Month: September 2019

Authorities served search warrants Sunday at the Southern California company that owned the scuba diving boat that caught fire and killed 34 people last week.

Agents with the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other agencies searched Truth Aquatics’ offices in Santa Barbara and the company’s two remaining boats, Santa Barbara County sheriff’s Lt. Erik Raney said.

The warrants served shortly after 9 a.m. are part of the ongoing investigation into the tragedy to determine whether any crimes were committed, he said. The office was ringed in red “crime scene” tape as more than a dozen agents took photos and carried out boxes.

Thirty-four people died when the Conception burned and sank before dawn on Sept. 2. They were sleeping in a cramped bunkroom below the main deck and their escape routes were blocked by fire.

The bodies of all but one victim have been recovered. The search for the final body was suspended this weekend because of strong winds and rough seas, Raney said.

“The dive teams are going to get together Monday to develop a plan. We’re hoping they’re back in the water on Tuesday,” he said Sunday.

For a judge to approve warrants, law enforcement must spell out the probability a crime was committed. Raney declined to comment on what evidence was disclosed to obtain the warrants, saying only that they are “a pretty standard” part of the investigation to determine whether crimes occurred.

Coast Guard records show the Conception passed its two most recent inspections with no safety violations. Previous customers said Truth Aquatics and the captains of its three boats were very safety conscious.

Authorities are focused on determining the cause of the fire and are looking at many things, including how batteries and electronics were stored and charged. They will also look into how the crew was trained and what crewmembers were doing at the time of the fire. The boat’s design will also come under scrutiny, particularly whether a bunkroom escape hatch was adequate.

Five crew members jumped overboard after trying to rescue the 33 scuba divers and one crew member whose escape routes were blocked by fire, federal authorities and the boat’s owner said. The crew, including the captain, said they were driven back by flames, smoke and heat.

They jumped from the bridge area to the main deck — one breaking a leg in the effort — and tried to get through the double doors of the galley, which were on fire.

That cut off both escape routes from the sleeping quarters: a stairway and an escape hatch that exited in the galley area. The crew then tried, but failed, to get into windows at the front of the vessel.

Truth Aquatics pre-emptively filed a lawsuit Thursday under a pre-Civil War provision of maritime law that could protect it from potentially costly payouts to families of the dead, a move condemned by some observers as disrespectful and callous.

The company said in a statement posted Friday on Instagram that the lawsuit is an “unfortunate side of these tragedies” and pinned the action on insurance companies and other so-called stakeholders.

…

Firefighters who arrived early or spent more time at the World Trade Center site after the 9/11 attacks seem to have a modestly higher risk of developing heart problems than those who came later or stayed less, doctors reported Friday.

The research might have implications for any efforts to expand the list of health problems eligible for payment from a victim compensation fund.

The study has some big limitations and can’t prove that dust or anything else about the disaster caused increased heart risks. It also doesn’t compare the New York firefighters to the general population or to other responders such as paramedics or construction workers.

But it does suggest that working at the site raised risk for some firefighters more than others. Those who arrived by noon that day had a 44% greater chance of suffering a heart problem in the years since the attack compared to firefighters who came hours or days later.

Risk was 33% higher for those who worked there during six or more months versus less time.

That may sound large but heart problems were fairly uncommon — only about 5% of these firefighters developed one.

“This is a modest increase, not an epidemic,” said one study leader, Dr. David Prezant, chief medical officer of the Fire Department of the City of New York. However, “this risk increases over time; it doesn’t disappear.”

Results of the federally funded study were published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

It tracked the health of 9,796 male firefighters through 2017 — 16 years after the collapse of the twin towers exposed many to a cloud of thick dust and particles from fires that burned for days. Female firefighters were excluded because there were only 25 and their heart risks may differ.

Medical records were available for years before the attacks, so researchers could consider high blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking and other factors.

They documented 489 heart problems since the disaster, including 120 heart attacks and roughly 300 procedures or surgeries for clogged arteries. Risks were higher among the 1,600 firefighters who arrived at the site by noon on Sept. 11, 2001, and among the 2,400 who worked there during six months or more.

There are good records on arrival times but less on duration at the site, making that result less reliable. Being counted as having worked one month could be one day during that month or 30 days.

Judith Graber, a researcher at Rutgers School of Public Health who has studied other 9/11 responders, called the research “very well conducted” and said “the important thing is the accumulation of evidence” suggesting increased risk.

Prezant said some other studies found signs suggesting a greater risk of heart problems, which are not covered now by the program that treats responders or the victim compensation fund. He said administrators will need more information to decide whether to include those conditions for any groups, such as firefighters who responded early.

“This adds to the evidence but it doesn’t guarantee coverage,” Prezant said.

Dr. Nieca Goldberg, a cardiologist at NYU Langone Health and an American Heart Association spokeswoman, said 9/11 responders must stay alert for possible problems.

“Everyone needs to know potential symptoms of a heart attack so they can get rapid care,” she said.

…

Turkish and U.S. troops conducted their first joint ground patrol in northeastern Syria Sunday as part of a planned so-called “safe zone” that Ankara has been pressing for in the volatile region.

Turkey hopes the buffer zone, which it says should be at least 30 kilometers (19 miles) deep, will keep Syrian Kurdish fighters, considered a threat by Turkey but U.S. allies in the fight against the Islamic State group, away from its border.

Associated Press journalists in the town of Tal Abyad saw about a dozen Turkish armored vehicles with the country’s red flag standing along the border after crossing into Syria, and American vehicles about a mile away waiting. The two sides then came together in a joint patrol with American vehicles leading the convoy.

At least two helicopters hovered overhead. The Turkish Defense Ministry confirmed the start of the joint patrols and said unmanned aerial vehicles were also being used.

Washington has in the last years frequently found itself trying to forestall violence between its NATO ally Turkey and the Kurdish fighters it partnered with along the border to clear of IS militants.

An initial agreement between Washington and Ankara last month averted threats of a Turkish attack. But details of the deal are still being worked out in separate talks with Ankara and the Kurdish-led forces in Syria known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF.

Turkey, which has carried out several incursions into Syria in the course of the country’s civil war in an effort to curb the expanding influence of the Kurdish forces, carried out joint patrols with U.S. troops in the northern town of Manbij last year.

Sunday’s joint patrol is the first one taking place east of the Euphrates River, where U.S. troops have more presence, and as part of the safe zone that is being set up.

Anadolu Agency said six Turkish armored vehicles crossed into Syria on Sunday from the border town of Akcakale, opposite from Syria’s Tal Abyad, and joined U.S. vehicles for their first joint patrol of an area east of the Euphrates river.

AP reporters in Tal Abyad said the patrol was headed to a Kurdish-controlled base apparently to inspect it, apparently to ensure that trenches and sand berms had been removed. U.S. troops had inspected the base on Saturday during patrols with the SDF during which some of the berms Turkey had complained about were removed.

For Turkey, a “safe zone” is important because it is hoping some of the Syrian refugees it has been hosting for years could be resettled there, although it is not clear how that would work.

On Thursday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that Turkey could “open its gates” and allow Syrian refugees in the country to move toward Western countries if a safe zone is not created and Turkey is left to shoulder the refugee burden alone. Turkey hosts 3.6 million refugees from Syria.

Rather than calling it a safe zone, Washington and the Kurdish-led forces have said a “security mechanism” is taking shape to diffuse tensions in northeastern Syria

…

Dorian, now a post-tropical cyclone, is expected to move over or near the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador Sunday and then enter the North Atlantic.

The storm hit Canada’s Atlantic coast Saturday with heavy wind and rains that toppled a construction crane into the side of an apartment building under construction in Halifax, the provincial capital of Nova Scotia.

Nova Scotia Power told the Associated Press that 300,000 customers of Halifax, which has a population of 400,000, were without power late Saturday.

Before reaching Canada, Dorian moved over extreme southeastern Massachusetts and Maine in the U.S.

On Friday, Dorian made landfall over Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, after weakening into a Category 1 storm. It generated tornadoes, severe storm surges and flooding in coastal areas in North and South Carolina.

Steve Harris, a resident of North Carolina’s Ocracoke Island said, “We went from almost no water to 4 to 6 feet in a matter of minutes.”

Dorian was a Category 5 storm when it hit the Bahamas, creating a path of death and destruction, leaving an estimated 70,000 people in need of immediate humanitarian relief.

The official Bahamian death toll is 43, but officials say that will rise, because hundreds, perhaps thousands are missing.

The death toll will be “catastrophic and devastating,” Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said, while Health Minister Duane Sands said the final toll “will be staggering.”

The U.N. World Food Program warned Saturday that thousands of displaced people are living in “rapidly deteriorating” conditions in the worst-hit parts of the Bahamas in Dorian’s aftermath.

“The needs remain enormous,” WFP spokesman Herve Verhoosel said in an email Saturday.

“People have no food. People have no water, and it’s not right. They should have been gone,” Chamika Durosier told the French news agency AFP Saturday as she waited for a flight out of Abaco, one of the most badly damaged areas in the Bahamas. “The home that we were in fell on us,” she said. “We had to crawl — get out crawling. By the grace of God, we are still alive.”

“Our relief operation is growing, but we are also facing serious challenges in terms of delivering aid,” Red Cross spokeswoman Jennifer Eli told Reuters. “Even search-and-rescue choppers haven’t been able to reach some people because there’s no place to land. These challenges are affecting everyone.”
 

…

The director of a prestigious research lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology resigned Saturday, and the school’s president ordered an independent investigation amid an uproar over the lab’s ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Joi Ito, director of MIT’s Media Lab, resigned from both the lab and from his position as a professor at the Cambridge school, university President L. Rafael Reif said. The resignation was first reported by The New York Times.

Ito’s resignation comes after The New Yorker reported late Friday that Media Lab had a more extensive fundraising relationship with Epstein than it previously acknowledged and tried to conceal the extent of the relationship.

Epstein suicide

Epstein killed himself in jail Aug. 10 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Federal prosecutors in New York had charged the 66-year-old with sex trafficking and conspiracy, alleging he sexually abused girls over several years in the early 2000s.

In a letter to the MIT community Saturday, Reif called the allegations in The New Yorker “deeply disturbing.”

“Because the accusations in the story are extremely serious, they demand an immediate, thorough and independent investigation,” Reif wrote. “This morning, I asked MIT’s General Counsel to engage a prominent law firm to design and conduct this process.”

Reif said last month that the university took about $800,000 from Epstein over 20 years. That announcement followed the resignation of two prominent researchers from Media Lab over revelations the lab and Ito took money from Epstein after he served time a decade ago for sex offenses involving underage girls.

The New Yorker reports Epstein arranged at least $7.5 million in donations, including $2 million from Microsoft founder Bill Gates and $5.5 million from investor Leon Black.

Although MIT listed Epstein as “disqualified” in its donor database, the Media Lab did not stop taking gifts from him and labeled his donations as anonymous, The New Yorker reported, citing emails and other documents it obtained.

Last week, Ito said Epstein gave him $525,000 for the Media Lab and another $1.2 million for his own investment funds.

Florida deal

Epstein’s July 6 arrest drew national attention, particularly focusing on a deal that allowed him to plead guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution in Florida and avoid more serious federal charges.

Epstein was a wealth manager who hobnobbed with the rich, famous and influential, including presidents and a prince.

He owned a private island in the Caribbean, homes in Paris and New York City, a New Mexico ranch and a fleet of high-price cars.

Phone and email messages seeking comment were left for Ito and Media Lab representatives Saturday.
 

…

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee is planning to vote to determine the parameters for conducting an impeachment probe of President Donald Trump.

Politico first reported the development, saying its report was based on “multiple sources briefed on the discussions.”

The committee is expected to vote on the details next week.

A draft of the resolution is expected to be released Monday morning, according to Politico.

The article said Democrats are “hopeful that explicitly defining their impeachment inquiry will heighten their leverage to compel testimony from witnesses.”

It is doubtful, however, that the probe will lead to any charges against the president.

Articles of impeachment would have to be voted on by the full House and it is doubtful that the Republican Senate would vote to remove the president from office.  

Various legislative committees are looking into a number of matters concerning the president, including his failure to release his tax returns, his payment of hush money to stop embarrassing stories becoming public, and the spending of taxpayer money at the president’s hotels and properties.

…

The National Hurricane Center says Hurricane Dorian has slightly weakened, but is expected to move over Nova Scotia and Newfoundland “with hurricane-force winds” Saturday.  Dorian is moving with maximum sustained winds of 140 kilometers per hour.

Before reaching Canada, however, Dorian continues moving over extreme southeastern Massachusetts, before moving into Maine Saturday afternoon.

Dorian made landfall over Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, Friday morning after weakening into a Category 1 storm and generating tornadoes, severe storm surges and flooding in coastal areas in North and South Carolina.

After landfall, Dorian began moving out into the Atlantic ocean and continued its trek up the U.S. eastern seaboard, the NHC said.

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said there was “significant concern about hundreds of people trapped on Ocracoke Island” in the Outer Banks region.

Steve Harris, who has been on Ocracoke for most of the last 19 years, said, “We went from almost no water to four to six feet in a matter of minutes.”

Before making landfall in the U.S., Dorian devastated the Bahamas were  thousands of people have begun the long and painful struggle to rebuild their lives following the onslaught of the extremely powerful Category 5 storm.  

International search and rescue teams are looking for survivors.

The death toll in the Bahamas is 43, but is expected to rise significantly.  

…

 The Alaska Department of Corrections has agreed to policy changes to accommodate Muslim inmates who wish to practice their religion, settling a lawsuit brought last year.

A federal judge Friday signed the agreement in a case brought on behalf of two Muslim inmates by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which argued that meals provided to the men during the holy month of Ramadan did not meet caloric requirements under federal health guidelines. They also said the meals were cold when others received hot meals and sometimes contained pork, which is at odds with their faith.

The lawsuit also said the department had not allowed Muslims to perform Friday religious services or hold study groups.

Details of agreement

Terms of the agreement call for the department to provide inmates fasting during Ramadan at least 3,000 average daily calories and at least two hot meals without pork. Officials are not allowed to remove inmates on the list for a Ramadan diet for disciplinary or other reasons.

Ramadan is marked by daily fasting from dawn to sunset. The settlement calls for meals to be provided between sunset and dawn.

Muslim inmates also will be allowed to participate in religious services, prayers and religious study groups.

The department agreed to pay $102,500 in damages, costs and attorneys’ fees.

The agreement states the department has adopted some of the provisions and will take steps to formally adopt others they have moved to implement, primarily related to religious gatherings.

A model for others

The Council on American-Islamic Relations also will provide free videoconference religious sensitivity training for department superintendents, chaplains and grievance officers.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Gadeir Abbas said that with these policies, Alaska would be a model for how prisons and jails should accommodate Muslims in their facilities. 

“That’s to be commended, it really is,” he said.

“It’s a positive development for the state of Alaska and for the Muslims that are incarcerated. There’s few places where a person’s faith is more important than when their freedom is taken away,” he said.

One of the men named as a plaintiff is no longer an inmate, Abbas said.

The Department of Corrections said by email that it was accommodating some of the settlement requirements before the lawsuit.

“The settlement agreement ensures that policy will not change in the future,” the department said.

It said it accommodates more than 30 different religious groups inside its facilities, including Muslims, and is committed “to providing religious as well as cultural opportunities for offenders within available resources, while maintaining facility security, safety, health and orderly operations.” 

…

An American Airlines mechanic was ordered temporarily detained Friday after he was charged with purposely damaging an aircraft in July amid a dispute between the airline and its mechanics union involving stalled contract negotiations.

Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani will remain in custody pending a hearing Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Federal prosecutors are requesting he be detained pending trial.

Takeoff aborted

Pilots of a flight from Miami to Nassau, Bahamas, July 17 aborted takeoff plans after receiving an error message involving the flight computer, which reports speed, pitch and other data, according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Miami.

It said after returning to the gate for maintenance, a mechanic discovered a loosely connected pitot tube, which measures airspeed and connects directly to the flight computer.

A later review of video surveillance footage before the flight captured “what appears to be the sabotage of the aircraft” by a man walking with a limp, the complaint said.

Union contract

When Alani was interviewed, he told law enforcement he was upset at the stalled contract between the union and American, which he said had affected him financially, according to the complaint. It said Alani claimed to have tampered with the aircraft to cause a delay or have the flight canceled in anticipation of obtaining overtime work.

Unions have complained that American is trying to outsource more maintenance jobs, a move American has indicated is necessary to cover increased wages.

In a statement Friday, American said it was scheduled to resume negotiations with its mechanics union at the National Mediation Board in Washington Sept. 16.

A U.S. federal court last month issued a permanent injunction against American’s mechanics union, which the airline had accused of illegal slowdowns it said had devastated its operations during the peak summer travel season.

Passengers continued safely

A spokesman for American said the airline had an “unwavering commitment” to safety and security and had placed passengers on the July 17 flight on another plane to get to their destination.

“At the time of the incident, the aircraft was taken out of service, maintenance was performed and after an inspection to ensure it was safe the aircraft was returned to service,” the spokesman said. “American immediately notified federal law enforcement, who took over the investigation with our full cooperation.”

Court records do not indicate whether Alani had an attorney.

The U.S. federal court order last month prohibits employees from “calling, permitting, instigating, authorizing, encouraging, participating in, approving, or continuing any form of disruption to or interference with American’s airline operations,” including a refusal to accept overtime or complete any maintenance repairs in the normal course of work.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida on Friday wrote on Twitter that on two days last week he had American flights canceled at the last minute because of mechanical issues and “now we learn an American mechanic was caught sabotaging planes due to labor dispute.” He added he wants mechanics to get a fair contract.

…

Eight-and-a-half-months pregnant and experiencing contractions, a Salvadoran woman who had crossed the Rio Grande and was apprehended by the Border Patrol was forced to go back to Mexico.

Agents took her to the hospital, where doctors gave her medication to stop the contractions. And then, according to the woman and her lawyer, she was almost immediately sent back to Mexico.

There, she joined the more than 38,000 people forced to wait across the border for immigration court hearings under a rapidly expanding Trump administration policy. And her plight highlights the health risks and perils presented by the “Remain in Mexico” program.

The woman was waiting Thursday with her 3-year-old daughter in a makeshift tent camp in Matamoros, Mexico, next to an international bridge, due to give birth any day, said her attorney, Jodi Goodwin.

“She’s concerned about having the baby in the street or having to have the baby in a shelter,” Goodwin said.

Pregnant women face special hazards in Mexico because places where migrants wait to enter the U.S. often don’t have access to regular meals, clean water and medical care.

Many shelters at the Mexico border are at or above capacity, and some families have been sleeping in tents or on blankets in the blistering summer heat. Reports have abounded of migrants being attacked or kidnapped in Mexican border cities, especially in Tamaulipas state across from South Texas, where the Salvadoran mother is waiting for a November court date.

The Associated Press is not identifying the woman from El Salvador because she fears for her safety.

The U.S. government does not automatically exempt pregnant women from the “Remain in Mexico” program. U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to comment on the woman’s case.

The program, officially called the Migrant Protection Protocols, was instituted by the U.S. and Mexico as a way of deterring migrants from crossing the border to seek asylum. Mexico has cooperated with the expansion of the program at the behest of President Donald Trump, who threatened crippling tariffs in June if Mexico did not do more to stop migrants.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has said people in “vulnerable populations” may be exempt from being sent to Mexico. But pregnant women are not necessarily considered vulnerable by CBP, a subsidiary of the department.

“In some cases, pregnancy may not be observable or disclosed, and may not in and of itself disqualify an individual from being amenable for the program,” CBP said in a statement. “Agents and officers would consider pregnancy, when other associated factors exist, to determine amenability for the program.”

Goodwin provided copies of the 28-year-old woman’s immigration paperwork and the bracelet from when she was admitted to Valley Regional Medical Center.

“In this particular case, this woman was actually taken to the hospital by CBP,” she said. “There’s no way that CBP could suggest that her pregnancy wasn’t known.”

The paperwork instructs her to return to Brownsville on Nov. 14 for a court hearing.

The U.S. government is establishing temporary tent courtrooms in Brownsville and Laredo, Texas, where immigration judges from around the U.S. will hear migrants’ cases by video. The hearings will start in those cities later this month.

The woman’s notice lists her address as a migrant shelter in Matamoros several miles from the primary international bridge near the camp where she is staying. Goodwin says she has never been to that shelter.

There are at least six cases of pregnant women border-wide who have been sent back to Mexico, according to U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat who recently sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general demanding an investigation into the issue. Goodwin also represents a woman from Peru who was seven months pregnant when border agents allowed her to enter, only to send her back to Mexico the next day.

Mexico offers limited health coverage to people regardless of nationality that includes some of the screenings a pregnant woman needs, said Lina Villa, a Mexico-based health official for Doctors Without Borders. But many migrants don’t know that they can get that coverage, she said.

As their deliveries near, many migrant women aren’t sure whether they’ll have access to a hospital and if they will need surgery, Villa said. They are worried about their child being born in Mexico instead of the U.S. and what that might mean for their prospects of eventually entering the U.S., she said.

“It’s a very, very difficult group of people that needs a lot of help, and they don’t get enough,” she said.

…

VOA correspondent Greta van Susteren spoke with former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta about the global arms race and the military expansion into space. 
 
Panetta said space represents a new frontier and the likely battlefield of the future. He also discussed China’s developing lead in space and its impact on the world, as well as the risks arising from the decision by the United States and Russia to abandon the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. 
 
Panetta said it is of utmost importance that the United States reopen dialogue with Russia and China so all sides can address the current lack of trust among the key arms players of the world. 

WATCH: VOA correspondent Greta van Susteren and former Defense Secretary

Leon Panetta – Greta Van Susteren Interview video player.

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Greta van Susteren: Mr. Secretary, nice to see you, sir. 
 
Leon Panetta: Nice to be with you, Greta. 
 
GVS: Mr. Secretary, what’s the difference, in concept, between Space Command and a space force? 
 
Panetta: Well, I’m assuming that what they’re hoping is that they can provide greater emphasis to our effort in space. I’m not convinced that that’s the answer. I mean, I sometimes worry that an additional bureaucracy, anyplace, only inhibits progress rather than advancing it. But … now in the Air Force, there are a number of officers who are committed to working in space, and I’m sure that that effort will continue and the United States will protect our position in space. 
 
GVS: What kind of mischief, for lack of a better word, can be imposed upon a nation by what goes on in space? I mean, how much self-defense do we have to worry about in space? 
 
Panetta: I think space is that frontier that a lot of nations are beginning to explore now, and India has just launched a vehicle into space. There are other countries that are developing initiatives to go into space. China, obviously, has a huge initiative with regards to space, as we do. And so I think space is indeed a battlefield of the future if we don’t sit down as nations and develop rules for how we’re going to behave. … Right now, it’s kind of wide open. 
 
GVS: Well, that’s what we’re doing. My next question: It seems like everyone, well, not everyone, but many nations are sort of freelancing in terms of what they’re doing in space and almost putting … like an arms race, or a technology race, in space.  I can deal with a technology space race but not an arms race in space. 
 
Panetta: Well, I think that’s a real concern, particularly with artificial intelligence. What China is doing with artificial intelligence and deploying their capabilities in space — they are really developing space weapons that are capable of interfering with other satellites that are in space. The United States frankly has not done as well in developing the kind of defenses that we absolutely have to have, if we’re going to have satellites in space that are not impacted by weapons from China. 
 
GVS: How did we let China get ahead of us? 
 
Panetta: Well, it’s a good question. I think they put a lot more emphasis on research and efforts to develop artificial intelligence and new  technologies in space.  They’ve really focused on that effort. The United States, while we’ve had the private sector developing capabilities in space, very frankly, we have not invested, as we should, with regards to space, and particularly with regards to national security in space as well. 
 
GVS: Turning now to the INF. President Trump has pulled out, as of early August, from the INF Treaty, but before that point, had Russia violated that agreement? 
 
Panetta: Well, I don’t think there’s any question that Russia had developed a missile which violated the terms of the INF agreement, and we had raised objections to that. I’m not sure it’s a good reason to withdraw from the INF, because the end result of that will be a nuclear arms race between the United States and Russia. I wish that diplomacy had been given a little more of a chance to try to resolve those issues. 
 
GVS: Well, if the INF is violated by Russia, it becomes almost a unilateral agreement with just the U.S. complying. Plus, in terms of an arms race, we just mentioned China and outer space — China is not a signatory to the treaty in the first place, so China was off doing its own thing. 
 
Panetta: Well, and that frankly is a concern about not only our national security but peace in the world. I mean, the reality is that we have some very, very dangerous flashpoints in the world that we live in.  And one without question is dealing with China, particularly with this trade war, but dealing with them and other capabilities in space.  And the other is Russia, which we’re now involved in what I call a new chapter of the Cold War. … And, you know, the prospect of having the United States and Russia engage in a nuclear arms race where they’re both trying to increase and improve their nuclear weapons, I think it’s a dangerous prospect for the world. And so, the most important thing right now, it strikes me, is that diplomacy has to play a role here.  We’ve got to make a serious effort to try to reopen dialogue, not only with China but with Russia as well. 
 
GVS: Is there any doubt that we’re in an arms race right now with Russia, and is there any doubt that we’re in an arms race with China? 
 
Panetta: I don’t think there’s any question that that’s happening. Russia is continuing to invest in developing new missiles and new arms, and the United States is obviously investing as well, with regards to those kinds of capabilities. So I don’t know what else you would call that but, you know, an arms race in terms of trying to figure out who can achieve superiority.  We’ve been through this in the past. Obviously, both countries are trying to checkmate each other as to who is the strongest. But as that continues, I think we have the same kind of danger we have in Iran, which is that somebody then can make a terrible mistake. And as a result of that mistake we could be involved in a nuclear war. 
 
GVS: What got to the point that China stopped destroying its missiles and stopped complying with the INF … ? I mean, what was the flashpoint? What provoked them to do it? 
 
Panetta: I think as always — look, this is an area where we’ve been competing with the Russians and with the Chinese for a very long time. And, you know, beneath the surface, even though there are agreements, there are those that feel that those agreements are inhibiting their ability to develop the weapons they need. And I think, with regards to Russia, they were working on this missile, and they wanted to develop that capability to be able to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile that could fly a lot faster at going after its target. And in doing that and in testing it, that’s what created the violation of the INF Treaty. But again, the problem is, you know, both sides now have decided to withdraw from that treaty, which means that the treaty doesn’t restrain anybody.  And the consequence of that is that both sides are going to be spending a lot more money and investing in what is essentially a new arms race. 
 
GVS: All right, obviously … that’s a terrible thing; it’s horribly expensive and horribly dangerous. Not what anyone should want, but how do you  reverse this? How do you get people to the table? How do you get to the point where, you know, the United States can trust Russia? Russia violated earlier the INF; how do you get China, which wasn’t part of the agreement in the first place, to come to the table and discuss this? 
 
Panetta: You’re asking the toughest question of all, which is: How do we get back to opening up a dialogue that will allow us to try to prevent this kind of uninhibited arms race that we’re in right now? There’s a lack of trust. There’s no question about it. Lack of trust with Russia, a lack of trust with China. 
 
You know, China — a great example of that is the trade war that we’re in, and the fact that we cannot arrive at some kind of agreement here, that we should try to eliminate these tariffs and create a better trade relationship with China, and for that matter the rest of the world. Look. It’s tough. … I’ve been there. I know what it means to sit down and try to negotiate with people you don’t agree with. But what it takes is persistence, it takes determination, and it takes the fundamental will to try to continue to work at trying to arrive at an agreement and develop that kind of trust that you need in order to do that.  I think Russia understands where this is all headed. I think China understands where this is all headed. I don’t think anybody wants the end result, which would be a nuclear war that would destroy the world. So, if that’s the case, then I think what the president and what our key diplomats have to do is to be willing to find an approach of sitting down, trusting each other, but being persistent.  You’re not going to get a quick deal here.  What each country is going to do is test each other. The most important thing is that when the United States sits down, that it … represents the strongest military power on the face of the Earth, and that they know that. If they know that, then they have everything to gain by trying to negotiate with the United States.  We need to be strong, but at the same time, we also need to be flexible to listen to their concerns, to listen to what bothers them and to try to deal with their concerns as well.  That’s the way you negotiate. That’s the way you get deals done. 
 
GVS: Meanwhile, though, Russia is selling surface-to-air missiles to our NATO ally Turkey. And that, of course is causing, you know, much consternation in the United States. Was that to sort of divide NATO, or what’s the purpose of Russia doing that with Turkey? 
 
Panetta: Look, we have to understand with Russia, you know, there’s one fundamental goal, which is to destabilize the United States and to destabilize our relationship with our allies. They’ve been doing that for a long time; this is nothing new. 
 
And I think the problem is when they sense that there’s a vacuum there, they will take advantage of it. That’s what they did when they went into the Crimea. That’s what they did when they went into the Ukraine. It’s what they did when they went into Syria. They sensed a vacuum there in terms of the United States, and they took advantage of it. And they’re doing the same thing with regards to Turkey; they sense that the relationship between Turkey and the United States is not well. … And so, they’re taking advantage of it by providing them with weapons and missiles, and by trying to gradually have Turkey pull back from NATO. I think that’s the ultimate goal. … (Turkish President Recep Tayyip) Erdogan is not dumb. He understands what Russia is trying to do. He’s going to take advantage of it. But, Erdogan is going to march to his own drummer. And I think in the end if the United States is smart, we’ll keep our channels of communication open to Erdogan, because I think at some point he’s going to need to have the United States when it comes to dealing not only with Syria, but with dealing with other problems in the Middle East. 
 
GVS: All right, the United States pulled out of the 2015 deal with Iran, the nuclear deal. And President Trump has said that he would be willing to talk to Iran again, but Iran says, no, until you lift the sanctions, we’re not going to talk at all. So there’s a stalemate … where does this lead us … ? 
 
Panetta: Well, that’s another one of these flashpoints in the world that I think is producing the potential for what could be another war in the Middle East. Right now it’s very tense. The United States did pull back from the arms control agreement. I think that was a mistake. At the same time, Iran is continuing to probe. They’re attacking ships. They’re using drones to come after us. … They’re making efforts to undermine stability in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East. So, this probing back and forth creates a very tense situation. … President Trump and the leader of Iran … they’re both dug in, and neither is going to move in terms of trying to establish some negotiating path. I think the key here is the effort by (French) President (Emmanuel) Macron, who has made the effort to try to open up some opportunity for negotiation. He does have the ability as a result of remaining in the agreement, the nuclear agreement with Iran, along with these other countries that were part of it — Great Britain, Germany, Russia, China. I think the key is to have those countries try to pursue an opening for negotiations with Iran that includes these areas that the president expressed concerns about, but gets us back to the negotiating table. Neither side wants a war here, neither side is going to benefit from a war. The only answer is to have some dialogue that is provided through this negotiating with our allies. 
 
GVS: All right, let me give you one more flashpoint. North Korea has been firing off missiles the last several months. President Trump seems at least publicly, to be sort of unnerved by it, that it’s happening. Meanwhile, you’ve got Japan and South Korea, they’ve got a very frosty relationship. We always hoped China would help us with North Korea, and now we’re in a trade war with them. So, what about North Korea? 
 
Panetta: Well, you’ve raised again another, you know, one of those dangerous flashpoints in a very dangerous world.  I don’t think that the president’s effort at summitry with Kim Jong Un has worked at all. I think he, you know, he tried to make an effort at it. I give him some credit for trying to make that effort. But the end result has been that that they are taking advantage of that relationship, and we’re paying a price for that.  North Korea continues to develop nuclear weapons. They continue to develop their missile capability. They’re developing a new submarine that will have the capability of firing a missile. They’re going ahead and rearming themselves as, you know, in the face of this relationship, and the president, frankly, has been excusing that kind of behavior. I don’t think that’s been a smart move on his part. And so, North Korea is going to continue to take advantage of that relationship. And the problem is it’s now beginning to impact on the most important relationship we had in that region, which is with South Korea, and with Japan. Now we’re seeing the relationship between South Korea and Japan break down as well. And so that alliance that’s been critical in dealing with North Korea is now suffering the consequences of that. This is not a good situation. And again, the only opportunity here is, if, if the United States and South Korea and Japan are willing to reopen discussions with North Korea. Summitry between the president and Kim Jong Un has not worked, and very frankly will not work. 
 
GVS: Mr. Secretary, thank you very much for talking to me. … Maybe next time the world will be a lot calmer … because the world certainly looks rather dangerous these days. 
 
Panetta: It does, but you know I always have great confidence that ultimately we will find the leadership in the world to find a way to resolve the crises that we’re facing. But it’s going to take that in order to hopefully preserve peace in the future. 
 
GVS: Mr. Secretary, thank you very much.  I hope to talk to you again soon. 
 
Panetta: Thank you. 

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