CIA Places Blame for Bhutto Assassination
Hayden Cites Al-Qaeda, Pakistani Fighters
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 18, 2008; A01

The CIA has concluded that members of al-Qaeda and allies of Pakistani tribal leader Baitullah Mehsud were responsible for last month's assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, and that they also stand behind a new wave of violence threatening that country's stability, the agency's director, Michael V. Hayden, said in an interview.

Offering the most definitive public assessment by a U.S. intelligence official, Hayden said Bhutto was killed by fighters allied with Mehsud, a tribal leader in northwestern Pakistan, with support from al-Qaeda's terrorist network. That view mirrors the Pakistani government's assertions.

The same alliance between local and international terrorists poses a grave risk to the government of President Pervez Musharraf, a close U.S. ally in the fight against terrorism, Hayden said in 45-minute interview with The Washington Post. "What you see is, I think, a change in the character of what's going on there," he said. "You've got this nexus now that probably was always there in latency but is now active: a nexus between al-Qaeda and various extremist and separatist groups."

Hayden added, "It is clear that their intention is to continue to try to do harm to the Pakistani state as it currently exists."

Days after Bhutto's Dec. 27 assassination in the city of Rawalpindi, Pakistani officials released intercepted communications between Mehsud and his supporters in which the tribal leader praised the killing and, according to the officials, appeared to take credit for it. Pakistani and U.S. officials have declined to comment on the origin of that intercept, but the administration has until now been cautious about publicly embracing the Pakistani assessment.

Many Pakistanis have voiced suspicions that Musharraf's government played a role in Bhutto's assassination, and Bhutto's family has alleged a wide conspiracy involving government officials. Hayden declined to discuss the intelligence behind the CIA's assessment, which is at odds with that view and supports Musharraf's assertions.

"This was done by that network around Baitullah Mehsud. We have no reason to question that," Hayden said. He described the killing as "part of an organized campaign" that has included suicide bombings and other attacks on Pakistani leaders.

Some administration officials outside the agency who deal with Pakistani issues were less conclusive, with one calling the assertion "a very good assumption."

One of the officials said there was no "incontrovertible" evidence to prove or rebut the assessment.

Hayden made his statement shortly before a series of attacks occurred this week on Pakistani political figures and army units. Pakistani officials have blamed them on Mehsud's forces and other militants. On Wednesday, a group of several hundred insurgents overran a military outpost in the province of South Waziristan, killing 22 government paramilitary troops. The daring daylight raid was carried out by rebels loyal to Mehsud, Pakistani authorities said.

For more than a year, U.S. officials have been nervously watching as al-Qaeda rebuilt its infrastructure in the rugged tribal regions along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, often with the help of local sympathizers.

In recent months, U.S. intelligence officials have said, the relationship between al-Qaeda and local insurgents has been strengthened by a common antipathy toward the pro-Western Musharraf government. The groups now share resources and training facilities and sometimes even plan attacks together, they said.

"We've always viewed that to be an ultimate danger to the United States," Hayden said, "but now it appears that it is a serious base of danger to the current well-being of Pakistan."

Hayden's anxieties about Pakistan's stability are echoed by other U.S. officials who have visited Pakistan since Bhutto's assassination. White House, intelligence and Defense Department officials have held a series of meetings to discuss U.S. options in the event that the current crisis deepens, including the possibility of covert action involving Special Forces.

Hayden declined to comment on the policy meetings but said that the CIA already was heavily engaged in the region and has not shifted its officers or changed its operations significantly since the crisis began.

"The Afghan-Pakistan border region has been an area of focus for this agency since about 11 o'clock in the morning of September 11, [2001], and I really mean this," Hayden said. "We haven't done a whole lot of retooling there in the last one week, one month, three months, six months and so on. This has been up there among our very highest priorities."

Hayden said that the United States has "not had a better partner in the war on terrorism than the Pakistanis." The turmoil of the past few weeks has only deepened that cooperation, he said, by highlighting "what are now even more clearly mutual and common interests."

Hayden also acknowledged the difficulties -- diplomatic and practical -- involved in helping combat extremism in a country divided by ethnic, religious and cultural allegiances. "This looks simpler the further away you get from it," he said. "And the closer you get to it, geography, history, culture all begin to intertwine and make it more complex."

Regarding the public controversy over the CIA's harsh interrogation of detainees at secret prisons, Hayden reiterated previous agency statements that lives were saved and attacks were prevented as a result of those interrogations.

He said he does not support proposals, put forward by some lawmakers in recent weeks, to require the CIA to abide by the Army Field Manual in conducting interrogations. The manual, adopted by the Defense Department, prohibits the use of many aggressive methods, including a simulated-drowning technique known as waterboarding.

"I would offer my professional judgment that that will make us less capable in gaining the information we need," he said.

Staff writer Robin Wright and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

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First Temple seal found in Jerusalem

Etgar Lefkovits , THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 17, 2008
A stone seal bearing the name of one of the families who acted as servants in the First Temple and then returned to Jerusalem after being exiled to Babylonia has been uncovered in an archeological excavation in Jerusalem's City of David, a prominent Israeli archeologist said Wednesday.

The 2,500-year-old black stone seal, which has the name "Temech" engraved on it, was found earlier this week amid stratified debris in the excavation under way just outside the Old City walls near the Dung Gate, said archeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar, who is leading the dig.

According to the Book of Nehemiah, the Temech family were servants of the First Temple and were sent into exile to Babylon following its destruction by the Babylonians in 586 BCE.

The family was among those who later returned to Jerusalem, the Bible recounts.

The seal, which was bought in Babylon and dates to 538-445 BCE, portrays a common and popular cultic scene, Mazar said.

The 2.1 x 1.8-cm. elliptical seal is engraved with two bearded priests standing on either side of an incense altar with their hands raised forward in a position of worship.

A crescent moon, the symbol of the chief Babylonian god Sin, appears on the top of the altar.

Under this scene are three Hebrew letters spelling Temech, Mazar said.

The Bible refers to the Temech family: "These are the children of the province, that went up out of the captivity, of those that had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away, and came again to Jerusalem and to Judah, every one unto his city." [Nehemiah 7:6]... "The Nethinim [7:46]"... The children of Temech." [7:55].

The fact that this cultic scene relates to the Babylonian chief god seemed not to have disturbed the Jews who used it on their own seal, she added.

The seal of one of the members of the Temech family was discovered just dozens of meters away from the Opel area, where the servants of the Temple, or "Nethinim," lived in the time of Nehemiah, Mazar said.

"The seal of the Temech family gives us a direct connection between archeology and the biblical sources and serves as actual evidence of a family mentioned in the Bible," she said. "One cannot help being astonished by the credibility of the biblical source as seen by the archaeological find."

The find will be announced by Mazar at the 8th annual Herzliya Conference on Sunday.

The archeologist, who rose to international prominence for her recent excavation that may have uncovered King David's palace, most recently uncovered the remnants of a wall from Nehemiah.

The dig is being sponsored by the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem research institute where Mazar serves as a senior fellow, and the City of David Foundation, which promotes Jewish settlement throughout east Jerusalem.

Article published Jan 17, 2008
Huckabee vows to deport all illegal aliens

January 17, 2008

By Stephen Dinan - TIGERVILLE, S.C. — Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee yesterday continued to move to the right on immigration during this year's presidential campaign, signing a pledge to enforce immigration laws and to make all illegal aliens go home.

The pledge, offered by immigration control advocacy group Numbers USA, commits Mr. Huckabee to oppose a new path to citizenship for current illegal aliens and to cut the number of illegal aliens already in the country through attrition by law enforcement — something Mr. Huckabee said he will achieve through his nine-point immigration plan.

"Some would say it's a tough plan. It is, but it's also fair and reasonable," Mr. Huckabee said.

Mr. Huckabee signed the pledge in South Carolina, whose Saturday Republican primary is shaping up as the most important contest so far. Unlike the previous primaries and caucuses, which have been contested usually by just two candidates, four Republicans are making all-out efforts here: Mr. Huckabee, former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.

Mr. Romney campaigned in South Carolina fresh off his Tuesday win over Mr. McCain in Michigan's primary. And though he held a lead here earlier last year, he tried to lower expectations yesterday, telling reporters that the pressure is really on Mr. McCain, who now leads in the polls here.

As the front-runner, Mr. McCain finds himself playing defense. Yesterday, he had one surrogate challenge charges on abortion and other issues from Common Sense Issues, a Colorado-based group that the Associated Press said is conducting push-polling here, and had another group of surrogates respond to charges from a group called Vietnam Veterans Against McCain.

The McCain campaign said the veterans group is circulating fliers that say Mr. McCain turned his back on fellow prisoners of war in order to receive special treatment while in captivity in Vietnam.

One issue that continues to hurt Mr. McCain here is immigration. Many voters say he supports amnesty for illegal aliens, and they point to his partnership with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, to try to pass a bill to legalize illegal aliens.

Mr. McCain has said he "got the message" from his bill's defeat last year in the Senate — when a majority of senators voted to filibuster his bill.

He says that as a senator from a border state, he knows how to secure the borders and says border governors would have to certify that fact before a guest-worker program and legalization could go forward. But Mr. McCain still supports a pathway to citizenship, and it's not clear how different his new stance is from the bill that failed.

Mr. Huckabee has faced some of the same questions, and yesterday's pledge — signed at a press conference with Numbers USA Executive Director Roy Beck — was an effort to provide answers.

It's a major reversal from less than two months ago, when Mr. Beck told The Washington Times that Mr. Huckabee was "an absolute disaster" on immigration during his time as governor. Americans for Better Immigration, another group Mr. Beck runs, has rated Mr. Huckabee's record as "poor."

Mr. Huckabee fought for tuition breaks for illegal-alien college students, failed to complete an agreement to let state police enforce federal immigration law and criticized enforcement efforts both at the federal and state level.

But Mr. Beck yesterday said Mr. Huckabee has made a number of key promises going forward, including to not grant illegal aliens long-term legal status; to reject a guaranteed right of return for those who go home voluntarily under his nine-point plan; and to not increase green cards as a way of allowing them to come back more quickly.

"Probably, this is the strongest no-amnesty, attrition plan of any of the candidates," Mr. Beck said.

Numbers USA does not plan to endorse a candidate. The group has asked all of the candidates to sign the pledge, but Mr. Huckabee is the only one to do so.

Mr. Beck said doing so will improve Mr. Huckabee's rating on the issue, bringing him in line with Mr. Thompson, Mr. Romney and Rep. Duncan Hunter of California.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Huckabee continued tapping into the network of Christian conservatives that served him well in winning the Iowa caucuses. He signed his immigration pledge at North Greenville University, a Christian school in the state's far northwestern corner, after holding a rally with hundreds of students there.

In his speech to the students, Mr. Huckabee took a swipe at Mr. McCain on immigration, though he didn't mention the senator by name.

"I don't think electing somebody who's part of the Washington scene makes a lot of sense, because if they could've fixed it, they would have," Mr. Huckabee said. "It's the principle that says that if you're faithful in little [things], you're given responsibility over greater things. But if you're not faithful with what you have, we don't give you greater responsibility, we take that responsibility and we give it to someone who might exercise it more responsibly."

At the end of the rally, the students held a group prayer led by school President James B. Epting.

"You've got to be pleased that one who loves You is running for such an important position," Mr. Epting said in his prayer.

Article published Jan 17, 2008
Huckabee vows to deport all illegal aliens

January 17, 2008

By Stephen Dinan - TIGERVILLE, S.C. — Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee yesterday continued to move to the right on immigration during this year's presidential campaign, signing a pledge to enforce immigration laws and to make all illegal aliens go home.

The pledge, offered by immigration control advocacy group Numbers USA, commits Mr. Huckabee to oppose a new path to citizenship for current illegal aliens and to cut the number of illegal aliens already in the country through attrition by law enforcement — something Mr. Huckabee said he will achieve through his nine-point immigration plan.

"Some would say it's a tough plan. It is, but it's also fair and reasonable," Mr. Huckabee said.

Mr. Huckabee signed the pledge in South Carolina, whose Saturday Republican primary is shaping up as the most important contest so far. Unlike the previous primaries and caucuses, which have been contested usually by just two candidates, four Republicans are making all-out efforts here: Mr. Huckabee, former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.

Mr. Romney campaigned in South Carolina fresh off his Tuesday win over Mr. McCain in Michigan's primary. And though he held a lead here earlier last year, he tried to lower expectations yesterday, telling reporters that the pressure is really on Mr. McCain, who now leads in the polls here.

As the front-runner, Mr. McCain finds himself playing defense. Yesterday, he had one surrogate challenge charges on abortion and other issues from Common Sense Issues, a Colorado-based group that the Associated Press said is conducting push-polling here, and had another group of surrogates respond to charges from a group called Vietnam Veterans Against McCain.

The McCain campaign said the veterans group is circulating fliers that say Mr. McCain turned his back on fellow prisoners of war in order to receive special treatment while in captivity in Vietnam.

One issue that continues to hurt Mr. McCain here is immigration. Many voters say he supports amnesty for illegal aliens, and they point to his partnership with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, to try to pass a bill to legalize illegal aliens.

Mr. McCain has said he "got the message" from his bill's defeat last year in the Senate — when a majority of senators voted to filibuster his bill.

He says that as a senator from a border state, he knows how to secure the borders and says border governors would have to certify that fact before a guest-worker program and legalization could go forward. But Mr. McCain still supports a pathway to citizenship, and it's not clear how different his new stance is from the bill that failed.

Mr. Huckabee has faced some of the same questions, and yesterday's pledge — signed at a press conference with Numbers USA Executive Director Roy Beck — was an effort to provide answers.

It's a major reversal from less than two months ago, when Mr. Beck told The Washington Times that Mr. Huckabee was "an absolute disaster" on immigration during his time as governor. Americans for Better Immigration, another group Mr. Beck runs, has rated Mr. Huckabee's record as "poor."

Mr. Huckabee fought for tuition breaks for illegal-alien college students, failed to complete an agreement to let state police enforce federal immigration law and criticized enforcement efforts both at the federal and state level.

But Mr. Beck yesterday said Mr. Huckabee has made a number of key promises going forward, including to not grant illegal aliens long-term legal status; to reject a guaranteed right of return for those who go home voluntarily under his nine-point plan; and to not increase green cards as a way of allowing them to come back more quickly.

"Probably, this is the strongest no-amnesty, attrition plan of any of the candidates," Mr. Beck said.

Numbers USA does not plan to endorse a candidate. The group has asked all of the candidates to sign the pledge, but Mr. Huckabee is the only one to do so.

Mr. Beck said doing so will improve Mr. Huckabee's rating on the issue, bringing him in line with Mr. Thompson, Mr. Romney and Rep. Duncan Hunter of California.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Huckabee continued tapping into the network of Christian conservatives that served him well in winning the Iowa caucuses. He signed his immigration pledge at North Greenville University, a Christian school in the state's far northwestern corner, after holding a rally with hundreds of students there.

In his speech to the students, Mr. Huckabee took a swipe at Mr. McCain on immigration, though he didn't mention the senator by name.

"I don't think electing somebody who's part of the Washington scene makes a lot of sense, because if they could've fixed it, they would have," Mr. Huckabee said. "It's the principle that says that if you're faithful in little [things], you're given responsibility over greater things. But if you're not faithful with what you have, we don't give you greater responsibility, we take that responsibility and we give it to someone who might exercise it more responsibly."

At the end of the rally, the students held a group prayer led by school President James B. Epting.

"You've got to be pleased that one who loves You is running for such an important position," Mr. Epting said in his prayer.

$3 billion Cosmopolitan casino project faces foreclosure in Vegas
Updated: Jan 16, 2008 12:14 PM
The developer of the $3 billion Cosmopolitan Resort & Casino says its lender, Deutsche Bank, filed a notice of foreclosure on the property for a construction loan of $760 million that just matured.

Developer and owner Ian Bruce Eichner says in a statement that his company is working with Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch to find new investors.

Eichner tells The Associated Press in the statement that, "This action by our lender comes as no surprise."

He blames challenges in the real estate and capital markets for difficulty in raising capital for the project, which is now under construction.

The 3,000-room high-rise casino and hotel is due to open in late 2009 between the Bellagio casino resort and the CityCenter casino complex on the Las Vegas Strip.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)