Philly Mayor Michael Nutter Would Quit Obama Church

Mayor Michael Nutter Tells ABC News He Would Have Quit Church if His Pastor Made Such Remarks

By DAVID MUIR, URSULA FAHY and JOEL SIEGEL
PHILADELPHIA, March 29, 2008

Sen. Hillary Clinton's most prominent African-American supporter in Pennsylvania says that had he been a member of Sen. Barack Obama's church, he would have left because of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's fiery and controversial sermons.

"I think there's no room for hate, and I could not sit and tolerate that kind of language, and especially over a very long period of time," said Philadelphia's newly elected mayor, Michael Nutter, in an interview with ABC News' David Muir.

"If I were in my own church and heard my pastor saying some of those kinds of things," he added, "we'd have a conversation about what's going on here, what is this all about, and then I would have to make my own personal decision about whether or not to be associated or affiliated."

Asked by Muir if he would he have quit Obama's church, Nutter said, "Absolutely."

Wright preached that the U.S brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own "terrorism." He also said the government "wants us to sing 'God Bless America'" but that it should be "God damn America" for the way it has treated minorities.

Obama condemned the comments, but said he could not "disown" Wright. He suggested the incendiary remarks reflected longstanding anger over past injustices against blacks.

Nutter said, "I think there is a big difference between expressing the pain and anger that many African Americans and other people of color may feel versus language that I think now crosses the line and goes into hate."

Clinton needs a decisive victory in Pennsylvania to keep her White House hopes alive. And Nutter, who took office in January, could play a pivotal role if he is able to help Clinton make inroads with African-American voters, a pillar of Obama's political base.

The pressure on some of Clinton's prominent black supporters to abandon her has been intense. An icon of the civil rights movement, Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., switched allegiances to Obama, partly because of anger in his home district over his choice for president.

Nutter has been called Philadelphia's Barack Obama. He is black, Ivy League-educated, popular and an agent of change -- just like Obama. But Nutter has remained steadfast in his support of Clinton -- to the surprise of many in this city.

The mayor acknowledges that some voters have approached him and asked, in his words, "Why not support a brother?"

"Somehow, someway, for some people there's an automatic assumption that a mayor who is African-American or some other elected official has to support another African-American," Nutter said.

"I thought that when Dr. King said that he wanted people to be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, I thought that's what he was talking about," Nutter added.

Nutter is sticking with Clinton, even though by doing so, he said he might be thwarting the election of America's first black president.

"Certainly the opportunity to demonstrate to my 13-year-old daughter that there is a bright future for her, that a woman could get elected president of the United States, is equally compelling," he said.

"I think that we are at this historical moment," Nutter said. "Either candidate will clearly make history. But you only get to vote for one. The most important thing is winning in November, putting a Democrat in the White House."

He added, "I'm a great fan of history. I don't know that when people are struggling to pay the bills, that they ultimately conclude that, 'Well, if we can just make history with this vote, then all of my problems will be solved.' It still, for me, always comes back to performance [and] track record."

Nutter met with both senators before deciding his endorsement. He brushes aside those who say he did not back Obama because Obama endorsed someone else for mayor.

"We're talking about president of the United States. They're not running for high school class president," he said.

"I think Sen. Clinton is the absolute best candidate for not only Philadelphia but for other cities like us, certainly for Pennsylvania [and] the United States of America, to restore our leadership role all around the world."

In a wide-ranging interview, Nutter voiced outrage [BLOGGER'S NOTE: the word "outrage" is a completely incorrect characterization of Nutter's comments -- he was quite calm while speaking.] that the Democratic Party is opposed to counting the Michigan and Florida primaries because both states scheduled the elections early in the primary season, against party rules. Clinton won those primaries -- though candidates were barred from campaigning in the states and Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan.

Counting the abridged votes from those states would help Clinton to narrow Obama's lead in delegates.

"Think about who we are in the Democratic Party and the country we are in," Nutter said. "That we would somehow leave out any of our citizens in this process, I think, would be an absolute disgrace. We need to be a bit smarter about it."

Political observers say Nutter's pick for president perhaps could cause him political problems down the road.

"The people who swept him to victory are exactly the same people who are over the moon for Barack Obama," said Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Chris Satullo.

The Rev. Ellis Washington, president of Black Clergy of Philadelphia and Vicinity, told The National Journal "there is some frustration" with Nutter's endorsement.

"I do speak to some who look at Nutter's name and kind of shake their head," he said.

A random sampling of voters here found others shaking their heads, too.

Philadelphian Victoria Walker said, "I would have thought that he would have endorsed Obama."

"I've struggled with this one a little bit, because from the perspective of Philadelphia, in many ways I see Nutter as a parallel to Obama," said long-time resident Fred Rosenfeld.

Nutter endorsed Clinton back in December, when she was the clear front-runner. Now she is struggling. But Nutter is having no second thoughts.

When asked if he would endorse Clinton again, Nutter said, "Absolutely. Same endorsement. Never a hesitation."

Link to article: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=4549699&page=1

Inspiration versus Substance by Joe Klein

TIME Magazine, February 7, 2008

"We are the ones we've been waiting for," Barack Obama said in yet another memorable election-night speech on Super-Confusing Tuesday. "We are the change that we seek." Waiting to hear what Obama has to say — win, lose or tie — has become the most anticipated event of any given primary night. The man's use of pronouns (never I), of inspirational language and of poetic meter — "WE are the CHANGE that we SEEK" — is unprecedented in recent memory. Yes, Ronald Reagan could give great set-piece speeches on grand occasions, and so could John F. Kennedy, but Obama's ability to toss one off, different each week, is simply breathtaking. His New Hampshire concession speech, with the refrain "Yes, We Can," was turned into a brilliant music video featuring an array of young, hip, talented and beautiful celebrities. The video, stark in black-and-white, raised an existential question for Democrats: How can you not be moved by this? How can you vote against the future?

And yet there was something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism — "We are the ones we've been waiting for" — of the Super Tuesday speech and the recent turn of the Obama campaign. "This time can be different because this campaign for the presidency of the United States of America is different. It's different not because of me. It's different because of you." That is not just maddeningly vague but also disingenuous: the campaign is entirely about Obama and his ability to inspire. Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause — other than an amorphous desire for change — the message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is.

That is not unprecedented. It has echoes of Howard Dean's 2004 primary effort, although in Dean's case the propellant was substance, not rhetoric — the candidate's early courageous voice against the war. But Dean soon found that wasn't enough. In June 2003 he told me he needed to broaden his movement, reach out past the young and the academic and find a greater array of issues that could inspire working people. He never quite found that second act, and his campaign became about process, not substance: the hundreds of thousands of supporters signing up on the Internet, the millions of dollars raised. He lost track of the rest of the world; his campaign was about ... his campaign.

Obama would never be so tone-deaf, but he is facing a similar ceiling, a similar inability to speak to the working people of the Democratic Party (at least, those who are not African American) or find an issue, a specific issue, that distinguishes him from his opponent. And his opponent, Hillary Clinton, has proved herself tough, specific and reliable — qualities that become increasingly important as the economy teeters and as worries about the future gather in the land.

This has become an odd campaign for Democrats. There is good news ... and fear. The good news is that this time the people seem far more interested in their party than in the Republicans. On Super Tuesday, at least 15,417,521 voted Democratic, and 9,181,297 voted Republican. And more good news: both Obama and Clinton are very good candidates who hold similar positions on most issues, moderates who intend to reach out to Republicans after they are elected — although, given Clinton's undeserved reputation as a partisan operative, that may be a tougher sell for her than for Obama. But this is not a struggle for the ideological soul of the party. It may, however, be a struggle for the party's demographic soul — older voters vs. younger, information-age workers vs. industrial and service workers, wine vs. beer. There is also — and I will try to tread lightly here — the classic high school girl/boy differential: the note-taking, front-row girl grind vs. the charismatic, last-minute-cramming, preening male finesse artist. Both Clinton and Obama have difficulties reaching across those divides, and that is where the fear resides: neither candidate may prove strong or broad enough. As this campaign progresses, their weaknesses — the reasons for their inability to put away this nomination — are going to become more apparent than their strengths.

Clinton's strengths are most apparent in debates, which is why she is pressing to have one each week. She simply knows more than Obama does. In recent weeks, she has been far more likely to take questions from the press and public than Obama is. That appeals to voters more interested in results than in inspiration; it especially appeals to the middle-class women, juggling job and family, who are the demographic heart of the Democratic Party. Clinton's weaknesses are intractable. They are wrapped up in her husband, who nearly ruined her campaign in the two weeks after Iowa but seems to have been relegated to the back of the bus in recent days. And they are wrapped up in her age. She is a baby boomer, of a generation that has been notably obnoxious and unsuccessful in the public arena. Perhaps the most dreadful baby-boom political legacy has been the overconsulted, fanatically tactical, poll-driven campaign — and Clinton has suffered whenever she has emphasized tactics over substance. Her lame attempts to "go negative" on Obama have been almost entirely counterproductive. Her husband's attempts to paint Obama as a "race" candidate — his resort to the most toxic sort of old-fashioned politics — only reinforced the strangely desperate nature of their campaign. It was the very opposite of "Yes, We Can" politics.

Obama's strength is inspiration, and it's also his weakness. In the recent past, Democrats have favored candidates who offer meaty, detailed policy prescriptions — usually to the party's detriment — and that is not Obama's game. After his Iowa victory, his stump speech had become a soufflé untroubled by much substance of any sort. He has rectified that, to some extent. He now spends some time talking about the laments of average Americans he has met along the way; then he dives into a litany of solutions he has proposed to address the laments. But those are not nearly so convincing as Clinton's versions of the same; of course, Clinton has a tragic deficit when it comes to inspiration.

There is an odd, anachronistic formality to Obama's stump speech: it is always the same. It sets his audiences afire, but it does not reach very far beyond them. It is no accident that Obama is nearly invincible in caucus states, where the ability to mobilize a hard core of activists is key — but not so strong in primaries, where more diverse masses of people are involved. He should be very worried that this nomination is likely to be decided in the big working-class primary states of Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania.

Then again, one of Obama's most effective lines is about the "craziness" of trying the same old thing in Washington "over and over and over again, and somehow expecting a different result." The first politician I ever heard use that line — weirdly attributed to everyone from Benjamin Franklin to Albert Einstein — was Bill Clinton. It is a sad but inescapable fact of this election that Bill and Hillary Clinton have now become "the same old thing" they once railed against. In a country where freshness is fetishized — and where a staggering 70% of the public is upset with the way things are today — the "same old thing" is not the place to be. Unless, of course, the next new thing turns out to be a mirage.

Link to article: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1710721,00.html

Arnaldo Jabor -- O homem versus o mosquito

And this is once again the reason that sometimes Arnaldo Jabor is my hero:

O Rio é uma calamidade urgente que tem de ser assumida

Não interessa saber se a dengue é uma epidemia ou não. A dengue é apenas a forma microbiológica que expõe o caos geral da administração do Rio. Os vírus proliferam pelo mesmo fertilizante que estimula a corrupção, a violência, a vergonha burocrática. A verdadeira epidemia é a administração da cidade que já atinge um grau de gravidade talvez irreversível.

Vivemos no Rio (oh leitores de outros estados!...) a sensação permanente do Insolúvel. Já temos a dengue, a febre amarela; um dia chegaremos à perfeição da varíola. Mas muitos sintomas eclodem alem da dengue: depressão, miséria, violência, ignorância. A própria crise psicótica do Cesar Maia também é um sintoma. Ele, que pareceu um exemplo de pragmatismo para quebrar a cadeia do populismo, entrou em catatonia, em paralisia mental, e não fala mais. Diante do Insolúvel, ele emite ruídos de e-mail como um robô quebrado.

O Rio de hoje é o filho defeituoso que a ditadura militar criou, pela fusão com o Estado fluminense, a estratégia "geiseliana" de afastar o MDB de uma possível vitória na política nacional em 75.

A des-fusão dos dois estados e a volta da Guanabara é um tema que surgiu, fervilhou e esfriou de novo, como tudo aqui. Seria uma utopia? Na Prefeitura, na Câmara Municipal, assembléias, repartições, vemos a cenografia e figurinos de nossa desgraça.

Estamos salpicados de favelas, de onde descem hordas de assaltantes para pescar cidadãos como num parque temático, somos governados por populistas de direita há décadas. Nosso melhor governador ("prefeito" do Estado da Guanabara) foi o Carlos Lacerda. Homem inteligente e competente - o ódio máximo de minha juventude - ( podem me esculhambar, velhos comunas...), mas que nos trouxe luz, água, túneis, urbanização e o conceito de administração moderna contra a politicagem fisiológica. Lacerda, com todos seus defeitos, era um atalho no populismo que tirou o Rio do ciclo "de dia falta água, de noite falta luz..."

Hoje, há um caldo de cultura de onde germina nossa tragédia. Ou melhor, duas grandes poças de cultura que se somam.

A primeira grande poça trágica é a imensa ignorância da população pobre, presa da demagogia de oportunistas que usam a religião, o clientelismo, o cabresto, grana, tudo para conquistar votos.

A crassa ignorância dos despossuídos é o chão onde crescem os pseudo-políticos, como a água parada gesta ovos de mosquitos.

A segunda poça de germes é mais sutil. Não está no analfabetismo, nem na crendice, nem na ingenuidade. Está no carioca médio e em sua "cultura malandra". Depois de décadas de desgraça, ainda não sabemos como agir, como nos mobilizar, além de vagos protestos, cartas a leitores ou comentários (como eu mesmo faço), na facilidade da indignação impotente.

Atraso x modernização

Cariocas, somos considerados criativos e manemolentes, quando hoje estamos mal informados e sem inspiração. Somos malandros com o terno esfarrapado, a navalha sem aço e o chapéu panamá rasgado. O carioca tem uma "poética" irresponsabilidade política. Carioca gosta de falar de política mas não de agir politicamente; tudo se afoga no chope ou na praia e chegamos, no máximo, a movimentos abstratos, pedindo paz, abraçando a Lagoa, cantando, chorando. O carioca é ideológico, mas deixa a política para os canalhas. E nossa única saída para a tragédia que vivemos seria uma virada pragmática, uma mudança, uma diferença de métodos e de ética. O Rio está organizado para "não" funcionar.

Tornou-se impossível governar sem uma macro-mudança administrativa. Precisamos de cinturões industriais na periferias, precisamos criar algum objetivo econômico para a região, seja a criação de uma "hong kong" carioca, uma base financeira e cultural. A idéia de que há uma "solução" para o Rio é uma falácia. Precisamos de atalhos, de imaginação. Não dá para retornar a uma "normalidade" ideal, apenas por uma corriqueira substituição de poder. O Rio tem de planejar seu futuro em cima de um luto, da aceitação de uma grave encrenca em estado adiantado.

Com a aproximação das eleições para a Prefeitura, dois cenários se apresentam na paisagem política: o atraso e a possibilidade de uma modernização. Marcelo Crivella é o uso da política como instrumento de outro poder. A prefeitura não como um instrumento para o bem da cidade. A cidade não como fim, mas como meio. Seus eleitores já foram escolhidos e apontados em sua primeira declaração contra Fernando Gabeira: "Ele é a favor de homem com homem, aborto e maconha". É nítido que ele vai usar a superstição, o moralismo tacanho, a ignorância e a obediência religiosa para se eleger, depois de ter sabiamente desviado Wagner Montes do caminho, ele o mais forte candidato no mundo da ignorância pública.

Para esta vertente político-religiosa, quanto mais paralisada a máquina da cidade, melhor. Quanto mais indefesos forem os aparelhos do estado, melhor. Depois do populismo chaguista no estado, depois da honestidade incompetente de Saturnino Braga, depois do brizolismo, da piração de Cesar Maia, involuímos para o populismo da fé.

Por outro lado, a possibilidade de eleição de Fernando Gabeira pode ser uma oportuna retomada de um pragmatismo que não se vê desde o boom do Estado da Guanabara. Não falo por salvacionismo, nem Gabeira seria um bonaparte. Falo porque ele pode criar uma nova vertente política, cortando caminhos pela imaginação, pela criatividade e pelo nível intelectual e contemporâneo que ele representa. Mudança de rumos, mudança: quase um Obama carioca.

Quem pode atrapalhar Gabeira? Homens e mulheres de bem, como Chico Alencar, Jandira, Eduardo Paes, que pensam ainda em termos legítimos (sem dúvida) mas também sem possibilidade alguma de vitória.

Eles teriam de entender e se coligar com o único que tem uma chance de vencer o populismo psicótico (sou um romântico). Entender que o Rio não é uma cidade a mais à espera de uma eleição. Somos uma calamidade urgente que tem de ser assumida, como o desmatamento da Amazônia ou a seca no Nordeste.

Alexander Calder!

Alexander Calder, Romulus and Remus, 1928. Wire and wood, 30 1/2 x 124 1/2 x 26 inches. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. 65.1738. © 2007 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Star Trek -- Enterprise theme song: "Faith of the Heart"

OK, so now you know I'm a Trekkie.



One-minute version above.

If anyone knows where I can find the high-def 4-minute version (old copy taken down at youtube), please send me a message or make a comment here with the link -- I really miss it!  Thanks!

"Faith of the Heart"

It's been a long road,
To get from there to here.
It's been a long time,
but my time is finally here.

And I can feel a change
in the wind right now.
Nothing's in my way.
And they're not gonna
hold me down no more.
No they're not gonna hold me down.

'Cause I've got faith of the heart.
I'm going where my heart
will take me.
I've got faith to believe.
I can do anything.
I've got strength of the soul.
And no one's going to bend
or break me.
I can reach any star.
I've got faith,
I've got faith,
Faith of the heart.

It's been a long night,
Trying to find my way.
Been thru the darkness,
Now I finally have my day.

And I will see my dream
come alive at last.
I will touch the sky.
And they're not gonna hold
me down no more.
No they're not gonna change
my mind.

'Cause I've got faith of the heart.
I'm going where my heart
will take me.
I've got faith to believe.
I can do anything.
I've got strength of the soul.
And no one's going to bend
or break me.
I can reach any star.
I've got faith,
Faith of the heart.

I know the wind's so cold,
I've seen the darkest days.
But now the winds I feel,
Are only winds of change.
I've been thru the fire,
And I've been thru the rain,
But I'll be fine.

'Cause I've got faith of the heart.
I'm going where my heart
will take me.
I've got faith to believe.
I can do anything.
I've got strength of the soul.
And no one's going to bend
or break me.
I can reach any star.
'Cause I've got faith,
'Cause I've got faith,
Faith of the heart...

Faith of the heart.
I'm going where my heart
will take me.
I've got faith to believe.
And no one's going to bend
or break me.
I can reach any star.
'Cause I've got faith,
'Cause I've got faith,
Faith of the heart...

Sinto vergonha de mim

Have a look at this short video of the words of Cleide Canton and Rui Barbosa.

http://www.rolandoboldrin.com.br/video/

When Women Rule by Nicholas D. Kristof

From the New York Times Op-Ed. Published: February 10, 2008

While no woman has been president of the United States — yet — the world does have several thousand years’ worth of experience with female leaders. And I have to acknowledge it: Their historical record puts men’s to shame.

Nicholas D. Kristof. Photo by Fred R. Conrad, The New York Times

A notable share of the great leaders in history have been women: Queen Hatshepsut and Cleopatra of Egypt, Empress Wu Zetian of China, Isabella of Castile, Queen Elizabeth I of England, Catherine the Great of Russia, and Maria Theresa of Austria. Granted, I’m neglecting the likes of Bloody Mary, but it’s still true that those women who climbed to power in monarchies had an astonishingly high success rate.

Research by political psychologists points to possible explanations. Scholars find that women, compared with men, tend to excel in consensus-building and certain other skills useful in leadership. If so, why have female political leaders been so much less impressive in the democratic era? Margaret Thatcher was a transformative figure, but women have been mediocre prime ministers or presidents in countries like Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Often, they haven’t even addressed the urgent needs of women in those countries.

I have a pet theory about what’s going on.

In monarchies, women who rose to the top dealt mostly with a narrow elite, so they could prove themselves and get on with governing. But in democracies in the television age, female leaders also have to navigate public prejudices — and these make democratic politics far more challenging for a woman than for a man.

In one common experiment, the “Goldberg paradigm,” people are asked to evaluate a particular article or speech, supposedly by a man. Others are asked to evaluate the identical presentation, but from a woman. Typically, in countries all over the world, the very same words are rated higher coming from a man.

In particular, one lesson from this research is that promoting their own successes is a helpful strategy for ambitious men. But experiments have demonstrated that when women highlight their accomplishments, that’s a turn-off. And women seem even more offended by self-promoting females than men are.

This creates a huge challenge for ambitious women in politics or business: If they’re self-effacing, people find them unimpressive, but if they talk up their accomplishments, they come across as pushy braggarts.

The broader conundrum is that for women, but not for men, there is a tradeoff in qualities associated with top leadership. A woman can be perceived as competent or as likable, but not both.

“It’s an uphill struggle, to be judged both a good woman and a good leader,” said Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a Harvard Business School professor who is an expert on women in leadership. Professor Kanter added that a pioneer in a man’s world, like Hillary Rodham Clinton, also faces scrutiny on many more dimensions than a man — witness the public debate about Mrs. Clinton’s allegedly “thick ankles,” or the headlines last year about cleavage.

Clothing and appearance generally matter more for women than for men, research shows. Surprisingly, several studies have found that it’s actually a disadvantage for a woman to be physically attractive when applying for a managerial job. Beautiful applicants received lower ratings, apparently because they were subconsciously pegged as stereotypically female and therefore unsuited for a job as a boss.

Female leaders face these impossible judgments all over the world. An M.I.T. economist, Esther Duflo, looked at India, which has required female leaders in one-third of village councils since the mid-1990s. Professor Duflo and her colleagues found that by objective standards, the women ran the villages better than men. For example, women constructed and maintained wells better, and took fewer bribes.

Yet ordinary villagers themselves judged the women as having done a worse job, and so most women were not re-elected. That seemed to result from simple prejudice. Professor Duflo asked villagers to listen to a speech, identical except that it was given by a man in some cases and by a woman in others. Villagers gave the speech much lower marks when it was given by a woman.

Such prejudices can be overridden after voters actually see female leaders in action. While the first ones received dismal evaluations, the second round of female leaders in the villages were rated the same as men. “Exposure reduces prejudice,” Professor Duflo suggested.

Women have often quipped that they have to be twice as good as men to get anywhere — but that, fortunately, is not difficult. In fact, it appears that it may be difficult after all. Modern democracies may empower deep prejudices and thus constrain female leaders in ways that ancient monarchies did not.

Link to article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/opinion/10kristof.html

Was It Only a Game? by Dick Cavett

Published in the New York Times, February 8, 2008, 8:11 pm

Among this year’s worst news, for me, was the death of Bobby Fischer.

Telling a friend this, I got, “Are you out of your bloody mind? He was a Nazi-praising raving lunatic and anti-Semite. Death is too good for him.”

He did, indeed, become all that. But none of it describes the man I knew.

Towering genius, riches, international fame and a far from normal childhood might be too heady a mix for anyone to handle. For him they proved fatal.

I’m still sad about his death. In our three encounters on my late-night show, I became quite fond of him.

Viewing the tapes of those memorable appearances, a licensed professional in the field of psychiatry might see foreshadowings of the savage illness that eventually engulfed him. I didn’t.

Some years back, the writer Rene Chen was working on a book about Fischer, and confessed to being unprepared for the maddening — and maddened — thing that the poor man had become.

Getting low on advance money, and having learned that Fischer had been on my show several times, Chun asked if there were any way he could see these “invaluable documents — short of unaffordable fees.” I sent them to him.

He had written me about a still picture he’d found:

Thought you might like to see this photo. When I came across it recently, I was struck by the warmth it transmits to the viewer. Both of you look like you are having a fabulous time. Studying the photo it’s obvious that these two men genuinely like each other. Fischer is clearly comfortable with you.

If you screen Fischer’s Tonight Show appearance, which aired shortly after his ‘72 victory, the enigmatic chess champ comes off well, but doesn’t look nearly as comfortable or spontaneous during the course of 15 minutes as he does here in a single frame. Of course, this is just an isolated image. One would have to see the entire show to make a judgment. But I suspect that the Fischer in your interviews is a Fischer we haven’t seen before. The famous 60 Minutes piece that aired just before the ‘72 match depicts a totally different Fischer — anxious, guarded, serious as hell.…

You were lucky enough to be the only media person that Fischer seemed to be completely at ease with. Taping not one, but several interviews with you speaks volumes about your character and integrity. [I’ll be the judge of that. — D.C.]

Fischer could smell a show biz phony in an instant….

*********************

It must seem strange to people too young to remember that there was once a chess champion — of all things — who became arguably the most famous celebrity on earth. And that his long-anticipated match against the reigning Russian champion, Boris Spassky, was broadcast and watched worldwide as if it were the Super Bowl, except that chess drew a much bigger audience.

There was another element that added to the drama. With Fischer the American and Spassky the Russkie, the monumental match was seen as a Cold War battle.

The Russian chess champions considered themselves the undoubted best. Time out of mind the Soviet chess dynasty had reigned supreme, viewing themselves as a rightful symbol of Soviet superiority in all fields.

PBS broadcast the drama in sports fashion, complete with play-by-play commentary by Shelby Lyman, who himself became a household name. People stayed home from work, glued to their sets, and PBS got its highest ratings ever. The country and the world became chess-crazy. And Fischer-crazy. Chess sets, dusty on the shelves, suddenly sold in the millions.

We ordinary mortals can only try to imagine what it might feel like to be both young and so greatly gifted at a complex art. And to be better at it than any other living being, past or present. There are plenty of geniuses and lots of famous people, but few are both. Is anyone really capable of surviving such a double burden?

We assume that geniuses are blessed creatures who don’t have to work hard to achieve their goals. Hard for us, easy for them. But Bobby as a kid — IQ pushing 200 — put in 10 to 15 hours a day of brain power and heavy concentration that would kill an ordinary person. (Or at least me.)

The chess world was already well aware of this kid prodigy. But they were unprepared for him to suddenly go up against the acknowledged top player of the day in the United States Chess Championship. And win — at the age of thirteen. When asked what happened, he said, “I got better.”

What does such dedication to seemingly unreachable goals — until he reached them — do to the rest of you, the over-achiever? Touchingly, when he returned to my show after having disposed of Spassky, triumphant in the eyes of the world, he opined that he might be wise to try developing some of the rest of himself. He had begun to see that a life of nothing but chess was “kind of limited.” (He went to dinner in Reykjavik with friends. “Bobby couldn’t follow the conversation,” one said. “He sort of backed into the corner, got out his little pocket chess set and played with himself.”) He announced on my show that he was now “reading a lot of magazines, trying to keep up with what’s going on in the world.” He was still in his twenties.

Until the advent of Bobby Fischer, my image of a young chess genius was not flattering. I pictured a sort of wizened and unpopular youth, small of frame, reclusive, short, with messy hair, untended acne, thick glasses and shirt sticking out in back. And also perhaps, as the great V. Nabokov wrote in describing somewhat genderless piano prodigies with eye trouble, obscure ailments, “and something vaguely misshapen about their eunuchoid hindquarters.”

**********

Getting Fischer on my show that first time, before the big match, was considered a major catch at the time. If anyone in the audience shared my image of what a chess genius probably looked like, Bobby’s entrance erased it.

Here was no Nabakovian homunculus. There appeared, somewhat disconcerted, a tall and handsome lad with football-player shoulders, impeccably suited, a little awkward of carriage and unsure how to negotiate the unfamiliarity of the set, the bright lights, the wearing of make-up, the band music, the hand-shaking and the thundering ovation — all at the same time. I had hoped to avoid the cliché “gangling,” but Bobby gangled. He sort of lurched into his chair.

Once seated, he was something to behold. Six foot two (tall in those days), athletic in build, perfect in grooming, and with striking features. The face radiated intelligence. You couldn’t confuse him with anyone you’d ever seen.

And there were the eyes.

Cameras fail to convey the effect of his eyes when they were looking at you. A bit of Svengali perhaps, but vulnerable. And only the slightest hint of a sort of theatrical menace, the menace that so disconcerted his opponents.

Looking out over the audience, I could clearly see entranced women gazing at him as if willing to offer their hearts — and perhaps more — to the hunky chess master.

When I asked him about such matters, he said that the awful demands of his life — the global travel; the constant study, sometimes until dawn, followed by play; the punishing five-hour sessions at full concentration, day after day — all this made it “pretty hard to . . . [hesitates] . . . build up a relationship.” He seemed quite surprised with himself, as did friends watching, that he had allowed so revealing a moment. (That old Cavett magic, no doubt.)

One thing he said in that first appearance became famous. At one point I asked him what, in terms of thrills, the chess equivalent might be of, say, hitting a home run. His answer: “I like the moment when I break a man’s ego.” There was a trace of a chill in his laughter.

For me, watching the Fischer shows after all this time contained quite a few surprises. For example, I winced watching the first one when I heard myself use the word “paranoid.” That awful word that in the later, bad years became almost part of Bobby’s name. But back then it passed unnoticed.

On the post-Spassky show it was Bobby himself who uttered the p-word. I re-winced. He claimed that Harold C. Schonberg, then the Times’ music and chess critic, “said I was paranoid.” Somehow the joker in me came up with, “No he didn’t. You’re imagining it.”

Happily he got the joke — a beat before the audience did — and laughed heartily. (People who who knew him were in disbelief that he could actually laugh and be funny on the show.)

He didn’t know it, but I had spotted him earlier that day. We were walking to my studio at the same time, but from opposite directions. He towered over passersby who would stop in their tracks and gaze worshipfully. From a distance, you could see the consonants in his name on their lips: B, F. He seemed unaware of them, with his ever-present little transistor radio clapped to his ear like a teenager.

He had come to like soul music, he said.

That night Tony Randall was on, which Bobby enjoyed, and both of us inquired about his reported loutish behavior in Reykjavik that nearly prevented the Great Match from happening, what with his incessant demands and threats to walk out and accusing the Russians of cheating and demanding to have the swimming pool to himself. (They had actually promised him that in their eagerness to get him.) Bobby, looking thoughtful, surprised lots of people with, “I’m afraid that a lot of what I did was . . . not too bright.” [Friendly laughter]

Crazy as it sounds, the paranoia was not all on one side in Reykjavik. The Russians demanded that Bobby’s chair be taken apart, so they could look for a hidden device that Spassky thought might be causing him to feel hypnotized. Bobby loved it.

Randall had vastly amused the audience when he told a story about a piece of hate mail that came to him not at his own show but, of all places, at the old “Opera Quiz” weekend radio show with its presumably cultured and genteel limited audience. Tony was a sometime panelist. The nasty letter began, “The only thing more disgusting than watching a faggot like you on television is when you go on Dick Cavett’s and having to watch you two faggots sit there together, yakking like two faggots,” etc. The audience was hysterical.

Fischer, having watched this from backstage, came out to a long ovation. Wanting to dispel the myth that he and Spassky were non-speaking enemies, he insisted that despite all the gossipy press to the contrary, he and Boris were truly quite good friends, and went bowling together. “Really buddy-buddy,” he said, adding, “not like you two, of course.” [Booming laughter.])

Tony asked him if he’d like to be on “The Odd Couple.” Bobby’s “maybe” fetched a healthy laugh.

With a little pressing about could he imagine another life for himself, he confessed to having given some thought to becoming an actor. If he had been able to use all that was in him, he might have proved a forerunner of the genius actor, Javier Bardem. Fine actors can use a touch of madness. (Geo. C. Scott, with several touches, comes to mind.) Bobby had acquitted himself stylishly as a guest on “The Bob Hope Show.” Strange to think that at that time Bobby was known to even more people even than his world-famous host. I couldn’t help wondering if Bobby F. knew who Bob H. was until then. “He’s a funny guy,” Bobby allowed.

**********

Our mental health advisers, shrinks and friends advise us to avoid guilt at all costs. But they don’t tell you how. There seems to be an unlimited number of guilts available to us. When someone we know — or are related to — comes apart and deteriorates physically and mentally and commits suicide, don’t most of us think, “Maybe I’d have been the one who could have made the difference; done or said this or that and saved the poor soul?” How much of such thinking is charitable and how much egotistical? For a time I was pained by that thought that I might have been Bobby’s salvation. But then we comfort ourselves, concluding that of course it would have been too late. And then, alas, comes, But would it have been?

I like to think I would have gladly boarded a plane and tracked Bobby down — in wichever of his far-flung refuges around the globe he was holing up in — and tried to be of help. But how would he have, as they say, received me? Would I still be one of the few (some said only) people Bobby ever really liked? Might pathology have erased memory? Would I have been utterly forgotten? Or a Jew bastard, sent to further hurt him? (Bobby’s mother was Jewish, as was his biological father, who left when Bobby was two.)

The thought that he might have been delighted to see me and that I might have brought him even brief pleasure — parted the clouds for him for a while — is hard to think about. Because it means I should have done it. This is going to always haunt me.

Somewhere on the internet I ran across a picture of the later, ailing Bobby. I don’t know where it was and don’t want to see it again.

It’s a color head-shot. It’s not pleasant to see how the magnificent edifice had crumbled. He looks ancient, is balding and that great face that shone with intelligence is all but hidden by a massive growth of white beard. It could be an actor playing King Lear. He is facing the camera but the eyes are cut sharply to one side. They look both suspicious and frightened. Those great Fischer eyes of old have been replaced. They’re not these.

**********

I’m surprised in writing this how much emotion there still is in the subject for me. There’s no story like it: genius kid, precocious, plunged into triumphant victory, money and world fame — no one under 30 should be subjected to fame — then gradual decline into raving lunatic. “Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

You’d think, with all the hells Bobby descended through in his allotted 68 years, that those gods could have spared him the agony of kidney disease — a notoriously painful way to die. A Sioux friend of mine likes to quote, “Count no man lucky until he has had a good death.” If there be such a thing as a place of rest, I hope that Robert James Fischer has found it.

I’ve sat for a while trying to figure out how to close A faint glimmer of a bit of poetry had been swimming elusively in my head, just out of reach. And then it emerged.

It’s from E.E.Cummings’ famous poem about another lionized and legendary figure who, after triumph and glamour, also did not have “a good death”: Buffalo Bill.

With Cummings’ quirky punctuation, it’s a short poem, with no title but referred to by its first three words: “Buffalo Bill’s / defunct.”

Its closing lines somehow seem appropriate here. They are:

Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what I want to know is
how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death

Link: http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/was-it-only-a-game/

60 Minutes: Interrogator Shares Saddam's Confessions

Tells 60 Minutes Former Iraqi Dictator Didn't Expect U.S. Invasion --Jan. 27, 2008

(CBS) For a man who drew America into two wars and countless military engagements, we never knew what Saddam Hussein was thinking. But you are going to hear more than has ever been revealed before.

After his capture, Saddam met every day with one man, an American he knew as "Mr. George." George is FBI agent George Piro, who was the front man for a team of FBI and CIA analysts who were trying to answer some of the great mysteries of recent history. What happened to the weapons of mass destruction? Was Saddam in league with al Qaeda? Why did he choose war with the United States?

As correspondent Scott Pelley reports, Piro is the man who came to know Saddam better than anyone, as they sat face to face in a windowless room.

---

"I purposely put his back against the wall. And then mine against the door, psychologically to tell him that his back was against the wall in the interview room. And that I stood between him and the door, psychologically. Between him whether it's to go back to his cell, freedom, whatever he was projecting to be outside of that door. I was kind of that psychological barrier between him and the door," Piro recalls.

Just weeks after being pulled from a hole in the ground by U.S. Special Forces after a nine-month manhunt, Saddam Hussein was placed in the hands of George Piro.

Piro says he called the former dictator "Mr. Saddam," and that Hussein began to call the agent "Mr. George." "Over time though, in private, it changed to just Saddam and George," Piro remembers.

Asked if Hussein ever knew who Piro really was, the agent says, "No."

Piro is an American success story. Born in Lebanon, his family escaped the civil war there and moved to the States when he was 12. After enlisting in the Air Force, Piro became a policeman in California. He went to night school to earn the college degree required to apply to the FBI. Piro had been an agent only five years at the time, but was chosen for this assignment for his native Arabic and because it was thought Saddam would identify with a young Arab man on his way up.

Piro's first trick was to make himself appear to be much more powerful than he was. "He didn’t know I worked for the FBI, he didn't know I was a field agent," Piro explains.

"If he found out you were a field agent for the FBI, what do you think his reaction would have been?" Pelley asks.

"I think initially he would have been angry. He would feel that I was way beneath him, and would not respond well to the interrogation. Or even to me," Piro says.

"I wonder who did Saddam think you were answering to?" Pelley asks.

"I think he thought, and actually on a couple of occasions talked around the issue that I was directly answering to the president," Piro says.

Piro says Saddam thought "Mr. George" was in direct contact with President Bush, but that in reality he never was.

But Saddam wouldn't have guessed, especially after seeing the charade Piro rehearsed with the guards in the jail. "At times we would rehearse where I would yell out some instructions, and they would literally start running around in panic, trying to accomplish it. And it was all part of our strategy," Piro explains.

Piro says it was all a show for Hussein, and that he established at the very beginning that he was going to be in charge of the dictator.

What did Piro tell Saddam?

"I basically said that I was gonna be responsible for every aspect of his life, and that if he needed anything I was gonna be the person that he needed to talk to," he recalls.

"He would be beholden to you for everything," Pelley remarks.

"Yes," Piro says.

Mr. George controlled the baby wipes that Saddam was fond of. Saddam was a clean freak and he used the wipes to clean his cell and wipe off fresh fruit. Saddam wrote poetry every day, but Mr. George controlled the pen and paper. And in a cell with no windows, Mr. George had the power over day and night.

"We had the guards remove their watches. And the only person that was wearing a watch was me. And it was very evident to him, 'cause I was wearing the largest wristwatch you could imagine. And it was just the act of him asking for the time -- was critical in our plan," Piro says.

"So you controlled time itself," Pelley says.

"Yes," Piro says.

Piro says no coercive interrogation techniques, like sleep deprivation, heat, cold, loud noises, or water boarding were ever used. "It's against FBI policy, first. And wouldn't have really benefited us with someone like Saddam," Piro says.

Why not?

"I think Saddam clearly had demonstrated over his legacy that he would not respond to threats, to any type of fear-based approach," Piro explains.

"So how do you crack a guy like that?" Pelley asks.

"Time," Piro says.

Months of time, during which Piro manipulated Saddam, creating a relationship based on dependency, trust and emotion. Piro alternated between acts of kindness and provocation. He would jar Saddam with video, including pictures of his fall, and the pulling down of his statues.

"I wanted him to get angry. I wanted him to see those videos and to get angry," Piro explains. "You want to take him through those various emotions. Happy, angry, sad. When you have someone going through those emotions they're not able to really control themselves. And they're more vulnerable during the interview."

"When he was watching his statue being pulled down, what did you see?" Pelley asks.

"You could see the anger in his face. He would try not to watch. Look down," Piro remembers. "But you could tell he was angered by it. But at the same time he was trying to keep himself under control."

"What does an angry Saddam look like? Angriest you ever saw him," Pelley asks.

"The angriest you ever saw him, his face got extremely red. And his voice changed," Piro recalls.

"The eyes?" Pelley asks.

"A lot of hate in those eyes. We were talking about what led to the invasion of Kuwait. What led him to want to invade Kuwait," Piro says.

That invasion was in 1990. Back then, Saddam accused Kuwait of wrecking Iraq’s economy by stealing oil and demanding repayment of loans. But Piro learned, for the first time, that the brutal invasion was triggered by personal insult.

"What really triggered it for him, according to Saddam, was he had sent his foreign minister to Kuwait to meet with the Emir Al Sabah, the former leader of Kuwait, to try to resolve some of these issues. And the Emir told the foreign minister of Iraq that he would not stop doing what he was doing until he turned every Iraqi woman into a $10 prostitute. And that really sealed it for him, to invade Kuwait. He wanted to punish, he told me, Emir Al Sabah, for saying that," Piro explains.

The U.S. ejected Saddam from Kuwait, leaving the dictator with no love lost for the Bush family. "He didn't like President [George W.] Bush. He would have liked meeting President Reagan. He thought he was a great leader. Honorable man. He liked President Clinton. But he did not like President Bush, the first or the current," Piro says.

Getting to Saddam's secrets depended on patiently undermining the self confidence of a man who was used to total control. Piro saw an opportunity one night when they flew Saddam to a hospital. They loaded him on a helicopter, manacled and wearing a blindfold.

"And once I saw how beautiful Baghdad was in the middle of the night, so I took advantage of it. I allowed him to look out and the lights were on. There was traffic. And it looked like any other major metropolitan city around the world. And for him to see that. And as I mentioned, you know, big Baghdad is moving forward without you. I mean, little things like that didn't require a lot of suggestion on our part. It made its point," Piro recalls.

Piro even used Saddam’s birthday, a former national holiday, to drive home another painful point. "In 2004, no one celebrated his birthday on April 28th. So the only one that really knew and cared was us. I'd brought him some cookies, and we, the FBI, celebrated his birthday for him."

The cookies, Piro says, he got from his own mother. "He loved 'em. I told them they were Lebanese cookies, which, of course, he was a big fan of the Lebanese people, as he said."

Piro says he told Saddam the cookies were from his mother, and that he appreciated it. But when he told his mom about the cookie gift on his return, Piro says, "She actually slapped me. In the back of the head."

Piro’s mother supplied another gift unwittingly: flower seeds. Saddam was given a small plot behind a high fence where he gardened with his bare hands because he couldn't have tools. Piro and Saddam took walks in the tiny garden and what flowed was a series of revelations.

First, how could U.S. forces have missed him when he was the chief target of 50 air strikes in the shock and awe campaign?

"He said that he was at one of the locations. He said it in a kind of a bragging fashion, that he was there, but that we missed him," Piro says. "He told me he changed the way he traveled. He got rid of his normal vehicles. He got rid of the protective detail he traveled with. Really just to change his signature so he would be much harder to identify."

And what about the body doubles, the decoys? There had been so much intelligence analysis of suspicious video, the man in the river and the man in the glasses.

"I asked him if he had used body doubles and he said no. And never had been any body doubles," Piro says.

"That was an urban legend?" Pelley asks.

"Yes. That's what he claimed. And I pressed him on it and he said that, really there weren't anybody that could play him. No one could fit the role of being Saddam's double," Piro says.

"I wonder, did Saddam appreciate how well you got to know him?" Pelley asks.

"I think he did. He told me that I knew him better than his own sons. Because I actually spent more time with him, than his own sons had as adults," Piro explains.

Piro established complete control, but Saddam had one act of defiance left in him: he staged a hunger strike. "Well, I, as you can imagine I was extremely nervous. I didn't want to be the guy to screw this up," Piro says.

He didn't eat for five days.

Asked how it ended, Piro says, "He eventually did eat. He said that he was so concerned for me because I was, he could clearly tell that I was concerned for his health. And it was starting to affect me. That he was going to eat for me."

"So he did you a favor?" Pelley asks.

"Yes, he did," Piro says.

Asked if anything changed after the hunger strike, Piro says, "Yes. I saw kind of a change in him at that point where he was becoming more and more attached to me emotionally."

"He would want me to spend more time with him. If I didn't spend what he thought was enough quality time I would hear about it. He would want me to spend hours with him. Because I was the only person that was really talking to him. He could share things with me. He would write poetry and then share that poetry with me. Things like that," Piro remembers. "His poetry, which he at that point was writing on a daily basis and reading to me was the means I used to introduce the subject of WMD."

The subject of weapons of mass destruction was the most important mystery Piro was trying to answer. It would take him five months to bring up the question.

Piro debriefed Saddam for the Iraq Survey Group, the people President Bush sent to figure out what had happened to the weapons of mass destruction. Piro's goal was to sit with Saddam month after month to tease out the truth over time and it dawned on Piro that Saddam fancied himself quite a writer: he wrote poetry every day, and in Saddam’s pride of authorship Piro found an opening.

"What did you think of the poetry?" Pelley asks.

"Most of them [the poems] were actually terrible," Piro says, laughing. "Some days I thought I didn't get paid enough to listen to them."

But Piro didn't tell Saddam his real opinion. "I told him they were great," he says.

And with that flattery, Saddam began to boast that he wrote all his own speeches too. That was Piro's chance.

"And I said, absolutely. I saw that. Except there was a couple of speeches that I really didn't see the same writing style. That same passion, emotion that I had seen in his poetry. So I figured those speeches must have been written by someone else. By a speechwriter. And he was kind of surprised. And he asked me what speeches. And I said, 'Well, funny you should ask. And in June 2000 you gave a speech in where you said Iraq would not disarm until others in the region did. A rifle for a rifle, a stick for a stick, a stone for a stone,'" Piro recalls.

That June 2000 speech was about weapons of mass destruction. In talking casually about that speech, Saddam began to tell the story of his weapons. It was a breakthrough that had taken five months.

"Oh, you couldn't imagine the excitement that I was feeling at that point," Piro remembers.

"And what did he tell you about how his weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed?" Pelley asks.

"He told me that most of the WMD had been destroyed by the U.N. inspectors in the '90s. And those that hadn't been destroyed by the inspectors were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq," Piro says.

"So why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk, why put your own life at risk to maintain this charade?" Pelley asks.

"It was very important for him to project that because that was what kept him, in his mind, in power. That capability kept the Iranians away. It kept them from reinvading Iraq," Piro says.

Before his wars with America, Saddam had fought a ruinous eight year war with Iran and it was Iran he still feared the most.

"He believed that he couldn't survive without the perception that he had weapons of mass destruction?" Pelley asks.

"Absolutely," Piro says.

"As the U.S. marched toward war and we began massing troops on his border, why didn't he stop it then? And say, 'Look, I have no weapons of mass destruction.' I mean, how could he have wanted his country to be invaded?" Pelley asks.

"He didn't. But he told me he initially miscalculated President Bush. And President Bush's intentions. He thought the United States would retaliate with the same type of attack as we did in 1998 under Operation Desert Fox. Which was a four-day aerial attack. So you expected that initially," Piro says.

Piro says Saddam expected some kind of an air campaign and that he could he survive that. "He survived that once. And then he was willing to accept that type of attack. That type of damage," he says.

"Saddam didn't believe that the United States would invade," Pelley remarks.

"Not initially, no," Piro says.

"Once it was clear to him that there was going to be an invasion of the country. I mean, did he actually believe that his armies could win?" Pelley asks.

"No," Piro says. "What he had asked of his military leaders and senior government officials was to give him two weeks. And at that point it would go into what he called the secret war."

"The secret war. What did he mean?" Pelley asks.

"Going from a conventional to an unconventional war," Piro says.

"So the insurgency was part of his plan from the very beginning," Pelley remarks.

"Well, he would like to take credit for the insurgency," Piro says.

Central to that insurgency were Saddam’s sons, that is, before they were killed by U.S. forces.

Asked how Saddam reacted to the deaths of his two sons, Uday and Qusay, Piro says, "I was surprised. He didn't show any remorse. He told me that he was, of course, proud of his sons. They died believing, or fighting, for what they believed."

Piro asked Saddam about his son Uday, a notorious rapist and murderer. He pressed him until Saddam didn’t want to hear anymore. "He tells me to stop. Basically stop asking these questions. You don't get to pick your kids. You're kind of stuck with what you get," Piro recalls.

Among the most important questions for U.S. intelligence was whether Saddam was supporting al Qaeda, as had been claimed by some in the Bush administration.

What was Saddam's opinion of Osama Bin Laden?

"He considered him to be a fanatic. And as such was very wary of him. He told me, 'You can't really trust fanatics,'" Piro says.

"Didn't think of Bin Laden as an ally in his effort against the United States in this war against the United States?" Pelley asks.

"No. No. He didn't wanna be seen with Bin Laden. And didn't want to associate with Bin Laden," Piro explains.

Piro says Saddam thought that Bin Laden was a threat to him and his regime.

Saddam's story was verified in interrogations with other former high-ranking members of his government. One striking theme that emerged was just how little we knew about Saddam and how little he knew about us.

"He couldn't understand why we would re-elect our president every four years. In his opinion, it takes years to really understand the job and to be able to do it effectively. So every four years he was joking that he'd have to break in a new president," Piro explains.

"So he didn't have a good understanding of how our system worked?" Pelley asks.

"No. Again, he was relying on movies to get an insight into the American culture," Piro says.

Piro's interrogation of Saddam Hussein gets strong praise from Charles Duelfer, the former weapons inspector who headed the Iraq Survey Group.

Piro’s boss at the Washington field office of the FBI is also highly complimentary.

"The FBI will be celebrating its 100th anniversary this year and I would have to say that the interview with Saddam Hussein is one of the top accomplishments of our agency in the last 100 years," FBI Assistant Director Joe Persichini, who is Piro's boss.

It is an accomplishment made possible by Piro’s language skills, Persichini says, noting that out of 10,000 FBI agents, only about 50 speak Arabic. "We’re out recruiting aggressively in our Middle Eastern communities I think it's very important that we mirror the demographics of society today in the war on terror its imperative that we’re out recruiting and hiring Arabic speaking agents and linguists," he explains.

For his part, Piro credits the team of analysts from the FBI and CIA who helped support his work, providing him with information on a daily basis that allowed him to have extensive knowledge about Saddam. Being a subject matter expert was crucial, says Piro.

"The more you know about your subject, the better of an interview …that you're gonna conduct. You'll be able to recognize inconsistencies, deception, things like that. Plus it really establishes your credibility within the interview," he says.

The Piro interviews with Saddam turned up other revelations about one of the most notorious war crimes of his regime: the use of chemical weapons on Kurdish civilians in 1988. Iraq gassed its own people in something called the Anfal campaign to counter Iranian incursions and Kurdish resistance to his rule.

Piro says Saddam told him he himself gave the orders to use chemical weapons against the Kurds in the North. When shown the graphic pictures of the aftermath, Piro says Saddam reacted by saying, "Necessary."

In fact, Piro says Saddam intended to produce weapons of mass destruction again, some day. "The folks that he needed to reconstitute his program are still there," Piro says.

"And that was his intention?" Pelley asks.

"Yes," Piro says.

"What weapons of mass destruction did he intend to pursue again once he had the opportunity?" Pelley asks.

"He wanted to pursue all of WMD. So he wanted to reconstitute his entire WMD program," says Piro.

"Chemical, biological, even nuclear," Pelley asks.

"Yes," Piro says.

In the summer of 2004, legal custody of Saddam transferred from the U.S. to Iraq. And Saddam had no illusions about what that meant. "Prosecution and execution," Piro says.

When he appeared in court, Piro wanted to show that Saddam had been well treated, so Piro bought him a new suit and an FBI intelligence analyst cut his hair. On Piro’s last day in Baghdad, he brought two Cuban cigars to the jail and sat with Saddam in his tiny garden.

"He told me that we would see each other again, which I knew wasn't going to happen. And then he said goodbye in the traditional Arab manner. And I was a little surprised. I kind of saw him tear up," Piro remembers.

The traditional Arab manner of saying goodbye - three kisses on the cheeks - surprised Piro. "And it made me feel somewhat awkward. To be saying goodbye to Saddam Hussein in that fashion," he recalls.

More than two years later, Saddam went to the gallows. Piro says that Saddam calculated his performance - his defiance, his refusal to wear a hood, so that the last picture for history would not be those humiliating images of his capture. It was, Saddam understood, the last thing he could control.

Piro says Saddam expected to die and that it didn't bother him.

Why not?

"Well, his answer was is he was 67 at the time. He had lived longer than the average Arab male lived in the Middle East. He had a wonderful life. Got to be the leader of the cradle of civilization. And in his opinion, of course, had a significant impact on that country. The region. The world. So he was not bothered by having to face death," Piro says.

"No remorse? No concern for the kinds of things that he had ordered and done?" Pelley asks.

"No. No remorse," Piro says. "No regret."

Link: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/24/60minutes/main3749494.shtml

Arnaldo Jabor: Eu te amo não diz tudo!

O cara diz que te ama, então tá!
Ele te ama.
Sua mulher diz que te ama, então assunto encerrado.
Você sabe que é amado porque lhe disseram isso,
as três palavrinhas mágicas.
Mas ouvir que é amado é uma coisa, sentir-se amado é outra, uma diferença de quilômetros.

A demonstração de amor requer mais do que beijos,
sexo e palavras. Sentir-se amado, é sentir que a pessoa
tem interesse real na sua vida, que zela pela sua felicidade,
que se preocupa quando as coisas não estão dando certo,
que coloca-se a postos para ouvir suas dúvidas e
que dá uma sacudida em você quando for preciso.

Sentir-se amado é ver que ela lembra de coisas que
você contou há dois anos, é vê-la tentar reconciliar você com
o seu pai, é ver como ela fica triste quando você está triste
e como sorri com delicadeza quando diz que você está fazendo
tempestade em copo d'água.

Sentem-se amados aqueles que perdoam um ao outro
e que não transformam a mágoa em munição na hora
da discussão...

Sente-se amado aquele que se sente aceito, que se sente inteiro.
Sente-se amado aquele que tem sua solidão respeitada,
aquele que sabe que tudo pode ser dito e compreendido.

Sente-se amado quem se sente seguro para ser
exatamente como é, sem inventar um personagem para a relação,
pois personagem nenhum se sustenta muito tempo.

Sente-se amado quem não ofega, mas suspira;
quem não levanta a voz, mas fala; quem não concorda,
mas escuta. Agora, sente-se e escute: Eu te amo! Não diz tudo!

"Me ame quando eu menos merecer,
que é quando eu mais preciso."