestações de Damares, Macedos, e Felicianos e Malafaias.
Os montes da sociedadeAs afirmações da nova ministra “Não é a política que vai mudar esta nação, é a igreja” e “É o momento de a Igreja governar”, extraídas de sermões religiosos nos anos de 2013 e 2016 – período em que já atuava como assessora parlamentar – estão se tornando realidade. Sem contar o papel decisivo do voto evangélico nas últimas eleições, no monte do governo e política. Em 2016, o PRB, partido dominado por membros da Universal, elegeu 105 prefeitos, incluindo Marcelo Crivella para a prefeitura do Rio.
No monte da mídia e comunicação, a igreja já exerce influência desde as concessões das rádios gospel que foram fundamentais para levar (e manter) no poder nomes como o de Anthony Garotinho, Eduardo Cunha e Arolde de Oliveira. Um estudo da Ancine constatou que 21% da programação da TV Aberta no Brasil em 2016 era de conteúdo religioso.
Quando Damares diz que, no governo Bolsonaro, “meninas seriam chamadas de princesas e meninos de príncipes”, e que “meninas vestiriam rosa e meninos azul”, como metáforas para ilustrar seu posicionamento avesso ao que chama de ideologia de gênero, estamos diante, na verdade, de uma demonstração da intenção de dominar o que eles chamam no livro de monte das artes e do entretenimento.
Conforme esclarecido pelo apóstolo Fernando Guillen, este monte diz respeito a tudo que envolve
“Música, artes, esportes, pintura, escultura, dança, fotografia literatura, poesia, dramatização, teatro, filmes, roupas e vestuário, design, cores, vídeo games, ou seja, tudo o que expressa a criatividade e beleza de Deus, que é usado pela sociedade para celebrar, entreter ou para desfrutar a vida”.
Trata-se, portanto, de uma evidente intenção de adequar elementos culturais de uma sociedade ao que entende por princípios cristãos. Veja a crescente produção de novelas e filmes voltados ao público gospel, e exemplos como as Nights Gospel voltado para jovens, e Cultos à Fantasia para servir de contraponto ao Dia das Bruxas.
A princípio, não é nenhum problema que determinado segmento social se comporte, se vista ou se entretenha conforme o que aprecia ou acredita. É até bem normal que as coisas sejam dessa forma. O problema é querer que essa forma de ser seja a única válida e universal e lançar mão de censura a manifestações artísticas que não se enquadram nas regras cristãs como tem sido feito com o carnaval no Rio de Janeiro, com o corte de subvenções das escolas de samba, e medidas que cerceiam as liberdades individuais e não reconhecem o direitos das minorias.
No âmbito da família, que inclusive integra o nome da pasta ocupada pela ministra, a visão do livro é a de que existe certa hierarquia conjugal entre homem e mulher que seria instituída por Deus:
“Mulheres emergirão no ministério, um poderoso exército de mulheres que entendam a importância de respeitar a ordem sacerdotal do varão, serão levantadas com muita ousadia e poder.” (pág. 131)
Não se sabe ainda o tipo de políticas públicas que se pretende com a criação desse Ministério da Família, mas é importante notar que a ministra Damares já disse que “mulher nasceu pra ser mãe”, e que se preocupa com a ausência da mulher na casa, além de fazer questão de afirmar que é “feminina e não feminista”.
No que tange à ciência e educação, sem entrar no mérito das especulações que rondam o novo governo, imbuídas de anticientificismo e avessas ao debate crítico em sala de aula, o livro do apóstolo Fernando Guillen aborda o tema da seguinte forma:
“A educação, próxima da religião cristã, é um elemento indispensável das instituições republicanas, a base sobre a qual os governos livres devem se apoiar. O Estado deve se apoiar na base da religião, e deve preservar esta base, ou ele mesmo irá ruir. Mas o suporte que a religião dá ao Estado irá obviamente terminar no momento em que a religião perder seu alcance na mente do povo. O próprio fato de que o Estado precisa da religião como um suporte para a sua própria autoridade exige que alguns meios para o ensino da religião sejam empregados. O melhor que se pode fazer é desistir das instruções de que a religião não deve ser ensinada em suas escolas.” (pág. 175)
Note como o discurso no livro é alinhado com as declarações de Damares quando ela diz que a igreja teria perdido espaço nas escolas quando “deixou” que a teoria da evolução entrasse sem questionar a ciência. Assim, travestidos de uma luta contra uma inexistente doutrinação marxista nas escolas, os interesses por trás do programa Escola sem Partido, com amplo apoio da ala conservadora da sociedade, o que inclui os evangélicos, têm o cunho de eliminar o debate crítico e progressista, baseado em crenças humanísticas das salas de aula, e podem abrir espaço para implantação de métodos de ensino baseados numa cosmovisão cristã, e significar um danoso retrocesso científico a longo prazo.
O fator MelquisedequeNote também que ao mesmo tempo que Jair Bolsonaro defende a “integração dos índios à sociedade” – como se os índios precisassem se adequar ao homem urbano e não fossem gente –, de rever a demarcação das terras indígenas e de enfraquecimento da Funai, a nova ministra dos Direitos Humanos demonstra uma grande preocupação em alcançar esses povos indígenas e resgatar os que precisam de ajuda.
Mas que ajuda é essa?
Ao final de seu discurso de posse, Damares, que no início se autointitulou “terrivelmente cristã”, fez referência ao “Grande Tupã”, uma demonstração que pareceu ser de tolerância à cultura dos povos indígenas. Mas não se engane. Curiosamente, foi exatamente essa, a de fazer alusão ao Deus Cristão. uma das ferramentas dos primeiros jesuítas na catequização dos índios.
A agenda do novo governo pode estar abrindo espaço para um novo movimento de catequização de indígenas em pleno século 21.Essa é uma estratégia de evangelização que missionários cristãos chamam de “Fator Melquisedeque”. Baseada numa tese desenvolvida por Don Richardson, num famoso livro que leva o mesmo nome, acredita-se que Deus tenha preparado todos os povos para receberem o evangelho através de uma revelação geral que serviria de base para receber a revelação especial que é a do cristianismo.
O exemplo bíblico que embasa a tese é extraído de uma passagem no livro de Atos dos Apóstolos 17.22-23, onde o apóstolo Paulo prega aos gregos em Atenas que cultuavam em um altar que era dedicado a um “deus desconhecido”. Na passagem, Paulo se aproveita da expectativa dos atenienses em saber quem era o “deus desconhecido” e lhes apresenta o evangelho de Jesus Cristo.
As boas intenções de Damares para com os indígenas precisam ser observadas com muito cuidado – sob a roupagem de trabalho humanitário, explorando o tema do infanticídio de crianças indígenas, que gera comoção pública, a agenda do novo governo pode estar abrindo espaço para um novo movimento de catequização de indígenas em pleno século 21.
O neopentecostalismo culturalÉ importante frisar, que a grande maioria das pessoas que chega às igrejas evangélicas sequer se dá conta da interferência dessas relações de poder da igreja na sociedade. Geralmente, as pessoas procuram a igreja para se sentir acolhida e encontrarem alguma esperança em meio ao caos que pode ser na sua intimidade, vida financeira, relações com a família etc.
Lembro-me de uma vez indagar um pastor muito íntegro sobre por que ele apoiava um candidato à prefeitura de reputação conhecidamente péssima. De um modo puro, ele me respondeu: “Ele está aqui próximo da gente. Posso entrar em contato com ele facilmente pra ajudar um irmão a conseguir uma internação ou o enterro de alguém. Infelizmente, a nossa comunidade têm necessidades desse tipo e ele pode nos ajudar.”
Recentemente, membros da bancada evangélica se manifestaram com grande entusiasmo sobre o posicionamento pró-Israel do governo por acreditar ser esse um dos sinais do Apocalipse. Tenho certeza que muitos crentes sequer se dão conta de todas as circunstâncias que envolvem o conflito árabe-israelense e não estão pensando no assunto sob a ótica da política externa. Eles só sabem que Israel é o “povo escolhido”, então deve ser bom apoiá-lo.
Minha crítica não é aos crentes nem ao cristianismo. Na verdade, eu vivi alguns dos momentos mais felizes e importantes da minha vida dentro da religião, fiz grandes amigos e o interesse na leitura depois da conversão foi fundamental pra me motivar a voltar a estudar e ter conseguido passar num dos vestibulares mais difíceis e concorridos do país, que é o do Direito da Universidade Estadual do Rio de Janeiro, a UERJ, onde devo me formar neste ano.
Esse não é o manifesto de uma alma magoada, muito pelo contrário. É um desabafo de preocupação de alguém que é grato e não gostaria de ver a religião sendo usada para fins distintos daquilo que entendeu pela mensagem do evangelho do Cristo, que é levar fé, esperança e amor e não domínio sobre os homens.
Aliás, essa é a lição bíblica da Torre de Babel (Gênesis 11). Quando Ninrode quis construir uma estrutura “que chegasse aos céus” para governar sobre os homens de modo que todos estivessem no mesmo lugar e falassem a mesma língua, Deus não se agradou, e espalhou todos e confundiu suas línguas.
Entendo que o proselitismo é um dos fundamentos do cristianismo. Desde sempre, é uma crença que se propõe a conversão de outras pessoas. O que, a princípio, não é nenhum problema, desde que não se utilize de mentiras, abusos ou violência. Também entendo que é até natural que a representação política de determinado segmento da sociedade aumente se a população que a ele pertence também aumenta de forma expressiva. Mas a laicidade do Estado precisa ser respeitada para que violações dos direitos das minorias não sejam legitimadas em nome de uma imposição moral de viés religioso.
Dentre as muitas comparações possíveis feitas com a figura do presidente Jair Bolsonaro, espero que não estejamos diante de uma espécie de Imperador Constantino do século 21 responsável pela neopentecostalização da República. Quanto a Damares, não a menosprezem. Ela sabe muito bem o que quer dizer.
The post Como eu descobri o plano de dominação evangélico – e larguei a igreja appeared first on The Intercept.
Quando criança, o hobby de Fernanda Falcão era estudar. A avó da jovem era professora em um colégio de classe média alta na zona norte do Recife, que ela – ainda como um garoto – frequentava. “Por perceber que eu era ‘diferente’, minha avó me protegia. Ela percebia o olhar das pessoas para mim e não me deixava brincar com as outras crianças, com medo de que eu apanhasse por ser como eu era”, conta.
A rotina de estudante só durou até o primeiro ano do ensino médio. Depois de sua primeira relação sexual, aos 15 anos, ela foi expulsa de casa e foi morar com seu companheiro. Começou a se prostituir para se sustentar e terminar os estudos. Com 18 anos, havia concluído os cursos técnicos em Enfermagem e Química Industrial – mas não conseguiu se livrar das passagens pelo sistema penitenciário.
Foi presa duas vezes, aos 18 e aos 23 anos, enquanto se prostituía, acusada de tráfico de drogas. Na última, quando ficou detida por três anos e três meses, aproveitou para concluir seu trabalho de conclusão de curso de Enfermagem sobre doenças negligenciadas no sistema prisional. Seu interesse pelo tema veio de sua própria história: estuprada, Fernanda havia sido contaminada com HIV dentro da cadeia naquele mesmo ano.
Um espaço (um pouco) menos perigosoA vida em liberdade já é hostil com a população LGBT. Mas a violência, dentro da cadeia, é ainda pior. É comum que as pessoas LGBT presas sofram desde agressões verbais, como xingamentos e comentários maldosos, até violência física e sexual, como aconteceu com Fernanda.
“Eu reagi ao estupro e introduziram no meu ânus um pedaço de cabo de vassoura com uma colher amarrada na ponta. Fiquei tão machucada, que foi preciso dois homens me segurarem, para que eu ficasse em pé, enquanto um dos presos me violentava”, conta. “Foi ele quem me transmitiu o HIV.”
No final de 2012, Fernanda e outros 15 presos LGBT começaram uma mobilização para que o presídio de Igarassu construísse uma área específica para eles. Deu certo. A unidade prisional na grande Recife foi a primeira de Pernambuco a inaugurar uma área específica para essa população, em 2013. Hoje, nove dos 23 presídios pernambucanos têm celas separadas para presos LGBT.
Ninguém sabe o tamanho do problemaA maior parte da população LGBT presa é formada por negros, jovens e sem ensino fundamental completo. São presos, principalmente, por tráfico de drogas. Os dados são de um levantamento inédito feito pelo Grupo de Trabalhos em Prevenção Posithivo, o GTP+, primeira ONG do nordeste a cuidar de pessoas vivendo com o HIV. Fernanda, hoje articuladora política da organização, foi uma das responsáveis por aplicar os questionários dentro das prisões para viabilizar a pesquisa.
De acordo com a Secretaria Executiva de Ressocialização, a Seres, ligada ao governo pernambucano, nessas unidades, 104 pessoas se reconhecem como LGBTs, 231 vivem com o HIV e 13 são LGBTs e soropositivas.
Assim como Fernanda – que passou mais de três anos presa sem julgamento – 62% dos entrevistados são presos provisórios. “Isso reflete o todo da população carcerária de Pernambuco, em que 51% ainda não tiveram julgamento, diz o advogado e coordenador do projeto, Lucas Enock. No Brasil, a taxa de presos provisórios é de 40%.
As condições da população LGBT presa são agravadas pela falta de estrutura – na prisão, falta até camisinha, segundo a ONG. Os preservativos vêm do Ministério da Saúde para os estados, mas não são distribuídos de maneira suficiente dentro as prisões. Mais de 50% dos presos LGBT não usam preservativo em relações sexuais.
Lá dentro, 42 vezes mais HIV+Na primeira vez que chegou para atuar no sistema prisional, o médico Bruno Ishigami, residente de Infectologia do Hospital Oswaldo Cruz, ficou chocado. “A gente só entende como um funciona um presídio quando se está lá dentro. É um ambiente desumano, superlotado, muito úmido, com lógicas diferentes de funcionamento, dependendo da unidade”, disse.
De acordo com um levantamento de 2015, realizado pela ONG internacional Human Rights Watch, a prevalência de infecção pelo vírus HIV nas prisões pernambucanas é 42 vezes maior que a média observada na população brasileira; a de tuberculose chega a ser quase 100 vezes maior.
No sistema prisional pernambucano, com cerca de 34 mil presos, 319 detentos recebem tratamento para o vírus, segundo a Secretaria de Justiça e Direitos Humanos.
De acordo com Levantamento Nacional de Informações Penitenciárias, o Infopen, divulgado no final de 2017, Pernambuco tem a maior proporção de presos para cada agente de custódia: 35 para um. O Ministério da Justiça recomenda cinco presos para um agente.
A falta de agentes cria ambientes caóticos dentro dos presídios. Até uma consulta médica, conta Ishigami, depende de autorização do “chaveiro”, como é chamado o preso responsáveis pelas celas. Isso faz com que, embora a incidência de doenças seja alta, os presos tenham tratamento aquém do necessário.
Ed Machado/The Intercept Brasil
“Há um estigma sobre quem tem o vírus do HIV, assim como do lado de fora, e muitos presos não se tratam, com medo de sofrerem represálias. O presídio é uma caricatura feia do que é a sociedade”, diz o médico.
O médico infectologista Rafael Sacramento começou a trabalhar nos presídios pernambucanos em 2016, depois de uma intervenção da Corte de Direitos Humanos. Cinco anos antes, a Pastoral Carcerária de Pernambuco havia feito uma denúncia internacional sobre violações de direitos humanos no complexo penitenciário do Curado.
“O sistema é brutal, principalmente para os que são considerados ‘menos úteis’, como travestis, transexuais e homossexuais”, ele diz. ” A violência sexual é uma forma de humilhação e de pagamento de dívidas dentro de um ambiente extremamente machista, onde só respeita a figura da mãe.”
Segundo o médico, há uma certa harmonia entre os presos, que dividem celas com até outros 100 homens – desde que heterossexuais. “Há uma extrema necessidade de extravasar toda a raiva na população LGBT”, diz. Em 2017, ele chegou a atender uma mulher trans estuprada por cerca de 60 homens no Presídio Juiz Antônio Luiz Lins de Barros.
A vida do lado de foraFernanda Falcão ganhou a liberdade em 2017. Foi inocentada. A vida do lado de fora, no entanto, ainda é hostil. O cenário de desemprego é ainda mais devastador entre a população transexual. É por isso que estima-se que 90% das pessoas transexuais já tiveram de recorrer à prostituição em algum momento da vida. “Você permanece na prostituição e a partir dessa prostituição, outras vulnerabilidades aparecem, como o uso de drogas, porque muitos homens têm prazer em ver você usando. Aí você topa, porque você tá com fome e precisa do dinheiro”, diz ela.
A ativista, no entanto, foi exceção. Ela se tornou coordenadora de articulação política do GTP+ e tem viajado pelo país para discutir políticas públicas para LGBTs e para pessoas que convivem com o vírus da Aids. Ela é responsável por parcerias estaduais e por criar campanhas de conscientização sobre o HIV. Também atua em três presídios da região metropolitana de Recife orientando os detentos sobre tuberculose.
O maior desejo dela ainda é concluir a graduação em Enfermagem. O curso está suspenso por falta de dinheiro.
The post Ela sobreviveu à transfobia. Agora, transforma as prisões em lugares mais seguros para os LGBTs appeared first on The Intercept.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren will make her presidential campaign official with a major speech and announcement on February 9, according to two sources with knowledge of her plan. The announcement will convert her current exploratory phase into a full-blown bid for the presidency.
The Massachusetts Democrat was the first major candidate to formally declare her intention to run, announcing the formation of her exploratory committee on New Year’s Eve. She was able to capture large crowds and attention before being joined in the field by Sen. Kamala Harris, who made her announcement on January 21, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. On Sunday, Harris officially kicked off her campaign with a massive gathering in Oakland.
Warren has garnered headlines with her proposal for a wealth tax aimed at reducing inequality. It would be the first federal policy of its kind, and it plays into a newfound interest in taxing the ultrarich triggered by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s call for a 70 percent tax rate on incomes above $10 million. Warren’s wealth tax would kick in at $50 million. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has followed with a proposal for a large estate tax on the extremely rich.
Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s curious decision to saunter into the presidential race has also been a gift to Warren. Since he declared his interest in the presidency on Monday, she has pounded away at the billionaire coffee mogul, who opposes taxing the wealthy and insists that the nation is too poor to provide health insurance to all its citizens. Sanders, who has yet to announce a campaign, has largely left Schultz alone, ceding the pummeling — and the resulting headlines and donations — to Warren.
Warren’s broadly successful January comes after a bruising several weeks at the end of 2018, after she released the results of a DNA test confirming distant Native American heritage. A number of high-profile Native Americans, as well as representatives of major tribes, welcomed Warren’s announcement, but others panned it. Most famously, Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. issued a scathing rebuke.
A DNA test is useless to determine tribal citizenship. Current DNA tests do not even distinguish whether a person’s ancestors were indigenous to North or South America. Sovereign tribal nations set their own legal requirements for citizenship, and while DNA tests can be used to determine lineage, such as paternity to an individual, it is not evidence for tribal affiliation. Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong. It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is proven. Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage.
On Thursday, Hoskin Jr. returned to the issue in a more gently worded column in Tulsa World, an Oklahoma newspaper. “When someone boasts they are Native American due to the results of a DNA test, it perpetuates the general public’s misunderstanding about what it means to be a tribal citizen,” he wrote.
The senator’s move was also broadly condemned by a wide range of columnists — including at The Intercept — and she has been doing cleanup since. In December, she sought to right the perception that she was claiming some sort of marginalized status. “I’m not a person of color. And I haven’t lived your life or experienced anything like the subtle prejudice, or more overt harm, that you may have experienced just because of the color of your skin,” she said at a commencement address at the historically black Morgan State University. On the campaign trail, she has noted repeatedly that she does not claim citizenship in any tribe nor was she trying to.
But she’s quietly since gone a step further. Warren has been in touch with Cherokee Nation leadership, apologizing for furthering confusion over issues of tribal sovereignty and citizenship and for any harm her announcement caused, two sources with knowledge of her overture said. The Warren campaign declined to comment.
“Senator Warren has reached out to us and has apologized to the tribe,” Cherokee Nation’s executive director of communications Julie Hubbard told The Intercept. “We are encouraged by this dialogue and understanding that being a Cherokee Nation tribal citizen is rooted in centuries of culture and laws not through DNA tests. We are encouraged by her action and hope that the slurs and mockery of tribal citizens and Indian history and heritage will now come to an end.”
The field is expected to continue to expand, with Sanders, who has been interviewing staff and building a team, likely to announce his bid soon. Sanders and Warren occupy a similar space on the ideological spectrum, while Harris, along with potential entrants Sen. Cory Booker, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, have more elastic politics.
Update: January 31, 2019
This story was updated to include comment from the Cherokee Nation.
The post Elizabeth Warren Will Make Her Presidential Bid Official in February appeared first on The Intercept.
A federal judge in Washington, D.C. has ordered the Syrian government to pay $302 million in damages for the murders of journalists Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik in a 2012 artillery strike. The decision, issued on Wednesday, marks the first time in the seven-year conflict that a court has declared Syrian forces loyal to the government of President Bashar al-Assad responsible for deliberately attacking civilians.
“A targeted murder of an American citizen, whose courageous work was not only important, but vital to our understanding of warzones and of wars generally, is outrageous, and therefore a punitive damages award that [multiplies] the impact on the responsible state is warranted,” wrote Judge Amy Berman Jackson.
The Syrian government did not respond to the lawsuit filed on behalf of Colvin’s niece and nephew, leading to a default judgement. The suit followed from a six-year investigation by the Center for Justice and Accountability, which unearthed testimony and documentary evidence detailing how Assad’s commanders tracked and killed Colvin and her colleague on the morning of February 22, 2012 in Homs, Syria. Colvin was among the few Western journalists working from Homs, where she reported on the government’s use of rocket and artillery strikes against the civilian population trapped in the city. Also hurt in the attack that killed Colvin and Ochlik, a French photojournalist, were photographer Paul Conroy, journalist Edith Bouvier, and media activist Khaled Abu Salah.
An undated photo of French photographer Remi Ochlik, who died on Feb. 22, 2012 in Homs, Syria.
Photo: Julien de Rosa/AP
The Assad government will almost certainly never pay the damages, but the finding establishes a significant precedent for the press, according to Scott Gilmore, the attorney who investigated and litigated the case. The ruling “recognizes that attacks designed to intimidate journalists and stifle reporting cause broad social harm and merit severe condemnation,” he told The Intercept. “The Colvin case joins Terry Anderson’s suit against Iran (circa 2000) as twin precedents establishing the specific harms to free expression when journalists are killed or detained.”
A representative at the Syrian delegation to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment. In a 2016 interview with NBC News, Assad blamed Colvin for her own death.
The judge ordered $11,836 to cover funeral expenses, a $2.5 million solatium payment to Colvin’s sister, Cathleen, and $300 million in punitive damages; however, Jackson rejected a request for $2,370,640 in lost income as “too high.”
While recouping the full damages may be difficult for the family, a portion can be sought from the U.S. Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund, created by Congress in 2015 to compensate survivors of terrorist attacks. The fund has paid out $800 million in claims to date.
The ruling comes as the Trump administration seeks to exit Syria and as Assad edges his way out of political isolation, beginning to re-establish diplomatic ties severed during the war. The U.S. government has previously negotiated victim compensation as part of re-establishing diplomatic relations. In 2008, for instance, Libya set aside $1.5 billion to compensate the surviving family members of Pan Am Flight 103, which was destroyed in a bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
The post U.S. Court Finds Syria Responsible for Killing American Journalist Marie Colvin appeared first on The Intercept.
Someone is arrested in the United States every three seconds. While arrests are the first entryway into a criminal justice system most acknowledge is in dire need of reform, we know remarkably little about who is arrested, where, and why. Advocates and legislators have pushed in recent years for policy changes at various points of the justice process, from pretrial to sentencing, but arrests remain one of the largest and least scrutinized contributors to the country’s mass incarceration and policing crises.
The FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics collect arrest data from the country’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies — but those agencies self-report on a voluntary basis, and there are significant disparities in the information they share. The data, for the most part, remains inaccessible to the broader public, and statistics on crime are isolated from data about the effectiveness of enforcement.
In an effort to better inform conversations about criminal justice, a team of researchers from the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit research and policy organization, took more than two years to combine eight different federal databases into a tool that allows users to analyze arrest trends at the national, state, and county levels against a series of variables, including offense types, demographic factors, and solved crimes.
The project was born “out of this moment of frustration over the past number of years that there isn’t very much information on policing, people feeling like it’s a black box,” said Rebecca Neusteter, co-author of a report Vera released Thursday alongside the new data tool. “We wanted to be able to demonstrate that there is some information. There are gaps in knowledge, for sure, but there are lots of pieces of information that the government is spending a lot of money to collect. It just hasn’t been released for people to look at previously.”
That data shows that of more than 10.5 million arrests made every year, the bulk are for noncriminal behavior, drug violations, and low-level offenses. Since 1980, arrests for drug violations have increased by 170 percent, and racial disparities in enforcement have grown even more stark. Still, a majority of victims don’t report their experiences to police, and police solve only a fraction of the crimes that are reported.
In recent years, after a series of police killings sparked nationwide protests, a growing movement for police accountability also exposed systemic problems with everyday policing practices. Most arrests are ultimately dismissed, but aggressive enforcement of low-level offenses, especially in communities of color, causes long-term damage to those communities and their relationship with police.
“There’s a growing understanding that the problems of policing are not limited to a few high-profile deaths but are the result of a broader problem of over-policing,” said Alex Vitale, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College and author of a book that argues for alternatives to policing rather than police reform. “The solution to this is not making police arrests friendlier or more professional: It’s to quit relying on arrests to solve any problem under the sun.”
The Persistent Harms of “Broken Windows”The Vera tool analyzes arrest trends between 1980 and 2016. The data shows that overall arrests have declined by nearly 25 percent over the last decade. But it also shows that, while arrests for serious crimes have dropped consistent with declining crime rates nationwide, they are increasingly being substituted with arrests for minor misconduct.
Among the most common causes for arrest are low-level offenses like “disorderly conduct” and a broad, largely unexplained category the FBI refers to as “all other offenses,” which can include a variety of non-traffic offenses, violations of local ordinances, and civil violations like failure to pay fines or child support. Together with drug violations, these offenses account for more than 80 percent of arrests, while serious, violent offenses make up less than 5 percent of arrests.
“We really want to see a national conversation about whether or not this is a good use of resources,” said Neusteter. “Are we potentially creating more harm than good by arresting people for what are essentially really low-level, trivial offenses?”
While there is little integration between court data and police data, and it’s hard to track a case from arrest through prosecution, a majority of arrests are dismissed. Still, police continue to use them as an enforcement tool of their own, rather than a way to funnel criminal behavior into the justice system.
“That’s the broken windows theory,” said Vitale, referring to the largely discredited but still widely applied criminological view that low-level misconduct fuels more serious crime. “The arrest itself is the tool we are using to try to fix the problem.”
“There’s still profound political imperatives to use policing to solve every social problem, especially in poor communities and communities of color,” he added. “They’re getting complaints about kids on a street corner, so they are looking for any excuse to arrest these kids, and they don’t care if it’s prosecuted.”
Graphic: Moiz Syed/The Intercept
What the FBI refers to as “drug abuse violations” lead to 1.5 million arrests annually, the Vera report found. And while the FBI doesn’t differentiate in how it categorizes drug violations, federal statistics have consistently shown that a vast majority of them are over simple possession, most often of marijuana.
The report also highlights the vast racial disparities in arrest rates, particularly when it comes to drug enforcement — and even in places where drug enforcement policies have been loosened. “In just about every state that’s made changes to how laws around marijuana are enforced, we see major racial disparities in enforcement,” Neusteter said.
Black people nationwide are an estimated 2.39 times more likely to be arrested for “drug abuse violations” than white people — even though drug use rates are similar across the two groups. The estimated number of arrests of black people across the country has risen by 23 percent in the last four decades. African-Americans now make up 12 percent of the U.S. population and an estimated 28 percent of all arrests.
Amid a push for more progressive polices in prosecutors’ offices, a growing number of district attorneys have announced that they will no longer prosecute marijuana possession. But that hasn’t necessarily translated into a drop in arrests yet.
“There’s some type of disconnect between what’s going on in the prosecutors’ offices and what’s going on with the police,” said Vitale, noting that police maintain significant discretion to make arrests over pretextual reasons. “Failure to prosecute doesn’t mean that the police can’t still arrest you, put you through the system, bring you to arraignment.”
“There’s this discourse out there that with the opioid crisis, there’s more openness to talking about treatment and how this is a medical problem, but this is not what we see in the arrests numbers,” he added. “There’s been some change in the discourse, but not in the actual underlying police practices.”
Graphic: Moiz Syed/The Intercept
Perhaps the report’s most revealing finding, however, is that such aggressive enforcement doesn’t seem to do much to improve public safety or solve crime. Only 40 percent of crime victims report their experiences to police, Vera found, and fewer than 25 percent of reported crimes are cleared by arrests.
“This television-inspired myth-making that police are out there all day solving serious crimes is just completely erroneous,” said Vitale. “We have this myth that if we didn’t have the police, crime would be out of control, when the reality is very little crime is reported to the police, and even less is solved by the police. There’s just no reason to equate police with public safety in this way.”
Arrests have an enormous impact on individuals: They can exacerbate economic disparities, harm an individual’s capacity to retain housing and jobs, and lead to devastating consequences like the loss of child custody or deportation. The mental health cost, too, is significant. But the huge number of arrests also comes at a cost to the safety of the community at large: both at the moment of the arrest itself, which can put those arrested, bystanders, and officers at risk of harm, and in the long run, as relationships between over-policed communities and law enforcement deteriorate, sometimes irreparably.
While that seems far too high a price, police continue to focus their attention on the enforcement of low-level offenses and noncriminal behavior, reinforcing a cycle of mistrust. That’s in part in response to arrest quotas and other incentives police get for productivity, as well as financial gains for agencies and municipalities that rely on punitive enforcement for funding. Vitale pointed to the controversial “collars for dollars” practice, by which officers will sometimes make arrests toward the end of their shifts in order to earn overtime pay, as they are required to remain with the person they arrested through the booking process. “A marijuana possession arrest at the end of the shift can be worth several hundred dollars for the officer,” he noted.
But part of the problem is also that police are the go-to solution for all kinds of complaints in communities with no meaningful alternatives. “The vast majority of police work is in response to 911 calls for service,” said Neusteter. “I think that the major component of the large number of arrests for low-level offenses has to do with the fact that police are being called as the default responders for these quality-of-life issues.”
There are some bright sides to the Vera report, which the authors hope will inspire further analysis and reform. Arrests of minors, for instance, decreased by more than 50 percent between 1980 and 2014, as juvenile-specific offenses like running away or curfew violations were decriminalized, and non-punitive programs were instituted in lieu of arrest. The solution, the report makes clear, is to find alternatives to enforcement for much of the behavior police currently address with arrest.
“People do not go to jail, they do not go to prison, without being arrested first,” said Neusteter. “But we haven’t seen enforcement and arrests tied very clearly to those conversations and ultimately to the strategies that are attached to improving them. That’s our ultimate goal here.”
The post Police Make More Than 10 Million Arrests a Year, but That Doesn’t Mean They’re Solving Crimes appeared first on The Intercept.
Em outubro, a Bloomberg Businessweek publicou uma reportagem alarmante: agentes que trabalhavam para o Exército de Libertação Popular da China haviam implantado secretamente microchips em placas-mãe fabricadas na China e vendidas pela Supermicro, com sede nos Estados Unidos, dando a espiões chineses acesso clandestino a servidores de mais de 30 empresas americanas, incluindo a Apple, a Amazon e vários fornecedores do governo, em uma operação conhecida como um “ataque a cadeias de suprimentos”, em que um hardware ou software malicioso é inserido em produtos antes de eles serem enviados para consumidores que serão alvo de vigilância.
O texto da Bloomberg, baseado em 17 fontes anônimas, incluindo “seis funcionários atuais ou antigos do alto escalão da segurança nacional”, começou a desmoronar logo após sua publicação quando partes envolvidas negaram os fatos de forma rápida e inequívoca. A Apple disse que “não há verdade” na afirmação de que teria descoberto chips maliciosos em seus servidores. A Amazon afirmou que o relatório da Bloomberg continha “tantos erros … naquilo que dizia respeito à Amazon que eles eram difíceis de contar”. A Supermicro declarou nunca ter ouvido de seus consumidores sobre quaisquer chips maliciosos e que sequer os encontrou, incluindo na declaração uma auditoria feita por outra empresa que a Supermicro contratou. Porta-vozes do Departamento de Segurança Nacional dos EUA e do Centro Nacional de Segurança Cibernética do Reino Unido afirmaram não terem motivos para duvidar das negações das empresas. Duas fontes citadas no texto declararam publicamente serem céticas quanto às conclusões dele.
Mas, enquanto o artigo da Bloomberg pode estar completamente (ou parcialmente) errado, o perigo de a China comprometer cadeias de suprimento é real, julgando a partir de documentos confidenciais de inteligência. Agências de espionagem americanas foram alertadas em termos drásticos sobre a ameaça quase uma década atrás e até mesmo avaliaram que a China era perita em corromper o software colocado mais próximo do hardware de um computador na fábrica, ameaçando algumas das máquinas mais sensíveis do governo dos EUA, conforme documentos fornecidos pelo delator da Agência de Segurança Nacional (NSA, na sigla em inglês) Edward Snowden. Os documentos também detalham como os EUA e seus aliados têm sistematicamente direcionado e subvertido cadeias de suprimentos de tecnologia, com a NSA conduzindo suas próprias operações, inclusive na China, em parceria com a CIA e outras agências de inteligência. Os documentos também revelam operações de cadeias de suprimentos feitas pela inteligência alemã e francesa.
O que está claro é que ataques a cadeias de suprimentos são um método de vigilância bem estabelecido, quem sabe até um tanto subvalorizado – e muito trabalho ainda está por ser feito para assegurar que equipamentos de informática estejam seguros contra esse tipo de risco.
“Um número crescente de agentes está buscando a capacidade de direcionar… cadeias de suprimento e outros componentes da infraestrutura de informação americana,” a comunidade de inteligência declarou em um relatório secreto de 2009. “Relatórios de inteligência fornecem apenas informações limitadas sobre os esforços em colocar em risco cadeias de suprimentos, em grande parte porque nós não temos acesso ou tecnologia necessários em mãos para a detecção confiável de tais operações.”
Nicholas Weaver, pesquisador de segurança do Instituto Internacional de Ciência da Computação, afiliado à Universidade da Califórnia em Berkeley, disse ao Intercept que “A história da Bloomberg/Supermicro era tão preocupante porque um ataque como aquele descrito teria funcionado, mesmo que agora nós possamos seguramente concluir que a história da Bloomberg se tratava de puro excremento. E agora, se eu sou a China, eu estaria pensando: ‘já estou levando a culpa, então é melhor cometer o crime!’”
Enquanto a história da Bloomberg pintava uma situação dramática, a que emerge dos documentos de Snowden é fragmentada e incompleta – mas assentada nos recursos profundos de inteligência disponíveis ao governo americano. Esse texto é uma tentativa de resumir o que aquele material tem a dizer sobre ataques a cadeias de suprimentos, de documentos não divulgados que publicamos pela primeira vez, documentos que já foram publicados e documentos que foram publicados apenas em parte com pouco ou sem comentários editoriais. Os documentos a que lançamos mão foram escritos entre 2007 e 2013; as vulnerabilidades de cadeias de suprimentos têm sido, aparentemente, um problema há muito tempo.
Nenhum dos materiais reflete diretamente as afirmações do texto da Bloomberg Businessweek. A publicação não comentou sobre as controvérsias em torno de seu relatório além dessa declaração: “A investigação da Bloomberg Businessweek é o resultado de mais de um ano de pesquisa, durante o qual conduzimos mais de 100 entrevistas. Dezessete fontes individuais, incluindo funcionários do governo e pessoas de dentro das empresas, confirmaram a manipulação de hardwares e outros elementos dos ataques. Também publicamos a declaração de três empresas na íntegra, assim como uma declaração do Ministério de Relações Exteriores da China. Acreditamos em nossa história e temos confiança em nossa pesquisa e fontes.”
Foto: Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty Images
Segundo documentos governamentais, o governo dos Estados Unidos, de forma geral, leva a sério a possibilidade de manipulação de cadeias de suprimentos e da China, em particular, conduzir tais interferências, incluindo a fase de fabricação.
O documento confidencial do Departamento de Defesa (DoD na sigla em inglês) de 2011 nomeado “Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace” [Estratégia para Operação no Ciberespaço] se refere às vulnerabilidades de cadeias de suprimentos como um dos “aspectos centrais das ameaças cibernéticas”, dizendo ainda que a dependência dos Estados Unidos em fábricas e fornecedores estrangeiros “dá amplas oportunidades para que atores internacionais subvertam e interditem cadeias de suprimentos americanas em pontos de projeto, fabricação, serviço, distribuição e descarte”.
De acordo como o documento, fornecedores de hardware chineses poderiam se posicional na indústria dos EUA de forma a comprometer “a infraestrutura crítica da qual o DoD depende”.
Outro documento confidencial, uma National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) [Estimativa Nacional de Inteligência] de 2009 sobre “A ameaça cibernética global à infraestrutura de informação dos Estados Unidos”, avaliou com “alta confiança” que havia um crescente “potencial para persistentes e furtivas subversões” em cadeias de suprimentos de tecnologia devido à globalização e com “confiança moderada” que isso ocorreria em parte por manipulação durante a fabricação e ao “tirar vantagem de figuras internas”. Tal “tática intensiva de recursos” seria adotada, afirmava o documento, para contrapor a segurança adicional em redes confidenciais dos EUA.
Cada National Intelligence Estimate foca em uma questão em particular e representa o julgamento coletivo de todas as agências de inteligência americanas, conforme resumido pelo diretor de inteligência nacional. O NIE de 2009 considerou a China e a Rússia como “as maiores ameaças cibernéticas” para os EUA e seus aliados, dizendo que a Rússia tinha a habilidade de conduzir operações em cadeias de suprimentos e que a China estava conduzindo “acesso interno, acesso próximo, acesso remoto e provavelmente operações em cadeias de suprimentos”. Em uma seção voltada a “Comentários de Revisores Externos”, um dos revisores, um antigo executivo em uma fábrica de hardwares de comunicações, sugeriu que a comunidade da inteligência olhasse mais de perto a cadeia de fornecimento chinesa. Ele disse ainda:
“A forte influência do governo chinês em seus fabricantes de eletrônicos, a crescente complexidade e sofisticação desses produtos e a sua dominante presença em redes de comunicação global aumenta a probabilidade do risco sutil – talvez um risco sistêmico, mas negável [pela China] – desses produtos.”
A NIE ainda assinalou ataques a cadeias de suprimentos como uma ameaça à integridade de máquinas eletrônicas de votação, já que tais máquinas estão “sujeitas a muitas das mesmas vulnerabilidades que outros computadores”, embora tenha mencionado que, na época, em 2009, a inteligência americana não estava ciente de quaisquer tentativas de “utilizar ataques cibernéticos para afetar as eleições dos Estados Unidos”.
Além das vagas preocupações envolvendo a Rússia e a China, a comunidade de inteligência americana não sabia o que pensar na vulnerabilidade de cadeias de fornecimento de computadores. Conduzir tais ataques era “difícil e demandava uma intensa utilização de recursos”, de acordo com a NIE, mas, além disso, ele tinha pouca informação para compreender a extensão do problema: “A indisponibilidade de vítimas e agências de investigação em reportar incidentes” e a falta de tecnologia para detectar manipulações significava que “uma incerteza considerável atrapalha nossa avaliação da ameaça trazida por operações de cadeias de suprimentos”, disse a NIE.
Uma seção dentro da Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace do Departamento de Defesa de 2011 é dedicada ao risco de ataques a cadeias de fornecimento. Esta seção descreve uma estratégia para “administrar e mitigar o risco de tecnologia não-confiável utilizada pelo setor de telecomunicações”, em parte reforçando a fabricação norte-americana, que estaria em completa operação em 2016, dois anos após a Bloomberg dizer que o ataque à cadeia de suprimentos da Supermicro teria ocorrido. Não está claro se a estratégia foi colocada de fato em operação; o Departamento de Defesa, que publicou uma versão pública do mesmo documento, não respondeu a pedidos de comentários. Mas a NIE de 2009 dizia que a “exclusão de hardwares e softwares estrangeiros de redes e aplicações sensíveis já é extremamente difícil” e que mesmo se uma política de exclusão tivesse sucesso, “oportunidades para subversão ainda existirão através de empresas de fachada nos Estados Unidos e uso adversário de acesso privilegiado em empresas americanas.”
Um terceiro documento, uma página sobre “Ameaças cibernéticas a cadeias de suprimentos” da Intellipedia, uma wiki interna da comunidade de inteligência norte-americana, incluía passagens confidenciais ecoando preocupações similares sobre cadeias de fornecimento. Um snapshot de 2012 da página incluía uma seção, atribuída à CIA, dizendo que “o espectro de subversão de hardwares de computadores levando armas a falharem em tempos de crise, ou secretamente corrompendo dados cruciais, é uma preocupação crescente. Chips de computadores cada vez mais complexos e modificações sutis feitas em seus projetos ou processos de fabricação podem tornar impossível detectar com os meios práticos disponíveis atualmente.” Outra passagem, atribuída à Defense Intelligence Agency, apontava servidores de aplicações, roteadores e interruptores como as ferramentas provavelmente “vulneráveis à ameaça global de cadeias de suprimento” e dizia ainda que “as preocupações com cadeias de fornecimento serão exacerbadas na medida em que fornecedores de produtos e serviços de segurança cibernética dos EUA são adquiridos por empresas estrangeiras.”
Um instantâneo de 2012 de outra página da Intellipedia listava ataques a cadeias de fornecimento primeiro entre ameaças aos chamados computadores air-gapped, que são mantidos isolados da internet e são usados por agências de espionagem para lidar com informações especialmente sensíveis. O documento também dizia que a Rússia “tem experiência com operações em cadeias de suprimentos” e declarava que “empresas de software russas montaram escritórios nos Estados Unidos, possivelmente para desviar atenção de suas origens russas e para serem mais aceitas aos agentes de compra do governo americano.” (Preocupações similares sobre o software antivírus russo Kaspersky Lab levou a um recente banimento do uso do antivírus dentro do governo dos EUA.) A Kaspersky Lab negou repetidamente ter ligações com qualquer governo e disse que não ajudaria um governo com ciberespionagem. A Kaspersky informou ainda ter ajudado a expor o ex-contratado da NSA Harold T. Martin III, que foi acusado de roubo em larga escala de dados confidenciais da NSA.
Componentes são vistos em uma placa de circuito dentro dos Interruptores Agile Série S12700 da Huawei Technologies Co. em exibição em uma sala de exposições na sede da empresa em Shenzhen, na China, na terça-feira, 5 de junho de 2018.
Foto: Giulia Marchi/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Além dos grandes receios, a comunidade de inteligência dos Estados Unidos tinha algumas preocupações com a habilidade da China em utilizar a cadeia de fornecimento para a espionagem.
O documento de estratégia de 2011 do Departamento de Defesa dizia, sem detalhar, que os fornecedores de equipamentos de telecomunicações chineses suspeitos de ligações com o Exército Popular de Libertação da China “buscam invasões na infraestrutura de telecomunicações dos Estados Unidos.”
Esta pode ser uma referência, pelo menos em parte, à Huawei, a gigante de telecomunicações chinesa que o Departamento temia que criasse acessos ilegais em equipamentos vendidos aos fornecedores de comunicações dos EUA. A NSA conseguiu chegar no máximo até a comunicação empresarial da Huawei, procurando por ligações entre a empresa e o Exército Popular de Libertação, conforme publicado em conjunto pelo New York Times e a revista de notícias alemã Der Spiegel. O artigo não citava evidências de relação entre a Huawei e o Exército, e uma porta-voz da empresa disse às publicações que era irônico que “eles estão fazendo conosco o que sempre disseram que os chineses fazem”.
Segundo o relatório ultrassecreto da NSA sobre a Huawei, a comunidade de inteligência dos EUA pareceu preocupada que a Huawei poderia ajudar o governo chinês a acessar um cabo transatlântico de telecomunicações sensíveis conhecimento como “TAT-14”. O cabo transmitia a comunicação da indústria de defesa em um segmento entre Nova Jersey e a Dinamarca; em uma atualização em 2008 a Mitsubishi foi contratada, o que “terceirizava o trabalho para a Huawei. Que, em troca, atualizou o sistema com um roteador de ponta deles”, dizia o documento. Como uma preocupação mais ampla, o documento acrescentou que havia indícios de que o governo chinês poderia usar a “penetração de mercado da Huawei para seus próprios propósitos SIGINT” – isto é, para inteligência de sinais (a coleta de informações feita através da interceptação de sinais de comunicação). Um porta-voz da Huawei não comentou em tempo para a publicação.
Ataques ao firmware preocupam Inteligência dos EUAEm outros documentos, agências de espionagem detectaram outra preocupação específica, a crescente destreza da China para explorar o BIOS, o Sistema Básico de Entrada/Saída, na sigla em inglês. O BIOS, também conhecido pelos acrônimos EFI e UEFI, é o primeiro código a ser executado quando um computador é ligado, antes mesmo do lançamento de um sistema operacional como o Windows, o macOS ou o Linux. O software que compõe o BIOS é armazenado em um chip na placa-mãe do computador, e não no disco-rígido; ele costuma ser referido como “firmware”, por ser ligado de maneira tão próxima ao hardware. Como qualquer outro software, o BIOS pode ser modificado para se tornar malicioso e é um alvo especialmente bom para ataques a computadores, pois reside fora do sistema operacional e, assim, não pode ser facilmente detectado. Ele nem sequer é afetado quando um usuário apaga o disco-rígido ou instala um sistema operacional novo.
A Agência de Inteligência da Defesa acreditava que a capacidade da China para explorar o BIOS “reflete um salto qualitativo que é difícil de detectar”, segundo a seção de “Implantes de BIOS” no artigo da Intellipedia a respeito das ameaças a computadores não conectados a outros terminais ou à Internet A seção também assinalava que “relatos recentes”, presumivelmente envolvendo implantes de BIOS, “corroboram a estimativa de inteligência feita em 2008 segundo a qual a China provavelmente era capaz de intrusões mais sofisitcadas do que aquelas atualmente observadas pelos responsáveis pelas defesas de rede dos EUA”.
Um instantâneo de 2012 de outra página da Intellipedia, sobre “Ameaças ao BIOS”, sinaliza a vulnerabilidade do BIOS a intromissões na cadeia de suprimentos e a ameaças internas. De forma significativa, o documento também parece se referir à descoberta feita pela comunidade de inteligência norte-americana sobre um malware feito pelo Exército Popular de Libertação da China, dizendo que “as versões do Exército Popular e do MAKERSMARK [russo] não parecem ter uma ligação em comum além do interesse em desenvolver formas mais persistentes e encobertas” para hackear. As “versões” citadas parecem ser casos de firmwares de BIOS maliciosos feitas pelos dois países, a julgar pelas notas de rodapé e outros trechos do documento.
A página da Intellipedia também continha indicações de que a China poderia ter descoberto uma forma de comprometer o software do BIOS produzido por duas empresas, a American Megatrends, conhecida como AMI, e a Phoenix Technologies, que faz os chips Award BIOS.
Em um parágrafo marcado como ultrassecreto (top secret), a página indicava: “entre as versões de BIOS atualmente comprometidas estão aquelas baseadas no AMI e no Award. A ameaça que implantes de BIOS causa aumenta de forma significativa para sistemas que operam nessas versões comprometidas”. Após essas duas frases, concluindo o parágrafo, há uma nota de rodapé para um documento ultrassecreto, ao qual o Intercept não teve acesso, intitulado “Provável terceirizado contratado pelo Exército de Liberação Popular da China conduz exploração de rede contra redes críticas de infraestrutura de Taiwan; desenvolve capacidades de ataque à rede”.
A palavra “comprometido” poderia ter diferentes significados nesse contexto e não necessariamente indica que um ataque bem-sucedido por parte da China tenha ocorrido; ela poderia simplesmente significar que versões específicas de BIOS da AMI e da Phoenix continham vulnerabilidades a respeito das quais os espiões norte-americanos tinham conhecimento. “É muito intrigante que não tenhamos visto evidências de mais ataques a firmware”, disse Trammell Hudson, um pesquisador de segurança no fundo de investimentos Two Sigma Investments e co-descobridor de uma série de vulnerabilidades de BIOS em Macbooks, conhecidas como Thunderstrike. “Quase todas as conferências de segurança estreia novas provas de conceitos de vulnerabilidades, mas … a única revelação pública de um firmware comprometido” veio em 2015, quando a Kaspersky Lab anunciou a descoberta de um firmware malicioso de uma operação hacker avançada apelidada Equation Group. “Ou nós não somos muito bons em detectá-los, enquanto indústria, ou esses ataques a firmware e implantes de hardware são usados em operações de acesso sob medida”.
Hudson acrescentou: “é preocupante que muitos sistemas nunca recebam atualizações de firmware após a fabricação, e que vários dispositivos incorporados a um sistema tenham uma probabilidade ainda menor de receber atualizações. Qualquer ataque a versões mais antigas tem um aspecto ‘eterno’, significando que eles vão continuar úteis para adversários invadirem sistemas que podem seguir sendo usados por muitos anos”.
A American Megatrends publicou a seguinte declaração: “A indústria de firmware de BIOS e de computação como um todo, deu passos incríveis em busca de mais segurança desde 2012. A informação no documento de Snowden diz respeito a plataformas anteriores ao nível atual de segurança de BIOS. Temos processos capazes de identificar vulnerabilidades de segurança no firmware de inicialização e oferecer uma rápida mitigação para nossos clientes OEM e ODM”.
A Phoenix Technologies publicou esta declaração: “Os ataques descritos no documento são bem entendidos na indústria. O Bios Award foi desbancado pela estrutura atual de UEFI, mais segura, que continha mitigações para esses tipos de ataques de firmware muitos anos atrás”.
Ataques bem-sucedidos à cadeia de suprimentos por parte de França, Alemanha e EUAOs documentos de Snowden revisados até aqui discutem, com frequência em termos vagos e imprecisos, o que a Inteligência norte-americana acredita que seus adversários russos e chineses são capazes de fazer. Mas esses documentos e outros também discutem, em termos muito mais específicos, o que os EUA e seus aliados são capazes de fazer, incluindo descrições de operações de cadeia de suprimentos específicas e bem-sucedidas. Eles também descrevem, de forma geral, as capacidades de vários programas e unidades da Agência de Segurança Nacional (NSA) contra cadeias de fornecimento.
A página da Intellipedia sobre ameaças às redes “air-gapped” revelam que, em 2005, a agência de inteligência internacional alemã (BND) “estabeleceu algumas companhias comerciais de fachada que usaria para ganhar acesso às cadeias de suprimentos de componentes de computação não-identificados”. A página atribui esse conhecimento a “informação obtida durante uma conversa oficial com um contato”. A página não menciona qual era o alvo da BND ou em que tipos de atividades as empresas de fachada se envolviam.
A BND tem “estabelecido companhias de fachadas para operações HUMINT e SIGINT desde os anos 1950”, disse Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, um escritor alemão e especialista em BND, usando os termos para a inteligência reunida tanto por espiões humanos quanto por espionagem eletrônica, respectivamente. “Via de regra, um agente da BND fundaria uma pequena empresa, responsável por uma única operação. Na área do SIGINT, essa empresa também mantém contatos com parceiros indutriais”.
A BND não respondeu a um pedido para comentar a situação.
A página da Intellipedia também dizia que, desde 2002, a agência francesa de inteligência, a DGSE, “entregou computadores e equipamentos de fax para os serviços de segurança de Senegal, e em 2004 era capaz de acessar toda a informação processada por esses sistemas, de acordo com uma fonte cooperativa com acesso indireto”. Senegal é uma antiga colônia francesa. Representantes do governo senegalês não responderam a um pedido por comentários. A DGSE se negou a comentar.
Muito do que foi reportado sobre as capacidades de ataque dos EUA a cadeias de suprimentos veio de um documento da NSA de junho de 2010, que o co-fundador do Intercept, Glenn Greenwald, publicou em seu livro “Sem lugar para se esconder”, de 2014. O documento, um artigo de um site de notícias interno da NSA chamado SIDtoday, foi republicado em 2015 na Der Spiegel com alguns trechos censurados (mas sem novas análises sobre o conteúdo).
O SIDtoday explicava de forma concisa uma das abordagens da NSA para ataques à cadeia de suprimento (os destaques são do texto original):
“Encomendas de produtos de redes de computadores (servidores, roteadores, etc. entregues a nossos alvos ao redor do mundo são interceptados. A seguir, eles são redirecionados para um local secreto onde empregados de Operações de Acesso Adaptado/Operações de Acesso (AO – S326), com o apoio do Centro de Operações Remotas (S321), habilitam a instalação de implantes de transmissão diretamente nos eletrônicos de nossos alvos. Esses aparelhos são então re-embalados e colocados novamente em transporte para o destino original.”
Ataques de “interdição” da cadeia de fornecimento como o descrito acima envolvem o comprometimento do hardware do computador enquanto ele está sendo transportado para o consumidor. Eles têm como alvo uma parte diferente da cadeia de suprimento daquela descrita pela Bloomberg. A reportagem da Bloomberg dizia que espiões chineses instalavam microchips maliciosos na placa-mãe de servidores enquanto eles estavam sendo produzidos na fábrica, e não quando estavam em trânsito. O documento da NSA dizia que seus ataques de interdição “são algumas das mais produtivas operações da TAO”, a sigla em inglês para as Operações de Acesso Adaptado, a unidade da NSA dedicada a ofensivas hackers, “porque elas posicionam previamente pontos de acesso em difíceis alvos ao redor do mundo.” (a TAO é conhecida atualmente como Computer Network Operations, ou Operações de Rede de Computadores).
Interditar entregas específicas pode trazer menos riscos para uma agência de espionagem do que implantar microchips maliciosos em massa ainda na fábrica. “Um ataque de design/manufatura do tipo alegado pela Bloomber é plausível”, disse Eva Galperin, diretora de cibersegurança na Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Isso é exatamente o porquê de a história ter sido tão importante. Mas ser plausível não significa que aconteceu, e a Bloomberg não trouxe evidência suficiente, na minha opinião, para apoiar sua alegação”. Ela acrescentou: “O que sabemos é que um ataque de design/manufatura é altamente arriscado para quem o comete, e há muitas alternativas menos arriscadas que são mais recomendáveis para essa tarefa.”
Foto: Manu Brabo/AP
O documento de 2010 também descrevia um ataque bem-sucedido da NSA contra a empresa estatal de telecomunicações síria (Syrian Telecommunications Establishment). A NSA sabia que a empresa havia encomendado aparelhos de rede de computadores para o seu serviço de internet, então a agência interditou esses equipamentos e os redirecionou para uma “estação de carga”, onde implantou “transmissores” e então colocou os produtos novamente em trânsito.
Alguns meses após a Syrian Telecom receber os equipamentos, um dos transmissores “chamou de volta para a infraestrutura de ações encobertas da NSA”. Nesse ponto, a NSA usou seu implante para fazer um levantamento da rede onde o aparelho estava instalado e descobriu que ele dava um acesso muito maior do que o esperado; além da rede de internet, também dava acesso à rede nacional de telefonia celular operada pela Syrian Telecom, já que o tráfego celular atravessava a espinha-dorsal da internet.
“Como a rede STE GSM [celular] nunca foi explorada, esse novo acesso representava um verdadeiro golpe”, escreveu o autor do documento da NSA. Isso permitia que a NSA “extraísse automaticamente” informações sobre os assinantes de celular da Syrian Telecom, incluindo informações sobre para quem eles ligavam, quando, e suas localizações geográficas enquanto carregavam seus telefones durante o dia. A NSA também tinha possibilidades de ganhar um acesso ainda maior às redes celulares da região.
Documento ultrassecreto detalha como explorar a rede VOIP para obter informações sigilosas de um alvo.
Documento: NSA
Outro documento da NSA descreve um ataque diferente, também de sucesso, conduzido pela agência. Um slide de uma da “revisão de administração de programas” feita pela NSA em 2013 descrevia uma operação ultrassecreta tendo como alvo a rede VOIP para telefonemas secretos realizados online. Em uma “base no exterior”, a NSA interceptou uma encomenda de equipamentos para essa rede de uma fábrica na China, e a comprometeu com transmissores implantados.
“A análise e o relato sobre esse alvo identificaram, com alto nível de detalhe, o método para aquisições de hardware [pelo alvo]”, dizia um slide da apresentação. “Como resultado desses esforços, a NSA e seus parceiros [na comunidade de inteligência] agora estão em posição para ser bem-sucedidos nas próximas oportunidades.”
Operações da NSA em ‘espaço adverso’Além da informação sobre operações específicas de cadeia de suprimentos por parte dos EUA e seus aliados, os documentos de Snowden também incluem informações mais geral sobre as capacidades dos Estados Unidos.
O hardware de computadores pode ser alterado em vários pontos ao longo da cadeia de suprimentos, desde o design à produção, do depósito à entrega. Os EUA estão entre um pequeno número de nações que poderiam, em tese, comprometer equipamentos em vários pontos diferentes desse canal, graças aos seus recursos e alcance geográfico.
Slide apresenta possíveis alvos de SCS (Serviço Especial de Coleta), um programa de espionagem a partir de instalações diplomáticas dos EUA.
Documento: NSA
Isso foi sublinhado em uma apresentação ultrassecreta de 2011 sobre o Serviço Especial de Coleta (SCS, na sigla em inglês), um programa conjunto de espionagem da NSA e da CIA operando a partir de instalações diplomáticas norte-americanas no exterior. Ela fazia referência a 80 locais da SCS ao redor do globo como “pontos de presença”, oferecendo a “vantagem de jogar em casa em um espaço adverso”, a partir dos quais uma “SIGINT ativada por humanos” pode ser conduzida, e onde “oportunidades” na cadeia de suprimento se apresentam, sugerindo que a NSA e a CIA conduzem ataques desde embaixadas e consulados norte-americanos ao redor do mundo. (A apresentação foi publicada pela Der Spiegel em 2014, ao lado de outros 52 documentos, e aparentemente nunca se escreveu a respeito dela. O Intercept a publica novamente para incluir os comentários do apresentador.)
Um programa que afeta cadeias de fornecimento dessa forma é o SENTRY OSPREY da NSA, no qual a agência utiliza espiões humanos para grampear fontes digitais de inteligência ou, como um briefing ultrassecreto publicado pelo Intercept em 2014 indica, “utiliza seus próprios recursos de HUMINT […] para apoiar operações SIGINT,” incluindo operações de “acesso próximo” que essencialmente colocam humanos contra a infraestrutura física. Essas operações, conduzidas ao lado de parceiros como a CIA, o FBI, e a Agência de Inteligência da Defesa, parecem ter incluído tentativas de implantar grampos e comprometer cadeias de suprimentos; um guia de classificação de 2012 dizia que eles incluíam formas de possibilitar implantes na cadeia de fornecimento e em hardware — bem como uma “presença avançada” em locais em Pequim, Coreia do Sul e Alemanha, todos sedes de fábricas de telecomunicações. Outro programa, o SENTRY OWL, trabalha “com parceiros estrangeiros específicos… e entidades industriais estrangeiras” para fazer aparelhos e produtos “exploráveis para SIGINT”, de acordo com o briefing.
A Divisão de PersistênciaAs Operações de Acesso Adaptado da NSA tiveram um papel crítico nas operações de interdição da cadeia de suprimentos levadas a cabo pelo governo americano. Além de ajudar a interceptar entregas de hardware para instalar implantes em segredo, uma divisão da TAO, conhecida como Divisão de Persistência, tinha a tarefa de criar os implantes.
Apresentação da TAO detalha as diferentes atividades, incluindo ações hackers encobertas.
Documento: NSA
Uma apresentação ultrassecreta de 2007 sobre a TAO descrevia ações hackers encobertas e “sofisticadas” contra softwares, incluindo firmware, utilizando uma rede de computadores “ou interdição física”, e credita a esses ataques “alguns dos mais significativos sucessos” das agências de espionagem dos EUA.
Outro documento, uma página wiki da NSA intitulada “Projetos Internos”, publicada originalmente pela Der Spiegel, descrevia “ideias sobre possíveis projetos futuros da Divisão de Persistência.” Os projetos ali descritos envolviam adicionar novas capacidades aos implantes de firmware maliciosos já existentes. Esses implantes poderiam ser inseridos nos computadores-alvo através de ataques à cadeia de suprimentos.
Um projeto potencial propunha expandir um tipo de malware de BIOS para funcionar em computadores que utilizam o sistema operacional Linux, e oferecer mais maneiras de explorar computadores Windows.
Outro sugeria mirar na chamada tecnologia de virtualização dos processadores, que permite aos computadores separar de forma mais eficiente e confiável as chamadas máquinas virtuais, um software que simula múltiplos computadores em um só. O projeto proposto desenvolveria um “implante hipervisor”, indicando que o alvo pretendido era o software que coordena a operação de máquinas virtuais, conhecido como hipervisor. Os hipervisores e máquinas virtuais são largamente utilizados pelos provedores de armazenamento em nuvem. O implante daria suporte para máquinas virtuais em processadores Intel e AMD. (a Intel e a AMD não responderam a pedidos para comentar o caso.)
Outro possível projeto sugeria prender um rádio do tipo short-hop à porta serial de um disco-rígido, comunicando-se a ele usando um implante de firmware. Outro projeto pretendia desenvolver implantes de firmware tendo como alvo discos-rígidos produzidos pela companhia norte-americana Seagate. (a Seagate não respondeu a um pedido por comentários.)
Ilustração: Oliver Munday para o Intercept
Uma das razões que agências de espionagem como a NSA temem o comprometimento de cadeias de suprimentos é que há muitos lugares em um computador comum para esconder um implante espião.
“Os servidores atuais têm dezenas de componentes com firmware e centenas de componentes ativos”, disse Joe FitzPatrick, um pesquisador e instrutor de segurança de hardwares. “A única maneira de ter um boletim de saúde perfeito é um teste destrutivo e aprofundado que depende de um ‘padrão-ouro’ como boa referência — só que definir esse ‘padrão-ouro’ é quase impossível. O risco muito maior é que mesmo um hardware perfeito pode ter um firmware ou um software vulneráveis.”
A página da Intellipedia sobre ameaças à cadeia de suprimentos lista e analisa as várias partes de hardware onde um computador poderia ser comprometido, incluindo as fontes de energia (“poderia ser estipulado a … autodestruir-se, danificar a placa-mãe do computador … ou mesmo iniciar um incêndio ou explosão”); cartões de rede (“bem posicionados para introduzir malwares e extrair informações”); controles de disco (“melhores que um rootkit”, tipo de software malicioso que permite acesso a um computador enquanto oculta suas atividades); e a unidade de processamento gráfico, ou GPU (“bem posicionada para escanear a tela do computador em busca de informação sensível”).
De acordo com o texto da Bloomberg, espiões chineses conectaram seus microchips maliciosos aos baseboard management controllers, ou BMCs, computadores em miniatura que são conectados aos servidores para dar a administradores de sistema acesso remoto para resolver problemas ou reiniciar os servidores.
FitzPatrick, citado pela Bloomberg, vê a história do Supermicro com ceticismo, incluindo sua descrição de como espiões exploraram os BMCs. Mas especialistas concordam que colocar uma entrada clandestina no BMC seria uma boa maneira de comprometer um servidor. Em uma reportagem complementar, a Bloomberg alegou que uma “importante empresa de telecomunicações norte-americana” descobriu um servidor Supermicro com um implante em um cartão de rede Ethernet, que é uma das partes do hardware listadas na página da Intellipedia como vulnerável a ataques da cadeia de suprimento. FitzPatrick, novamente, via as alegações com ceticismo.
Após o texto da Bloomberg ser publicado, em um post no blog Lawfare, o pesquisador de segurança de Berkeley, Weaver, defendeu que o governo americano deveria reduzir o número de “componentes que precisam executar com integridade” a apenas a unidade de processamento central, ou CPU, e requisitar que esses componentes “confiáveis” usados em sistemas do governo deveriam ser fabricados nos EUA, por empresas norte-americanas. Dessa forma, o resto do computador poderia ser manufaturado com segurança na China — os sistemas funcionariam com segurança mesmo se os componentes fora dessa base confiável, como a placa-mãe, tivessem implantes maliciosos. O iPhone da Apple e o Boot Guard da Intel, dizia ele, já funcionavam dessa maneira. Devido ao poder de compra do governo, “deveria ser plausível escrever regras de fornecimento que, após alguns anos, efetivamente exigissem que os sistemas do governo americano fossem montados de forma a resistir a maioria dos ataques à cadeia de suprimentos”, disse Weaver ao Intercept.
Embora operações de cadeia de suprimentos sejam utilizadas em ciberataques reais, elas parecem ser raras quando comparadas a outras formas mais tradicionais de hackear, como o phishing e os ataques de malware na internet. A NSA os utiliza para acessar “redes complexas e isoladas”, de acordo com uma apresentação ultrassecreta de 2007 sobre o TAO.
“Ataques à cadeia de suprimentos são algo que indivíduos, empresas e governos devem estar cientes. O risco potencial deve ser pesado frente a outros fatores”, disse FitzPatrick. “A realidade é que a maioria das organizações tem várias vulnerabilidades que não precisam de ataques à cadeia de suprimentos para ser exploradas.”
Documentos divulgados com este artigo: DoD 2011 Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace – Supply Chain Excerpts Intellipedia – Air Gapped Network Threats Intellipedia – BIOS Threats Intellipedia – Supply Chain Cyber Threats NSA Supply Chain Attack From PMR 4-24-13 National Intelligence Estimate 2009 Global Cyber Threat – Supply Chain Excerpts PRC Information Warfare & Huawei Special Collection Service – Pacific SIGDEV Conference March 2011 – Supply Chain Excepts Tailored Access Operations 2007Tradução: Maíra Santos
The post Todos fazem isso: a incômoda verdade sobre a espionagem em computadores appeared first on The Intercept.
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Since getting elected to the senate, Kamala Harris has become one of the most progressive voices in the chamber, coming out in favor of Medicare for All and debt-free college. Her forensic questioning of Brett Kavanaugh during last September’s Supreme Court nomination hearings boosted her national profile even further. However, her record as a district attorney and as attorney general in California stand in stark contrast to the progressive ideals she now claims to hold. As attorney general, Harris opposed a bill requiring her office to investigate shootings involving police officers and threatened to imprison the parents of truant children, who are disproportionately poor and non-white. Her office fought a proposed parole program that would release prisoners early if they served half their sentences, arguing that “prisons would lose an important labor pool.” When questioned about her record at a CNN Town Hall this week, Sen. Harris evaded the questions and argued instead that her record has been “consistent.” On this week’s Deconstructed podcast, Mehdi Hasan is joined by Jamilah King of Mother Jones and by Lara Bazelon, a professor of law at the University of San Francisco, to discuss Sen. Harris’s record and her prospects in the Democratic primaries.
Juliette Goodrich: We start with a major announcement from Senator Kamala Harris.
Kamala Harris (at campaign announcement): I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for president of the United States.
KH (CNN town hall): I compare my record to any prosecutor, any elected prosecutor in this country in terms of the work that I have done to reform the criminal justice system.
nbsp;
[Music interlude.]
Mehdi Hasan: Welcome to Deconstructed. I’m Mehdi Hasan. Another week, another Democrat declared their candidacy for president of the United States. But while plenty of liberals have welcomed Senator Kamala Harris’s announcement that she’s running, and even dubbed her the frontrunner. Some on the left are pretty worried about her controversial record as a prosecutor back home in California.
Lara Bazelon: I have not seen any real evidence that she is who she says she is. She says she’s a progressive prosecutor. That is not the case.
MH: That’s my guest Lara Bazelon, law professor and author of a recent, damning and viral New York Times op-ed headlined: “Kamala Harris Was Not a ‘Progressive Prosecutor’”.
I’m also joined to discuss the Harris record and her potentially-history-making presidential bid by Jamilah King of Mother Jones magazine, who’s been out on the road with Senator Harris.
Jamilah King: Hopefully the next stop on this campaign is to have this reckoning that we so deeply want. I think that the backlash that you’re seeing from Black progressive activists right now shows that she’s got a lot of work to do.
MH: So, on today’s show, is Senator Kamala Harris really the presidential candidate that progressives have been waiting for?
In 1999, a man named Daniel Larsen was convicted of possession of a concealed weapon — after two police officers testified that they saw him throw a knife under a car in the parking lot of a bar in Northridge, California. Unfortunately for Larsen, his attorney — since disbarred — failed to discover nine witnesses, who saw another man, not Larsen, toss the knife. In fact Larsen’s lawyer failed to call a single witness at trial and so Larsen ended up convicted and sentenced to 27-years-to-life in prison, under California’s ridiculous Three Strikes Law — because he already had a previous conviction from nearly a decade earlier.
A federal court later found, though, in the words of the California Innocence Project which went to bat on Larsen’s behalf, that he was “innocent, the police officers who testified at his trial were not credible, and his trial attorney was constitutionally ineffective for failing to call witnesses on his behalf.”
News Anchor: The federal magistrate ruled, had the jury been able to hear the new evidence, “no reasonable juror would have found petitioner Daniel Larsen guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”
MH: But here’s the thing: before Larsen was released, the California Attorney General appeal the judge’s ruling, arguing that even if Larsen was innocent of the crime, he shouldn’t be released and his conviction shouldn’t be overturned because he had waited too long to file his paperwork. That’s right: the California AG was okay with an innocent man spending his life in prison, his entire life behind bars, over a freaking technicality.
Now, why am I telling you all this? How is a 20-year-old unjust conviction relevant to our politics today? Well, that Attorney General is now running for president and her name is Senator Kamala Harris.
Kamala Harris: I’m running to be president of the people, by the people, and for all people.
[Cheers.]
MH: And folks are very excited about her campaign.
Chris Hayes: Kamala Harris launched her campaign in Oakland to rave reviews.
Laura Ingraham: Democrats are very excited about Kamala Harris.
Ana Cabrera: Is Kamala Harris the Democrats’ best chance to beat Trump in 2020?
MH: You can’t blame them: Harris is a damn strong candidate. She’s got charisma, humor, a fierce intellect, and her forensic questioning of Brett Kavanaugh at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last September was truly brilliant.
KH: Have you discussed Mueller or his investigation with anyone at Kasowitz, Benson and Torres, the law firm founded by Mark Kasowitz, President Trump’s personal lawyer?
Brett Kavanaugh: Uh.
KH: Be sure about your answer sir.
BK: I would like to know the person you’re thinking of —
KH: I think you’re thinking of someone and you don’t want to tell us.
MH: She’s also become one of the most progressive voices in the Senate since getting elected to that chamber as the junior senator from California in 2016. She’s come out in favor of Medicare-for-all and debt-free college, among other things. But, and there’s always a but, her high profile, her growing popularity, and now her presidential bid has put her record as a district attorney in San Francisco and as attorney general of California under the spotlight.
Lara Bazelon, in the New York Times on January the 17th, published what I would argue was a pretty damning and disturbing piece outlining how Kamala Harris was anything but a progressive prosecutor back in California. Lara writes, and I quote: “Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms…Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent.” She also says Harris fought to uphold wrongful convictions, even when they involved “evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors.”
Lara goes on to point out that when California’s death penalty was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge, Harris, then attorney general, appealed that ruling. She opposed a bill requiring her office to investigate shootings involving police officers. She laughed when a reporter asked her if she’d support the legalization of marijuana.
Now, people change, politicians’ views evolve, they do, over time, and some of these issues that are being raised go back almost a decade. And yet, on Monday night, in a CNN Town Hall with Jake Tapper, Senator Harris refused to explain or even try and justify any of this stuff and in fact, when explicitly asked by a member of the audience how she reconciled her past with the kind of progressive stances she takes today, the senator replied:
KH: I’ve been consistent my whole career. My career has been based on an understanding one, that as a prosecutor, my duty was to seek and make sure that the most vulnerable and voiceless among us are protected. And that is why I have personally prosecuted violent crime that includes rape, child molestation, and homicide. And I have also worked my entire career to reform the criminal justice system understanding, to your point, that it is deeply flawed and in need of repair.
MH: Well, she hasn’t been consistent. That’s just not true. I mean, why say that? Why not just own it and say: “You know what? I’ve moved on. I’ve grown. I’ve evolved. I’m sorry.” But, no, pressed further by Jake Tapper on her contentious record, she refused to budge and instead invoked her own identity and background as a defense against the very legitimate criticisms of her record.
KH: I am a daughter of parents who met when they were active in the Civil Rights Movement. Nobody had to teach me about the disparities in the criminal justice system. I was born knowing what they are.
MH: She then even offered this ludicrous strawman of an argument.
KH: There are some people who just believe that prosecutors shouldn’t exist and I don’t think I’m ever going to satisfy them.
MH: Sorry, Senator, that’s bullshit. That’s a complete evasion. It’s not that prosecutors shouldn’t exist, it’s that prosecutors, especially Democrats who one day want to run for president, shouldn’t have a record of such awfulness on drug cases, or police use of force cases, or official misconduct cases, or legal marijuana or the death penalty. They shouldn’t brag about being a cop who used their badge to scare the shit out of the parents of truant kids — disproportionately poor and non-white parents, I might add.
KH: I decided I was going to start prosecuting parents for truancy. This was a little controversial in San Francisco. So, I sent a letter out on my letterhead to every parent in the school district. A friend of mine actually called me and said “Kamala, my wife got the letter. She freaked out. She brought all the kids into the living room, held up the letter, and said ‘If you don’t go to school, Kamala’s going to put you and me in jail.'”
MH: Did she really giggle while talking about threatening to lock up parents? Wow.
So, on today’s show, given the importance of the Democratic presidential nomination, given the importance of picking the best candidate to defeat and replace Donald Trump in 2020, I want to get to the bottom of all this — Really try and understand the Kamala Harris record, why it matters, and whether it’ll hurt her presidential chances, especially with a Democratic base which thankfully is moving more and more to the left on race, on criminal justice reform, on civil liberties.
[Music interlude.]
MH: I’m joined today from San Francisco, by Lara Bazelon, associate professor of law at the at the University of San Francisco, author of the book “Rectify,” and the author also of that scathing New York Times op-ed on Senator Kamala Harris’s prosecutorial record. And from the offices of the Intercept in New York, by Jamilah King, race and justice reporter at Mother Jones magazine and host of the Mother Jones podcast. She’s also the author of the recent piece “The Secret To Understanding Kamala Harris.”
Lara, Jamilah, thank you both for joining me on Deconstructed.
JK: Thanks for having me.
LB: Thank you for having me.
MH: Lara, why did you write your op-ed in the New York Times? What prompted you to come out so strongly, so comprehensively against Senator Harris and her record? You even said she was on the wrong side of history.
LB: I wrote it from a real place of concern because she announced herself as a progressive prosecutor and she’s just not in that group of people. And I felt because those issues are so important to voters and so important to be clearly understood that it was necessary to set the record straight and so I did.
MH: Wow, so Jamilah, I want to bring you into the discussion. You’ve written extensively about Senator Harris as well. We’ll come to your piece in a moment. What did you make of Lara’s op-ed in the New York Times that got so much attention and Lara’s claim both in that piece and just now that Kamala Harris is presenting herself as a progressive prosecutor and she most certainly wasn’t?
JK: Yeah, I thought that Lara’s piece was articulating a lot of concerns that folks have had about Senator Harris’ record for many, many years, dating back to her time as district attorney of San Francisco. You know, I have been following her career since she was district attorney and you know, it’s really interesting to see someone suddenly get national attention who has been in elected office for 20 years, right. I think a lot of the more charismatic political figures who’ve sort of burst on the scene in recent years — Donald Trump notwithstanding — you know, they’re folks whose political histories are relatively new, right. Or somewhat neutral in that they’re serving the public interest. They were elected to state senate and then they went on from there. But Kamala Harris is obviously very different. She’s worked in elected office for going on two decades and more than that, she works in law enforcement, right. And we’re in this moment right now of intense reckoning with the failures of law enforcement over the course of several generations and she’s sort of become the face of that. So, you know, I thought that —
MH: Is it just bad timing, Jamilah? If she’d run four or eight years ago, would we not be having this debate?
JK: It’s possible. It’s possible that maybe four or eight years ago, you know, this conversation would’ve been different but because so many things have shifted — I think in 2016, you look at the very valid criticism that Black activists waged against Hillary Clinton around her use of the term “superpredator,” right. And Hillary Clinton was in 1996, or 1994, she was a very important woman but she was not in elected office, right. And so, even those things were being used against her. And so, I do think that there’s a part of this with like, you know, how do we reckon with someone who worked in law enforcement trying to run our government? How do we reckon with someone in law enforcement becoming sort of the face of a resistance? And I think this is sort of, the lane that Donald Trump has sort of pushed us in.
MH: So, you write in your piece, Jamilah, “Harris is not interested in crusading from the outside. Her mission is to reform the system from within.” Did she do that in California in your view?
JK: She certainly tried. She tried for two decades, I think. She wrote a whole book that was just released recently about her time in public office in California, in San Francisco, and then later in the Attorney General’s office. And there were some great things that she did, right. You can point to certain programs that at the time, were seen as revolutionary. At the time, were seen as these huge steps forward. Programs like Back On Track that tried to divert non-violent, first-time offenders. You know, but it’s tough. I think that in San Francisco she also did spend some time cultivating relationships with Black activists and sort of folks who were on the ground doing the work. And they’re still very, very supportive of her, but it’s a very fine line to walk. And I think that a lot of folks who’ve been walking this line are in a really tough position right now. Everyone kind of says it’s complicated.
MH: Lara, I mentioned in my intro the case of Daniel Larsen, an innocent man who Senator Harris, when she was AG, attorney general in California opposed the release of, mainly over a legal technicality. He ended up serving 13 years of a 27-year sentence before he could get out. You mentioned in your piece the case of George Gage who I believe is still in prison today serving a 70-year sentence. Explain to our listeners what that has to do with Senator Harris.
LB: What happened was that George Gage in 1999 was accused of sexually assaulting and abusing his stepdaughter Marian. Gage who was — there was a hung jury the first time — turned down an offer essentially of time served and said “I am not a sexual predator.” And in his defense, he had an expert saying that he had none of the characteristics of one. The jury convicted based largely on Marian’s testimony and then it came out afterwards that the prosecutor had held back a lot of important information that he was required to turn over including psychiatric and medical records. One of which, in her mother’s own handwriting, said “My daughter is a pathological liar and she lives her lies.” The case was appealed. The trial judge confronted with this evidence reacted really strongly and overturned the conviction but it was reinstated on appeal because ironically, the jury never considered the evidence because of course, they were not allowed to. And then all these years later, it gets to the ninth circuit in federal court and at that point it was Kamala Harris’s job as attorney general to decide what to do. Was she going to defend this conviction? Or was she going to acknowledge the serious constitutional problems with it and ask that it be overturned so that George Gage could be retried?
MH: And what was her decision?
LB: Her decision was to defend the conviction on a technicality. And so, she sent her deputies in to argue that George Gage should not get relief because when he was in federal court, in front of the trial judge, forced to be his own lawyer — because in habeas, you do not have the right to a lawyer — he failed to state the claim in exactly the way that he was required to do, the way that the law mandated. And that was the argument her deputies made.
MH: And he’s still in prison today, George Gage?
LB: Yes, George Gage is 80 and he is still in prison.
MH: On CNN’s Town Hall discussion with Senator Harris on Monday night, the Senator said one of the reasons she became a prosecutor and rose up the ranks is because she wanted to reform the system. Is that a fair description of what she did in your view, first as a DA and then as an attorney general?
LB: In my view, no. I don’t want to take away from the fact that she did start the Back on Track and that it did give first-time offenders a second chance and that it was in its own way, a revolutionary program. That was during her time as district attorney. I think then you need to fast-forward to what she would call “inflection points” and what I would call situations that call for courage and conviction and principle. So, for example, the George Gage case or the Daniel Larsen case that you mentioned. But we can also go on. There were activists of color, activists at the ACLU, all kinds of folks including members of the Black caucus in the state senate who were very, very disappointed for example, when she opposed bills in 2015 that would’ve required her office to investigate officer-involved shootings, to take them out of the control of the local DA which was often seen as being too cozy with the police. Those same folks were very taken aback when she opposed mandating that all police officers wear body-worn cameras. Anti-death penalty activists and people who care about racial justice were very concerned when she defended the death penalty. So, a federal judge found that it was unconstitutional at that point, she could’ve stood down and instead she appealed and had it reinstated at the ninth circuit. So we’re talking about decisions that affect hundreds, and thousands of lives.
MH: Yes, it’s interesting you mention the death penalty case. But didn’t she also, as a DA in San Francisco, oppose calling for the death penalty for a guy who’d killed a cop even though she was under pressure from her own party, from Democratic senators at that time? So, as Jamilah mentioned, she seems to be walking this line. On the one hand, she opposes saying the California death penalty is unconstitutional but then she opposes calling for it earlier on in her career. It’s kind of hard to make out where she stands.
LB: It’s tricky and I’m not arguing that she wasn’t in a very difficult situation and I think she was very brave not to seek the death penalty in 2004. That was the platform that she ran on and she stayed true to her promise. Then though, you need to look at her recent record and the kinds of decisions that she’s made. And it may be that that was a very scarring experience because she experienced a tremendous amount of backlash including Dianne Feinstein at the officer’s funeral standing up, demanding the death penalty and getting a standing ovation. So, you do face a lot of pressure and a lot of backlash for standing up for your convictions but I don’t think the lesson should be that you then stop standing up for them.
JK: Yeah, that’s a really great point, Lara. And I do want to go back to that decision in 2004, to not seek the death penalty. She paid a huge political price for that and it’s one that you can see that she tried to rectify in her run for attorney general by courting police unions, right. And that was, I think that turned a lot of people off. She’s this liberal from San Francisco who’s going around saying that she’s against the death penalty and so she did become more of a centrist in that regard. She’s a politician, a consummate politician in that she will sort of, do what the political calculus says is necessary.
MH: Just on the kind of, politician, you say in your piece, Jamilah, she “long tried to bridge the tricky divide between social progressivism and the work required as a prosecutor sometimes more successfully than others.” Overall, do you think she managed to bridge that divide? Was she successful overall, do you think?
JK: I think that the backlash that you’re seeing from Black progressive activists right now shows that she’s got a lot of work to do. You know, I think that she’s been able to put together — If she can put together a team that you know, can actually get people on her side that’s a different thing but you know, she at least, in my circles, her announcement shows that she’s one of the most contentious figures to run for president in recent memory.
MH: It’s funny that you mention Black progressive activists reacting badly to her because a lot of her defenders on Twitter for example, on social media, especially in kind of “mainstream Democrats,” if I can call them that, are suggesting that a lot of the criticism against her is driven by racism and misogyny or a combination of the two. Do you think that’s fair? What’s your reaction to people say “Well, this is typical. It’s because she’s a Black woman.”
JK: Well, I think it depends on which criticism you’re talking about, right. If you’re talking about who she dated 25 years ago, then yes, that is absolutely driven by racism and sexism and misogyny.
MH: The Willie Brown stuff, yes.
JK: I think that if you can keep the criticism to her record, those are very valid criticisms that people should be having. Those are criticisms that sort of, lay at the heart of where criminal justice reform is moving in the next two decades. So, you know, I think that it’s a really tricky position for a lot of people, but again, I think you know, if you, I think Black folks are smart enough to know that you know, you don’t have to vote for somebody just because they’re black or just because they’re a Democrat. And so, I think that all of that tension is sort of being played out in the very beginning stages of this campaign.
MH: Lara, is she being held, is Senator Harris being held to an unfair standard? A lot of her defenders say her critics are guilty of racism or misogyny. Others are saying, you know, she’s being held to standards that other Democrats aren’t being held to, other Democrats aren’t having their records on criminal justice being scrutinized or criticized in the same way. People point at Bernie Sanders and say “He voted for the 1994 notorious crime bill. That doesn’t get mentioned.” WHat’s your reaction to those people who say that, Lara?
LB: I agree that it depends on who the critic is and where the criticism is coming from. But no other candidate is running as a progressive prosecutor. No other candidate has seized that label and affixed it to themselves and that term has a very specific meaning. It means that you seek justice and you make hard decisions including embracing criminal justice reforms and at almost every inflection point, she did not do that. And the other thing I want to say about what’s so disappointing to me in this rollout, is what I keep waiting for is a reckoning from her. You mentioned the CNN Town Hall last night. She was asked very pointed questions by a young man in the audience about her record as a prosecutor and asked specifically about these tainted convictions and other decisions and rather than respond directly, she just responded with a bunch of platitudes about how she’s always been consistent, not true. And talking once again about Back on Track, as if that was somehow the answer to all of these questions.
MH: And not engaging with the specifics raised by you in your piece and elsewhere.
LB: Not at all.
MH: Here’s a question though, Lara, what do you say to people who say “You know what? None of this even matters anymore. Yes, she gets a question in a CNN Town Hall but it’s ancient history. Some of this stuff is from almost a decade ago and people don’t care about it anymore. People in Iowa and New Hampshire aren’t going to be basing their votes on what she did as a DA back in San Francisco in 2004?”
LB: What people in Iowa, and New Hampshire, and South Carolina and all over this country are going to care about is a leader, someone who is a true leader which means that they go first even if there aren’t a crowd of people in front of them and a crowd of people following them. What they’re going to care about is someone promising, for example, to be progressive and then actually delivering on those promises and not holding their finger to the wind and doing the political thing. And so, in the end of the day, whether their key issue is the death penalty or wrongful convictions or police brutality, what they’re really looking for is someone who stands behind what they say and walks the walk.
MH: Okay, so do you think that she’s that person? Is she authentic?
LB: I have not seen any real evidence that she is who she says she is. She says she’s a progressive prosecutor. That is not the case and I haven’t seen any reckoning with the voluminous evidence indicating that that is really a problem and not an accurate statement.
MH: Before I ask Jamilah the same question, one quick thing, you keep mentioning progressive prosecutor. What do you say to people who say progressive prosecutor’s an oxymoron? There’s no such thing.
LB: I say that that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the prosecutor’s role. Most people in this country think that prosecutors and defense attorneys are flip sides of the same coin and that their job is to win at all costs. But that’s not the prosecutor’s job. The prosecutor’s job is to seek justice and to vindicate the truth. And what that means is that if they come to find a case is tainted by misconduct and lying and cheating, they have an affirmative obligation to go to the court and say this was wrong. This was a miscarriage of justice. I am standing down. They also have an obligation to be fair to everyone. So for example, if they find that there’s a system in place that is exacting racially disproportionate penalties. They have an obligation to embrace reforms that correct that. And again, at various junctions in California when legislation came up designed to do that precise thing, she opposed it or remained silent.
MH: Jamilah, you spent some time with Senator Harris on the ground in California reporting for your piece. Do you think she’s authentically moving on these issues, that she’s genuinely maybe changed her mind or evolved even if she doesn’t want to say it? Because what I can’t quite yet figure out is whether she’s just a product of her time. She’s a politician who became politically active in the 1990s when every Democrat had to be tough on crime, had to be pro-prison, pro-locking people up. Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, you know, this is the stuff she said in order to get elected or does she really believe some of the stuff she was doing back then? Is she really deep down quite right-wing on law and order?
JK: I think no one knows the answer to that except for Kamala Harris and I would love to see her actually, like Lara said, come out with a public reckoning and know that she is different from the rest of the field. She has held elected office for so long. She has been sort of, in the crucible of this most contentious issue for nearly two decades. And this is something that you know, she can’t just appeal to the folks in Iowa. She can’t just be trying to appeal to the folks in New Hampshire. She has to be able to really rally the progressive base around her and until she’s able to do that, I think she’s got her work really cut out for her.
MH: Although some centrist Democrats might say, Jamilah, they might say, “You know what? You know, you lefties are getting all upset about her record as a prosecutor, as a cop but that’ll actually help her win in the general election. It’ll help her win “moderate voters.” What do you say to them?
JK: I worry that folks are going to sit home. I worry that folks are not going to come out. Folks are not going to you know, rally around her with the same enthusiasm that they might with someone who’s honest. I think our democracy deserves someone who will be able to admit when they’ve made a mistake and be able to say that they’re willing to do better.
MH: Just before we wrap up, broadening the discussion into kind of the general politics since we mentioned Iowa, New Hampshire. How strong a candidate is Kamala Harris? Is she one of the frontrunners in your view, Lara?
LB: Yes, I think she absolutely is.
MH: And she deserves to be because she’s a good candidate, in many ways, to be fair.
LB: She’s a very strong candidate in many, many ways and I’m not surprised that she’s a front-runner. And her rollout has been incredibly successful.
MH: And if she can, if she does this reckoning, which you’d like to see her do and Jamilah would like to see her do, but is unlikely, I suspect, would she have your vote, Lara?
LB: Well, let’s be clear any Democratic nominee has my vote against Donald Trump or quite frankly, any Republican. I think the real question is does she have my vote in the primary? And it’s really too early to say. We’re at the very, very beginning stages. We don’t know what the full field is and like every voter, I want to sit back and evaluate each candidate and then pick the person who best reflects my values.
MH: Jamilah, what do you think is going to happen to the Kamala Harris campaign? Where’s it going to go next?
JK: Hopefully the next stop on this campaign is to have this reckoning that we so deeply want but you know, if not, I think you can see a lot of these sort of arguments that are happening on the far left to become more central and I think you can see some splintering. So, you know, she’s got some of the best people around on her team. I’m sure that it will continue to be successful and high profile and she will do well. What that means, you know, in the primary and the general and then you know, for the White House, I think remains to be seen. I think you want someone in office who will be responsive and I’m not sure that folks trust her to be that person.
MH: Jamilah, Lara, we’ll have to leave it there. Thank you so much for joining me on Deconstructed.
LB: Thank you so much.
JK: Thank you.
MH: That was Lara Bazelon and Jamilah King, talking Kamala Harris. A very interesting discussion, I think there, about the seriousness and importance of this topic. Will some voters stay at home if Harris is the candidate, as Jamilah suggested? Will the senator have a reckoning on her record as a prosecutor, as Lara wants? I doubt it, but with Kamala Harris as a frontrunner, this topic isn’t going away and she certainly has a lot of questions to answer about miscarriages of justice, police violence, the war on drugs and a racist criminal justice system.
[Music interlude.]
MH: That’s our show. Deconstructed is a production of First Look Media and The Intercept, and is distributed by Panoply. Our producer is Zach Young. Dina Sayedahmed is our production assistant. The show was mixed by Bryan Pugh. Leital Molad is our executive producer. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Betsy Reed is The Intercept’s editor in chief.
And I’m Mehdi Hasan. You can follow me on Twitter @mehdirhasan. If you haven’t already, please do subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. Go to theintercept.com/deconstructed to subscribe from your podcast platform of choice, iPhone, Android, whatever. If you’re subscribed already, please do leave us a rating or review. It helps new people find the show. And if you want to give us feedback, do email us at Podcasts@theintercept.com. Thanks very much. See you next week.
Articles referenced in this podcast:
The Secret to Understanding Kamala Harris by Jamilah King, Mother Jones January 2018
Kamala Harris’ Presidential Run Will Force Democrats to Decide Where They Really Stand on Criminal Justice by Jamilah King, Mother Jones January 2019
Kamala Harris was Not a “Progressive Prosecutor” by Lara Bazelon, New York Times January 2019
The post Kamala Harris Wants to Be President. But What About Her Right-Wing Past? appeared first on The Intercept.
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After the new evidence comes to light, we look back at the investigation into the murder of Donna Brown. And share some information we didn’t quite know what to do with — information about some key players who we know shaped the outcome of the case. Players we still have questions about. One is an elusive police detective with a bad reputation. The other is a witness we’ve talked about before. Or, maybe she’s a suspect. It’s hard to tell.
Jordan Smith: Okay. So, by now you pretty much know the story. Devonia Inman has been behind bars for nearly 20 years for a crime he almost certainly did not commit.
Liliana Segura: He was sentenced to life in prison for the 1998 robbery and murder of Donna Brown, a manager at the Taco Bell in Adel, Georgia. It would be the first of four brutal murders in this tiny town of just more than 5,000 people. One of those murders, of a man named Shailesh Patel, remains unsolved. Just months later two beloved members of the community, William Carroll Bennett and Rebecca Browning, were bludgeoned to death in broad daylight.
Jordan Smith: A man named Hercules Brown was quickly arrested for that crime and sent to prison for life. Nine years later, DNA evidence taken from a mask found in Donna Brown’s car was matched to Hercules. And only to Hercules. And that raised a whole bunch of questions. And the biggest question? Why didn’t the police ever consider Hercules a suspect in Donna Brown’s death?
Liliana Segura: That’s the question we’ve come back to over and over again while reporting this story. Remember, people around town had told investigators that Hercules was responsible for her murder and that he’d even confessed to the crime. He was known to police and he had a violent streak. It just seems like if we could answer that question, we could get closer to the truth of what happened — not just at the Taco Bell, but during this violent period that traumatized so many people in Adel. For The Intercept, I’m Liliana Segura.
Jordan Smith: And I’m Jordan Smith. Welcome back to Murderville, Georgia. When we set out to report this story, we wanted to get to understand why Devonia Inman was convicted. We learned a lot, but didn’t come away with a definitive answer. Why? Partly because — if you noticed — we got a lot of doors slammed in our face. Key law enforcement just didn’t want to talk.
Liliana Segura: But we didn’t give up. We kept trying. In this final episode, we wanted to give you a glimpse of what’s that like. First up, tracking down Adel police detective Jimmy Hill.
Earline Goodman: I think Jimmy Hill is the reason why this case- I think because he was the lead investigator and if y’all could talk with Jimmy Hill, I think that’s who you need to talk to.
Liliana Segura: Why? You started to say you think he’s the reason that this didn’t …
Earline Goodman: I just think his investigation- he was the head investigator of the police department. I think he’s the one that put the case together.
Liliana Segura: That’s Earline Goodman. She was part of Inman’s original defense team. Remember, the Adel police department was so small that it didn’t have the resources to handle a big murder case. So they called in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. GBI Agent Jamy Steinberg took charge. Jimmy Hill was his local partner. But people like Earline Goodman thought Hill was the real driving force behind the investigation.
Earline Goodman: He’s the one you guys need to talk with. Ask him why did he think Devonia done it.
Liliana Segura: My question to him would be, “Why didn’t you pursue Hercules Brown as a suspect?”
Earline Goodman: Very good question. That’s a very good question.
Jordan Smith: We spent a lot of time trying to ask him that question and we really didn’t get anywhere. For one, Hill was hard to track down. Not because we didn’t know where he worked — after leaving the Adel police force, he went to work for the Cook County Sheriff’s Department. In one of the only photos we found of him, he’s standing behind a group of smiling sheriff’s deputies. He is wearing a blue shirt and a bright red tie — everyone else is in uniform. And he’s got a look on his face that we think is supposed to be a smile, but looks more like he’s in mid-growl.
Liliana Segura: But even though he’s still active in law enforcement in this small, rural place, Hill proved amazingly elusive. We went to his house, we left messages with a good friend, we camped out in the lobby of the sheriff’s department and left multiple notes for him. Yet, no Jimmy Hill. Finally, on the way out of town after our last visit to Adel, the phone rang.
Jordan Smith: Oh. Oh my gosh. Gosh, gosh, gosh. Yeah, we’ve got to find to somewhere that we can pull over because that call was definitely from the sheriff’s office.
Liliana Segura: Yeah. Holy fucking shit. Sorry. Oh. Yep.
Jordan Smith: Sheriff’s office just called twice but-
Liliana Segura: Two times in a row.
Jordan Smith: -no messages. It’s vexing.
Liliana Segura: Yeah. Oh my god. I mean it can only be him. Who else would be calling?
Jordan Smith: Nobody.
Liliana Segura: We were about an hour-and-a-half north of Adel. We found a gas station and pulled over. We called him back.
Jimmy Hill: Cook County Sheriff’s Office.
Jordan Smith: Is this Chief Deputy Hill?
Jimmy Hill: Yes, ma’am.
Jordan Smith: Well, hey, this is Jordan Smith. It’s great to hear your voice. How are you doing?
Jimmy Hill: I’m doing fine.
Jordan Smith: So we’ve been trying to get in touch with you because we’ve been working on a-
Jimmy Hill: Isn’t it a clue when I don’t return your call I don’t intend to talk to you?
Jordan Smith: Well, no, not necessarily.
Jimmy Hill: Well, I’m not talking to you.
Jordan Smith: Can you tell me why not?
Jimmy Hill: I’ve got nothing- Yeah. I don’t want to.
Jordan Smith: Well, can you tell me why not?
Jimmy Hill: Yes, because I don’t want to talk to you.
Jordan Smith: But I mean is there-
Jimmy Hill: Now you have a nice day.
Jordan Smith: I’m sorry? Wow. That was hostile.
Liliana Segura: I think he said you have a nice day.
Jordan Smith: Well, you have a nice day too, Mr. Hill.
Liliana Segura: I don’t think he meant it.
Jordan Smith: Oh.
Jordan Smith: It was hardly a satisfying exchange. And it certainly didn’t get us any closer to understanding his role in the investigation. And that’s a problem. Because his name is all over the GBI report on Donna Brown’s murder. He’s clearly involved in key interviews. He provides Agent Steinberg with important evidence and with information about Inman, but none of the entries in the report were actually written by him.
Liliana Segura: This isn’t exactly surprising. None of the local cops who first responded to the call about a body at the Taco Bell wrote reports. There were no observations from the scene. This basic information is just absent from the GBI report. In fact, there are no reports written by the Adel officers at all. At Inman’s trial, Adel police Chief Kirk Gordon testified that his officers didn’t write reports “because we’re not going to interfere” with the GBI. Even when an officer was the first to get a tip or to develop some sort of lead. “What’s the use in writing it down when you can just explain it to them face to face?” he asked.
Jordan Smith: I’m sorry, but this is crazy. The point of writing a police report is so that there is an actual report — a detailed record of what steps were taken, when, and by whom. It is critical to understanding why leads were followed and perhaps why others weren’t. Police reports often serve as a window into who might’ve exerted influence on various players in the case or on the overall direction of the investigation. Without a full accounting written by the individuals who actually handled specific tasks, there is simply no way to know. And certainly no way to know what might’ve fallen through the cracks, or was ignored, or was left out of the record on purpose.
Liliana Segura: But there was another reason we really, really wanted to talk to Jimmy Hill. It wasn’t just about the murder at Taco Bell. It was also about figuring out why there seemed to be no trace of an investigation into the killing of Shailesh Patel. Remember the page on the GBI website listing unsolved homicides? The one with the short entry about Patel that has that weird sketch of a possible witness but no actual suspect? There are two investigators listed on that page: one, an agent with the GBI. And the other is Jimmy Hill. We tried him again.
Jimmy Hill: Cook County Sheriff’s Office.
Liliana Segura: Hi, this is Liliana. Is this Jim Hill?
Jimmy Hill: Yes.
Liliana Segura: Well, you spoke to my colleague a day or two ago. We’ve been trying to get in touch about this project we’ve been working on, and she didn’t really, you know-
Jimmy Hill: Ma’am, I told you, I don’t want to talk with you people.
Liliana Segura: Well-
Jimmy Hill: And, I’m not going to talk to you people.
Liliana Segura: I just have a very important question, which is-
Jimmy Hill: You have a nice day.
Liliana Segura: Did you know about the DNA-
Liliana Segura: The phone calls really didn’t amount to much, but they did give us a sense of what was behind Hill’s reputation.
Johnny Daugherty: He’s the most hated guy in Cook County, there’s no doubt about it, from one end of the county to the other.
Liliana Segura: This is Johnny Daugherty, the former Cook County Sheriff. And one of the only people who would talk with us on-the-record about Jimmy Hill.
Johnny Daugherty: He’s a vicious little man. He is a vicious little man. He’s always threatening. He’s threatening something all the time. If you go in to talk to him, first thing you’re going to find out is he thinks he’s already smarter than you are when you walk in the room. And I can tell you what he would say if you walked in the room, as soon as you walked out of the room, “That bunch of dumb bitches.” That’s Jim Hill. I don’t know how else to put it, but that’s Jim Hill.
Liliana Segura: The prosecutors in Inman’s case described Hill in very different terms. They said he was an aggressive investigator with a strong personality. Maybe a little rough around the edges, but he got the job done. One called him a “true detective.”
Jordan Smith: But Inman’s family said he targeted black people. Here’s Takeisha Pickett, Inman’s cousin.
Takeisha Pickett: I just heard that he was always not a good cop. He was just always trying to get the black people off the streets, he wasn’t giving you a chance. I just always known him to not be a good person.
Jordan Smith: And Inman’s aunt, Ethel Pickett.
Jordan Smith: Is Jimmy Hill’s reputation so terrible? What was it?
Ethel: ’Cause he always doing stuff to people. He- Jimmy Hill always doing to young, you know, young black mens. He was always pinning stuff on them and then make it stick ’cause of what he say. You know? What he say goes. That’s the type of reputation he got.
Liliana Segura: Inman’s family says that this, combined with Hill’s vindictiveness, drove him to go after Inman for Donna Brown’s murder. Dinah Ray, Inman’s mother, remembers her son calling her after his arrest.
Dinah Ray: My son, I spoke to him on the phone when he was in jail and he told me that he had smart-mouthed a police officer.
Liliana Segura: She’s convinced this is why Hill was out to get him.
Dinah Ray: I strongly believe this is the reason. Him disrespecting authority, does that equal to life in prison?
Liliana Segura: In the end, it’s hard to know exactly how this went. We never really got to know Jimmy Hill at all. Except by reputation. So we still don’t know how deeply he influenced the case.
Jordan Smith: There’s another character in this story that we want to come back to. One we know far better. But one whose influence on the case, or even potential involvement in the crime, is a similar mystery. That person? Marquetta Thomas.
Jordan Smith: If you remember, Marquetta Thomas was the sister of Inman’s girlfriend, Christy Lima, and she really hated Inman for the way he treated her sister. So when the cops came around asking where Inman was the night of Donna Brown’s murder, Thomas threw him under the bus. Said he hadn’t been around that night. And worse, later she said that he’d talked about “jacking and robbing” places around town. Eventually she said he’d talked about robbing Taco Bell.
Liliana Segura: Then, she took it all back. She testified at Inman’s trial that she’d been coerced by the GBI into implicating him. When we met Thomas, she was filled with remorse. She had only recently gotten out of prison herself and her son was serving an 80-year sentence for a robbery murder. She told us she thinks about Inman all the time.
Marquetta Thomas: I haven’t spoke with him. I would like to, but I don’t know if I could handle his rage if he is angry or mad or hurt because of what I said or did, which I’ll accept, but I would like forgiveness. That would be peace.
Liliana Segura: She also told us that she had worked hard to turn her life around. She became involved with a ministry while in prison. When she got out, they put her up in an apartment and paid the rent for three months so that she could get job training. She found work in a warehouse and devoted herself to her church. Now she’s a youth minister and sings in a traveling choir.
Jordan Smith: You should sing for us.
Marquetta Thomas: I will. I can. I can. I’m not shy, it’s a gift. Let me see what I could sing. Here’s just a worship song that we sing. It’s called How Great Our God. Let me get my breath right.
[SINGING]
Jordan Smith: Look. We liked Thomas. She was personable and open. But, you know, she’s also- what’s the word? Complicated. This too comes back to the GBI report. We’ve talked a lot about how confusing it is. And about how some key things — like really any mention of Hercules — seem to be absent. But what we haven’t said before is that Marquetta Thomas is all over it and not just as the person that implicates Inman. A lot of people around town seem to think she had something to do with the murder at Taco Bell. We didn’t bring this up before because, honestly, it raises way more questions than answers.
Earline Goodman: Marquetta, I’ll never forget Marquetta. Marquetta was something else. Do I believe Marquetta was involved? Yes, I think so, because Marquetta was involved in everything in Adel it seemed like.
Liliana Segura: That’s Earline Goodman again. She’s not the only one with that impression of Thomas. When it came to the murder at Taco Bell, a bunch of people had stories for the cops that somehow involved Thomas. One was her manager at Waffle House. Remember, Thomas worked the night shift there. But the night of Donna Brown’s murder, the manager said Thomas didn’t show up for work. Then, the next day, she showed up acting so nervous the manager sent her home. A different woman, who worked at the Hampton Inn, had some third-hand information to share. She’d heard that Thomas was initially planning to rob a convenience store with her sister’s boyfriend. In other words, Inman. But when they got there it was closed, so they decided to rob the Taco Bell instead. This was pretty sketchy stuff, but we asked Thomas about it.
Jordan Smith: What’s weird is in the big police report, there are places in there where people are basically pointing at you as possibly having been involved in that crime.
Marquetta Thomas: Right, I heard about that a while later, but it didn’t bother me because I didn’t have anything to do with it or I wasn’t around, so it really didn’t bother me at all, didn’t penetrate me, because I was like, “Yeah, whatever. Yeah right.”
Jordan Smith: Whatever might’ve been behind these various rumors, it’s hard to know what the cops made of them, if anything. In part, because the GBI report, as you know, is totally opaque. In fact, the report was so confusing, at a certain point Liliana decided to make a master timeline. One that included everything that happened in Adel over a period of about two years, and including all four murders. It was to get a better sense of how all the pieces fit. It became an epic document, like 15 pages long. And when you read it? There are things that really jump out.
Liliana Segura: One of the main things is what happens after November 11, 1998 — roughly two months after Donna Brown’s murder. Until then, the cops don’t seem to be all that interested in what people have said about Thomas, only what she said about Inman. But on that day, the Adel News Tribune runs a front page story identifying Inman as the “prime” suspect in the murder at Taco Bell. That same day, Thomas is booked into jail in a neighboring county on a totally unrelated charge. And then it just gets weird. Within a week, Agent Steinberg is all over Thomas. Interviewing all kinds of people about her.
Jordan Smith: There are a couple possible reasons for the sudden interest. The first? Virginia Tatem. Remember, she’s the newspaper carrier who had a dramatic story about seeing Inman fleeing the Taco Bell the night of the murder. A story she never bothered to mention until after there was a hefty reward offered for information about the crime. And a story that was totally implausible. A story that her fellow newspaper carrier, Lee Grimes, says was a total lie. Tatem also told the GBI she saw a woman in a second car that night, one the cops decided looked like Marquetta Thomas. This could explain their sudden interest in her. It could explain it. But what it doesn’t explain is the one thing that Thomas has insisted on for years: that early on she had recanted her story about Inman’s involvement in the murder. This is conspicuously absent from the GBI report.
Marquetta Thomas: And I was like, “Yeah, he didn’t do it.” I don’t know if they recorded it…
Liliana Segura: There’s something even bigger that is also missing from the GBI report. Something we only discovered earlier this year at the end of our reporting. That there was another person who came forward with information that should have made investigators question whether Inman was really the right suspect. And that’s Kim Brooks.
Jordan Smith: Brooks is the woman who took over as Taco Bell manager after Donna Brown died and who tried to tell the police that her co-worker, Hercules Brown, was acting odd and that he’d all but confessed his involvement in the murder. Remember, this is the new evidence contained an appeal filed last winter. It is still pending. According to Brooks, she came forward with this information by December of 1998. But, as usual, instead of looking at Hercules, the cops looked away. They seemed to obsess over Marquetta Thomas. It’s pretty inexplicable, but totally par for the course.
Liliana Segura: They talked to a couple of Thomas’ old school counselors, then a guard and a nurse at the jail, and then a bunch of jailhouse snitches. Women who said Thomas had variously confessed to being involved in Donna Brown’s murder. One said she mentioned having $800 from the crime. Another said Thomas had bragged about burying the gun. A third mentioned something pretty out there about Thomas having made a bomb from a Coke can.
Jordan Smith: This is how they spent the month of December. No sign of Hercules in the report. By the end of the year, Steinberg had refocused all of his attention on Inman. There is one sign in the report that Hercules was on their radar. Less than a week before Inman was indicted for murder, on January 4, 1999, Steinberg got a tip that Hercules shot Donna Brown and tossed the gun behind a convenience store. That same day, he went to the store. He didn’t find anything. And that was it, it was over.
Liliana Segura: So, what does this all mean? Jordan and I have had this conversation too many times to count.
Jordan Smith: To me, it’s just that GBI report is just a hot mess. It’s a pretty crappy narrative of a pretty important investigation. So you’ve got a woman, Donna Brown, brutally murdered, and she deserves justice. But you’ve also got someone who could potentially be sentenced to death. Inman wasn’t, but that was on the table. I mean, there’s a premium on getting this shit right. And it doesn’t seem that anyone really cared about that. And the one thing we know for sure is that Hercules was in Donna Brown’s car. And he’s the only one that the evidence shows was involved in her murder. The only one. And they completely ignored him. Even when they were told multiple times about his involvement. And then even more egregious, when they found out there was DNA tying him to the crime, they essentially shrugged their shoulders.
Liliana Segura: For me, when I back up and look at everything that happened after Kim Brooks comes forward, it’s just so damning. Here was this woman who was courageous enough to contact police, not just to share information that might be relevant to the murder of Donna Brown, but to warn them that Hercules was a dangerous man. If you look at the overall timeline, every time Hercules comes up after Inman is indicted, he’s committing some kind of violence. There’s the woman he beats up in June of 1999, then the man he sent to the hospital the following summer. And then, just a month and a half before Hercules kills Bennett and Browning, there’s his run-in with police, where they find a gun and a black cloth cap with two eye holes cut out. It’s like this rolling disaster in slow motion.
Jordan Smith: And then there’s Shailesh Patel.
Liliana Segura: Right. He’s killed right in the middle of all of this. And his murder is still unsolved.
Jordan Smith: Exactly. Is there a connection? We don’t know.
Liliana Segura: Did anyone look for one? We don’t know that either.
Jordan Smith: We decided to check in one last time, to see if the GBI had any updates about that supposedly ongoing investigation. We called agent Mark Pro.
Mark Pro: We’re trying to do some stuff, the case agent has got some stuff that he’s trying to do as far as any physical evidence that they’re trying to work on. Basically that’s where he’s at. He’s got some people that he has to make contact with. Once he does that and secures stuff with him, we’re going to have to have that stuff tested. Then we’ll kind of go and see what we got once we do that, that could be something that could be, I don’t want to say something that will…
Jordan Smith: Again, it was a bunch of bullshit.
Mark Pro: …help us in a direction that we need to go based on what he’s looking at right now because we’ve been going in a direction but if the information doesn’t pan out the way we think it will, we’ll have to take a new direction.
Liliana Segura: Okay, just to be clear, the physical evidence you’re talking about for testing, is that new evidence?
Mark Pro: No, we’re just following up on existing evidence that we have. It’s nothing new.
Liliana Segura: Is there a potential suspect in the case?
Mark Pro: No, not right now.
Jordan Smith: Not very enlightening.
Liliana Segura: Over the last 20 years, Inman has been transferred a bunch of times, to prisons all over the state. We sent him a card around Christmas last year, but we never heard back. Then in January his mom, Dinah Ray, told us he’d been transferred again, to one of the most notoriously violent prisons in Georgia. She sends us emails pretty regularly, asking about our investigation. But sometimes, she also talks about how she’s feeling and her guilt about sending Inman to Adel in the first place.
Jordan Smith: She wrote to us: “I have taken over half my son’s life away by leaving him there. Never in a million years did I think this would ever happen to him, I still think this is a dream that I can’t wake up from.” She wrote that Inman tells her that he doesn’t blame her, that it isn’t her fault.
Liliana Segura: “But it was,” she wrote. “A mom is suppose to protect her kids and I failed him and I will have to live with that for the rest of my life.”
Jordan Smith: She tries to keep busy. Because, “when I sit still,” she wrote, “I can hear my son saying to me over and over, mom, don’t leave me. It’s like a recorder I can’t turn off.”
Liliana Segura: For now, she’s waiting to find out if her son’s appeal will be granted and she’s grateful for all the people who are trying to help him. “It gives us hope,” she wrote. “I just pray that whoever has the authority to make it right, does so.”
Murderville, Georgia is a production of The Intercept and Topic Studios. Alisa Roth is our producer. Ben Adair is our editor. Sound design, editing, and mixing by Bryan Pugh. Production assistance from Isabel Robertson. Our executive producer is Leital Molad. For The Intercept, Roger Hodge is our editor and Betsy Reed is the editor-in-chief. I’m Liliana Segura. And I’m Jordan Smith. You can read our series and see photos at theintercept.com/murderville. You can also follow us on Twitter @lilianasegura and @chronic_jordan. Thanks for listening.
The post Epilogue: Unanswered Questions appeared first on The Intercept.
