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VOL. CLIX . . No. 54,851

© 2009 The New York Times

NEW YORK, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2009


Top Palestinian KERIK CONFESSES Rules Out Race TO CHEATING I.R.S. For Re-election

AND TELLING LIES

12 KILLED, 31 WOUNDED IN RAMPAGE AT ARMY POST; OFFICER IS SUSPECT

Abbas Vow Highlights Deadlock on Peace GUILTY PLEA ON 8 COUNTS
By ETHAN BRONNER and MARK LANDLER

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, warned on Thursday
that he would not seek reelection, the latest sign that the Obama administration’s
drive to broker a Middle East peace accord, one of President Obama’s key foreign
policy goals, has fallen into disarray. Mr. Abbas, 74, has threatened to step aside
before, but coming immediately after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s
visit to the region aimed at reviving a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians,
his announcement laid bare the deepening tensions over the administration’s failure
to extract an Israeli settlement freeze or any concessions from Arab leaders. Mrs.
Clinton’s visit, which she characterized as a success, sowed anger and confusion
among Palestinians and other Arabs after she praised as “unprecedented” the offer
by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to slow down, but not stop, construction
of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. In a televised speech from his office in
Ramallah, Mr. Abbas, who replaced Yasir Arafat five years ago as president of the
Palestinian Authority, said, “I have told my brethren in the P.L.O. that I have
no desire to run in the forthcoming election,” referring to the Palestine Liberation
Organization. It was not clear whether Mr. Abbas, considered a moderate, pro-Western
leader, was determined to quit, although he said his decision was final. He may stay
in his post regardless, because it is far from certain that elections he has called
for January will be held then and there are few alternatives to him as leader. What
seems clear is that highlevel Israeli-Palestinian talks will not resume any time
soon, despite Mr. Obama’s pledge in September to redouble American efforts to get
the process back on Continued on Page A14

Prison Term Is Expected for 9/11 Leader of New York Police
By SAM DOLNICK

WHITE PLAINS — Bernard B. Kerik, a former detective who rose to lead the New York
Police Department through the 9/11 attack before his career crumbled in scandal,
pleaded guilty Thursday to eight charges including tax fraud and lying to White House
officials. Wearing a blue suit and a red tie in Federal District Court here, Mr.
Kerik sat at the defense table in the packed courtroom with a subdued expression.
In a deep, gravelly voice, he said, “Guilty, Your Honor,” as the judge read the
charges against him. One of his lawyers, Michael F. Bachner, rubbed Mr. Kerik’s
back during the 90-minute proceeding. The prosecution and the defense recommended
that the judge, Stephen C. Robinson, sentence Mr. Kerik, who faced up to 30 years
in prison on the most serious charge, to 27 to 33 months. The judge, who is not bound
by the recommendation, set sentencing for Feb. 18. Mr. Kerik was also ordered to
pay restitution of nearly $188,000. The tax fraud charges stemmed in part from Mr.
Kerik’s acceptance of $250,000 in renovations to his Bronx apartment, provided
by a company accused of having ties to organized crime. He also admitted lying to
White House officials, denying improprieties, while he was being interviewed to be
head of the Department of Homeland Security. For the swaggering Mr. Kerik, a man
at ease with powerful politicians and street cops alike, the morning marked the low
point in a career filled with operatic twists that wound through the Bronx, the rubble
of ground zero, and the White House. Mr. Kerik was a police detective when Rudolph
W. Giuliani chose him as his bodyguard and Continued on Page A3

BEN SKLAR/GETTY IMAGES

Shock spread across Fort Hood in Texas on Thursday after one of the worst rampages
ever at a military base in the United States.

Told of War Horror, Gunman Feared Deployment GUNMAN IS SEIZED
By JAMES DAO

WASHINGTON — Born and reared in Virginia, the son of immigrant parents from a small
Palestinian town near Jerusalem, he joined the Army right out of high school, against
his parents’ wishes. The Army, in turn, put him through college and then medical
school, where he trained to be a psychiatrist. But Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the 39-year-old
man accused of Thursday’s mass shooting at Fort Hood, Tex., began having second
thoughts about a military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him
for being a Muslim, he told relatives in Virginia. He had also more recently expressed
deep concerns about be-

After Gruesome Find, Anger at Cleveland Police
By IAN URBINA and CHRISTOPHER MAAG

ing sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Having counseled scores of returning soldiers with
post-traumatic stress disorder, first at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington
and more recently at Fort Hood, he knew all too well the terrifying realities of
war, said a cousin, Nader Hasan. “He was mortified by the idea of having to deploy,”
Mr. Hasan said. “He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw
over there.” The Federal Bureau of Investigation earlier became aware of Internet
postings by a man calling himself Nidal Hasan, a law enforcement official said. The
postings discussed suicide bombings favorably, but the investigators were not clear
whether the writer was Major Hasan. In one posting on the Web site Scribd, a man
named Nidal Hasan compared the heroism of a soldier who throws himself on a grenade
to protect fellow soldiers to suicide bombers who sacrifice themselves to protect
Muslims. “If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they

were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory,” the man wrote.
It could not be confirmed, however, that the writer was Major Hasan. Major Hasan
was wounded and taken into custody by the Fort Hood police after the shooting spree,
in which 12 people were killed and at least 31 others were wounded. Though Senator
Kay Bailey Hutchison Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan of Texas reported that Major Hasan was
to be deployed this month, that could not be confirmed with the Army on Thursday
night. Nader Hasan said his cousin never mentioned in recent phone calls to Virginia
that he was going to be deployed, and he said the family was shocked when it heard
the news on television on Thursday afternoon. “He was doing everything he Continued
on Page A20

He Is a Psychiatrist at Fort Hood in Texas, Officials Say
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

CLEVELAND — After the third police station in a row refused to take a missing-person
report about her niece two years ago, Sandy Drain took matters into her own hands.
She organized search parties to comb abandoned houses. She got neighborhood children
to help post fliers on light poles. She recruited a national advocacy group for missing
persons to host a rally. She even hired a psychic to look for clues in her niece’s
apartment. “It was pretty obvious the police weren’t going to help us,” said
Ms. Drain, 65, who added that the police began seriously investigating the case of
her niece, Gloria Walker, only after Ms. Drain’s initial efforts prompted the news
media to begin asking questions. “If you’re from this neighborhood, you come
to expect that,” Ms. Drain said. Her desperation and anger have grown here on Cleveland’s
gritty east side since the police last week arrested Anthony Sowell, a convicted
sex offender who has been charged with multiple counts of murder after 11 decomposing
bodies were discovered in his house and backyard. Despite being accustomed to Continued
on Page A4

U.S. Reviews of Afghan Forces Raise Doubt on Training Goal
By THOM SHANKER and JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.

KEN BLAZE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Sandy Drain, whose niece has been missing for two years, said the police in Cleveland
initially refused to investigate the case.
BUSINESS DAY B1-8

WASHINGTON — A series of internal government reviews have presented the Obama administration
with a dire portrait of Afghanistan’s military and police force, bringing into
serious question an ambitious goal at the heart of the evolving American war strategy
— to speed up their training and send many more Afghans to the fight. As President
Obama considers his top commander’s call to rapidly double Afghanistan’s security
forces, the internal reviews, written by officials directly involved in the training
program or charged with keeping it on track, describe an overstretched enterprise
struggling to nurse along the poorly led, largely illiterate and often corrupt Afghan
forces. In September, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American and allied commander
in Afghanistan, recommended increasing the Afghan Army as quickly as possible —
to 134,000 in a year

from the current force of more than 90,000, instead of taking two years, and perhaps
eventually to 240,000. He would also expand the police force to 160,000. The acceleration
is vital to General McChrystal’s overall counterinsurgency plan, which also calls
for more American troops but seeks more protection against the Taliban for the Afghan
population than the Pentagon could ever supply. While General McChrystal knew of
the latest assessments when he wrote his plan, their completion just as President
Obama considers the general’s proposal has given fresh ammuContinued on Page A12

U.N. Workers to Be Moved
The United Nations will temporarily relocate hundreds of staff members in Afghanistan
in the wake of a lethal attack. Page A6.

An Army psychiatrist facing deployment to one of America’s war zones killed 12
people and wounded 31 others on Thursday in a shooting rampage with two handguns
at the sprawling Fort Hood Army post in central Texas, military officials said. It
was one of the worst mass shootings ever at a military base in the United States.
The gunman, who was still alive after being shot four times, was identified by law
enforcement authorities as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, who had been in the service
since 1995. Major Hasan was about to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, said Senator
Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas. Clad in a military uniform and firing
an automatic pistol and another weapon, Major Hasan, a balding, chubby-faced man
with heavy eyebrows, sprayed bullets inside a crowded medical processing center for
soldiers returning from or about to be sent overseas, military officials said. The
victims, nearly all military personnel but including two civilians, were cut down
in clusters, the officials said. Witnesses told military investigators that medics
working at the center tore open the clothing of the dead and wounded to get at the
wounds and administer first aid. As the shooting unfolded, military police and civilian
officers of the Department of the Army responded and returned the gunman’s fire,
officials said, adding that Major Hasan was shot by a first-responder, who was herself
wounded in the exchange. In the confusion of a day of wild and misleading reports,
the major and the officer who shot him were both reported killed in the gun battle,
but both reports were erroneous. Eight hours after the shootings, Lt. Gen. Robert
W. Cone, a base spokesmen, said Major Hasan, whom he described as the sole gunman,
had been shot four times, but was hospitalized off Continued on Page A20

NATIONAL A15-20

SPORTSFRIDAY B10-15

WEEKEND C1-36

Inside a Stony-Hard Life
“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” is part bootstrap drama
of a Harlem teenager and part Gothic tale of the cruelty of adults. A film review
by PAGE C1 A. O. Scott.
ONLINE

Readying for Health Care Vote
As House Democratic leaders worked furiously to secure the final votes for weekend
approval of a sweeping health care overhaul, conservatives turned out to protest
the measPAGE A18 ure.

Hedge Fund Scandal Widens
A federal investigation of hedge funds has led to charges of insider trading PAGE
B1 against 14 money managers.
INTERNATIONAL A6-14

27 Is Not Enough for Yanks
Yankees officials can’t afford to spend too much time celebrating their 27th World
Series title. They have already begun thinking about how to improve PAGE B10 the
team for next season.

Artist as a Burdened Child
Mary Karr tells of the influence of her parents — drinking mother and unavailable
father — in “Lit,” a memoir of her own alcoholism and recovery. A book review
by Michiko Kakutani.
PAGE C23

Court Seeks Inquiry in Kenya
A Hague court wants an investigation of PAGE A6 Kenyan strife last year.
NEW YORK A23-28

Successes for Gene Therapy
With three recent successes, scientists say gene therapy, which not long ago seemed
troubled by insurmountable difficulties, may be on the edge of a resurPAGE A19 gence.

Accompanying a clip from the movie, the director Lee Daniels discusses a scene involving
Gabourey Sidibe in the title role, Mo’Nique and Mariah Carey.
nytimes.com/movies

A City Council Remade
With many new members, a more feisty PAGE A26 Council is expected.

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A30-31

Paul Krugman

PAGE A31