By Mistake in Inquiry Journalist Was Killed Saudis Now ... · cials have said, an autopsy...
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VOL. CLXVIII . . . No. 58,117 © 2018 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2018 U(D54G1D)y+&!$!?!#!{ WASHINGTON — Saudi Ara- bia was preparing an alternative explanation of the fate of a dissi- dent journalist on Monday, saying he died at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago in an in- terrogation gone wrong, accord- ing to a person familiar with the kingdom’s plans. In Washington, President Trump echoed the pos- sibility that Jamal Khashoggi was the victim of “rogue killers.” The shifting story line defied earlier details that have emerged in the case, including signs that he was murdered and dismembered. Among other things, Turkish offi- cials have said, an autopsy spe- cialist carrying a bone saw was among 15 Saudi operatives who flew in and out of Istanbul the day Mr. Khashoggi disappeared. The new explanation, whatever its truth, seemed intended to ease the political crisis that Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance has created for Saudi Arabia. The new story could also defuse some criti- cism of the Trump administration, which has refused to back down from billions of dollars in weapons sales to the kingdom and as of Monday was still planning to at- tend a glittering Saudi investment forum next week. And it could help Turkey, where a shaky economy would benefit from a financial infusion that low- interest loans from Riyadh could provide. But the theory was widely dis- missed among Mr. Khashoggi’s friends, human rights advocates and some on Capitol Hill, who noted that Saudi officials had de- nied his death for two weeks — in- cluding assertions by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last week and the king himself on Monday. “Been hearing the ridiculous ‘rogue killers’ theory was where the Saudis would go with this,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, wrote in a Twitter post. “Absolutely ex- traordinary they were able to en- list the President of the United States as their PR agent to float it.” Mr. Trump spoke with King Salman of Saudi Arabia on Mon- day morning in a 20-minute phone call. The president said the king denied any knowledge of what had happened to Mr. Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post who had been critical of the crown prince. “It sounded to me like maybe these could have been rogue killers — who knows,” Mr. Trump said, speaking to reporters as he headed to visit areas in Georgia and Florida that were ravaged by Hurricane Michael. Mr. Trump also said he told the king: “The world is watching. The world is talking, and this is very important to get to the bottom of it.” The Saudi state news service reported a different take on the conversation, in which Mr. Trump praised the cooperation between the Saudis and Turkish officials as they investigate Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance. Saudis Now Plan to Say Journalist Was Killed By Mistake in Inquiry Report of Shifting Story — Trump Echoes Theory About ‘Rogue’ Assailants This article is by Gardiner Harris, David D. Kirkpatrick and Eileen Sullivan. Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul was cordoned off Monday by the Turkish police investigating Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance. YASIN AKGUL/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES Continued on Page A8 NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar — They posed as fans of pop stars and national heroes as they flooded Facebook with their ha- tred. One said Islam was a global threat to Buddhism. Another shared a false story about the rape of a Buddhist woman by a Muslim man. The Facebook posts were not from everyday internet users. In- stead, they were from Myanmar military personnel who turned the social network into a tool for eth- nic cleansing, according to former military officials, researchers and civilian officials in the country. Members of the Myanmar mili- tary were the prime operatives behind a systematic campaign on Facebook that stretched back half a decade and that targeted the country’s mostly Muslim Rohing- ya minority group, the people said. The military exploited Face- book’s wide reach in Myanmar, where it is so broadly used that many of the country’s 18 million internet users confuse the Silicon Valley social media platform with the internet. Human rights groups blame the anti-Rohingya propa- ganda for inciting murders, rapes and the largest forced human mi- gration in recent history. While Facebook took down the official accounts of senior Myan- mar military leaders in August, the breadth and details of the propaganda campaign — which was hidden behind fake names and sham accounts — went unde- tected. The campaign, described by five people who asked for ano- nymity because they feared for their safety, included hundreds of military personnel who created troll accounts and news and celeb- rity pages on Facebook and then flooded them with incendiary comments and posts timed for Genocide Across Myanmar, Incited on Facebook By PAUL MOZUR Sham Accounts Spread Military Propaganda for Several Years Continued on Page A10 LAKE WORTH, FLA. — On Halloween night in 1996, a man in a skeleton mask knocked on the door of a house in Martinez, Calif., handcuffed the woman who greeted him and raped her. Two weeks later, he called the dental office where she worked. Investi- gators tried to track him down through phone records, but got nowhere. They obtained traces of his semen, but there was no match for his DNA in any criminal data- base. Last month — two decades af- ter the crime — the Sacramento district attorney’s office tried something new to finally crack the case of this serial rapist, who had attacked at least 10 women in their homes. Investigators converted the assailant’s DNA to the kind of profile that family history web- sites such as 23andMe are built on, and uploaded it to GEDmatch .com, a free site open to all and be- loved by genealogical researchers seeking to find biological relatives or to construct elaborate family trees. Within five minutes of review- ing the results, the investigators had located a close relative among the million or so profiles in the database. Within two hours, they had a suspect, who was soon ar- rested: Roy Charles Waller, a safety specialist at the University of California, Berkeley. The arrest was the 15th time that GEDmatch had provided es- sential clues leading to a suspect in a murder or sexual assault case, starting with the arrest in April of Joseph James DeAngelo, a former police officer, in the rapes and murders committed across Cali- fornia in the 1970s and 1980s by the notorious Golden State Killer. And no one has been more sur- prised than the two creators of GEDmatch — Curtis Rogers, 80, a retired businessman who could be easily mistaken for just another low-key Florida grandpa in his white Velcro sneakers, and John Genealogy Website Has Side Benefit: Solving Coldest Cold Cases By HEATHER MURPHY Continued on Page A18 STEPHEN SPERANZA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES In the last school year, 114,659 students, including at Brooklyn’s P.S. 446, had no home. Page A19. Record Rise in Homelessness RUIRU, Kenya — Before last year, Richard Ochieng’, 26, could not recall experiencing racism firsthand. Not while growing up as an or- phan in his village near Lake Vic- toria where everybody was, like him, black. Not while studying at a university in another part of Ken- ya. Not until his job search led him to Ruiru, a fast-growing settle- ment at the edge of the capital, Nairobi, where Mr. Ochieng’ found work at a Chinese motor- cycle company that had just ex- panded to Kenya. But then his new boss, a Chi- nese man his own age, started calling him a monkey. It happened when the two were on a sales trip and spotted a troop of baboons on the roadside, he said. “‘Your brothers,’” he said his boss exclaimed, urging Mr. Ochieng’ to share some bananas with the primates. And it happened again, he said, with his boss referring to all Ken- yans as primates. Humiliated and outraged, Mr. Ochieng’ decided to record one of his boss’s rants, catching him de- claring that Kenyans were “like a monkey people.” After his cellphone video circu- lated widely last month, the Ken- yan authorities swiftly deported the boss back to China. Instead of a tidy resolution, however, the episode has resonated with a growing anxiety in Kenya and set off a broader debate. As the country embraces Chi- na’s expanding presence in the re- gion, many Kenyans wonder whether the nation has unwit- tingly welcomed an influx of pow- Chinese Bring Jobs, and Bias, Kenyans Find By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN Continued on Page A11 SAUDI R.S.V.P. The U.S. Treasury secretary is deciding whether to cancel on a conference. PAGE A9 EXECUTIVE DECISION Corporate leaders struggle with how to respond. PAGE B1 WASHINGTON — It is a racial taunt made by the president of the United States, not unlike his dis- credited claim that Barack Obama was not born in America. And just as President Trump’s embrace of birtherism led to the remarkable spectacle of Presi- dent Obama’s birth certificate be- ing distributed in the White House, Mr. Trump’s unrelenting mockery of Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas” — ques- tioning her claims about having Native American heritage — has prompted Ms. Warren to release the results of a DNA test that she says provide proof of her ancestry. There is “strong evidence” that Ms. Warren has Native American pedigree “6-10 generations ago,” according to a document she re- leased Monday from Dr. Carlos Bustamante, a renowned genet- icist. The error rate is less than one in a thousand, he said. Ms. Warren’s elaborate attempt to neutralize Mr. Trump’s attacks represented the surest sign yet that she intends to run for presi- dent in 2020. Not only did Ms. Warren release the DNA results, but she created a fact-check web- site that details her Native Ameri- can ancestry and her Oklahoma roots. The site also includes docu- ments that Ms. Warren, Massa- chusetts Democrat, says make clear her heritage “had no role whatsoever” in her advancement during her academic rise as a Har- vard law professor — as some Re- With DNA Test, Warren Signals Interest in 2020 By JONATHAN MARTIN Continued on Page A16 Visiting Florida and Georgia, President Trump again declined to acknowledge the threat of climate change. PAGE A14 NATIONAL A12-18 Trump Inspects Storm Damage A regional election in Germany, sup- posed to be about a populist backlash against migrants, turned out to be about “rebooting democracy.” PAGE A4 INTERNATIONAL A4-11 Glimpse of Post-Merkel Nation The 132-year-old retailer says it will do more of what it has been doing: closing stores and borrowing money. PAGE B1 BUSINESS DAY B1-8 Sears Files for Bankruptcy Milwaukee’s starting pitcher lasted more than five innings — a rarity for the team these days — in a 4-0 road win over the Dodgers in Game 3. PAGE B11 SPORTSTUESDAY B9-14 Brewers Seize Lead in N.L.C.S. Tarana Burke talks about the move- ment’s future, the #HimToo backlash, and advice for survivors. PAGE C1 ARTS C1-7 Reflections of #MeToo Leader Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s expected baby will be British. But will he or she be American too? PAGE A6 A Royal Conundrum Police officials defended the depart- ment’s handling of clashes between leftists and a far-right group. PAGE A19 NEW YORK A19-20 More Face Charges in Brawl Falling corporate tax revenues from the Trump tax cuts helped push the annual deficit to $779 billion. PAGE B7 Federal Deficit Rises 17% A group is working to persuade people to help return trapped reptiles to the ocean, rather than sell their meat and shells. PAGE D1 SCIENCE TIMES D1-8 Rescuing Sea Turtles in Kenya John B. Judis PAGE A23 EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23 Paul G. Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft who helped usher in the personal computing revolution and then channeled his enormous fortune into transforming Seattle into a cultural destination, died on Monday in Seattle. He was 65. The cause was complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his family said in a statement. The disease recurred re- cently after having been in remission for years. He left Microsoft in the early 1980s, after the cancer first ap- peared, and, using his enormous wealth, went on to make a power- ful impact on Seattle life through his philanthropy and his owner- ship of the N.F.L. team there, en- suring that it would remain in the city. Mr. Allen was a force at Micro- soft during its first seven years, along with its co-founder, Bill Gates, as the personal computer was moving from a hobbyist curi- osity to a mainstream technology, used by both businesses and con- sumers. When the company was founded, in 1975, the machines were known as microcomputers, At Gates’s Side For Revolution In Computing By STEVE LOHR PAUL G. ALLEN, 1953-2018 Continued on Page A24 Paul G. Allen Democrats have pulled far ahead in funds for key congressional races, but Republicans are competitive. PAGE A15 A Democratic Cash Surge Late Edition Today, plenty of sunshine, cooler, high 58. Tonight, partly cloudy, low 46. Tomorrow, sunshine and some clouds, becoming windy, cool, high 60. Weather map is on Page C8. $3.00
Transcript of By Mistake in Inquiry Journalist Was Killed Saudis Now ... · cials have said, an autopsy...
VOL. CLXVIII . . . No. 58,117 © 2018 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2018
C M Y K Nxxx,2018-10-16,A,001,Bs-4C,E2
U(D54G1D)y+&!$!?!#!{
WASHINGTON — Saudi Ara-bia was preparing an alternativeexplanation of the fate of a dissi-dent journalist on Monday, sayinghe died at the Saudi Consulate inIstanbul two weeks ago in an in-terrogation gone wrong, accord-ing to a person familiar with thekingdom’s plans. In Washington,President Trump echoed the pos-sibility that Jamal Khashoggi wasthe victim of “rogue killers.”
The shifting story line defiedearlier details that have emergedin the case, including signs that hewas murdered and dismembered.Among other things, Turkish offi-cials have said, an autopsy spe-cialist carrying a bone saw wasamong 15 Saudi operatives whoflew in and out of Istanbul the dayMr. Khashoggi disappeared.
The new explanation, whateverits truth, seemed intended to easethe political crisis that Mr.Khashoggi’s disappearance hascreated for Saudi Arabia. The newstory could also defuse some criti-cism of the Trump administration,which has refused to back downfrom billions of dollars in weaponssales to the kingdom and as ofMonday was still planning to at-tend a glittering Saudi investmentforum next week.
And it could help Turkey, wherea shaky economy would benefitfrom a financial infusion that low-interest loans from Riyadh couldprovide.
But the theory was widely dis-missed among Mr. Khashoggi’sfriends, human rights advocatesand some on Capitol Hill, whonoted that Saudi officials had de-nied his death for two weeks — in-cluding assertions by Crown
Prince Mohammed bin Salmanlast week and the king himself onMonday.
“Been hearing the ridiculous‘rogue killers’ theory was wherethe Saudis would go with this,”Senator Christopher S. Murphy,Democrat of Connecticut, wrote ina Twitter post. “Absolutely ex-traordinary they were able to en-list the President of the UnitedStates as their PR agent to floatit.”
Mr. Trump spoke with KingSalman of Saudi Arabia on Mon-day morning in a 20-minute phonecall. The president said the kingdenied any knowledge of whathad happened to Mr. Khashoggi, acolumnist for The WashingtonPost who had been critical of thecrown prince.
“It sounded to me like maybethese could have been roguekillers — who knows,” Mr. Trumpsaid, speaking to reporters as heheaded to visit areas in Georgiaand Florida that were ravaged byHurricane Michael.
Mr. Trump also said he told theking: “The world is watching. Theworld is talking, and this is veryimportant to get to the bottom ofit.” The Saudi state news servicereported a different take on theconversation, in which Mr. Trumppraised the cooperation betweenthe Saudis and Turkish officials asthey investigate Mr. Khashoggi’sdisappearance.
Saudis Now Plan to SayJournalist Was Killed
By Mistake in InquiryReport of Shifting Story — Trump Echoes
Theory About ‘Rogue’ Assailants
This article is by Gardiner Harris,David D. Kirkpatrick and EileenSullivan.
Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul was cordoned off Monday by the Turkish police investigating Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance.YASIN AKGUL/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
Continued on Page A8
NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar —They posed as fans of pop starsand national heroes as theyflooded Facebook with their ha-tred. One said Islam was a globalthreat to Buddhism. Anothershared a false story about the rapeof a Buddhist woman by a Muslimman.
The Facebook posts were notfrom everyday internet users. In-stead, they were from Myanmarmilitary personnel who turned thesocial network into a tool for eth-nic cleansing, according to formermilitary officials, researchers andcivilian officials in the country.
Members of the Myanmar mili-tary were the prime operatives
behind a systematic campaign onFacebook that stretched back halfa decade and that targeted thecountry’s mostly Muslim Rohing-ya minority group, the peoplesaid. The military exploited Face-book’s wide reach in Myanmar,where it is so broadly used thatmany of the country’s 18 millioninternet users confuse the SiliconValley social media platform withthe internet. Human rights groups
blame the anti-Rohingya propa-ganda for inciting murders, rapesand the largest forced human mi-gration in recent history.
While Facebook took down theofficial accounts of senior Myan-mar military leaders in August,the breadth and details of thepropaganda campaign — whichwas hidden behind fake namesand sham accounts — went unde-tected. The campaign, describedby five people who asked for ano-nymity because they feared fortheir safety, included hundreds ofmilitary personnel who createdtroll accounts and news and celeb-rity pages on Facebook and thenflooded them with incendiarycomments and posts timed for
Genocide Across Myanmar, Incited on FacebookBy PAUL MOZUR Sham Accounts Spread
Military Propagandafor Several Years
Continued on Page A10
LAKE WORTH, FLA. — OnHalloween night in 1996, a man ina skeleton mask knocked on thedoor of a house in Martinez, Calif.,handcuffed the woman whogreeted him and raped her. Twoweeks later, he called the dentaloffice where she worked. Investi-gators tried to track him downthrough phone records, but gotnowhere. They obtained traces ofhis semen, but there was no match
for his DNA in any criminal data-base.
Last month — two decades af-ter the crime — the Sacramentodistrict attorney’s office triedsomething new to finally crack thecase of this serial rapist, who hadattacked at least 10 women in theirhomes. Investigators convertedthe assailant’s DNA to the kind ofprofile that family history web-sites such as 23andMe are builton, and uploaded it to GEDmatch.com, a free site open to all and be-loved by genealogical researchers
seeking to find biological relativesor to construct elaborate familytrees.
Within five minutes of review-ing the results, the investigatorshad located a close relative amongthe million or so profiles in thedatabase. Within two hours, theyhad a suspect, who was soon ar-rested: Roy Charles Waller, asafety specialist at the Universityof California, Berkeley.
The arrest was the 15th timethat GEDmatch had provided es-sential clues leading to a suspect
in a murder or sexual assault case,starting with the arrest in April ofJoseph James DeAngelo, a formerpolice officer, in the rapes andmurders committed across Cali-fornia in the 1970s and 1980s bythe notorious Golden State Killer.
And no one has been more sur-prised than the two creators ofGEDmatch — Curtis Rogers, 80, aretired businessman who could beeasily mistaken for just anotherlow-key Florida grandpa in hiswhite Velcro sneakers, and John
Genealogy Website Has Side Benefit: Solving Coldest Cold CasesBy HEATHER MURPHY
Continued on Page A18
STEPHEN SPERANZA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
In the last school year, 114,659 students, including at Brooklyn’s P.S. 446, had no home. Page A19.Record Rise in Homelessness
RUIRU, Kenya — Before lastyear, Richard Ochieng’, 26, couldnot recall experiencing racismfirsthand.
Not while growing up as an or-phan in his village near Lake Vic-toria where everybody was, likehim, black. Not while studying at auniversity in another part of Ken-ya. Not until his job search led himto Ruiru, a fast-growing settle-ment at the edge of the capital,Nairobi, where Mr. Ochieng’found work at a Chinese motor-cycle company that had just ex-panded to Kenya.
But then his new boss, a Chi-nese man his own age, startedcalling him a monkey.
It happened when the two wereon a sales trip and spotted a troopof baboons on the roadside, hesaid.
“‘Your brothers,’” he said hisboss exclaimed, urging Mr.Ochieng’ to share some bananaswith the primates.
And it happened again, he said,with his boss referring to all Ken-yans as primates.
Humiliated and outraged, Mr.Ochieng’ decided to record one ofhis boss’s rants, catching him de-claring that Kenyans were “like amonkey people.”
After his cellphone video circu-lated widely last month, the Ken-yan authorities swiftly deportedthe boss back to China. Instead ofa tidy resolution, however, theepisode has resonated with agrowing anxiety in Kenya and setoff a broader debate.
As the country embraces Chi-na’s expanding presence in the re-gion, many Kenyans wonderwhether the nation has unwit-tingly welcomed an influx of pow-
Chinese BringJobs, and Bias,
Kenyans Find
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN
Continued on Page A11
SAUDI R.S.V.P. The U.S. Treasurysecretary is deciding whether tocancel on a conference. PAGE A9
EXECUTIVE DECISION Corporateleaders struggle with how torespond. PAGE B1
WASHINGTON — It is a racialtaunt made by the president of theUnited States, not unlike his dis-credited claim that Barack Obamawas not born in America.
And just as President Trump’sembrace of birtherism led to theremarkable spectacle of Presi-dent Obama’s birth certificate be-ing distributed in the WhiteHouse, Mr. Trump’s unrelentingmockery of Senator ElizabethWarren as “Pocahontas” — ques-tioning her claims about havingNative American heritage — hasprompted Ms. Warren to releasethe results of a DNA test that shesays provide proof of her ancestry.
There is “strong evidence” thatMs. Warren has Native Americanpedigree “6-10 generations ago,”according to a document she re-leased Monday from Dr. CarlosBustamante, a renowned genet-icist. The error rate is less thanone in a thousand, he said.
Ms. Warren’s elaborate attemptto neutralize Mr. Trump’s attacksrepresented the surest sign yetthat she intends to run for presi-dent in 2020. Not only did Ms.Warren release the DNA results,but she created a fact-check web-site that details her Native Ameri-can ancestry and her Oklahomaroots. The site also includes docu-ments that Ms. Warren, Massa-chusetts Democrat, says makeclear her heritage “had no rolewhatsoever” in her advancementduring her academic rise as a Har-vard law professor — as some Re-
With DNA Test,Warren SignalsInterest in 2020
By JONATHAN MARTIN
Continued on Page A16
Visiting Florida and Georgia, PresidentTrump again declined to acknowledgethe threat of climate change. PAGE A14
NATIONAL A12-18
Trump Inspects Storm Damage
A regional election in Germany, sup-posed to be about a populist backlashagainst migrants, turned out to beabout “rebooting democracy.” PAGE A4
INTERNATIONAL A4-11
Glimpse of Post-Merkel Nation
The 132-year-old retailer says it will domore of what it has been doing: closingstores and borrowing money. PAGE B1
BUSINESS DAY B1-8
Sears Files for Bankruptcy
Milwaukee’s starting pitcher lastedmore than five innings — a rarity forthe team these days — in a 4-0 road winover the Dodgers in Game 3. PAGE B11
SPORTSTUESDAY B9-14
Brewers Seize Lead in N.L.C.S.
Tarana Burke talks about the move-ment’s future, the #HimToo backlash,and advice for survivors. PAGE C1
ARTS C1-7
Reflections of #MeToo LeaderPrince Harry and Meghan Markle’sexpected baby will be British. But willhe or she be American too? PAGE A6
A Royal Conundrum
Police officials defended the depart-ment’s handling of clashes betweenleftists and a far-right group. PAGE A19
NEW YORK A19-20
More Face Charges in BrawlFalling corporate tax revenues from theTrump tax cuts helped push the annualdeficit to $779 billion. PAGE B7
Federal Deficit Rises 17%
A group is working to persuade peopleto help return trapped reptiles to theocean, rather than sell their meat andshells. PAGE D1
SCIENCE TIMES D1-8
Rescuing Sea Turtles in Kenya
John B. Judis PAGE A23
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23
Paul G. Allen, the co-founder ofMicrosoft who helped usher in thepersonal computing revolutionand then channeled his enormousfortune into transforming Seattleinto a cultural destination, died onMonday in Seattle. He was 65.
The cause was complications ofnon-Hodgkin’slymphoma, hisfamily said in astatement.
The diseaserecurred re-cently afterhaving been inremission foryears. He leftMicrosoft inthe early1980s, after the cancer first ap-peared, and, using his enormouswealth, went on to make a power-ful impact on Seattle life throughhis philanthropy and his owner-ship of the N.F.L. team there, en-suring that it would remain in thecity.
Mr. Allen was a force at Micro-soft during its first seven years,along with its co-founder, BillGates, as the personal computerwas moving from a hobbyist curi-osity to a mainstream technology,used by both businesses and con-sumers.
When the company wasfounded, in 1975, the machineswere known as microcomputers,
At Gates’s SideFor Revolution
In ComputingBy STEVE LOHR
PAUL G. ALLEN, 1953-2018
Continued on Page A24
Paul G. Allen
Democrats have pulled far ahead infunds for key congressional races, butRepublicans are competitive. PAGE A15
A Democratic Cash Surge
Late EditionToday, plenty of sunshine, cooler,high 58. Tonight, partly cloudy, low46. Tomorrow, sunshine and someclouds, becoming windy, cool, high60. Weather map is on Page C8.
$3.00
