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Gert Berthold, a forensic accountant who served on a military task 
force in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2012, analyzed 3,000 Defense 
Department contracts worth $106 billion. He said they calculated that 
about 40 percent of the money ended up in the pockets of insurgents, 
criminal syndicates or corrupt Afghan officials. But former government 
ministers told them it was higher. Berthold said few U.S. officials 
wanted to hear about the evidence they uncovered: "No one wanted 
accountability," he said. "If you're going to do anti-corruption, 
someone has got to own it. From what I've seen, no one is willing to 
own it." 
Christopher Kolenda, a retired Army colonel who deployed to 
Afghanistan several times and advised three U.S. generals in charge of 
the war, said the Afghan government led by Karzai had "self-organized 
into a kleptocracy" by 2006. "I like to use a cancer analogy," the 
colonel told his government interviewers. "Petty corruption is like skin 
cancer; there are ways to deal with it and you'll probably be just fine. 
Corruption within the ministries, higher level, is like colon cancer; it's 
worse, but if you catch it in time, you're probably ok. Kleptocracy, 
however, is like brain cancer; it's fatal." 
-- A lot of important information is still being concealed by the 
government. While the agency has turned over previously 
unpublished notes and transcripts from 428 of more than 600 
interviews that were conducted, these documents identify only 62 of 
the people who were interviewed by their names. The names of 366 
others are blacked out. A decision by a federal judge is pending in 
response to a motion to disclose the other names. But The Post chose 
to publish what it has now, instead of waiting for the judge to rule on 
the rest, because these records could contribute to the civic discourse 
Page 17752 
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over President Trump's negotiations with the Taliban and the debate 
over whether to withdraw the 13,000 U.S. troops who remain in 
Afghanistan, which has become a flashpoint in the 2020 campaign. 
The Post attempted to contact for comment everyone whom it was able 
to identify as having given an interview as part of the project. (Their 
responses are compiled here.) 
-- Here are five of the most striking quotes about corruption from 
people whose identities are still redacted in the interview 
summaries: 
1. An unnamed senior U.S. diplomat said the early years were "a dark 
space" with "not much documentation" about who we were giving cash. 
"We had partnerships with all the wrong players," this diplomat 
lamented during an interview in August 2015. "The U.S. is still standing 
shoulder-to-shoulder with these people, even through all these years. 
It's a case of security trumping everything else." 
2. From another unnamed senior U.S. official: "Our money was 
empowering a lot of bad people. There was massive resentment 
among the Afghan people. And we were the most corrupt here, so had 
no credibility on the corruption issue." 
3. From a former National Security Council staffer: "In the beginning, 
the military kept saying that corruption was an unfortunate short-term 
side effect then toward the end the feeling was 'Oh, my God, this could 
derail the whole thing."' 
4. An unnamed State Department official said that U.S. officials were 
"so desperate to have the alcoholics to the table, we kept pouring 
drinks, not knowing [or] considering we were killing them." This person 
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said that the Americans "had no red lines" for cutting off corrupt 
partners. "We didn't spend the money effectively and didn't consider 
the implications," this person told government interviewers. "We 
wanted to keep the country afloat, not to let the country be a safe 
haven for the Taliban and al Qaeda." 
5. An unidentified government contractor said his job was to distribute 
$3 million in taxpayer money each day for projects in an Afghan district 
roughly the size of a U.S. county. He recalled asking a visiting 
congressman whether the lawmaker could responsibly spend that kind 
of money back home: "He said hell no. 'Well, sir, that's what you just 
obligated us to spend and I'm doing it for communities that live in mud 
huts with no windows.-
Presidents say the U.S. is not nation-building in Afghanistan 
-- So often, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. 
Chapter four of Whitlock's six-part series is a narrative, as told 
through these interviews, of how Afghanistan became consumed 
by corruption: "About halfway into the 18-year war, Afghans stopped 
hiding how corrupt their country had become. Dark money sloshed all 
around. Afghanistan's largest bank liquefied into a cesspool of fraud. 
Travelers lugged suitcases loaded with $1 million, or more, on flights 
leaving Kabul. ... Karzai won reelection after cronies stuffed thousands 
of ballot boxes. He later admitted the CIA had delivered bags of cash 
to his office for years, calling it 'nothing unusual.' ... According to the 
interviews, the CIA, the U.S. military, the State Department and other 
agencies used cash and lucrative contracts to win the allegiance of 
Afghan warlords in the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. 
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"In 2002 and 2003, when Afghan tribal councils gathered to write 
a new constitution, the U.S. government gave `nice packages' to 
delegates who supported Washington's preferred stance on 
human rights and women's rights, according to a U.S. official who 
served in Kabul at the time. The perception that was started in that 
period: If you were going to vote for a position that [Washington] 
favored, you'd be stupid to not get a package for doing it,' the 
unnamed official told government interviewers. By the time Afghanistan 
held parliamentary elections in 2005, that perception had hardened. 
Lawmakers realized their votes could be worth thousands of dollars to 
the Americans, even for legislation they would have backed anyway ... 
`People would tell each other, so-and-so has just been to the U.S. 
Embassy and got this money. They said 'ok now I need to go," the 
U.S. official said. `So from the beginning, their experience with 
democracy was one in which money was deeply embedded."' 
"On Aug. 20, 2009, Afghans went to the polls to choose a 
president. ... Right away, reports surfaced of electoral fraud on 
an epic scale — ghost voting, official miscounting, ballot-box stuffing, 
plus violence and intimidation at the polls. Initial results showed Karzai, 
the incumbent, had won. But his opponents, and many independent 
observers, accused his side of trying to steal the election. A U.N.-
backed panel investigated and determined Karzai had received about 1 
million illegal votes, a quarter of all those cast. The outcome put 
Obama administration officials in a box. They had said corruption was 
intolerable but also had promised to respect Afghan sovereignty and 
not interfere with the election. Moreover, they did not want to 
completely alienate Karzai. If there was another vote, many saw him as 
the likely victor anyway. In the end, the Obama administration 
brokered a deal in which Karzai was declared the winner after he 
Page 17755 
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agreed to share some power with his main rival. ... 
"Peter Galbraith, a Karzai critic who served as a deputy U.N. envoy to 
Afghanistan in 2009, was removed from his post after he complained 
that the United Nations was helping cover up the extent of the election 
fraud. An American, Galbraith told government interviewers that the 
U.S. government also stood by when Karzai appointed cronies to 
election boards and anti-corruption posts." 
Afghan women walk past a large portrait of then-President Hamid Karzai in Kabul in 
2004. (Emilio Morenatti/AP) 
It got worse in 2010: "Kabul Bank, the country's biggest, nearly 
collapsed under the weight of $1 billion in fraudulent loans — an 
amount equal to one-twelfth of the country's entire economic output the 
year before. The Afghan government engineered an emergency bailout 
to stem a run on the bank as angry crowds lined up to withdraw their 
savings. Investigators soon determined Kabul Bank had falsified its 
books to hide hundreds of millions of dollars in unsecured loans to 
politically connected business executives, including the president's 
brother Mahmoud Karzai and the family of Fahim Khan, the warlord 
then serving as the country's first vice president. 'On a scale of one to 
10, it was a 20 here,' an unnamed U.S. Treasury Department official 
posted to Kabul as an Afghan government adviser told interviewers. 'It 
had elements that you could put into a spy novel, and the connections 
between people who owned Kabul Bank and those who run the 
country.' ... 
"At first, in public and in private, the Obama administration leaned on 
Page 17756 
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marzal to wily investigate we maw' bank scanaai — not only to 
recover the stolen money but also to demonstrate to the Afghan people 
that no one was above the law. ... For about a year after the 
scandal became public, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, led by then-
Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, made the case a top priority and 
pressed Karzai to take action, three former officials told 
government interviewers. But they said the embassy backed off 
after Eikenberry was replaced by Ryan Crocker in July 2011. ... 
Crocker, as well as U.S. military commanders and others in 
Washington, did not want to risk alienating Karzai, because they 
needed his support as tens of thousands of additional U.S. soldiers 
arrived in the war zone. They also said Crocker and his allies did not 
want Congress or international donors to use the bank scandal as an 
excuse to cut off aid to Kabul." 
-- I spent much of this weekend reviewing more than a thousand 
reader emails about the biggest storylines of the 2010s. There are 
so many thoughtful and interesting answers that I'm excited to highlight 
in the coming days. I'm grateful to everyone who responded, but I'm 
also struck by how few of you mentioned Afghanistan. It's not just 
America's longest war, but also perhaps its most forgotten while 
combat operations are still underway. Whatever your politics, the 
Afghanistan Papers are worthy of your time and attention. After all, 
those who don't learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to 
repeat them. 
Subscribe on Amazon Echo, Goggle Home, Applei:Ion:loam( and 
other podcast players. 
Page 17757 
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Welcome to the Daily 202, PowerPost's morning 
briefing for decision-makers. 
Sign up to receive the newsletter. 
Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker reading the financial page as he waits for a 
hearing in 1980. ( 
K. W. Atherton!The Washington Post) 
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING: 
-- Paul Volcker, a hard-headed economic statesman who as 
chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1987 shocked the 
U.S. economy out of a cycle of inflation and malaise and so set 
the stage for a generation of prosperity, died Dec. 8 at his home 
in Manhattan. He was 92. The cause was complications from prostate 
cancer, said his daughter, Janice Zima. "With influence that spanned 
five decades and seven presidents, Mr. Volcker left as deep an imprint 
on the U.S. economy and financial system as has anyone of his 
generation," Neil Irwin writes in his obituary. "As a senior Treasury 
official in the 1960s and early '70s, he advised President Richard M. 
Nixon on taking the United States off the gold standard. At the Fed, he 
was arguably the second-most-powerful person in the country. ... He 
later counseled President Obama on his response to the 2008 financial 
crisis and proposed a key restriction on speculative activity by banks 
that would become known as the 'Volcker Rule.-
-- The White House and House Democrats are on the cusp of 
finalizing a new trade deal for North America, a major 
achievement for Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that 
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comes even as Democrats prepare to impeach the president. "A 
key party to the talks, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, said 
Monday morning that there was a deal and he planned to meet with his 
executive committee Monday afternoon to discuss it," Erica Werner 
and 
Lynch report. "Support from the AFL-CIO, which opposes 
the existing North American Free Trade Agreement and blames it for 
destroying millions of good-paying manufacturing jobs, would likely 
ensure support from a majority of House Democrats if the deal is 
brought up for a vote. Backing from the AFL-CIO would also indicate 
that Democrats had succeeded in negotiating stronger enforcement 
mechanisms and protections for labor than existed in the agreement 
signed by Trump and the leaders of Mexico and Canada a year ago." 
'Overwhelming and uncontested': Democrats defend impeachment case, predict 
articles by end of week 
THE CASCADING INVESTIGATIONS: 
-- Rudy Giuliani pressed administration officials to dump 
Trump's nominee for ambassador to Qatar and replace her with 
someone else in late 2018. Josh Dawsey, Rosalind S. Helderman, 
Tom Hamburger and Devlin Barrett scoop: "Trump had nominated a 
career Foreign Service officer to ... a key post in a Middle Eastern 
country with tricky regional relationships, an important U.S. military 
installation and vast oil reserves. Giuliani, who has said he had held a 
cybersecurity contract with Qatar in 2017 and early 2018, proposed 
replacing her with someone he said would be a better fit — Scott W. 
Taylor, a Trump-supporting former congressman from Virginia defeated 
in his reelection bid in November 2018 ... 
Page 17759 
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"Scott Taylor, who wrote a 2015 book called 'Trust Betrayed: Barack 
Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the Selling Out of America's National 
Security,' had ... served as a security contractor for Hunt Oil in Yemen 
from 2008 to 2010 ... Giuliani offered to promote Taylor as candidate 
for the post and help guide him through the process ... During a night 
at a cigar bar in Friendship Heights in December and a lunch meeting 
the following day at the Trump hotel, Giuliani described a plan to 
promote Taylor for the job ... Giuliani told Taylor that he had done work 
in Qatar, but it was unclear why he was interested in shaping the 
ambassador pick. In subsequent calls to administration officials, 
Giuliani argued that Taylor would be a better choice than [Mary 
Catherine Phee] ... When asked about his advocacy for Taylor in a 
November interview, Giuliani laughed and ended the call. ... Phee's 
nomination expired when Congress adjourned last year and Trump has 
not renominated her." 
Two more scoops from their story: "In several conversations in 
recent months, Attorney General William P. Barr has counseled 
Trump in general terms that Giuliani has become a liability and a 
problem for the administration, according to multiple people familiar 
with the conversations. In one discussion, the attorney general warned 
the president that he was not being well-served by his lawyer ... 
Giuliani has assured the president that he is not in legal trouble ... And 
Trump has so far resisted entreaties to distance himself from the 
former New York mayor, telling others that he appreciates Giuliani's 
combative media appearances on his behalf ... In recent weeks, 
prosecutors subpoenaed a consulting firm founded by former 
FBI director Louis J. Freeh, which hired Giuliani to write an 
August 2018 letter to Romanian officials calling for an amnesty 
for people prosecuted for corruption, a policy change that would 
Page 17760 
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have benefited a Freeh client..." 
The bigger picture: Giuliani has taken on clients from Turkey to 
Venezuela to Romania to Ukraine since Trump took office. He's said 
he doesn't need to register as a foreign agent: "But since the start of 
the administration, his actions have caused persistent alarm 
among Trump's advisers, who worry that it is often not clear 
who Giuliani is representing —the president, his private clients 
or his own foreign policy views — in his meetings at the White 
House and in foreign cities ... In one meeting with a prominent 
Ukrainian political figure in early 2018, Giuliani was explicit that hiring 
him would provide a route to the president, according to a person in 
attendance. 'It was just so clear what he was peddling. He was 
pushing for business, and his pitch was, "I'm close to the White 
House, I'm close to Trump. If you want to get in there, I'm your guy," ' 
the person said. In that case, the Ukrainian did not hire Giuliani." 
-- Giuliani's old friends worry that his legacy as New York's 
mayor will be forgotten because of his stint as Trump's 
fixer. From the Times: "Working on a laptop at a restaurant table in 
the Trump International Hotel in Washington, he has bathed in the 
warm acclaim of friends and strangers who recognize him from his 
television advocacy. 'I enjoyed the fact that people were coming by 
and tapping me on the back,' Mr. Giuliani said. He was there so 
often, he said, that he set up a plaque. Rudolph W. Giuliani 
Attorney at law. 'He doesn't just like the spotlight,' his estranged 
wife, Judith Giuliani, said in an interview. 'He craves it, for 
validation' ... There are conflicting accounts of why Mr. Giuliani did 
not get the State Department position he campaigned for in 2016, and 
of whether anyone other than himself even thought it was a real 
Page 17761 
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possibility, but his years of lucrative consulting payments from foreign 
governments since leaving City Hall would certainly have made for a 
complicated Senate confirmation. ... Anthony Carbonetti, a City Hall 
aide to Mr. Giuliani and a longtime friend, said he worried that what he 
saw as Mr. Giuliani's groundbreaking years as New York mayor would 
be forgotten behind the sky-filling spectacle of Mr. Trump. 'The fact 
that this is what he'll be known for is painful,' Mr. Carbonetti said. 'His 
public persona has been dominated by his representation of the 
president for the last two years, so that has become the public 
perception of him. I don't think anyone goes back in time.-
-- The House Judiciary Committee may vote to advance articles 
of impeachment by the end of this week. From the Journal: The 
committee will hear today from a lawyer for the Intelligence Committee 
about the constitutional grounds for impeachment. "Democrats haven't 
decided on what the articles of impeachment will be, a congressional 
aide working on the impeachment inquiry said Saturday. A report 
issued by Judiciary Committee Democrats on Saturday, echoing 
reports issued for the cases against Richard Nixon in 1974 and Bill 
Clinton in 1998, examined the Constitution's impeachment provision to 
lay the groundwork for drafting articles of impeachment. Mr. Nadler, 
asked on NBC's `Meet the Press' how many articles of 
impeachment the committee would file, said: `I'm not ready to 
decide that.' House Intelligence Committee Chairman 
Schiff 
(D., Calif.) on CBS's 'Face the Nation' suggested he favored a more 
narrow approach to the articles of impeachment. He said that as a 
former prosecutor, his inclination is to target charges where there is 
'the strongest and most overwhelming evidence' and 'not try to charge 
everything, even though you could charge other things.-
Ritian still rinacn't have% a anrtri ancwnr• Tha frtrmar vire. 
Page 17762 
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president insists that his son did nothing wrong by buckraking 
in Ukraine — but he also admits he has not dug into what Hunter 
Biden actually did for Burisma. "I don't know what he was doing. I 
know he was on the board. I found out he was on the board after he 
was on the board and that was it," Biden told Axios for an interview that 
aired last night on HBO. Asked whether he wants to get to the bottom 
of it, Biden said, "No. Because I trust my son." 
-- Meanwhile, speaking to NPR, Biden blamed his staff for not 
flagging potential conflict of interest concerns about his son's 
work for Burisma. "Nobody warned me," he said. "They should've 
told me." In fact, the New Yorker reported earlier this year that at least 
one staffer raised the issue with Biden. And other stories have said 
that staffers were intimidated to broach the issue with the then-vice 
president. 
-- The Justice Department's inspector general is set to release 
his report today concluding the FBI was justified in opening an 
investigation into the Trump campaign's relationship with 
Russia. The report is also expected to detail numerous 
shortcomings in how the bureau conducted the investigation. In 
light of this, FBI's Chris Wray is trying to steer the bureau away 
from politics. From the Journal: "Mr. Wray took over an agency 
buffeted by recriminations over those two politically charged 
investigations after Mr. Trump in spring 2017 fired the FBI's former 
director, 
Comey ... Where Mr. Comey embraced a public 
persona, Mr. Wray has continued to maintain an unassuming and 
detail-oriented persona, bent on avoiding the spotlight and keeping the 
FBI out of the political fray as much as possible ... Mr. Wray has 
quietly pursued some policy changes, including deciding not to run any 
Page 17763 
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investigations out of the offices of senior leadership at FBI 
headquarters, as the Clinton investigation largely was in 2016, and 
reinstituting annual ethics training, according to people familiar with the 
matter. Some current and former officials have wanted Mr. Wray to 
more publicly defend the FBI. But people close to him said he 
recognizes that a vociferous pushback could imperil his job at a time 
when his main goal is he wants to steady the agency." 
-- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) peddled the debunked conspiracy 
theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. Katie Shepherd 
reports: "In a fiery back-and-forth on NBC's 'Meet the Press' on 
Sunday, [Cruz] declared that there is 'considerable evidence' that 
Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, echoing debunked claims 
recently spread by other GOP leaders. The show's host, Chuck 
Todd, asked the senator if he believed Ukraine had attempted to 
sway the 2016 election. 'I do,' Cruz said. Todd's eyes grew wide 
and he raised his eyebrows in surprise: 'You do?' ... 'Senator, this 
sort of strikes me as odd,' Todd said. 'Because, you went through a 
primary campaign with this president. He launched a birtherism 
campaign against you. He went after your faith. He threatened to, 
quote, 'spill the beans' about your wife. ...Is it not possible that this 
president is capable of creating a false narrative about somebody to 
help him politically?' he asked. 'Except that's not what happened,' Cruz 
replied." 
-- As the impeachment inquiry moves forward, there is a push 
underway to raise money to help cover the legal bills of the 
career government witnesses who have gotten caught up in this 
donnybrook. Lisa Rein reports: "With the House hurtling toward a full 
chamber vote before Christmas, the diplomatic community is gearing 
Page 17764 
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up for Phase Two of potential testimony. The White House has 
announced that President Trump plans to bring forward 'serious 
witnesses' in his likely trial early next year in the Republican-led 
Senate. That could mean more questioning of witnesses from Senate 
Democrats, or cross-examination by Republicans — and with it more 
steep legal fees. `A few weeks ago I was hoping we wouldn't need to 
raise more money,' Eric Rubin, a former ambassador to Bulgaria who 
is now president of the American Foreign Service Association, told the 
group. 'But as of now,' Rubin said, 'we have a very clear statement 
that the White House will call witnesses, and that includes our 
colleagues.' ... The group has raised more than $250,000 for a legal-
defense fund for nine of the 17 witnesses who testified about whether 
Trump and the White House pressured Ukraine to investigate the 
president's political opponents." 
-- Trump skipped the Kennedy Center Honors this weekend for 
the third year in a row. Roxanne Roberts reports: "On one hand, this 
is a bad thing: The president and first lady traditionally bring glamour 
and prestige to the annual celebration of American art and culture, 
highlighting the power of art to bring us together regardless of political 
differences and the importance of support and philanthropy. On the 
other hand, the absence of Trump — under threat of impeachment and 
quick to take offense — is a relief to almost all involved. Not that 
anyone will say it out loud, but the odds that someone (an honoree, a 
performer, an audience member) might say or do something political at 
this nonpartisan evening is, frankly, uncomfortably high." 
-- Case in point: Kennedy Center honoree Linda Ronstadt threw 
shade at Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the annual 
dinner for honorees at the State Department. Peggy McGlone 
Page 17765 
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I upor w. rumpuu uul 
bll iyur di iu WC/I iuei cu till/DU WI leiI 
he would be loved — a reference to the Ronstadt hit 'When Will I Be 
Loved.' According to Sam Greisman, son of actress Sally Field —
another of the evening's honorees — the singer responded, 'Maybe 
when you stop enabling Donald Trump.-
Five dead, several injured after volcanic eruption on New Zealand island 
THE NEW WORLD ORDER: 
-- At least five people died and many more remain unaccounted 
for after a volcano erupted on an island off the coast of New 
Zealand. Allyson Chiu reports: "Fewer than 50 visitors were on or near 
White Island, which is also known as Whakaari, at the time of the 
eruption, and 23 people have been rescued so far, New Zealand Police 
Deputy Commissioner John Tims said a media briefing Monday night. 
Among the people transported to shore, many had burn injuries and a 
number were taken to area hospitals, Tims said. He confirmed that five 
people have died and said he didn't know how many people are still 
unaccounted for, estimating that figure to be in the 'double digits.' 
Dangerous conditions have prevented police and rescue services from 
reaching the island, Tims said, citing experts who found that the area is 
unstable and said more eruptions could be possible." 
-- The World Anti-Doping Agency executive committee voted 
Monday to bar Russia from competing at the next two Olympic 
Games. Rick Maese reports: "The decision means Russia will have no 
formal presence at next year's Summer Games or the 2022 Winter 
Games in Beijing. Similar to the 2018 Winter Olympics in 
PyeongChang, Russians who have not been implicated in the 
CfniCo_ennnenrori 
rinninn ershorrun 
nlInuttori 
PARVICatCk 
Page 17766 
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gal y 
WY III VV (.4111,JVII....4 LS! lAJII I 
in Tokyo as unaffiliated athletes. In PyeongChang, 168 Russians 
competed as 'Olympic Athletes from Russia.' After being banned from 
the 2018 Games, the country and its Russian Anti-Doping Agency 
were conditionally reinstated in September 2018, but Russian officials 
were caught earlier this year manipulating data from its Moscow anti-
doping laboratory and misleading WADA investigators, prompting a 
new chapter in a years-long doping scheme that continues to roil the 
international sports community." 
-- Investigators in Florida and Saudi Arabia are digging deeper 
into the background of the Saudi aviation student who fatally 
shot three people and wounded eight others at a naval base in 
Pensacola, Fla. The FBI is investigating the incident as an act of 
terrorism. Devlin Barrett, Carol Morello and Hannah Knowles report: 
"Officials sought to reassure Pensacola residents that they knew of no 
ongoing threat to the area, saying that while investigators pursue a 
wide variety of interviews and evidence, there was only one gunman 
behind Friday's violence. On the third day of the investigation into the 
attack at a base where the U.S. military trains pilots from foreign 
forces, details on what has been learned so far were sparse, tentative 
and sometimes contradictory. The gunman, a Royal Saudi Air Force 
member named Ahmed Mohammed al-Shamrani, was shot dead by a 
sheriffs deputy responding to the rampage. Shamrani apparently left 
hints that he was motivated at least in part by his hatred of American 
foreign policy and military might. ... Investigators say they believe 
Shamrani was the author of an anti-American screed posted on Twitter 
shortly before the shooting, according to a law enforcement official." 
-- Trump's impulse to defend the Saudi regime after one of the 
kingdom's officers killed Americans has isolated him from 
Page 17767 
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members of his own party, especially in Florida. Toluse 
Olorunnipa and Josh Dawsey report: The president "used his 
appearances before television cameras — and his Twitter account —
to repeatedly offer cover for the Saudis, conveying Riyadh's 
condolences with more fervor than he used in relaying his personal 
feelings about the shooting. ... Trump's defense of the Saudi 
government, which began just hours after Friday's shooting, steadily 
became a more isolated position over the weekend as more 
information trickled out about the gunman and other Saudi nationals 
who were receiving training at the base. ... Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), 
normally a staunch Trump ally, was among several officials from the 
state pushing for more stringent scrutiny of foreigners who come to the 
United States for military training. Gaetz, who earlier called the killing 
an act of terrorism, also suggested the incident should change 
America's relationship with Saudi Arabia. ... 
"Trump, who often jumps to label shootings by foreigners from 
Muslim-majority countries as terrorism, had not done so as of 
Sunday evening. ... Florida Sen. Rick Scott (R), who immediately 
labeled the shooting terrorism, has called for a halt in the military 
program that brings hundreds of foreign nationals to U.S. bases to train 
alongside American troops. ... Several other Saudis who were also 
training on the base have been questioned by the FBI and 
Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said Sunday that some of the 
trainees filmed the shooting. Speaking on Fox News, Scott called 
on the Saudi government to provide more support for the investigation. 
"The president has personally chafed at the idea of not being 
able to sell arms to Saudi Arabia, even as lawmakers have 
Page 17768 
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repeatedly condemned the kingdom's human rights record in the wake 
of the grisly murder of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal 
Khashoggi and civilian casualties from the Saudi-led coalition's 
bombing campaign in Yemen. ... Democrats tried to restrict arms sales 
to Saudi Arabia as part of a military budget deal negotiated this week, 
but the White House pushed back and rejected the idea ... Trump has 
shown little interest in Saudi Arabia's human rights record, according 
to current and former aides. The president has been especially blunt in 
describing his transactional approach to foreign affairs, particularly in 
the Middle East where his interests in oil, arms deals and terrorism 
intersect." 
-- North Korea claims to have carried out an "important" test at a 
rocket launch site. Simon Denyer and Min Joo Kim report: "The test 
paves the way for North Korea to launch a satellite or intercontinental 
ballistic missile (ICBM) around the end of this year, experts said, 
fulfilling a threat to give the United States an unwelcome 'Christmas 
gift.' A spokesman for North Korea's Academy of National Defense 
Science said the test was carried out Saturday at the Sohae Satellite 
Launching Station in Tongchang-ri, a site near the Chinese border that 
has been used to launch satellites into space in the past. The United 
Nations bans North Korea from launching satellites, viewing it as a 
cover for testing ballistic missile technology." 
-- Chinese officials are literally burning books that diverge from 
Communist Party ideology. Gerry Shih reports: "The book-burning 
incident, with all its dark historical precedents from this country and 
Nazi-era Germany, has heightened alarm at a time when Chinese 
intellectuals see their society tipping further into authoritarianism. The 
incident gained widespread attention on Sunday after Chinese social 
Page 17769 
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meoia users noticeo a report on tne uorary oociety or unina s weosite 
from a library in Zhenyuan County, which declared it had removed 
'illegal publications, religious publications and deviant papers and 
books, picture books and photographs' in an effort to 'fully exert the 
library's role in broadcasting mainstream ideology.-
-- China has ordered that all foreign computer equipment and 
software be removed from government offices and public 
institutions within three years. From the Guardian: "The government 
directive is likely to be a blow to US multinational companies like HP, 
Dell and Microsoft and mirrors attempts by Washington to limit the use 
of Chinese technology, as the trade war between the countries turns 
into a tech cold war." 
-- Large and peaceful protests in Hong Kong show that the pro-
democracy movement is still going strong. Shibani Mahtani 
reports: "Hundreds of thousands of people showed up in the park 
where the movement began in June, waving signs calling for the end of 
Chinese Communist Party rule and for the Hong Kong government to 
meet protesters' four outstanding demands. The march, approved by 
authorities, was one of the biggest peaceful protests in the city in 
months — organizers counted at least 800,000 participants — and 
demonstrated the strong support that still exists for greater democratic 
freedoms despite a crackdown in which police have fired more than 
10,000 tear gas canisters and arrested about 6,000 people." 
-- A 34-year-old transportation minister will become Finland's 
youngest prime minister ever -- and its third female leader. From 
the AP: "Finland's ruling Social Democratic Party council voted 32-29 
late Sunday to name Sanna Marin over rival Antti Lindtman to take 
over the government's top post from incumbent Antti Rinne. Having 
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emerged as Finland's largest party in the April election, the Social 
Democrats can appoint one of their own to the post of prime minister in 
the Nordic nation of 5.5 million." 
-- The U.S. ambassador to Denmark barred an American NATO 
expert critical of Trump from speaking at an international 
conference hosted by the embassy and a Danish think tank, 
effectively cancelling the Copenhagen event. From the Times: "The 
expert, 
R. Sloan, was scheduled to give a keynote speech at 
the conference, which was celebrating the 70th anniversary of NATO, 
on Tuesday. ... One day before he was set to leave for Copenhagen, 
Mr. Sloan was informed that the United States Embassy in 
Copenhagen had vetoed his participation because of his previous 
criticisms of [Trump], Mr. Sloan said on Facebook on Saturday. Carla 
Sands, the United States ambassador to Denmark, did not want Mr. 
Sloan to participate, and the Danish Atlantic Council `had no other 
option' than to revoke his invitation to speak, Lars Bangert Struwe, the 
secretary general of the council, said in a statement." 
-- British voters in the middle of an already messy election say 
they don't like either Boris 
or Jeremy Corbyn. William 
Booth and Karla 
report: "Many voters confess unease with the 
erudite but untrustworthy Prime Minister ... and his plan for a hard, 
swift Brexit, and also with Labour leader [Corbyn] and his own hard-left 
plan to remake the British economy under a socialist banner. As the 
two main parties have moved away from the center and toward what 
many consider the extremes, voters in the middle are wondering where 
to go. This is especially so for the half of the country that doesn't like 
Brexit." 
-- Reddit uncovered a Russian interference campaign in the U.K. 
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