Governor of Alabama, Robert Bentley, Says He Won’t Quit

RUSSELLVILLE, Ala. — The governor of Alabama wanted to talk about broadband.
But because the governor was Robert Bentley, who is confronting a deepening political morass after acknowledging last week that he had sexually charged conversations with a top aide, that was hardly how a news conference could unfold in this northwest Alabama city. Instead, he had to start by discussing whether he would be able to keep his job.
“I have no intentions of resigning,” said Mr. Bentley, a Republican in his second term. “My intentions are to try to make this state better. My intentions are to try to work through all the difficulties that we’re going through.”
Within hours, Rebekah C. Mason, the governor’s senior political adviser and the woman with whom he engaged in suggestive conversations, captured on tape, said she had quit. And by day’s end, it was uncertain whether it would be politically feasible for Mr. Bentley, 73, to remain in office in this state, which has a gaudy history of scandal but has been in something of a morals-driven meltdown since the governor’s admission last Wednesday.
Some lawmakers are talking of impeaching Mr. Bentley. The governor’s former pastor spoke of “church discipline” and said that Mr. Bentley was no longer a member of the Tuscaloosa congregation where he was once a deacon. And as audio recordings of the governor’s conversations with Ms. Mason were replayed and dissected across the Internet, even Mr. Bentley’s proficiency at phone sex has been a subject of conversation.
“As far as my situation is concerned, it is really just a shock to people, and, you know, I understand that,” Mr. Bentley said on Wednesday in an interview, his first since he acknowledged the nature of his behavior with Ms. Mason. Mr. Bentley, who complained about “a lot of errors and misconceptions and opinions” on social media, said a fuller account would someday put his behavior in a better light. “I still feel that, in time, all of this will come out, and everything will be exposed.”
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Mr. Bentley, who was elected statewide in part because of his reputation as a churchgoing, squeaky-clean public official,  said that his conduct had not been “all that egregious,” but also said, “All I can say is that I think I let people down, and that disturbs me more than anything else.”
People here have been hearing plenty about what happened.
According to the monitoring service TV Eyes, Alabama television stations have mentioned Mr. Bentley, whose wife of 50 years filed for divorce last year, more than 700 times since last Wednesday. In the entire month leading to Mr. Bentley’s news conference, the stations had referred to him on fewer than 650 occasions.
“It’s totally humiliating,” said State Representative Allen Farley, a Republican who last year spoke with Mr. Bentley about rumors of sexual impropriety. “This man has got to understand that every day he’s in the governor’s office, this circus will go on.”
Alabama was mired in scandal well before Ms. Mason became a household name. A former governor is serving a prison term for corruption, and the speaker of the State House of Representatives is to stand trial this year on charges of ethics violations.
“We’ve bottomed out,” Mr. Farley said. “We’ve got a speaker of the House that’s got 23 felony violations for using his office for personal gain, and now we’ve got a governor who’s using his office for God knows what.”
The State Ethics Commission said this week that it would investigate whether Mr. Bentley and Ms. Mason had committed wrongdoing. The state attorney general’s office has declined to say whether it has opened an inquiry.
Mr. Bentley has denied a physical relationship with Ms. Mason, despite recordings in which the governor refers to “when I stand behind you and I put my arms around you and I put my hands on your breasts.” In an excerpt published by the Alabama Media Group, he also said, “If we’re going to do what we did the other day, we’re going to have to start locking the door.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Bentley has not said how long the inappropriate phase of his relationship with Ms. Mason lasted. Referring to that controversial period, he said, “We understood at that time the boundaries, I should say, and we still do.”
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It was not clear whether Ms. Mason’s resignation would help Mr. Bentley to regain his political footing and whether a scheduled appearance at a prison in Wetumpka on Thursday might carry a semblance of normalcy. In a statement released by Mr. Bentley’s office, Ms. Mason said, “My only plans are to focus my full attention on my precious children and my husband who I love dearly.”
Before Ms. Mason’s departure, speculation about Mr. Bentley rained down on the governor’s office.
In the interview, when he referred to last week’s news conference as “a firing squad,” Mr. Bentley confirmed some details of a report by Yellowhammer News, which said Tuesday that he and Ms. Mason had shared a safe deposit box at a bank in Montgomery.
He denied that Ms. Mason owned the box, but said that she was designated to have access to it if he died.
“I couldn’t ask my attorney to come down and sign for it,” said Mr. Bentley, who added he would release a video message in the coming days to “get my message out unfiltered.”
“I want them to hear from my lips because when I was in the press conference the other day, that’s kind of a shock thing,” he said. “I can’t answer everything, and in fact, I couldn’t answer everything that day because I didn’t know what was coming out. I really didn’t. I had never heard any of this stuff. I didn’t know.”
But there are doubts that the scandal will fade from view anytime soon. “It’s not football season,” said Paul DeMarco, a Republican former member of the Legislature.
And around the state, there are questions of what more might come — or, as State Senator Dick Brewbaker put it, whether “this gets any weirder.”
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“I really hate that this happened to the governor, but he did it to himself,” Mr. Brewbaker, a Republican, said. “It just shows that any governor who serves two terms and can leave office without scandal has really accomplished something in Alabama.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/us/governor-of-alabama-robert-bentley-says-he-wont-quit.html?partner=msft_msn&_r=0

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All three Republican presidential candidates back away from pledge to support eventual nominee

JANESVILLE, Wis. — None of the three remaining Republican presidential candidates would guarantee Tuesday night that they would support the eventual GOP nominee for president, departing from previous vows to do so and injecting new turmoil into an already-tumultuous contest.
Mogul Donald Trump, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich were each given a chance during a CNN town hall in Milwaukee to definitively state they would support the nominee. All three declined to renew their pledge. As recently as March 3, in a Fox News debate, all three said they would support the nominee.
“No, I don’t anymore,” Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, when asked if he remains committed to the pledge. Trump said that he would instead wait to see who emerges as the nominee before promising his support, recanting the pledge he previously signed with the Republican Party.
“I have been treated very unfairly,” Trump added.
Trump and his team have braced for the possibility of a contested convention in recent weeks, as opposing forces have set their sights on denying him the nomination by preventing him from crossing the necessary delegate threshold.
Trump said Tuesday that he believes establishment Republicans and the Republican National Committee in particular have not treated him with respect.
“I’m the front-runner by a lot. I’m beating Ted Cruz by millions of votes,” he said. “This was not going to happen with the Republican Party. People who have never voted before, Democrats and independents are pouring in and voting for me.”
Cruz was asked three times by Cooper whether he would support the nominee.
"I'm not in the habit of supporting someone who attacks my wife and attacks my family," Cruz said, making reference to Trump.
When Cooper followed up, Cruz replied: "Let me tell you my solution to that: Donald is not going to be the GOP nominee."
Cooper pressed him a third time. Cruz responded: "I gave you my answer."
Kasich said he would have to "see what happens" in the race before he could answer the question.
Trump pointed to strategic maneuvering in Louisiana that could result in Cruz capturing more delegates from the state despite the fact that Trump won the statewide vote.
“I call it bad politics. When somebody goes in and wins the election and goes in and gets less delegates than the guy that lost, I don’t think that’s right," he said.
On the question of supporting the ultimate party nominee, “I’ll see who it is,” Trump said. "I’m not looking to hurt anybody. I love the Republican Party."

Source: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/all-three-republican-presidential-candidates-back-away-from-pledge-to-support-eventual-nominee/ar-BBr6iuo?ocid=spartandhp

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EgyptAir hijack ends with passengers freed unharmed, suspect arrested

Eighty-one people, including 21 foreigners and 15 crew, had been onboard the Airbus 320 flight when it took off, Egypt's Civil Aviation Ministry said in a statement.
Conflicting theories emerged about the hijacker's motives, with Cypriot officials saying early on the incident did not appear related to terrorism but the Cypriot state broadcaster saying he had demanded the release of women prisoners in Egypt.
After the aircraft landed at Larnaca airport, negotiations began and everyone onboard was freed except three passengers and four crew, Egypt's Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fethy said.
Soon after his comments, Cypriot television footage showed several people leaving the plane via the stairs and another man climbing out of the cockpit window and running off.
The hijacker then surrendered to authorities.
"Its over," the Cypriot foreign ministry said in a tweet.
Speaking to reporters after the crisis ended, Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said the hijacker was an Egyptian national but that his motives remained unclear.
"At some moments he asked to meet with a representative of the European Union and at other points he asked to go to another airport but there was nothing specific," he said, adding that the man would now be questioned to ascertain his motives.
Cypriot foreign ministry official Alexandros Zenon told reporters during the crisis that the hijacker appeared to be "unstable".
Egypt's Civil Aviation Ministry said the plane's pilot, Omar al-Gammal, had informed authorities that he was threatened by a passenger who claimed to be wearing a suicide explosives belt and forced him to divert the plane to Larnaca.
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•    › Another four people seen leaving hijacked EgyptAir plane: Cypriot TV
Photographs shown on Egyptian state television showed a middle-aged man on a plane wearing glasses and displaying a white belt with bulging pockets and protruding wires.
Fethy, the Egyptian minister, said authorities suspected the suicide belt was not genuine but treated the incident as serious to ensure the safety of all those on board.
"Our passengers are all well and the crew is all well... We cannot say this was a terrorist act... he was not a professional," Fethy told reporters after the incident.
In the midst of the crisis, witnesses said the hijacker had thrown a letter on the apron in Larnaca, written in Arabic, asking that it be delivered to his ex-wife, who is Cypriot.
But the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC) said the hijacker had asked for the release of women prisoners in Egypt, suggesting a political motive.
EgyptAir also delayed a New York-bound flight from Cairo onto which some passengers of the hijacked plane had been due to connect. Fethy said it was delayed partly due to a technical issue but partly as a precaution.
The plane remained on the tarmac at Larnaca throughout the morning while Cypriot security forces took up positions around the scene.
EGYPT'S IMAGE
While the reasons for the hijacking were not entirely clear, the incident will deal another blow to Egypt's tourism industry and hurt efforts to revive an economy hammered by political unrest following the 2011 uprising.
The sector, a main source of hard currency for the import-dependent county, was already reeling from the crash of a Russian passenger plane in the Sinai in late October.
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•    › Egypt prime minister said hijacker's motives unclear
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has said the Russian plane was brought down by a terrorist attack. Islamic State has said it planted a bomb on board, killing all 224 people on board.
The incident has raised renewed questions over airport security in Egypt, though it was not clear whether the hijacker was even armed. Ismail said stringent measures were in place.
There was also some confusion over the identity of the hijacker. Egypt's official state news agency MENA initially named him as Egyptian national Ibrahim Samaha but later said the hijacker was called Seif Eldin Mustafa.
The Cypriot Foreign Affairs Ministry also identified the hijacker as Mustafa.
Passengers on the plane included eight Americans, four Britons, four Dutch, two Belgians, an Italian, a Syrian and French national, the Civil Aviation Ministry.
Cyprus has seen little militant activity for decades, despite its proximity to the Middle East.
A botched attempt by Egyptian commandos to storm a hijacked airliner at Larnaca airport led to the disruption of diplomatic relations between Cyprus and Egypt in 1978.
In 1988, a Kuwaiti airliner which had been hijacked from Bangkok to Kuwait in a 16-day siege had a stopover in Larnaca, where two hostages were killed.
Egypt said it would send a plane to Cyprus to pick up stranded passengers, some of whom had been traveling to Cairo for connecting flights abroad.
(Additionaly reporting by Michele Kambas in Athens and Mostafa Hashem, Ahmed Mohammed Hassan, Amina Ismail and Lin Noueihed in Cairo, Writing by Lin Noueihed, Editing by Michael Georgy and Angus MacSwan)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-egypt-airplane-hijacking-idUSKCN0WV0CP

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Who Will Become a Terrorist? Research Yields Few Clues

The operations center of the National Counterterrorism Center in Tysons Corner, Va., in 2005. The backgrounds of people arrested in connection with terrorism-related crimes defy a single profile. Credit Mark Wilson/Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The brothers who carried out suicide bombings in Brussels last week had long, violent criminal records and had been regarded internationally as potential terrorists. But in San Bernardino, Calif., last year, one of the attackers was a county health inspector who lived a life of apparent suburban normality.
And then there are the dozens of other young American men and women who have been arrested over the past year for trying to help the Islamic State. Their backgrounds are so diverse that they defy a single profile.
What turns people toward violence — and whether they can be steered away from it — are questions that have bedeviled governments around the world for generations. Those questions have taken on fresh urgency with the rise of the Islamic State and the string of attacks in Europe and the United States. Despite millions of dollars of government-sponsored research, and a much-publicized White House pledge to find answers, there is still nothing close to a consensus on why someone becomes a terrorist.
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“After all this funding and this flurry of publications, with each new terrorist incident we realize that we are no closer to answering our original question about what leads people to turn to political violence,” Marc Sageman, a psychologist and a longtime government consultant, wrote in the journal Terrorism and Political Violence in 2014. “The same worn-out questions are raised over and over again, and we still have no compelling answers.”

When researchers do come up with possible answers, the government often disregards them. Not long after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, for instance, Alan B. Krueger, the Princeton economist, tested the widespread assumption that poverty was a key factor in the making of a terrorist. Mr. Krueger’s analysis of economic figures, polls, and data on suicide bombers and hate groups found no link between economic distress and terrorism.
More than a decade later, law enforcement officials and government-funded community groups still regard money problems as an indicator of radicalization.
When President Obama announced plans in 2011 to prevent homegrown terrorism, the details were sketchy, but the promise was clear. The White House would provide warning signs to help parents and community leaders.
“It’s going to be communities that recognize abnormal behavior,” Denis McDonough, the deputy national security adviser at the time, said. As an example, he cited truancy, which he said was an indicator of possible gang activity. “Truancy is also going to be an early warning sign for violent extremism,” he said.
But the years that followed have done little to narrow the list of likely precursors. Rather, the murky science seems to imply that nearly anyone is a potential terrorist. Some studies suggest that terrorists are likely to be educated or extroverted; others say uneducated recluses are at risk. Many studies seem to warn of the adolescent condition, singling out young, impatient men with a sense of adventure who are “struggling to achieve a sense of selfhood.”
Such generalizations are why civil libertarians see only danger in government efforts to identify people at risk of committing crimes. Researchers, too, say they have been frustrated by both the Bush and Obama administrations because of what they say is a preoccupation with research that can be distilled into simple checklists, even at the risk of casting unnecessary suspicion on innocent people.
“They want to be able to do things right now,” said Clark R. McCauley Jr., a professor of psychology at Bryn Mawr College who has conducted government-funded terrorism research for years. “Anybody who offers them something right now, like to go around with a checklist — right now — is going to have their attention.
“It’s demand driven,” he continued. “The people with guns and badges are so eager to have something. The fact that they could actually do harm? This doesn’t deter them.”
Europe, too, is grappling with these questions, but there is no clear answer. Hans Bonte, the mayor of the Belgian town of Vilvoorde, attended a White House summit meeting on radicalization last year and described efforts to stem a steady tide of angry young men leaving to join the Islamic State. In Britain, the government encourages or requires people to alert the authorities about people who could become risks. That has spurred debate abroad, and has raised questions in the United States about whether the Constitution would allow the government to keep tabs on lawful political or religious speech.
“I understand, from an American standpoint, that can be troubling,” said Lorenzo Vidino, the director of the Program on Extremism at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University. “But the European model, for most countries, is to intervene early, as soon as you see the first sign of extremism.”
Researching terrorism is admittedly difficult. It involves tough questions about who qualifies as a terrorist, or as a rebel or a soldier. Nelson Mandela? Palestinian suicide bombers? The Taliban of today? The Afghan mujahedeen when the C.I.A. supported them?
Researchers seldom have access to terrorists, and scientific methods, such as control groups, are rare. In 2005, Jeff Victoroff, a University of Southern California psychologist, concluded that the leading terrorism research was mostly just political theory and anecdotes. “A lack of systematic scholarly investigation has left policy makers to design counterterrorism strategies without the benefit of facts,” he wrote in The Journal of Conflict Resolution.
When the government does give advice about what to look for, the origin of that information is often impossible to know. A 2012 National Counterterrorism Center report, for instance, declared that anxiety, unmet personal needs, frustration and trauma helped drive radicalization. “Not all individuals who become radicalized have unmet personal needs, but those who do are more vulnerable to radicalization,” the document said, citing no sources.
Finding terrorism’s roots was supposed to help turn people away from violence. But even when someone comes to the government’s attention, there is no policy on what the response should be. The Obama administration envisions a network of counselors, religious figures and experts who can step in to help. With rare exceptions, such a network has not materialized.
The White House recently put the Department of Homeland Security in charge of a task force to coordinate those efforts, an acknowledgment that the loose alliance of the past several years had suffered from a lack of goals and coordination. George Selim, the Homeland Security official leading the effort, said the administration had never intended to dictate policies. The government, Mr. Selim said, has successfully started conversations and fostered relationships between communities and law enforcement groups.
In Minneapolis, one of the pilot cities for the administration’s counter-radicalization efforts, Andrew M. Luger, the United States attorney for Minnesota, has built relationships with the Somali community. He said that a prevention program was coming soon, and that interventions were farther off.
“It’s taken a lot of time,” he said. “We’re at a point where a lot of it is beginning to come to fruition.”
Though the government plays down its use of checklists, the Justice Department offers grants for the development of “a rapid assessment” tool to help the authorities “gauge the potential” for extremism. Last year, the Intercept news organization revealed a government checklist to score people in terrorism investigations based on factors, including whether they feel mistreated by the government, distrust law enforcement or suffer from discrimination.
Mr. McCauley said many of his colleagues and peers conducted smart research and drew narrow conclusions. The problem, he said, is that studies get the most attention when they suggest warning signs. Research linking terrorism to American policies, meanwhile, is ignored.
As a practical matter, scientists note, checklists are mathematically certain to fail. Even a test with 99 percent accuracy would be wrong far more often than right. It is a counterintuitive thought, but in a country with a huge population and a tiny number of terrorists, even a nearly perfect test would flag many more innocent people than actual terrorists.
In social services, this problem all but disappears. There are few consequences for seeking help for someone who appears to be suicidal but is not. When the F.B.I. is the only option, the ramifications can be severe.
“We talk a very good game,” said John Horgan, a professor at Georgia State University who has conducted numerous government-funded studies. “But from the national security standpoint, we still have a scorecard mentality of early identifications and sting operations.”
In Montgomery County, Md., a Washington suburb, a Muslim-led interfaith organization called Worde thinks it may have a solution. Organizers have provided families and faith leaders with lists of warning signs: depression, trauma, economic stress and political grievances. Anyone who spots these indicators signs can call Worde, which will arrange mental health or religious counseling.
Police officers become involved only when there is a threat of imminent danger, said Hedieh Mirahmadi, the group’s president. Ideally, she said, people get help without being stigmatized or placed on government watch lists.
The program is unproven; a nearly complete study on its effectiveness gives it high marks for building community relationships but does not assess whether the group reduces violent extremism. And while Ms. Mirahmadi said “nobody would disagree” with her warning signs, researchers are far less certain that they are indicators of potential radicalization. Still, the Obama administration believes Worde could be a model and has awarded it $500,000 in grants.
Faiza Patel, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice, remains skeptical. Worde has not released its intervention protocols or its method for assessing things like political grievances. Ms. Mirahmadi said such tools would be too easily misunderstood.
But, she said, it is a start. She said her group had counseled about 20 people, providing help that otherwise did not exist. Whether any of these people would have become violent, she said, is impossible to know.
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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/28/world/europe/mystery-about-who-will-become-a-terrorist-defies-clear-answers.html?partner=msft_msn&_r=0

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