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The Fast Rise and Steep Fall of Jack Abramoff
How a Well-Connected Lobbyist Became the Center of a Far-Reaching Corruption Scandal

By Susan Schmidt and James V. Grimaldi
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 29, 2005; A01

Jack Abramoff liked to slip into dialogue from "The Godfather" as he led his lobbying colleagues in planning their next conquest on Capitol Hill. In a favorite bit, he would mimic an ice-cold Michael Corleone facing down a crooked politician's demand for a cut of Mafia gambling profits: "Senator, you can have my answer now if you like. My offer is this: nothing."

The playacting provided a clue to how Abramoff saw himself -- the power behind the scenes who directed millions of dollars in Indian gambling proceeds to favored lawmakers, the puppet master who pulled the strings of officials in key places, the businessman who was building an international casino empire.

Abramoff is the central figure in what could become the biggest congressional corruption scandal in generations. Justice Department prosecutors are pressing him and his lawyers to settle fraud and bribery allegations by the end of this week, sources knowledgeable about the case said. Unless he reaches a plea deal, he faces a trial Jan. 9 in Florida in a related fraud case.

A reconstruction of the lobbyist's rise and fall shows that he was an ingenious dealmaker who hatched interlocking schemes that exploited the machinery of government and trampled the norms of doing business in Washington -- sometimes for clients but more often to serve his desire for wealth and influence. This inside account of Abramoff's career is drawn from interviews with government officials and former associates in the lobbying shops of Preston Gates & Ellis LLP and Greenberg Traurig LLP; thousands of court and government records; and hundreds of e-mails obtained by The Washington Post, as well as those released by Senate investigators.

Abramoff, now 47, had mammoth ambitions. He sought to build the biggest lobbying portfolio in town. He opened two restaurants close to the Capitol. He bought a fleet of casino boats. He produced two Hollywood movies. He leased four arena and stadium skyboxes and dreamed of owning a pro sports team. He was a generous patron in his Orthodox Jewish community, starting a boys' religious school in Maryland.

For a time, all things seemed possible. Abramoff's brash style often clashed with culturally conservative Washington, but many people were drawn to his moxie and his money. He collected unprecedented sums -- tens of millions of dollars -- from casino-rich Indian tribes. Lawmakers and their aides packed his restaurants and skyboxes and jetted off with him on golf trips to Scotland and the Pacific island of Saipan.

Abramoff offered jobs and other favors to well-placed congressional staffers and executive branch officials. He pushed his own associates for government positions, from which they, too, could help him.

He was a man of contradictions. He presented himself as deeply religious, yet his e-mails show that he blatantly deceived Indian tribes and did business with people linked to the underworld. He had genuine inside connections but also puffed himself up with phony claims about his access.

Abramoff's lobbying team was made up of Republicans and a few Democrats, most of whom he had wined and dined when they were aides to powerful members of Congress. They signed on for the camaraderie, the paycheck, the excitement.

"Everybody lost their minds," recalled a former congressional staffer who lobbied with Abramoff at Preston Gates. "Jack was cutting deals all over town. Staffers lost their loyalty to members -- they were loyal to money."

A senior Preston Gates partner warned him to slow down or he would be "dead, disgraced or in jail." Those within Abramoff's circle also saw the danger signs. Their boss had become increasingly frenzied about money and flouted the rules. "I'm sensing shadiness. I'll stop asking," one associate, Todd Boulanger, e-mailed a colleague.

Abramoff declined to comment for this article. "I have advised my client not to speak, except in court," said Neal Sonnett, one of his attorneys. A friend of two decades, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), defended Abramoff: "I think he's been dealt a bad hand and the worst, rawest deal I've ever seen in my life. Words like bribery are being used to describe things that happened every day in Washington and are not bribes."

Few of those interviewed would agree to be quoted on the record because of the ongoing investigation by a Justice Department task force. But some who spoke on the condition of anonymity said they look back in amazement at the heady days of Abramoff's rise.

"We weren't outside the box," the former Preston Gates colleague said. "We were outside the universe."
Hints of Trouble

A quarter of a century ago, Abramoff and anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist were fellow Young Turks of the Reagan revolution. They organized Massachusetts college campuses in the 1980 election -- Abramoff while he was an undergraduate at Brandeis and Norquist at Harvard Business School -- to help Ronald Reagan pull an upset in the state.

They moved to Washington, maneuvered to take over the College Republicans -- at the time a sleepy establishment organization -- and transformed it into a right-wing activist group. They were joined by Ralph Reed, an ambitious Georgian whose later Christian conversion would fuel his rise to national political prominence.

Soon they made headlines with such tactics as demolishing a mock Berlin Wall in Lafayette Park, where they also burned a Soviet leader in effigy. "We want to shock them," Abramoff told The Post at the time.

They forged lifelong ties. At Reagan's 72nd-birthday party at the White House, Reed introduced Abramoff to his future wife, Pam Alexander, who was working with Reed. She eventually converted to Judaism and embraced the Orthodox beliefs Abramoff had adopted as a teenager.

Even in those early days, there were hints of the troubles to come. "If anyone is not surprised at the rise and fall of Jack Abramoff, it is me," said Rich Bond, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Abramoff and his crew busted the College Republicans' budget with a 1982 national direct-mail fundraising campaign that ended up "a colossal flop," said Bond, then deputy director of the party's national committee. He said he banished the three from GOP headquarters, telling Abramoff: "You can't be trusted."

Shortly thereafter, Abramoff was running Citizens for America, a conservative grass-roots group founded by drugstore magnate Lewis E. Lehrman. Abramoff was in frequent contact with Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, the Reagan White House's Iran-contra mastermind, about grass-roots efforts to lobby Congress for the Nicaraguan contras, according to records in the National Security Archive.

One of Abramoff's most audacious adventures involved Jonas Savimbi, the Angolan rebel leader who had U.S. support but was later found to have ordered the murders of his movement's representative to the United States and that man's relatives. With Savimbi, Abramoff organized a "convention" of anticommunist guerrillas from Laos, Nicaragua and Afghanistan in a remote part of Angola. Afterward, Lehrman fired Abramoff amid a dispute about the handling of the group's $3 million budget.

Abramoff also worked on behalf of the apartheid South African government, which secretly paid $1.5 million a year to the International Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit group that Abramoff operated out of a townhouse in the 1980s, according to sworn testimony to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

At the same time, Abramoff dabbled as a Hollywood producer, shepherding an anticommunist movie, "Red Scorpion," starring Dolph Lundgren, filmed in Namibia, which was then ruled by South Africa. Actors in the film said they saw South African soldiers on the set. When the film was released in 1989, anti-apartheid groups demonstrated at the theaters. The movie ran into financial difficulty during and after production, but Abramoff produced a sequel, "Red Scorpion 2."
Mysterious Entrance

When Republicans wrested control of the House from the Democrats in 1994, Abramoff turned his focus back to Washington politics. With Norquist's help, he reinvented himself as a Republican lobbyist on heavily Democratic K Street. Norquist was one of the intellectual architects of the Republican Revolution and a muse for its leader, Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), soon to be speaker of the House.

Abramoff also counted on his father, who had a wealth of connections from his days as president of the Diners Club credit card company. Frank Abramoff had once looked into operating a casino in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, U.S. territory that includes Saipan. He introduced his son around, and the Marianas became one of the first important clients of the new lobbyist.

Soon the younger Abramoff developed a key alliance with Rep. Tom DeLay, a conservative Republican from Texas who was working his way up in the House leadership. The two met at a DeLay fundraiser on Capitol Hill in 1995, according to a former senior DeLay aide. The aide recalled that Edwin A. Buckham, then DeLay's chief of staff, told his boss: "We really need to work with Abramoff; he is going to be an important lobbyist and fundraiser."

DeLay, a Christian conservative, did not quite know what to make of Abramoff, who wore a beard and a yarmulke. They forged political ties, but the two men never became personally close, according to associates of both men.

Almost from the start, Abramoff struck some rival lobbyists as a strange figure who operated on the margins. He even turned up as a representative of the Pakistani military when Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto went to Washington in 1995 to seek the return of $600 million the Islamabad government had paid for 28 F-16 fighters. The sale had been blocked by the U.S. government over concerns about Pakistan's nuclear program.

Bhutto's Washington lobbyists were at the Pakistani Embassy savoring her successful meeting with President Bill Clinton when a man in a suit made a mysterious entrance.

"Suddenly, this portly guy steps in and sits down. He says nothing," recalled one of the lobbyists. The Americans asked him to introduce himself. He folded his arms and refused.

"Finally, he says, 'I am Jack Abramoff,' " recalled the lobbyist, a well-connected Democrat. They had never heard of him. Abramoff explained that he was "close to Newt."

The astonished lobbyists for Bhutto learned that Abramoff had traveled to Islamabad and had sold his services to the Pakistani military without the prime minister's knowledge.

In the Senate, Abramoff befriended Republicans and their staffers, along with some Democrats on the appropriations committees. In August 1999, he signed up for the National Republican Senatorial Committee's "Tartan Invitational," in which a half-dozen Republican senators and their aides spent a few days with about 50 lobbyists golfing at the exclusive St. Andrews Links in Scotland.

The following year, Abramoff figured out how to use his clients to fund his own trips to St. Andrews with lawmakers. The first guests were DeLay and his aides.
Team Abramoff

With Norquist's help, Abramoff secured a spot on the transition team for the Interior Department after George W. Bush was elected president in 2000. He tried to place several officials in Interior, including an unsuccessful attempt to land a former Marianas official in the top spot overseeing U.S. territories.

He was able to befriend J. Steven Griles, the deputy interior secretary, e-mails and interviews show. By the sum mer of 2001, Abramoff was referring to him in an e-mail to a client as "our guy Steve Griles." Federal investigators are now looking into whether Griles interceded on behalf of Abramoff and improperly discussed a job with the lobbyist while in a position to affect his clients. Griles denied any wrong doing in recent testimony to the Senate.

Abramoff's team also cultivated Roger Stillwell, the Marianas desk officer at the Interior Department. In a recent interview, Stillwell said he accepted dinners at Abramoff's restaurant, Signatures, and tickets to Washington Redskins games. But he said that all those actions occurred while he was a contract employee at Interior, not a federal worker. He also said he sent Abramoff copies of e-mails he sent to his boss, but he noted that none of them contained confidential information and that "there's nothing wrong with doing that."

Abramoff wallowed in his access, real and imagined. When his crack administrative assistant Susan Ralston bolted for a position with White House political adviser Karl Rove, Abramoff told colleagues he had gotten her the job even though it was Ralston's old boss, Reed, who made it happen, her former colleagues said.

Even glowing profiles in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal noting Abramoff's extensive influence and impressive income were not enough. Abramoff quietly paid op-ed columnists thousands of dollars to write favorably about his clients, including one writer for Copley News Service who disclosed this month that he had been paid for as many as two dozen columns since the mid-1990s.

Abramoff drove his colleagues hard, often e-mailing them late into the night. Many more than doubled their Hill pay when they went to work with him, some earning salaries of $200,000 to $300,000.

"He hired a bunch of white, middle-class Irish Catholic guys who wanted to exceed their parents' expectations," said one of the young lobbyists who himself fit that description. "He was always pushing, demanding. He would say, 'We are a family, we will work 24 hours a day, we will win.' "

Team Abramoff included former staffers to DeLay, as well as to Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), head of the Senate Appropriations panel's Interior subcommittee; Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Administration Committee; Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.), who has served on the key House committee that oversees tribes; and Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), now minority leader.

Abramoff gathered his troops for strategy meetings that were "a great show," rollicking forums where ethical niceties were derided with locker room humor, recalled a former Preston Gates colleague. "Jack would say, 'I gave that guy 10 grand and he voted against me!' " the former associate recalled.

Bill padding was openly discussed, according to Abramoff's Greenberg Traurig e-mails that have been released by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. For example, in April 2000, Abramoff had lobbyist Shawn Vasell working on a monthly invoice to the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, telling him to "be sure we hit the $150k minimum. If you need to add time for me, let me know."

An exasperated Vasell e-mailed back: "You only had 2 hours. We are not even close to this number . . . ." Abramoff's solution: "Add 60 hours for me," and "pump up" the hours for three or four other lobbyists.

The Choctaws were one of a half-dozen Indian tribes who gave more than $80 million to Abramoff between 2000 and 2003. Not only were the tribes paying Abramoff's lobbying firm, they were also paying Abramoff's secret outside partner, Michael Scanlon, who charged the Indians millions of dollars for public relations work and split the money with Abramoff. Scanlon's public relations fees did not have to be disclosed under lobbying rules, thus making it possible for the magnitude of their take from the tribes to be kept from public view. The two dubbed their scheme "Gimme Five," according to e-mails in which Abramoff disparaged their clients as "morons" and "troglodytes."

E-mails show that Abramoff put his money into an array of political and personal projects.

The nonprofit Capital Athletic Foundation, for example, allowed him to schmooze with Washington's movers and shakers at charity affairs. He put a congressional spouse -- Julie Doolittle, wife of the California lawmaker -- on his payroll to plan at least one event. The congressman's office has said that there was no connection between his wife's work and official acts.

The foundation was ostensibly created to help inner-city children through organized sports. There is no evidence money went to city kids, but the foundation did fund some of Abramoff's pet projects: a sniper school for Israelis in the West Bank, a golf trip to Scotland for Ohio congressman Ney and others, and a Jewish religious academy in Columbia that Abramoff founded and where he sent his children to be educated.

Another Abramoff financial vehicle was the nonprofit American International Center, a Rehoboth Beach, Del., "think tank" set up by Scanlon, who staffed it with beach friends from his summer job as a lifeguard. The center became a means for Abramoff and Scanlon to take money from foreign clients that they did not want to officially represent. Some of the funds came from the government of Malaysia. Banks and oil companies there were making deals in Sudan, where U.S. companies were barred on human rights grounds. Sudan was among several oil-rich nations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East that Abramoff eyed as venues for lucrative energy deals. Abramoff told associates he wanted to become a go-to person for U.S. companies seeking to do business with oil-patch nations.

But by early 2003, Abramoff's private dealmaking had spiraled out of control. His religious academy was draining his income, and his restaurants were hemorrhaging money. He told Scanlon in an e-mail that February that he was at "rock bottom" and needed funds immediately. By the next day, he was frantic. "Mike!!! I need the money TODAY! I AM BOUNCING CHECKS!!!"
'Enron of Lobbying'

To Abramoff's rivals in the niche world of tribal lobbying, however, he was still a confounding success.

Team Abramoff was stealing away tribal clients from other lobbyists and charging fees of $150,000 a month or more -- 10 or 20 times what the Indians had been paying to others. Team members did it by touting their ties to powerful Republicans on Capitol Hill and stoking tribal worries that Congress might try to tax casino proceeds. Abramoff and Scanlon also quietly got involved in tribal elections.

Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (N.D.), the ranking Democrat on the Indian Affairs Committee, remembers first hearing "vague complaints" about Abramoff in June 2003 from three Democratic lobbyists. The tribes had traditionally supported Democrats, but Abramoff was capturing them for Republicans, getting them to boost their contributions and give two-thirds to his party.

There was even more buzz on Capitol Hill about Scanlon, the gregarious former DeLay press aide who had become a multimillionaire almost overnight. His old friends were astonished that Scanlon, then in his early thirties, was traveling to the beach by helicopter and living in a waterfront Rehoboth mansion that he bought for nearly $5 million in cash. A Louisiana paper, the Town Talk of Alexandria, reported in September 2003 that the Coushatta tribe paid Scanlon's public relations firm $13.7 million, a figure that amazed tribal lobbyists as well as some of Abramoff's colleagues. It was around that time that one colleague, Kevin Ring, learned from one of Abramoff's assistants that his boss was secretly getting money from Scanlon, according to a source privy to the conversation.

"This could be the Enron of lobbying," Ring told the colleague.

Rival lobbyists, including some Republicans, were comparing notes about what they considered Abramoff's outrageous conduct.

One of them contacted The Post in fall 2003. In early 2004, The Post published a detailed account of Abramoff's tribal lobbying, showing how four of Greenberg Traurig's Indian clients had paid $45 million, most of it in fees to Scanlon's firm. Within weeks, Greenberg initiated an internal investigation, Abramoff was ousted and the Senate Indian Affairs Committee began its own inquiry, which unearthed hundreds of incriminating e-mails from Abramoff's Greenberg Traurig computer files.

Abramoff had another problem that few people in Washington knew about.

He and another old friend from College Republican days, Adam Kidan, had purchased in 2000 a fleet of Florida casino boats for $147.5 million. By 2004, SunCruz Casinos was bankrupt, and the two men were being sued by lenders for $60 million in loan guarantees, accused of faking a wire transfer for the $23 million they had promised to put into the deal.

Even more serious, Abramoff and Kidan were targets of a Florida federal grand jury investigating the SunCruz wire transfer. And local authorities were probing the gangland-style slaying of the man who had sold them the cruise line, Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis.

Greenberg Traurig officials have said that they asked Abramoff to resign in March 2004 over unauthorized personal transactions. They have noted that they had no knowledge of his financial arrangement with Scanlon before they received inquiries from The Post.

However, two months before the firm requested Abramoff's resignation, Greenberg lawyers representing Abramoff in the SunCruz bankruptcy summoned Scanlon to the firm's Miami headquarters to ask about the relationship, according to two people close to Scanlon. Scanlon told them he had paid Abramoff $19 million out of the money he had received in public relations fees from tribal clients. Cesar L. Alvarez, president and chief executive of Greenberg Traurig, said the firm will not comment on any meeting with Scanlon.

By the spring of 2004, the Justice Department had launched an investigation of Abramoff and Scanlon that quickly developed into a multi-agency task force.
Pressure to Plead

Nearly two years later, Abramoff's legal troubles appear to threaten the careers of many of his colleagues and political allies. Sources familiar with the Justice Department investigation say that half a dozen lawmakers are under scrutiny, along with Hill aides, former business associates and government officials.

Two of Abramoff's former business partners -- Scanlon and Kidan -- have pleaded guilty and have agreed to testify about bribery and fraud in Florida and Washington.

Three men have been arrested in the Boulis killing. Two of the three were Kidan's associates; one of them is known to law enforcement as an associate of the Gambino crime family.

Another former Abramoff associate, David H. Safavian -- most recently head of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy in the Office of Management and Budget -- has been indicted on five felony counts of lying to federal investigators about his dealings with Abramoff while he was chief of staff at the General Services Administration.

Within the past year, Abramoff began selling off assets such as his restaurants and has told his lawyers he is broke. He faces the possibility of lengthy prison sentences and stiff financial penalties that could be reduced if he cooperates.

All these developments have added to the pressure on Abramoff to reach his own deal before the SunCruz trial begins on Jan. 9.

Alan K. Simpson (R), the former Wyoming senator who was in Washington during the last big congressional scandal -- the Abscam FBI sting in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in which six House members and one senator were convicted -- said the Abramoff case looks bigger. Simpson said he recently rode in a plane with one of Abramoff's attorneys, who told him: "There are going to be guys in your former line of work who are going to be taken down."

Dozens of lawmakers -- who were showered with trips, sports and concert tickets, drinks and dinners -- are returning campaign contributions from Abramoff and his clients and calling him a fraud and a crook.

Burns, one of half a dozen legislators under scrutiny by the federal Abramoff task force, returned $150,000 in campaign contributions this month.

"This Abramoff guy is a bad guy," Burns told a Montana television station. "I hope he goes to jail and we never see him again. I wish he'd never been born, to be right honest with you."

Former Republican congressman Mickey Edwards (Okla.), usually a defender of lobbying and Congress, said there have always been members who get caught "stuffing money in their pants." But he said this is different -- a "disgusting" and disturbingly broad scandal driven by lobbyists whose attitude seemed to be "government to the highest bidder."

"This is at a scale that is really shocking," said Edwards, who teaches public and international affairs at Princeton. "There is a certain kind of arrogance that in the past you might not have had. They were so supremely confident that there didn't seem to be any kind of moral compass here."

Researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company

December 22, 2005
New York Police Covertly Join In at Protest Rallies

By JIM DWYER
Undercover New York City police officers have conducted covert surveillance in the last 16 months of people protesting the Iraq war, bicycle riders taking part in mass rallies and even mourners at a street vigil for a cyclist killed in an accident, a series of videotapes show.

In glimpses and in glaring detail, the videotape images reveal the robust presence of disguised officers or others working with them at seven public gatherings since August 2004.

The officers hoist protest signs. They hold flowers with mourners. They ride in bicycle events. At the vigil for the cyclist, an officer in biking gear wore a button that said, "I am a shameless agitator." She also carried a camera and videotaped the roughly 15 people present.

Beyond collecting information, some of the undercover officers or their associates are seen on the tape having influence on events. At a demonstration last year during the Republican National Convention, the sham arrest of a man secretly working with the police led to a bruising confrontation between officers in riot gear and bystanders.

Until Sept. 11, the secret monitoring of events where people expressed their opinions was among the most tightly limited of police powers.

Provided with images from the tape, the Police Department's chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, did not dispute that they showed officers at work but said that disguised officers had always attended such gatherings - not to investigate political activities but to keep order and protect free speech. Activists, however, say that police officers masquerading as protestors and bicycle riders distort their messages and provoke trouble.

The pictures of the undercover officers were culled from an unofficial archive of civilian and police videotapes by Eileen Clancy, a forensic video analyst who is critical of the tactics. She gave the tapes to The New York Times. Based on what the individuals said, the equipment they carried and their almost immediate release after they had been arrested amid protestors or bicycle riders, The Times concluded that at least 10 officers were incognito at the events.

After the 2001 terrorist attacks, officials at all levels of government considered major changes in various police powers. President Bush acknowledged last Saturday that he has secretly permitted the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a warrant on international telephone calls and e-mail messages in terror investigations.

In New York, the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg persuaded a federal judge in 2003 to enlarge the Police Department's authority to conduct investigations of political, social and religious groups. "We live in a more dangerous, constantly changing world," Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said.

Before then, very few political organizations or activities were secretly investigated by the Police Department, the result of a 1971 class-action lawsuit that charged the city with abuses in surveillance during the 1960's.

Now the standard for opening inquiries into political activity has been relaxed, full authority to begin surveillance has been restored to the police and federal courts no longer require a special panel to oversee the tactics.

Mr. Browne, the police spokesman, said the department did not increase its surveillance of political groups when the restrictions were eased.

The powers obtained after Sept. 11 have been used exclusively "to investigate and thwart terrorists," Mr. Browne said. He would not answer specific questions about the disguised officers. Nor would he describe any limits the department placed on surveillance at public events.

Jethro M. Eisenstein, one of the lawyers who brought the class-action suit 34 years ago, said: "This is a level-headed Police Department, led by a level-headed police commissioner. What in the world are they doing?"

For nearly four decades, civil liberty advocates and police officials have fought over the kinds of procedures needed to avoid excessive intrusion on people expressing their views, to provide accountability in secret police operations and to assure public safety for a city that has been the leading American target of terrorists.

To date, officials say no one has complained of personal damage from the information collected over recent months, but participants in the protests, rallies and other gatherings say the police have been a disruptive presence.

Ryan Kuonen, 32, who took part in a "ride of silence" in memory of a dead cyclist, said that two undercover officers - one with a camera - subverted the event. "They were just in your face," Ms. Kuonen said. "It made what was a really solemn event into something that seemed wrong. It made you feel like you were a criminal. It was grotesque."

Ms. Clancy, a founder of I-Witness Video, a project that collected hundreds of videotapes during the Republican National Convention that were used in the successful defense of people arrested that week, has assembled videotape of other public events made by legal observers, activists, bystanders and police officers.

She presented examples in October at a conference of defense lawyers. "What has to go on is an informed discussion of policing tactics at public demonstrations, and these images offer a window into the issues and allow the public to make up their own mind," Ms. Clancy said. "How is it possible for police to be accountable when they infiltrate events and dress in the garb of protestors?"

The videotapes that most clearly disclosed the presence of the disguised officers began in August 2004. What happened before that is unclear.

Among the events that have drawn surveillance is a monthly bicycle ride called Critical Mass. The Critical Mass rides, which have no acknowledged leadership, take place in many cities around the world on the last Friday of the month, with bicycle riders rolling through the streets to promote bicycle transportation. Relations between the riders and the police soured last year after thousands of cyclists flooded the streets on the Friday before the Republican National Convention.

Officials say the rides cause havoc because the participants refuse to obtain a permit. The riders say they can use public streets without permission from the government.

In a tape made at the April 29 Critical Mass ride, a man in a football jersey is seen riding along West 19th Street with a group of bicycle riders to a police blockade at 10th Avenue.

As the police begin to handcuff the bicyclists, the man in the jersey drops to one knee. He tells a uniformed officer, "I'm on the job."

The officer in uniform calls to a colleague, "Louie - he's under." A second officer arrives and leads the man in the jersey - hands clasped behind his back - one block away, where the man gets back on his bicycle and rides off.

That videotape was made by a police officer and was recently turned over by prosecutors to Gideon Oliver, a lawyer representing bicycle riders arrested that night.

Another arrest that appeared to be a sham changed the dynamics of a demonstration. On Aug. 30, 2004, during the Republican National Convention, a man with vivid blond hair was filmed as he stood on 23rd Street, holding a sign at a march of homeless and poor people. A police lieutenant suddenly moved to arrest him. Onlookers protested, shouting, "Let him go." In response, police officers in helmets and with batons pushed against the crowd, and at least two other people were arrested.

The videotape shows the blond-haired man speaking calmly with the lieutenant. When the lieutenant unzipped the man's backpack, a two-way radio could be seen. Then the man was briskly escorted away, unlike others who were put on the ground, plastic restraints around their wrists. And while the blond-haired man kept his hands clasped behind his back, the tape shows that he was not handcuffed or restrained.

The same man was videotaped a day earlier, observing the actress Rosario Dawson as she and others were arrested on 35th Street and Eighth Avenue as they filmed "This Revolution," a movie directed by Stephen Marshall, that used actual street demonstrations as a backdrop. At one point, the blond-haired man seemed to try to rile bystanders.

After Ms. Dawson and another actress were placed into a police van, the blond-haired man can be seen peering in the window. According to Charles Maol, who was working on the film, the blond-haired man is the source of a voice that is heard calling: "Hey, that's my brother in there. What do you got my brother in there for?"

After Mr. Browne, the police spokesman, was sent photographs of the people involved in the convention incidents and the bicycle arrests, he said, "I am not commenting on descriptions of purported or imagined officers."

The federal courts have long held that undercover officers can monitor political activities for a "legitimate law enforcement purpose."

While the police routinely conduct undercover operations in plainly criminal circumstances - the illegal sale of weapons, for example - surveillance at political events is laden with ambiguity. To retain cover in those settings, officers might take part in public dialogue, debate and demonstration, at the risk of influencing others to alter opinions or behavior.

The authority of the police to conduct surveillance of First Amendment activities has been shaped over the years not only by the law but also by the politics of the moment and the perception of public safety needs.

In the 1971 class-action lawsuit, the city acknowledged that the Police Department had used infiltrators, undercover agents and fake news reporters to spy on yippies, civil rights advocates, antiwar activists, labor organizers and black power groups.

A former police chief said the department's intelligence files contained a million names of groups and individuals - more in just the New York files than were collected for the entire country in a now-discontinued program of domestic spying by the United States Army around the same time. In its legal filings, the city said any excesses were aberrational acts.

The case, known as Handschu for the lead plaintiff, was settled in 1985 when the city agreed to extraordinary new limits in the investigation of political organizations, among them the creation of an oversight panel that included a civilian appointed by the mayor. The police were required to have "specific information" that a crime was in the works before investigating such groups.

The Handschu settlement also limited the number of police officers who could take part in such investigations and restricted sharing information with other agencies.

Over the years, police officials made no secret of their belief that the city had surrendered too much power. Some community affairs officers were told they could not collect newspaper articles about political gatherings in their precincts, said John F. Timoney, a former first deputy commissioner who is now the chief of police in Miami.

The lawyers who brought the Handschu lawsuit say that such concerns were exaggerated to make limits on police behavior seem unreasonable.

The city's concessions in the Handschu settlement, while similar to those enacted during that era in other states and by the federal government, surpassed the ordinary limits on police actions.

"It was to remedy what was a very egregious violation of people's First Amendment rights to free speech and assemble," said Jeremy Travis, the deputy police commissioner for legal affairs from 1990 to 1994.

At both the local and federal level, many of these reforms effectively discouraged many worthy investigations, Chief Timoney said.

"The police departments screw up and we go to extremes to fix it," Chief Timoney said. "In going to extremes, we leave ourselves vulnerable."

Mr. Travis, who was on the Handschu oversight panel, said that intelligence officers understood they could collect information, provided they had good reason.

"A number of courts decided there should be some mechanism set up to make sure the police didn't overstep the boundary," said Mr. Travis, who is now the president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "It was complicated finding that boundary." The authority to determine the boundary would be handed back to the Police Department after the Sept. 11 attacks.

On Sept. 12, 2002, the deputy police commissioner for intelligence, David Cohen, wrote in an affidavit that the police should not be required to have a "specific indication" of a crime before investigating. "In the case of terrorism, to wait for an indication of crime before investigating is to wait far too long," he wrote.

Mr. Cohen also took strong exception to limits on police surveillance of public events.

In granting the city's request, Charles S. Haight, a federal judge in Manhattan, ruled that the dangers of terrorism were "perils sufficient to outweigh any First Amendment cost."

New guidelines say undercover agents may be used to investigate "information indicating the possibility of unlawful activity"- but also say that commanders should consider whether the tactics are "warranted in light of the seriousness of the crime."

Ms. Clancy said those guidelines offered no clear limits on intrusiveness at political or social events. Could police officers take part in pot-luck suppers of antiwar groups, buy drinks for activists? Could they offer political opinions for broadcast or publication while on duty but disguised as civilians?

Mr. Browne, the police spokesman, declined to answer those questions. Nor would he say how often - if ever - covert surveillance at public events has been approved by the deputy commissioner for intelligence, as the new guidelines require.


Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

December 15, 2005 Edition > Section: New York > Printer-Friendly Version
Test of Mayor's Housing Assumptions Is About To Take Place in Brooklyn

BY JULIA VITULLO-MARTIN - Special to the Sun
December 15, 2005
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/24490

Will households that have paid $700 a square foot or more for waterfront condos be happy living adjacent to subsidized households paying far less? Mayor Bloomberg's 165,000-unit housing plan, a cornerstone of his re-election campaign, is based on the assumption that the answer is yes.

New Yorkers are about to find out if these assumptions are right. The premiere mixed-income project, Schaefer Landing on the Brooklyn waterfront, is scheduled to open by the end of the year. Thought to be the largest project in the country that combines low-income rentals with high-end condos, Schaefer Landing offers 140 "affordable" rental units in one building and 210 luxury units for sale in two adjacent towers, one 15 stories, the other 25 stories.

Tenants are chosen by lottery from a prequalified pool of households earning less than 60% of the census district's median income, which works out to about $37,000 annually for a family of four. The condos are selling for between $390,000 and $1.9 million, many to households from Manhattan.

A Douglas Elliman broker, Helene Luchnick, who is in charge of sales, said that the south tower, scheduled to open in the first quarter of 2006, is entirely sold. The north tower, scheduled to open in the spring of 2006, has sold 104 of its 134 units, not surprising given the spacious apartments and the appeal of nearby public spaces and the waterfront.

Ms. Luchnik is confident the apartments are a smart investment.

"The neighborhood will keep appreciating in value," she said. "We're selling now at an average of $725 per square foot, which means we're far more reasonably priced than Manhattan, where everything is $1,000 a square foot, even in the East Village."

Outside praise for the project is almost unanimous. In October Mayor Bloomberg called it "the key to a greater New York," as future tenants were offered a first look at Schaefer Landing's low-income rental building. "Thrilling," the chairwoman of the City Planning Commission, Amanda Burden, said. Assemblyman Vito Lopez said it was an "outstanding example" of private-public collaboration.

Indeed, the public contribution to the private-public collaboration has been significant. The site landed in city government hands after being abandoned in 1976. Years of failed proposals followed, including an attempt by Mayor Koch's administration to build an enormous incinerator to burn garbage, which was opposed by both residents and environmentalists. A development lawyer, Ken Fisher, who represented several Brooklyn neighborhoods in the City Council during the 1990s, said once the idea of the incinerator was eliminated, neighborhood leaders started looking at the site for housing. "The Giuliani administration was receptive and committed upwards of $8 million to environmental remediation," he recalls. "The site had been a brownfields, a derelict industrial area that had to be cleaned up. In effect, the city agreed to front the money to make the site buildable."

Or as the commissioner of housing, preservation and development, Shaun Donovan, pointed out last year, "We had every kind of subsidy helping that property. Without the government clean-up, Schaefer Landing couldn't have gone forward. And without the deep subsidies, we couldn't have provided 40% affordable housing."

The Giuliani administration signed the papers with developer Kent Waterfront Associates on its last day in office, December 31, 2001. Kent paid $9 million, or about 60% of the site's market value, in exchange for the promise to reserve a large number of apartments for low-income rentals - long one of the most contentious subjects in Brooklyn.

At the time, relations were strained among Brooklyn's politically active, low-income ethnic groups. In particular, Puerto Rican and Chasidic families were warring over public and other government-assisted housing in Williamsburg, upland of Schaefer Landing. Williamsburg has for several years had the largest and fastest-growing community of Chasidic Jews in the country. Puerto Ricans, who pointed out they had been there first, argued they were being pushed out of their neighborhood. Nonetheless, the Giuliani administration named the United Jewish Organizations as the nonprofit partner in Schaefer Landing, meaning they are paid to oversee the lottery that allocates apartments. After objecting initially, the Puerto Rican organization Los Sures agreed to the arrangement. Mr. Fisher said, "My theory was that until you solved the housing problem you weren't going to be able to solve the racial problems."

A dissenting voice on the social value of mixing subsidized and market rate housing comes from a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Howard Husock, who said, "It's sad and scary for the government to set up these permanent welfare-state systems, which cause people to go for each other's throats to get at the goodies. In a normal market system, ethnic conflicts work their way out. You get tolerance and respect via the market when everyone is paying a market price. Here the government inflates the cost for one group and subsidizes the cost for the lucky few."

And the few are indeed lucky, provided with the same amenities - including a gym, a library, and public gardens - as the tenants paying market rate, developer Don Capoccia, who is the managing principal in the project, said. Perhaps more important, all residents will have access to the project's way of compensating for the lack of public transportation: a shuttle bus to nearby subway lines and water taxi service to downtown Manhattan leaving every 20 minutes during morning and afternoon rush hours.

Mr. Capoccia believes enough in the future of the project to move in himself. He has bought the large, front penthouse at the top of the 25-story north building - at full market price, he emphasizes. Familiar as he is with his project, he still gives a little gasp of awe as he walks onto what will be his wraparound terrace. All of New York can be seen, including its suburban hinterland in the distance and its harbor below. Mr. Capoccia is confident that the views and waterfront location will sell the apartments, which will prove to be one of the city's best investments. "You're going to see residential and some good retail all up the waterfront," he says, gesturing toward the recently rezoned area that starts at the northern border of the site. "In 10 years, it won't look anything like what it looks like now."

He's surely correct, another developer, Paul Travis, said. Brooklyn has seen its building permits more than double over the last 10 years to some 22,000 annually. It is now a "destination borough," Mr. Travis said. "People moving to New York now often move straight to Brooklyn, not because it's a second choice, but because it's the first choice that only Manhattan, of all the boroughs, once was."

December 15, 2005 Edition > Section: New York > Printer-Friendly Version

Where to Now?

By William Raspberry
Monday, December 12, 2005; A25

The beginning of the week usually finds me in Durham, N.C., preparing for the classes I teach at Duke University. But this was fall break, and I didn't have to make the trip.

Instead -- almost without thinking about it -- I dressed and headed for The Post, where I busied myself with various journalistic chores.

And then it hit me: Where will I go next fall break -- and spring break, and all those other free-from-school times? What will I do to get out of the house?

At the end of this month, I'll be retiring from the newspaper where I've worked for more than 43 years, and I had already been going through the process of redefining my existence without The Post. But this was a new worry: How does a retired guy get out of the house?

Let me be clear: This is not a commentary on my marriage. I've enjoyed 39 years with a wonderful woman, and I'd happily sign up for as many more. No, the getting-out-of-the-house quandary is as much about her as me. You may have seen the story by my Post colleague Anthony Faiola concerning a new disorder being treated by Japanese mental health therapists: RHS, or retired husband syndrome.

Apparently, Japanese wives have grown used to playing something of a servant's role to their husbands -- making their dinner when they come home from work, seeing to their well-being and so on.

But listen to one desperate Japanese housewife's reaction to her husband's beaming announcement that he was retiring:

" 'This is it,' I remember thinking. 'I am going to have to divorce him now.' . . . It was bad enough that I had to wait on him when he came home from work. But having him around the house all the time was more than I could possibly bear."

I don't consider myself a particularly high-maintenance husband, but Sondra can't possibly cherish the prospect of having both a lot less income and a lot more husband invading the space she surely must think of as primarily hers.

But how to save her sanity -- and mine?

One helpful friend to whom I put the dilemma pointed me to Ray Oldenburg's 16-year-old book, "The Great Good Place," wherein he laments the loss of what he calls "third places" in American life. The first place, of course, is home; the second is work. Third places, in Oldenburg's taxonomy, are those informal gathering spots where one finds not just escape but camaraderie, conversation, friendly argument and pleasant conversation with regulars.

I read his description of -- his paean to -- third places, and I think of old-time barbershops, where barbering was largely a backdrop for an informal social life; of chess players in the city park, where the only admission ticket is a delight in the game and where opponents need know little more about you than your first name; and of small-town diners where regulars dawdle for hours over coffee and pie.

But all these are Norman Rockwell vignettes. Barbershops, even if they haven't gone unisex, are unmistakably about business these days, and I wouldn't urge you to dawdle too long without spending money at Starbucks. Commercialization and suburbanization are crushing the life out of third places.

At least in America. Irish pubs, German biergartens , Moroccan tea shops, French neighborhood cafes -- all are hangouts of regulars who seem to check their titles and status at the door. Or at any rate, potential regulars, for, as Oldenburg points out, admittance may be free, but "membership" happens only after the regulars get to know and trust you.

"The Great Good Place" argues that third places build community, social capital and civic solidarity. Perhaps, but my immediate worry is that they won't be there for me when I need them.

I suppose a case could be made for the gym as a latter-day third place. Likewise the beauty salon or the sports bar. But listen to Oldenburg:

"The lure of a third place depends only secondarily upon seating capacity, variety of beverages served . . . or other features. What attracts the regular visitor to a third place is supplied not by management but by fellow customers. . . . It is the regulars who give the place its character and who assure that on any given visit some of the gang will be there."

And that describes perfectly the newsroom of The Post, except that it was -- and is -- a job site. I need a new third place.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

The New York Times
December 8, 2005
Found: Old Wall in New York, and It's Blocking the Subway
By PATRICK McGEEHAN

Three weeks after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority started digging a subway tunnel under Battery Park, the project hit a wall. A really old wall. Possibly the oldest wall still standing in Manhattan.

It was a 45-foot-long section of a stone wall that archaeologists believe is a remnant of the original battery that protected the Colonial settlement at the southern tip of the island. Depending on which archaeologist you ask, it was built in the 1760's or as long ago as the late 17th century.

Either way, it would be the oldest piece of a fortification known to exist in Manhattan and the only one to survive the Revolutionary War period, said Joan H. Geismar, president of the Professional Archaeologists of New York City.

"To my knowledge, it's the only remain of its kind in Manhattan," Ms. Geismar said. "It's a surviving Colonial military structure. That's what makes it unique."

Among the items found around the wall are a well-preserved halfpenny coin dated 1744 and shards of smoking pipes and Delft pottery, said Amanda Sutphin, director of archaeology for the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission.

"It's one of the most important archaeological discoveries in several decades in New York City," said Adrian Benepe, commissioner of the city's Department of Parks and Recreation. "Everybody knows that the Bronx is up and the Battery's down. But I don't think anybody anticipated that the Battery was 10 feet down."

Some city officials are excited about the discovery because of what it might teach historians and tourists about life in New York under British rule.

But its discovery has posed a problem for transit officials, who are in a hurry to replace the 100-year-old South Ferry station.

Ms. Geismar and other archaeologists said it was too soon to say exactly when the wall was built or by whom. Most likely, it is the base of a barrier at what was then the shoreline, built to protect soldiers as they fired guns and cannons at attacking ships, they said.

Several historians and archaeologists interviewed about the find said they did not have enough information to compare its significance with other discoveries in Lower Manhattan. In 1979, the walls of the Lovelace Tavern, which was built in 1670, were found during excavation for the building at 85 Broad Street that now serves as the headquarters of Goldman Sachs. And in 1991, digging for a federal building a block north of City Hall turned up the African Burial Ground that dates from the early 1700's. In both cases, at least some of the remains were preserved.

A battery wall appears on maps from the 1760's, but some archaeologists said they have a hunch that this wall may predate that one by as much as 60 years. Some say the discovery of the coin near the base dates it to at least the 1740's. There is no way to tell for sure exactly how old the wall is, but the archaeologists want to study the material in and around it.

What is clear about the battery wall, which sits on bedrock about nine feet below street level, is that it is in the way of the transportation authority's plan to build a section of tunnel for the No. 1 train that will connect to a new South Ferry station.

The authority planned to spend about $400 million on the project, which began in late 2004 and is scheduled to be completed in two years. The money came from the Federal Transit Administration after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.

But the authority has not estimated how much the discovery will add to the cost of the project or to its duration, said Tom Kelly, an M.T.A. spokesman.

"It's premature to discuss this thing at all, other than to say that we have made this find and we are protecting it," Mr. Kelly said.

The authority's handling of the site has already rankled some preservationists.

When an excavation crew discovered the eight-foot-thick wall in early November, it was one continuous stretch of cut and mortared stones about 45 feet long, archaeologists familiar with the project said. But pictures and drawings produced by the authority's employees show that the wall is now in two smaller pieces about 10 feet apart. The gap, the archaeologists said, was created by the steel claw of a backhoe before they could halt work at the site.

For the past month, work on the tunnel there has been at a standstill while officials of the various city agencies involved have debated how to proceed with construction of the tunnel while preserving some or all of the wall.

The authority's contractor on the project, Schiavone Construction of Secaucus, N.J., was being paid extra to complete its work in Battery Park quickly so that the park could reopen by summer. In exchange for the right to tear up the park, the authority agreed to spend more than $10 million cleaning up the mess and helping to reconfigure the park as the Parks Department has envisioned. That redesign would include a new bicycle path to link the riverfront on the east and west sides.

But the contractor is already a few weeks behind schedule, and engineers are concerned about a prolonged delay. One idea the authority floated was to remove a three-foot-long section of the wall to be preserved elsewhere, then plow ahead with the excavation.

Mr. Benepe and Robert B. Tierney, the chairman of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, said they had been assured that no decisions had been reached on the matter.

"I'll talk to Parks about that and look at the options and see how much could be and should be preserved," Mr. Tierney said.

The unease among the various officials was apparent yesterday when archaeologists from the preservation commission and representatives of the Parks Department arrived at the site, which has been cordoned off with a plywood fence. A group of officials from the transportation authority's Capital Corporation turned the visitors away, telling them that the wall had been hidden under wooden planks that could not easily be lifted.

That response came as a surprise to the Parks Department representatives who were preparing to hold a news conference there today with remarks provided by officials including Mr. Benepe and Katherine N. Lapp, the executive director of the transportation authority.

Late yesterday, the various agencies said two planks would be removed to provide a glimpse of the wall, and the news conference today would go on without Ms. Lapp.

The squabbling did not dampen the enthusiasm of the preservationists.

"This is thrilling," said Warrie Price, president of the Battery Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that supports revitalization of the Battery. Ms. Price added that she hoped the wall could be reconstructed, at least in part, above ground in the park.

"If these stones are able to be reused," she said, "it would be wonderful to be able to actually touch this history."

* Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

Without Health Insurance

by Joshua Brustein
December 5, 2005

A woman from Pastor Ebenezer Martinez’s congregation was recently bit by a dog, and ended up spending a week in the hospital. Neither the woman nor her husband had health insurance, and they were worried about the thousands of dollars of medical bills. Martinez is not sure how to help her, or the many others among his South Bronx congregation he knows don’t have insurance. But he does know what they’re going through: He is not covered, either.

Martinez, 54, gave up what he refers to as his “secular job” as a counselor at the Upper Manhattan Mental Health Center two years ago, when he left to become the pastor at the First Pentecostal Church of Jerome Avenue as its only full-time employee. Knowing that the church was not in great financial shape, he hid his medical condition –- he has high blood pressure -– from the board of trustees, so it wouldn’t strain to pay for health insurance. Martinez gave up his prescription drugs, instead taking aspirin when he felt pain in his chest or arms.

“Using aspirin is not the same, but you know, aspirin helps a little,” he said. The prescription "was very expensive.”

Aspirin was not helping enough, however, and Martinez ended up in the emergency room for nosebleeds he couldn’t control. The trip cost him $700, and he still left without a prescription.

Stories like Martinez's are common in New York, where almost a quarter of the population lacks health insurance. True, the percentage of New Yorkers without insurance has been dropping in recent years, largely due to a unique statewide program that allows community groups to sign New York residents up for Medicaid. But health care advocates fear that within a few months this program will end, and the gains that have been made will be reversed.

Public officials are aware of the growing anxiety among New Yorkers. Mayor Michael Bloomberg made a campaign promise that within the next four years virtually every child in the city would have health coverage. The mayor and the city council are also pushing separate efforts to encourage – or force – private employers to give their workers health insurance.

But as it stands today, huge problems remain. People of color are much more likely to be uninsured than whites, aggravating racial disparities in health care. And experts and officials worry that having a large uninsured population is undermining the financial stability of the health care system as a whole.

“From a health care system’s point of view, the uninsured are the single largest structural flaw in the system,” said James Tallon of the United Hospital Fund.

On an individual level, the lack of having health insurance is often devastating financially. Other times it is far worse. Manny Lanza learned that he had a serious brain condition, AVM, after he had a seizure in 2004, and was referred to St Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital for treatment. But for months, the Manhattan hospital reportedly refused to provide care for him until he had insurance. His family labored to get him enrolled in Medicaid, but the delay, they charge, was deadly: Lanza died in his bedroom earlier this year. He was 24 years old. After his death, according to the Post, debt collectors for St. Luke's-Roosevelt called the family demanding payment of $42,000.

THE COSTS OF BEING UNINSURED

About half of New York City residents get health insurance through their work, either receiving it as a benefit free of charge or splitting the cost with their employer. Another quarter of the population receives health insurance through a public health plan like Medicaid or Medicare. Funded by various levels of government, these programs are available to the elderly, the poor, and other disadvantaged populations.

But 1.7 million New Yorkers have no insurance at all. Most, like Martinez, are adults working for small employers, the majority at secular jobs like restaurants or hardware stores. Eighty percent of city residents without insurance are either employed or are the dependents of someone who works.

“There are programs for the very poor,” said Martinez. “But people like me are in between.”

People without insurance are less likely to get preventive care. They often wait until their health problems are too serious to tolerate or ignore, and then arrive at hospital emergency rooms. By this time, health problems that could have been easily addressed earlier have become difficult or impossible to treat.

While it is less effective, the health care received by the uninsured is actually more expensive, both for the patient receiving it and the health care system providing it. Because uninsured patients do not have access to the group discounts that insurance companies negotiate for their clients, they pay higher rates, a burden that has become ever less bearable as health care costs skyrocket. Unpaid medical bills are now the country’s most common cause of personal bankruptcy.

Treating uninsured patients also takes its toll on the hospitals that do so. Dealing with a problem once it has progressed to the point that it warrants an emergency room visit is much more expensive than preventive care; and if a patient cannot pay for this visit the hospital is left to pick up the bill. This burden falls particularly hard on the city’s public hospitals, and is regularly cited as a reason for their financial difficulties.

No one has calculated how much it costs to service the uninsured in New York in particular, but a recent nationwide study showed that the country’s health care system would save between $65 billion and $135 billion if all of the patients it served were insured.

TWO SEPARATE SYSTEMS OF CARE

During the course of their education, students at Albert Einstein College of Medicine spend at least two Saturdays at the ECHO Free Clinic in the South Bronx. The clinic, which provides free health care once a week for those without health insurance, stays busy to the point of being overwhelmed, even though it shuns publicity.

“Word of mouth travels fast, especially when you’re talking about free health care,” said Rus Korets, one of the students who runs the clinic.

Students at Albert Einstein often work at private hospitals during the week, and many are struck by how frequently the medical strategies they have learned in school do not apply.

“I remember the first time I recommended giving an expensive drug, because … in medical school we learn the latest thing,” said Sharmilee Bansal, the clinic’s other student coordinator. “The [supervising physician] just looked at me and said, ‘Do you know how much that costs?’ You learn there are other options.”

The existence of two sets of options based on insurance status amounts to "medical apartheid," according to a recent report (in .pdf format) by advocacy group Bronx Health REACH. In some hospitals, more than 95 percent of patients have private insurance; in others, 90 percent of patients are either uninsured or part of a public insurance plan.

Of the ten hospitals that see the largest proportion of publicly insured or uninsured patients, nine are city-run. But even within the public hospital system -– which officially is supposed to give people equal care regardless of ability to pay -– those with private insurance have access to clinics that those without it do not have, according to the report.

Since 30 percent of African Americans and Latinos in the city don’t have health insurance, as compared to 17 percent of whites, the issue of health coverage cannot be separated from the issue of race, claims Neil Calman, one of the authors of the report. Lack of insurance, he says, is the number one reason that people of color are more likely to lose limbs due to diabetes, less likely to be tested for cancer following abnormal mammograms, and more commonly don’t live long enough to collect social security.

“While there are no longer signs that say ‘Coloreds’ and ‘Whites’ hanging over the doors of our institutions, nearly the same thing occurs when we discriminate based on insurance,” the report states.

While a systematic shift is the only way to change this, said Calman, there are immediate steps that could be taken at the state level. One is to change the way clinics are reimbursed by Medicaid from the current system, which pays clinics relatively little to treat patients with public insurance; the other is to make hospitals that receive public funding to treat poor patients prove that these pools of money are going directly to those who cannot pay for their own care.

PUBLIC HEALTH PLANS

Between 2000 and 2004, New York State reduced the proportion of its population without health insurance by about two percent, at a time when the percentage of Americans as a whole without health insurance rose about 1.5 percent (although, as recently reported in the New York Times, the percentage of children without health insurance is dropping across the country.) In doing so, New York State dropped below the national average of uninsured residents for the first time in over a decade.

These gains were secured entirely by expanding public health programs. Today, New Yorkers are more likely to be enrolled in public health plans than people elsewhere in the country. About 2.2 million city residents are covered by public plans, one million of whom, the city claims, were enrolled in the last year. This is about 80 percent of those who are eligible. (Of course, while officials cite this as a sign of success, it means that 20 percent of those eligible, or over 500,000 city residents, are not enrolled.)
New York State

Over the past several years, New York State increased the number of people who were eligible for programs like Family Health Plus, and Child Health Plus. It also tapped into private groups like community organizations and Health Maintenance Organizations to enroll people in public health insurance.

The federal government prohibits private groups from enrolling people in public health insurance, seeing a possible conflict of interest. But it has waived this restriction for New York State, making it the only place in the country where so-called facilitated enrollment exists. Health advocates estimate that half of all New York City residents who enroll in public plans do so through private groups.

“We love that people can go into the clinic where they’re getting care and sign up for Medicaid,” said Denise Soffel of the Community Service Society.

Funding public health insurance is expensive for all levels of government. The federal government, New York State, and New York City have all shown reluctance at times to support programs that increase the Medicaid rolls. New York’s legal ability to run its facilitated enrollment expires this spring, and late last month the state applied for an extension. But many worry that the federal government will not be inclined to grant it, and that Governor George Pataki isn’t willing to push for it.
New York City

The systematic planning for public health plans takes place in Albany and Washington. But Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently laid out a plan to encourage enrollment. His main goal over the next four years is to enroll all 214,000 children who are eligible for public insurance but not currently covered. He plans to do this by simplifying the application process. Eventually, he hopes, children’s coverage will be automatically renewed.

It is too early, say health advocates, to assess Bloomberg’s plan; its potential success depends on execution. But several expressed some concern that the mayor did not mention a plan to increase enrollment among adults as well, who make up about 80 percent of the city’s uninsured.

In New York, the relationship of local government to public health insurance is different than elsewhere. Unlike most other states, local governments here have to pay a quarter of their own Medicaid costs. This pulls local governments both ways – wanting to provide health care on the one hand, and to cut costs on the other.

The answer, says Bloomberg, is to get more private employers to provide health insurance, which he believes will “offer working New Yorker more choices and save taxpayers money.”
NEW YORK CITY AND EMPLOYER SPONSORED HEALTH INSURANCE

New Yorkers are less likely than people elsewhere in the country to get insurance through work, and the percentage of New York State residents with private insurance actually dropped between 2000 and 2004 (though not as much as it did elsewhere in the country).

Even for large employers who have enough employees to negotiate favorable terms, providing health care is a financial burden. General Motors says it pays $1,500 for health care costs per car it manufactures – more than it pays for steel. It cites these costs as a major reason for recent layoffs.

Manny Lanza died after unsuccessfully seeking care at the St.Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital.

Small employers have less money to spend and less room to bargain. As a result, a third of New Yorkers who work for businesses with less than 25 employees do not have health insurance.

First Pentecostal is on better footing financially than it was two years ago, and it has begun paying for Ebenezer Martinez’s prescription and for trips to the doctor. The board of trustees has also offered to split the cost of health insurance with him, and has asked him to find an appropriate plan.

“In this case I’m blessed,” said Martinez. “But looking for the right plan is not easy. They are very expensive, especially in my case because I’m an individual.” The health coverage he looked at so far ranged from $350 to $500 a month.

Bloomberg hopes to ease the burden on businesses by expanding on existing programs that allow small businesses to band together to secure better rates on coverage. But many say that such programs cannot provide full coverage at affordable rates unless the city subsidizes them heavily.

Not all businesses that fail to provide health insurance can plead poverty, however. When St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital turned Manny Lanza away he was working 50 hours a week at a “part time” job at Wendy’s fast food restaurant.

In an attempt to address the problem, the City Council passed the Health Care Security Act, a bill that requires food retailers with more than 25 employees to spend a minimum amount of money on health care for its employees. This bill would not have helped Lanza, however, because it does not cover Wendy’s. Critics say that the bill is a bid to keep WalMart out of the city, rather than a real solution, and complain that it is unfair to a single industry. Supporters respond by saying that the bill is a test balloon, and want to expand it beyond just food retailers. In any case, the mayor vetoed the council's bill, the council overrode the veto, and it now seems destined to be challenged in the courts.

Health care advocates view the city’s plans to expand employer-based insurance as well intentioned but doubt they will have wide effects. Real systematic change, they agree, is out of the city’s hands.

“All of [these programs] are going to do little teeny things that are going to help certain, limited numbers of people. And they’re important,” said Calman. “But there has to be a total, national solution to the issue. All the rest of this stuff is going to be constantly working around the edges.”

The New York Times
December 4, 2005
A Cleanup That's Easier Legislated Than Done
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

Two years ago, the New York State Legislature passed what it called the most significant environmental legislation in recent memory, the culmination of a seven-year effort to turn many long-abandoned industrial sites into usable properties.

The law, hailed by an unlikely coalition of environmentalists, government officials and real estate interests, seemed to set the stage for economic revitalization in neighborhoods blighted by such sites - in no small part because of tax incentives offered to developers willing to clean up the sites.

In New York City, where many former manufacturing neighborhoods were recently rezoned to allow for residential construction, there was hope that the legislation, known formally as the Brownfield Cleanup Program, would pave the way for badly needed housing.

But two years after the legislation passed, only slightly more than 100 of the state's thousands of industrial sites have been approved for the program. As well, scores of developers, confused about the program's regulations, still have no idea whether they qualify to participate.

Indeed, many private nonprofit organizations hoping to use the legislation to develop housing and other projects in low-income neighborhoods complain that the program excludes smaller, less contaminated sites - like a dump filled with car parts or construction materials - and may prevent new economic development in the communities that were supposed to benefit most from the legislation.

"This law was a very good idea," said Richard G. Leland, an environmental lawyer and chairman of the environmental law committee Real Estate Board of New York's environmental law committee. "But it is flawed in its execution."

Officials at the Department of Environmental Conservation, which is overseeing the program, say many applications have been filed with the state and that they are encouraged by the response from developers and others.

They contend that any new program of this size can be expected to encounter some snags.

"The Brownfield Cleanup Program has made substantial progress since its creation just over two years ago with more than 240 applications submitted to the program in that short period of time," said Dale Desnoyers, the department's official in charge of the program.

But some developers and community groups say the environmental agency, while well-intentioned, is too understaffed to deal with the paperwork and other aspects of a sprawling new program.

In many ways, some legislators and development experts say, the experience of the brownfield cleanup program is emblematic of New York's way of doing business: later and more strangely than any other state in the union. New York was the last former manufacturing center to pass a brownfield law, and it structured its incentive program in a way that seems to favor large developers.

In fact, many of the program's problems, these people say, stem from the Legislature's decision to give tax credits up to 22 percent of the total cost of a project on a brownfield. Most states offer tax credits based only on the cleanup cost, rather than the project's total cost.

If developers here do not spend all their credit, they are eligible for a check for the difference. Participants get protection from lawsuits and a letter when they have completed their work declaring the site clean, which can be useful in attracting investors.

But the generous tax benefits set off a stampede of developers - many of whom were already planning to build before being offered the incentives - that has overwhelmed the environmental agency and led to long delays. The New York Times Company, in fact, sought a brownfield tax credit for its new headquarters in Midtown, but was rejected.

"It is going more slowly than people had hoped," said Michael B. Gerrard, an environmental lawyer with the Arnold and Porter firm.

Some of the most acute frustration with the state has been felt by nonprofit organizations interested in building low- and moderate-income housing. They say their applications - for cleaning up and building on smaller, less toxic sites - have been rejected because those sites are not contaminated enough.

Mathy Stanislaus, a director of New Partners for Community Revitalization, a nonprofit group that develops projects on brownfields in low-income neighborhoods, said the environmental agency had basically decreed that sites available for development had to have been the scene of major toxic spills.

Mr. Stanislaus is not alone in his frustration.

"There are swaths of areas around the Bronx River, in many cases in low- or moderate-income neighborhoods, where those sites are not eligible as defined by D.E.C.," said Linda Shaw, legal chairwoman of the National Brownfield Association, which represents developers who want to develop brownfields.

Mr. Desnoyers of the D.E.C. insisted that all projects get the same consideration, no matter their size or what will ultimately go on them.

Tension has also continued between environmental groups - who generally believe that the most important thing is to clean up hazardous sites, no matter what their ultimate use - and economic development interests that generally believe that a cleanup without a development goal is a wasted opportunity.

"In order to solve a problem you have to agree on what the problem is," said Mark A. Izeman, a senior lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "And when it comes to brownfields, there is no agreement on what the problem is. Every person you speak to has a different reason for why sites are not being cleaned up."

Lawyers and developers point to New Jersey and Pennsylvania as states with easier-to-navigate programs. Those programs, which offer more modest tax breaks than New York's, have produced hundreds of cleaned-up properties since their inception a decade ago. "Pennsylvania is a very streamlined program," said Kenneth J. Warren, an environmental lawyer in Philadelphia.

Thomas P. DiNapoli, the state assemblyman who was instrumental in getting the law passed, acknowledged that New York's program needed work. "It is a very ambitious program with a lot of detail attached to it," Mr. DiNapoli said. "It would have been nice if it had been done faster but it would rather have it done right. As we monitor things, we are open to things being tweaked here and there."

* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company