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VOL. CLXIV . . . No. 56,721
$2.50
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2014
© 2014 The New York Times
Obama Vows a Response
To Cyberattack on Sony
Criticizes Move to Withdraw Film — F.B.I.
Says Evidence Points to North Korea
This article is by David E.
Sanger, Michael S. Schmidt and
Nicole Perlroth.
FAYAZ AZIZ/REUTERS
A boy in an army outfit on Friday in front of the Army Public School in Peshawar, which was attacked by Taliban gunmen.
NEWS ANALYSIS
Crucible of Cuban Zeal Redefines Revolutionary
Pakistan’s Old Curse
By DAMIEN CAVE
After Another National Tragedy Strikes,
Hopes That Outrage Will Bring Change
By DECLAN WALSH
LONDON — Only a week ago,
the Red Mosque seemed a nearly
untouchable bastion of Islamist
extremism in Pakistan, a notorious seminary in central Islamabad known for producing radicalized, and sometimes heavily
armed, graduates.
On Friday evening, though, the
tables were turned when hundreds of angry protesters stood
at the mosque gates and howled
insults at the chief cleric — a
sight never seen since the Taliban insurgency began in 2007.
What has changed is the mass
killing of schoolchildren, at least
132 of them, slain by Pakistani
Taliban gunmen in a violent cataclysm that has traumatized the
country. In the months before the
shocking assault on a Peshawar
school on Tuesday, Pakistan’s
leadership had been consumed
by political war games, while the
debate on militancy was dominated by bigoted and conspiracyladen voices, like those of the
clerics of the Red Mosque.
Now, united by grief, rage and
political necessity, Pakistanis
WASHINGTON — President
Obama said on Friday that the
United States “will respond proportionally” against North Korea
for its destructive cyberattacks
on Sony Pictures, but he criticized the Hollywood studio for
giving in to intimidation when it
withdrew “The Interview,” the
satirical movie that provoked the
attacks, before it opened.
Deliberately avoiding specific
discussion of what kind of steps
he was planning against the reclusive nuclear-armed state, Mr.
Obama said that the response
would come “in a place and time
and manner that we choose.”
Speaking at a White House news
conference before leaving for Hawaii for a two-week vacation, he
said American officials “have
from across society are speaking
with unusual force and clarity
about the militant threat that
blights their society. For the first
time, religious parties and ultraconservative politicians have
been forced to publicly shun the
movement by name. And while
demonstrations against militancy have been relatively small so
far, they touched several cities in
Pakistan, including a gathering of
students outside the school in Peshawar.
Protest leaders believe that the
public will support them. “This
will become a protest movement
against the Taliban,” one organizer, Jibran Nasir, thundered into
a microphone outside the Red
Mosque on Friday.
Though there is little doubt
that the Peshawar massacre has
galvanized Pakistani society, the
question is whether it can become a real turning point for a society plagued by violent divisions, culture wars and the strategic prerogatives of a powerful
Continued on Page A6
CÁRDENAS, Cuba — The
home of Elián González is a simple affair — a one-story ranch,
painted red, with a yin and yang
symbol on an outer wall. His
neighbors are quick to point to it
with pride, along with their town,
a place of revolutionary zeal ever
since Fidel Castro successfully
pushed the United States to re-
turn Elián to Cuba after the boy’s
mother died at sea carrying him
to Florida in 2000.
But Cárdenas is no longer just
concerned with revolutionary
fervor. It is a small but growing
city of contrasts and contradictions — with horse-drawn taxis,
new, bigger houses built with the
wealth earned from Canadian
and European tourists in the
nearby resort town of Varadero,
and American-backed Pentecos-
tal churches that provide drinkable water to residents who no
longer get it from the government.
This epicenter of anti-American pride — where Elián celebrated his 21st birthday on Dec. 6
with a huge parade — is increasingly a microcosm of how much
Cuba has changed, and the direction that the country may be
heading.
Continued on Page A8
Memo to Kim:
Dying Is Easy,
Comedy Is Hard
UPPER MARLBORO, Md. —
“Judge Dawson, he don’t play,” a
parent once said about Herman
C. Dawson, the main juvenile
court judge in Prince George’s
County. And on this Tuesday
morning, Judge Dawson was definitely not in a playing mood.
“Who’s in court with you today?” he demanded of Tanika,
the 16-year-old standing before
him in handcuffs.
“My mom,” she said.
“I know that,” Judge Dawson
snapped.
An honors student, Tanika had
never been in trouble with the
law before. But for the past year,
ever since she was involved in a
fight with another girl at her high
school, Judge Dawson had ruled
her life, turning it into a series of
court hearings, months spent on
house arrest and weeks locked
up at a juvenile detention center
in Laurel, Md.
Most recently, he had detained
her for two weeks for violating
probation by visiting a friend on
the way home from working off
community service hours. Now
he was deciding whether to release her.
“I’m hesitating because I don’t
know whether you got the message,” he said.
Juvenile court judges in the
United States are given wide discretion to decide what is in a
young offender’s best interest.
It’s a moot point, but someone
should have told Kim Jong-un
that “The Interview” isn’t really
about blowing him up. Sure, its
narrative climax features his character
being vaporized by a
rocket-propelled grenade. But its comic
CRITIC’S and emotional high
NOTEBOOK
points come earlier,
when he bonds over hoops and
babes with a dimwitted American
television host. Also, when the
somewhat less dimwitted American played by Seth Rogen has to
hide the business end of a missile
in his rectum.
Now that “The Interview” has
been eighty-sixed after an assault on the computer systems
and corporate image of Sony Pictures that the F.B.I. says was instigated by North Korea, its actual nature will remain a mystery
at least until a good and safe copy
shows up on file-sharing sites.
Having seen it, I can tell you
what you might have guessed:
The only real mystery is how
something this ordinary could
have caused so much agitation.
Before proceeding, some disclosures: I saw “The Interview”
at a media screening at the Regal
multiplex in Times Square on
Dec. 10, six days before the hackers who infiltrated Sony threatened to attack theaters that
showed it. I wasn’t planning to
write about it, and I didn’t pay
undivided attention or take notes.
So this isn’t a review so much as
a slightly hazy recollection, made
hazier by the free margarita provided beforehand. Liquoring up a
preview audience is a pretty good
Continued on Page A3
MIKE
HALE
MERIDITH KOHUT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Cárdenas, Cuba, home to Elián González, is a growing city of contrasts and contradictions.
Judge Locks Up Youths and Rules Their Lives Panel to Advise Against Penalty
For C.I.A.’s Computer Search
By ERICA GOODE
been working up a range of options” that he said have not yet
been presented to him.
A senior official said Mr. Obama would likely be briefed in Hawaii on those options. Mr. Obama’s threat came just hours after
the F.B.I. said it had assembled
extensive evidence that the
North Korean government organized the cyberattack that debilitated the Sony computers.
If he makes good on it, it would
be the first time the United States
has been known to retaliate for a
destructive
cyberattack
on
American soil or to have explicitly accused the leaders of a foreign nation of deliberately damaging American targets, rather
than just stealing intellectual
property. Until now, the most aggressive response was the largely symbolic indictment of members of a Chinese Army unit this
year for stealing intellectual
property.
The president’s determination
to act was a remarkable turn in
what first seemed a story about
Hollywood backbiting and gossip
as revealed by the release of
emails from studio executives
and other movie industry figures
describing Angelina Jolie as a
“spoiled brat” and making racially tinged lists of what they
thought would be Mr. Obama’s
favorite movies.
But it quickly escalated, and
the combination of the destructive nature of the attacks —
which wiped out Sony computers
— and a new threat this week
against theatergoers if the “The
Interview,” whose plot revolves
an attempt to assassinate the
North Korean leader, Kim JongContinued on Page A3
Many, like Judge Dawson, turn to
incarceration, hoping it will teach
disobedient teenagers a lesson
and deter them from further
transgressions.
But evidence has mounted in
recent years that locking up juveniles, especially those who pose
no risk to public safety, does
more harm than good. Most juvenile offenders outgrow delinContinued on Page A14
OZIER MUHAMMAD/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Judge Herman C. Dawson of Prince George’s County, Md., is
more quick than others to incarcerate young offenders.
By MATT APUZZO and MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON — A panel investigating the Central Intelligence Agency’s search of a computer network used by staff
members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who were looking into the C.I.A.’s use of torture
will recommend against punishing anyone involved in the episode, according to current and
former government officials.
The panel will make that recommendation after the five C.I.A.
officials who were singled out by
the agency’s inspector general
this year for improperly ordering
and carrying out the computer
searches staunchly defended
their actions, saying that they
were lawful and in some cases
done at the behest of John O.
Brennan, the C.I.A. director.
While effectively rejecting the
most significant conclusions of
the inspector general’s report,
the panel, appointed by Mr. Bren-
nan and composed of three C.I.A.
officers and two members from
outside the agency, is still expected to criticize agency missteps that contributed to the fight
with Congress.
But its decision not to recommend anyone for disciplinary action is likely to anger members of
the Intelligence Committee, who
have accused the C.I.A. of trampling on the independence of Congress and interfering with its investigation of agency wrongdoing. The computer searches occurred late last year while the
committee was finishing an excoriating report on the agency’s detention and interrogation program.
The computer search raised
questions about the separation of
powers and caused one of the
most public rifts in years beContinued on Page A10
NATIONAL A11-15
INTERNATIONAL A3-10
ARTS C1-6
BUSINESS DAY B1-8
METROPOLITAN
A Socialist Tests the Waters
Russian Dissident in Peril
A ‘Late Show’ Swan Song
A Profit on the Bailout
Raising Students’ Sights
Senator Bernard
Sanders of Vermont has little
chance of being Democrats’ presidential choice,
but he could
shape the dePAGE A13
bate.
Russian prosecutors want to send Aleksei A. Navalny to prison for 10 years on
charges that critics say are intended to
PAGE A9
crush the opposition.
Amid artificial snowflakes, Darlene
Love, below, belted out a soulful “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” for the
final “Late Show With David Letterman” holiday
program. She
first sang the
song for Mr. Letterman in 1986
and vowed not
to reprise it for
another host.
Stephen Colbert
will take over
the show in 2015.
The Obama administration declared a
profitable end to the sweeping federal
interventions in Wall Street and Detroit.
But to critics of big government, those
numbers were beside the point. PAGE B1
At LaGuardia
Community College in Queens,
professors struggle to inspire students who have
often been failed
by the educational
system. The latest
installment in the
Degrees and Difficulties series takes a
look at the uphill battle. THIS WEEKEND
No Regrets From Prosecutor
The prosecutor overseeing the investigation into the death of a black teenager
in Ferguson, Mo., offered a firm defense
PAGE A11
of his role in the case.
A Turkish Rivalry Escalates
Turkey is seeking the arrest of a Turkish
cleric in the United States whose followers are accused of sedition.
PAGE A4
NEW YORK A16-19
Ex-Inmate on Parole Panel
A new member of Connecticut’s parole
board spent 21 years in prison before a
DNA test cleared him.
PAGE A17
PAGE C1
SPORTSSATURDAY D1-6
Postseason Game, Tailor-Made
ESPN created the Camellia Bowl when
two lower-tier college football conferences sought more bowl tie-ins. PAGE D1
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A20-21
Joe Nocera
PAGE A21
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