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On our use of propaganda about Iraq

Military's Information War Is Vast and Often Secretive
By JEFF GERTH

The media center in Fayetteville, N.C., would be the envy of any global communications company.

In state of the art studios, producers prepare the daily mix of music and news for the group's radio stations or spots for friendly television outlets. Writers putting out newspapers and magazines in Baghdad and Kabul converse via teleconferences. Mobile trailers with high-tech gear are parked outside, ready for the next crisis.

The center is not part of a news organization, but a military operation, and those writers and producers are soldiers. The 1,200-strong psychological operations unit based at Fort Bragg turns out what its officers call "truthful messages" to support the United States government's objectives, though its commander acknowledges that those stories are one-sided and their American sponsorship is hidden.

"We call our stuff information and the enemy's propaganda," said Col. Jack N. Summe, then the commander of the Fourth Psychological Operations Group, during a tour in June. Even in the Pentagon, "some public affairs professionals see us unfavorably," and inaccurately, he said, as "lying, dirty tricksters."

The recent disclosures that a Pentagon contractor in Iraq paid newspapers to print "good news" articles written by American soldiers prompted an outcry in Washington, where members of Congress said the practice undermined American credibility and top military and White House officials disavowed any knowledge of it. President Bush was described by Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser, as "very troubled" about the matter. The Pentagon is investigating.

But the work of the contractor, the Lincoln Group, was not a rogue operation. Hoping to counter anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world, the Bush administration has been conducting an information war that is extensive, costly and often hidden, according to documents and interviews with contractors, government officials and military personnel.

The campaign was begun by the White House, which set up a secret panel soon after the Sept. 11 attacks to coordinate information operations by the Pentagon, other government agencies and private contractors.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the focus of most of the activities, the military operates radio stations and newspapers, but does not disclose their American ties. Those outlets produce news material that is at times attributed to the "International Information Center," an untraceable organization.

Lincoln says it planted more than 1,000 articles in the Iraqi and Arab press and placed editorials on an Iraqi Web site, Pentagon documents show. For an expanded stealth persuasion effort into neighboring countries, Lincoln presented plans, since rejected, for an underground newspaper, television news shows and an anti-terrorist comedy based on "The Three Stooges."

Like the Lincoln Group, Army psychological operations units sometimes pay to deliver their message, offering television stations money to run unattributed segments or contracting with writers of newspaper opinion pieces, military officials said.

"We don't want somebody to look at the product and see the U.S. government and tune out," said Col. James Treadwell, who ran psychological operations support at the Special Operations Command in Tampa.

The United States Agency for International Development also masks its role at times. AID finances about 30 radio stations in Afghanistan, but keeps that from listeners. The agency has distributed tens of thousands of iPod-like audio devices in Iraq and Afghanistan that play prepackaged civic messages, but it does so through a contractor that promises "there is no U.S. footprint."

As the Bush administration tries to build democracies overseas and support a free press, getting out its message is critical. But that is enormously difficult, given widespread hostility in the Muslim world over the war in Iraq, deep suspicion of American ambitions and the influence of antagonistic voices. The American message makers who are wary of identifying their role can cite findings by the Pentagon, pollsters and others underscoring the United States' fundamental problems of credibility abroad.

Defenders of influence campaigns argue that they are appropriate. "Psychological operations are an essential part of warfare, more so in the electronic age than ever," said Lt. Col. Charles A. Krohn, a retired Army spokesman and journalism professor. "If you're going to invade a country and eject its government and occupy its territory, you ought to tell people who live there why you've done it. That requires a well-thought-out communications program."

But covert information battles may backfire, others warn, or prove ineffective. The news that the American military was buying influence was met mostly with shrugs in Baghdad, where readers tend to be skeptical about the media. An Iraqi daily newspaper, Azzaman, complained in an editorial that the propaganda campaign was an American effort "to humiliate the independent national press." Many Iraqis say that no amount of money spent on trying to mold public opinion is likely to have much impact, given the harsh conditions under the American military occupation.

While the United States does not ban the distribution of government propaganda overseas, as it does domestically, the Government Accountability Office said in a recent report that lack of attribution could undermine the credibility of news videos. In finding that video news releases by the Bush administration that appeared on American television were improper, the G.A.O. said that such articles "are no longer purely factual" because "the essential fact of attribution is missing."

In an article titled "War of the Words," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld wrote about the importance of disclosure in America's communications in The Wall Street Journal in July. "The American system of openness works," he wrote. The United States must find "new and better ways to communicate America's mission abroad," including "a healthy culture of communication and transparency between government and public."

Trying to Make a Case

After the Sept. 11 attacks forced many Americans to recognize the nation's precarious standing in the Arab world, the Bush administration decided to act to improve the country's image and promote its values.

"We've got to do a better job of making our case," President Bush told reporters after the attacks.

Much of the government's information machinery, including the United States Information Agency and some C.I.A. programs, was dismantled after the cold war. In that struggle with the Soviet Union, the information warriors benefited from the perception that the United States was backing victims of tyrannical rule. Many Muslims today view Washington as too close to what they characterize as authoritarian regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and elsewhere.

The White House turned to John Rendon, who runs a Washington communications company, to help influence foreign audiences. Before the war in Afghanistan, he helped set up centers in Washington, London and Pakistan so the American government could respond rapidly in the foreign media to Taliban claims. "We were clueless," said Mary Matalin, then the communications aide to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Mr. Rendon's business, the Rendon Group, had a history of government work in trouble spots, In the 1990's, the C.I.A. hired him to secretly help the nascent Iraqi National Congress wage a public relations campaign against Saddam Hussein.

While advising the White House, Mr. Rendon also signed on with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, under a $27.6 million contract, to conduct focus groups around the world and media analysis of outlets like Al Jazeera, the satellite network based in Qatar.

About the same time, the White House recruited Jeffrey B. Jones, a former Army colonel who ran the Fort Bragg psychological operations group, to coordinate the new information war. He led a secret committee, the existence of which has not been previously reported, that dealt with everything from public diplomacy, which includes education, aid and exchange programs, to covert information operations.

The group even examined the president's words. Concerned about alienating Muslims overseas, panel members said, they tried unsuccessfully to stop Mr. Bush from ending speeches with the refrain "God bless America."

The panel, later named the Counter Terrorism Information Strategy Policy Coordinating Committee, included members from the State Department, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies. Mr. Rendon advised a subgroup on counterpropaganda issues.

Mr. Jones's endeavor stalled within months, though, because of furor over a Pentagon initiative. In February 2002, unnamed officials told The New York Times that a new Pentagon operation called the Office of Strategic Influence planned "to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign news organizations." Though the report was denied and a subsequent Pentagon review found no evidence of plans to use disinformation, Mr. Rumsfeld shut down the office within days.

The incident weakened Mr. Jones's effort to develop a sweeping strategy to win over the Muslim world. The White House grew skittish, some agencies dropped out, and panel members soon were distracted by the war in Iraq, said Mr. Jones, who left his post this year. The White House did not respond to a request to discuss the committee's work.

What had begun as an ambitious effort to bolster America's image largely devolved into a secret propaganda war to counter the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon, which had money to spend and leaders committed to the cause, took the lead. In late 2002 Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters he gave the press a "corpse" by closing the Office of Strategic Influence, but he intended to "keep doing every single thing that needs to be done."

The Pentagon increased spending on its psychological and influence operations and for the first time outsourced work to contractors. One beneficiary has been the Rendon Group, which won additional multimillion-dollar Pentagon contracts for media analysis and a media operations center in Baghdad, including "damage control planning." The new Lincoln Group was another winner.

Pentagon Contracts

It is something of a mystery how Lincoln came to land more than $25 million in Pentagon contracts in a war zone.

The two men who ran the small business had no background in public relations or the media, according to associates and a résumé. Before coming to Washington and setting up Lincoln in 2004, Christian Bailey, born in Britain and now 30, had worked briefly in California and New York. Paige Craig, now 31, was a former Marine intelligence officer.

When the company was incorporated last year, using the name Iraqex, its stated purpose was to provide support services for business development, trade and investment in Iraq. The company's earliest ventures there included providing security to the military and renovating buildings. Iraqex also started a short-lived online business publication.

In mid-2004, the company formed a partnership with the Rendon Group and later won a $5 million Pentagon contract for an advertising and public relations campaign to "accurately inform the Iraqi people of the Coalition's goals and gain their support." Soon, the company changed its name to Lincoln Group. It is not clear how the partnership was formed; Rendon dropped out weeks after the contract was awarded.

Within a few months, Lincoln shifted to information operations and psychological operations, two former employees said. The company was awarded three new Pentagon contracts, worth tens of millions of dollars, they added. A Lincoln spokeswoman referred a reporter's inquiry about the contracts to Pentagon officials.

The company's work was part of an effort to counter disinformation in the Iraqi press. With nearly $100 million in United States aid, the Iraqi media has sharply expanded since the fall of Mr. Hussein. There are about 200 Iraqi-owned newspapers and 15 to 17 Iraqi-owned television stations. Many, though, are affiliated with political parties, and are fiercely partisan, with fixed pro- or anti-American stances, and some publish rumors, half-truths and outright lies.

From quarters at Camp Victory, the American base, the Lincoln Group works to get out the military's message.

Lincoln's employees work virtually side by side with soldiers. Army officers supervise Lincoln's work and demand to see details of article placements and costs, said one of the former employees, speaking on condition of anonymity because Lincoln's Pentagon contract prohibits workers from discussing their activities.

"Almost nothing we did did not have the command's approval," he said.

The employees would take news dispatches, called storyboards, written by the troops, translate them into Arabic and distribute them to newspapers. Lincoln hired former Arab journalists and paid advertising agencies to place the material.

Typically, Lincoln paid newspapers from $40 to $2,000 to run the articles as news articles or advertisements, documents provided to The New York Times by a former employee show. More than 1,000 articles appeared in 12 to 15 Iraqi and Arab newspapers, according to Pentagon documents. The publications did not disclose that the articles were generated by the military.

A company worker also often visited the Baghdad convention center, where the Iraqi press corps hung out, to recruit journalists who would write and place opinion pieces, paying them $400 to $500 as a monthly stipend, the employees said.

Like the dispatches produced at Fort Bragg, those storyboards were one-sided and upbeat. Each had a target audience, "Iraq General" or "Shi'ia," for example; an underlying theme like "Anti-intimidation" or "Success and Legitimacy of the ISF;" and a target newspaper.

Articles written by the soldiers at Camp Victory often assumed the voice of Iraqis. "We, all Iraqis, are the government. It is our country," noted one article. Another said, "The time has come for the ordinary Iraqi, you, me, our neighbors, family and friends to come together."

While some were plodding accounts filled with military jargon and bureaucratese, others favored the language of tabloids: "blood-thirsty apostates," "crawled on their bellies like dogs in the mud," "dim-witted fanatics," and "terror kingpin."

A former Lincoln employee said the ploy of making the articles appear to be written by Iraqis by removing any American fingerprints was not very effective. "Many Iraqis know it's from Americans," he said.

The military has sought to expand its media influence efforts beyond Iraq to neighboring states, including Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan, Pentagon documents say. Lincoln submitted a plan that was subsequently rejected, a Pentagon spokesman said. The company proposed placing editorials in magazines, newspapers and Web sites. In Iraq, the company posted editorials on a Web site, but military commanders stopped the operation for fear that the site's global accessibility might violate the federal ban on distributing propaganda to American audiences, according to Pentagon documents and a former Lincoln employee.

In its rejected plan, the company looked to American popular culture for ways to influence new audiences. Lincoln proposed variations of the satirical paper "The Onion," and an underground paper to be called "The Voice," documents show. And it planned comedies modeled after "Cheers" and the Three Stooges, with the trio as bumbling wannabe terrorists.

The Afghan Front

The Pentagon's media effort in Afghanistan began soon after the ouster of the Taliban. In what had been a barren media environment, 350 magazines and newspapers and 68 television and radio stations now operate. Most are independent; the rest are run by the government. The United States has provided money to support the media, as well as training for journalists and government spokesmen.

But much of the American role remains hidden from local readers and audiences.

The Pentagon, for example, took over the Taliban's radio station, renamed it Peace radio and began powerful shortwave broadcasts in local dialects, defense officials said. Its programs include music as well as 9 daily news scripts and 16 daily public service messages, according to Col. James Yonts, a United States military spokesman in Afghanistan. Its news accounts, which sometimes are attributed to the International Information Center, often put a positive spin on events or serve government needs.

The United States Army publishes a sister paper in Afghanistan, also called Peace. An examination of issues from last spring found no bad news.

"We have no requirements to adhere to journalistic principles of objectivity," Colonel Summe, the Army psychological operations specialist, said. "We tell the U.S. side of the story to approved targeted audiences" using truthful information. Neither the radio station nor the paper discloses its ties to the American military.

Similarly, AID does not locally disclose that dozens of Afghanistan radio stations get its support, through grants to a London-based nonprofit group, Internews. (AID discloses its support in public documents in Washington, most of which can be found globally on the Internet.)

The AID representative in Afghanistan, in an e-mail message relayed by Peggy O'Ban, an agency spokeswoman, explained the nondisclosure: "We want to maintain the perception (if not the reality) that these radio stations are in fact fully independent."

Recipients are required to adhere to standards. If a news organization produced "a daily drumbeat of criticism of the American military, it would become an issue," said James Kunder, an AID assistant administrator. He added that in combat zones, the issue of disclosure was a balancing act between security and assuring credibility.

The American role is also not revealed by another recipient of AID grants, Voice for Humanity, a nonprofit organization in Lexington, Ky. It supplied tens of thousands of audio devices in Iraq and Afghanistan with messages intended to encourage people to vote. Rick Ifland, the group's director, said the messages were part of the "positive developments in democracy, freedom and human rights in the Middle East."

It is not clear how effective the messages were or what recipients did with the iPod-like devices, pink for women and silver for men, which could not be altered to play music or other recordings.

To show off the new media in Afghanistan, AID officials invited Ms. Matalin, the former Cheney aide and conservative commentator, and the talk show host Rush Limbaugh to visit in February. Mr. Limbaugh told his listeners that students at a journalism school asked him "some of the best questions about journalism and about America that I've ever been asked."

One of the first queries, Mr. Limbaugh said, was "How do you balance justice and truth and objectivity?"

His reply: report the truth, don't hide any opinions or "interest in the outcome of events." Tell "people who you are," he said, and "they'll respect your credibility."

On a man who traces shadows as art

Tracing Shadows
By CONRAD MULCAHY

It began this spring without explanation: fire hydrants, street signs and bicycles all over Park Slope and Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn were suddenly standing watch over their own distorted chalk outlines, as if anticipating some violent demise. Whoever did this left no clue other than an ambiguous signature: "© Ellis G. 2007," scrawled next to the chalk etchings.

During daylight, the outlines did not make much sense. Shopkeepers and bar owners had little information. Deliverymen muttered to themselves as they moved their outlined bicycles indoors. Parents were just as confused as their young children.

But under the orange glow of the streetlights, the intent became clear: the outlines are shadows, burned into the sidewalk.

The man behind this mystery, who in the last six months has outlined thousands of objects throughout Brooklyn, is "Ellis G.," or as his parents know him, Ellis Gallagher, a Brooklyn artist. His chalk drawings are a private joke between him and anyone in Brooklyn who takes the time to look at his work before the snow or rain washes it away.

"This work won't be around," Mr. Gallagher said. "God knows, it could be gone tomorrow."

His chalk outlines, inspired by his own brush with crime, are "exhilarating for me," he said. "I can do it at any time of the day and I don't have to look over my shoulder. I can do it right in front of the police."

For Mr. Gallagher, 32, keeping his art on the right side of the law is a relatively new endeavor. He spent many years putting graffiti on New York's train tunnels, walls and other public spaces. But graffiti "missions," as they are known in some circles, took their toll on Mr. Gallagher, who works as a waiter when he is not making art. There were the fines, the frantic footraces with police officers (when he was lucky) and the nights in jail (when he was not). A 1999 arrest resulted in a community service sentence and probation, court records show.

But Mr. Gallagher's passion for graffiti was extinguished for good early one morning in 2001, when he and Hector Ramirez, a close friend, were painting in the F train tunnel between Bergen and Carroll Streets. A train roared by, and Mr. Ramirez was struck and killed. Mr. Gallagher was not injured. "After that," he said, "I'd had enough."

He turned to painting, working out of a studio and focused on displaying his work in shows with other artists, including a forthcoming book called "Adhesives" that is a collection of stickers made by graffiti artists from all over New York.

Earlier this year, Mr. Gallagher was mugged on his way home from a shift at Bar Tabac on Smith Street, where he worked as a waiter. "I turn around and this guy's got a two-foot machete in my face," he said.

Mr. Gallagher was unhurt and the mugger was later caught by the police, but one night soon after the mugging, with the image of his attacker's dark silhouette still burned into his memory, Mr. Gallagher was mesmerized by a shadow on the sidewalk. He reached into his pocket and felt the chalk he had used to write the outdoor menu at Bar Tabac, and he dropped to his knees to outline it.

Shadow art was born.

Now Mr. Gallagher heads out on foot or on his bike with a backpack full of chalk, looking for shadows to trace. When he tells you that "everything is fair game," he means it. He has traced everything from hydrants to whole city blocks.

While most people in Carroll Gardens and Park Slope have never seen him, many know his work and they seem to like it. (While the city's administrative code says defacing streets is illegal, it is unclear whether that holds true for sidewalks.)

Patty Wu, owner of Handmade on Smith Street, knows Mr. Gallagher's work because he often stops to trace the shadows of objects in her window display, like women's shirts and lingerie sets. "I love it; It's great, it creates a lot of visual interest and people stop and then see the store," Ms. Wu said of the chalk outlines.

It even stirs a little friendly neighborhood rivalry. "People across the street say, 'How come he does it in front of your store so much?' and I say 'Because I have good lighting,' " Ms. Wu says with a smile.

More than anything, Mr. Gallagher will tell you, his work is meant for pure enjoyment.

"All of my chalk drawings are like graffiti," he said. "It's putting out public art for people who normally wouldn't go to a museum."

Claude DeCastro, the owner of the Hoyt Street bar Kili, saw Mr. Gallagher's chalk art and invited him to put up a show of paintings on canvas in the bar, where it is now displayed.

"I think that public art is important," said Mr. DeCastro, who once owned a gallery. "It expresses what people are feeling in society at the time, and it puts it out there. It's not like a museum, where things are hidden away for 20 years."

On a recent evening, a man named Steve stopped to watch Mr. Gallagher work, despite the cold. "A million times I walked by a street sign, how come I never thought to do something like that with a piece of chalk?" Steve asks. Mr. Gallagher smiles when he hears this, watching a new fan walk off down the street.

"It's very touching," he says sincerely. "People tell me 'you make me smile' or 'you make me stop and think,' and that's cool. I make a difference in people's lives. It inspires me to create more."

Then he's on his feet again, clapping the dust off his hands. He grabs his bag of chalk, and a bright smile flashes across his face when he sees a bicycle is casting a hard shadow on a wide stretch of sidewalk nearby.

"Oh, that's a good one," he says to no one in particular.

Before you know it, he's back on his knees, tracing another shadow.

On Santa, swimming with the sharks

Where Sleigh Bells Gurgle, Santa Swims With Sharks
By CHRIS MAAG

NEWPORT, Ky., Dec. 7 - Calvin Freeman, age 4, has a question for Scuba Santa. "Do you only have nice sharks in there?" Calvin asks, pointing to a toothy, 270-pound tiger shark swishing past Santa's underwater sleigh. "Because some sharks chew people's legs off. They're bad sharks."

"Ho-ho-ho!" Scuba Santa laughs, then sucks a low, bubbly breath of air from his tank. "Ooh, yes, these are all very nice sharks!"

Calvin appears relieved. He asks a second question: "Do you remember me, Santa Claus?"

Scuba Santa dives five times a day into the 385,000-gallon shark tank at the Newport Aquarium here. The tradition started three years ago, when the aquarium was searching for ways to increase attendance during the normally slow holiday season.

"Why not stick Santa into the shark tank?" said Jill Isaacs, an aquarium spokeswoman.

To avoid being eaten, Santa takes several precautions. He checks his arms and legs before each show to be sure he has no open, bleeding cuts. Once in the water he keeps his hands close to his body and makes no sudden moves; if Santa were to wave quickly, a passing shark could mistake his flopping, white-gloved hand for a wounded fish.

The subsequent interaction would no doubt prove emotionally scarring for the dozens of children in the audience.

Most important, Santa makes sure the sharks receive their regular meals, which consist of green peas and pink squid served once every four days.

"Santa thinks it's a good idea to keep the sharks well fed, especially when Santa's in here," said the aquarium's top Santa, Ed Evans, one of five scuba divers who play the role.

Getting Santa underwater required some technical improvisation. First, the aquarium designed a dive suit. Made of thick red neoprene and fuzzy white fringe, it includes a red dive cap topped by a white ball.

The aquarium uses a commercial-grade dive mask to maintain a pocket of air in front of Santa's face. This allows him to speak through a microphone and hear through speakers embedded in the mask straps. A white elastic band wrapped around the mask prevents Santa's beard from floating off.

As any well-informed 4-year-old knows, Santa has no business swimming in an aquarium across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, especially just a few weeks before Christmas. So each Scuba Santa presentation begins with a 30-second cartoon that shows Santa's reindeer escaping. With help from his magical seahorse friends, Santa finds them at the bottom of the sea.

Suddenly, the movie screen rises, and there is Scuba Santa, hovering 10 feet underwater behind a wall of acrylic six inches thick. The children in the audience gasp, as do many of their parents.

"It's an awesome moment, seeing all those faces light up," Mr. Evans said. "Even a lot of the adults are surprised."

Floating next to Santa is his elf, Snowflake, dressed in a green-and-red costume over a black dive suit. Snowflake's primary task is to alert Santa of nearby sharks.

Their most frequent visitor is Sweet Pea, a shark ray, who resembles a stingray crossed with a crocodile. Sweet Pea, who weighs 50 pounds and someday will weigh over 250, is the first member of her endangered species to be held in captivity in the Western Hemisphere. She spends most of her time during the scuba event swimming circles around Snowflake's flippers.

At the end of a recent show, Sweet Pea rammed Santa like a Labrador retriever greeting its master at the door. Santa grabbed the shark ray by her snout and jammed a fist-size hunk of lobster into her mouth.

"We serve only grade-A, restaurant-quality seafood," said Mark Dvornak, the aquarium's aquatic director. "We like to say that the fish here eat better than we do."

As long as the sharks are not hungry, the biggest threat to Santa and Snowflake is actually Denver, a 400-pound loggerhead sea turtle. In a show last week, Denver made a quick dive, sneaked up behind Santa and tried to steal his bright red hat.

The turtle has succeeded in this game many times, jeopardizing the fragile state of suspended disbelief that keeps mature 7- and 8-year-olds barely within the fold of Santa believers. (What would they think if the giant turtle were to abscond not only Santa's with hat, but also with his curly white wig?)

Snowflake, played during that show by the dive program director, Jennifer Wolfe, thwarted this near-disaster by kicking hard with her flippers and shooting toward Santa, catching Denver just under his chin with her hand. Ms. Wolfe stuck a piece of white plastic pipe, painted with red stripes like a candy cane, into Denver's mouth. The turtle happily gnawed on it as Santa and Snowflake scratched his neck.

In two minutes the giant beast had fallen asleep on the sandy aquarium floor. Mr. Evans continued with the show.

"Help me out, kids," he said, his voice scratchy and distant through the microphone. "What do you think I should get the jellyfish for Christmas?"

"Peanut butter!" said Alex Covington, 3.

"That's a good idea!" Mr. Evans said. Later, he asked, "Now, what do you think I should get for my turtle friend here, Denver?"

"An underwater crossbow!" yelled Calvin Freeman.

For a moment, the auditorium was silent. Then Scuba Santa laughed: "Well, that's the first time I've heard that idea! Ho-ho-ho!"

Homeschooling has become more popular with black families

Home Schools Are Becoming More Popular Among Blacks
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

RICHMOND, Va., Dec. 10 (AP) - When Denise Armstrong decided to teach her daughter and two sons at home instead of sending them to public school, she said she did so thinking she would do a better job than the school of instilling her values in her children.

At the time, Ms. Armstrong was the only black parent at gatherings of home-education groups. But she said that has been changing.

"I've been delighted to be running into people in the African-American home-schooling community," said Ms. Armstrong, who lives in Chesterfield County.

The move toward home schooling, advocates say, reflects a wider desire among families of all races to guide their children's religious upbringing, but it also reflects concerns about other issues like substandard schools and the preservation of cultural heritage.

"About 10 years ago, we started seeing more and more black families showing up at conferences, and it's been steadily increasing since then," said Michael Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, a national advocacy group.

Nationwide, about 1.1 million children were schooled at home in 2003, which was about 2.2 percent of the school-age population. That was up from about 850,000, or 1.7 percent, in 1999, according to the National Center for Education Statistics in the Department of Education.

The center said a racial breakdown of students being schooled at home was not available. But Michael Apple, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin who tracks home schooling, said the numbers were still very low.

Professor Apple said much of the increase was in cities where there were histories of racial tension and where black people felt alienated and marginalized.

He said some families chose home schooling because they were concerned that the public schools were not adequately teaching African-American history and culture, others taught their children at home to protect them from violence, and, "for some, it's all of this and religion."

Ms. Armstrong said she wanted her children to have a "moral Judeo-Christian foundation" that public schools could not provide.

"I felt that my husband and I would be able to give more of a tutorial, individual learning situation than a teacher trying to address 40 kids at one time," she said.

To help guide black families though home schooling, Joyce Burges and her husband, Eric, started the National Black Home Educators Resource Association in 2000.

Ms. Burges said many black families were unaware that home schooling was a legal option. But she said that she and other blacks who school their children at home had been considered turncoats by people who think they have turned their backs on the struggle by blacks to gain equal access to public education.

Still, she said, when schools are not teaching children to read, or are failing to provide a safe place to learn, the children should come first.

"You do what you have to do that your children get an excellent education," she said. "Don't leave it up to the system."

Professor Apple said improvements in public education depended on the mobilization of parents.

By home schooling, parents are "trying as hard as they possibly can to protect their children," he said.

"For that," he added, "they must be applauded. But, in the long run, protecting their own children may even lead to worse conditions for the vast majority of students who stay in public schools, and that's a horrible dilemma."

On plans for redeveloping Staten Island's Homeport

An Old Naval Base in Search of Its Soul
By JOHN FREEMAN GILL

The Homeport, a former naval base in Stapleton, Staten Island, has seen more than its share of false starts. Ever since 1995, when the city acquired the 36-acre site, grand redevelopment schemes have come and gone, among them a Formula One racetrack, a coal importing station, a pier for gambling ships and, most recently, a film studio, which the city forced out after less than three years.

Now the city is giving the site another shot, with a $66 million initial investment in a plan to create a broad esplanade, a sports complex, a banquet hall, retail space and a farmers' market, along with 350 residential units in multifamily buildings and up to 288 more spurred by proposed rezoning of adjacent property.

Judging by reaction at a public meeting on the plan, held on Nov. 30 by the city's Economic Development Corporation in a room of the defunct film studio, local residents - even some who are happy with the project's overall shape - think the plan could use some rejiggering. The meeting was first reported by The Staten Island Advance.

The new development would lie between the waterfront and the tracks of the Staten Island Railway, prompting some residents to worry that the existing neighborhood to the west of the railway might be cut off from the new waterfront district. "Everyone feels that whatever happens down there needs to be connected to and a part of the rest of Stapleton," said Cynthia Mailman, president of the Mud Lane Society for the Renaissance of Stapleton.

Another issue was the proposed new retail space in the rezoned area, which some people suggested could deprive struggling businesses on nearby Bay Street of much-needed new foot traffic.

"People are going to need a laundry and a tailor and a nice deli and a dress shop," Joe Marotta, a member of Community Board 1, said in an interview on Wednesday. "But if they put a lot of retail on the site, I could see it becoming almost a wealthy enclave unto itself."

Sean Sweeney, chairman of the community board, applauded the overall plan but expressed concern over whether local services would be unduly strained. "When you're adding 350 homes," he said, "I'd like to see someone have the foresight to say: 'Here's a great proposal. Let's make sure we have school seats and hospital beds.' "

Janel Patterson, a spokeswoman for the Economic Development Corporation, declined to comment on specific community concerns, noting that the purpose of the meeting was to solicit public comments on environmental issues. "These comments," she said, "will be given serious consideration as we move forward in the process." Economic Development Corporation officials plan to discuss the project at a Community Board 1 meeting on Tuesday, and the corporation plans to issue a draft environmental impact statement by next spring.

For Ms. Mailman, of the Mud Lane Society, the process cannot move forward quickly enough. "Part of me feels this is just another fantasy," she said. "I've been here so long without seeing anything of value in there."

A VERY IMPORTANT ARTICLE! On the law, and spying on phone lines.

Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts
By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.

"This is really a sea change," said a former senior official who specializes in national security law. "It's almost a mainstay of this country that the N.S.A. only does foreign searches."

Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation's legality and oversight.

According to those officials and others, reservations about aspects of the program have also been expressed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a judge presiding over a secret court that oversees intelligence matters. Some of the questions about the agency's new powers led the administration to temporarily suspend the operation last year and impose more restrictions, the officials said.

The Bush administration views the operation as necessary so that the agency can move quickly to monitor communications that may disclose threats to the United States, the officials said. Defenders of the program say it has been a critical tool in helping disrupt terrorist plots and prevent attacks inside the United States.

Administration officials are confident that existing safeguards are sufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, the officials say. In some cases, they said, the Justice Department eventually seeks warrants if it wants to expand the eavesdropping to include communications confined within the United States. The officials said the administration had briefed Congressional leaders about the program and notified the judge in charge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret Washington court that deals with national security issues.

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

Dealing With a New Threat

While many details about the program remain secret, officials familiar with it say the N.S.A. eavesdrops without warrants on up to 500 people in the United States at any given time. The list changes as some names are added and others dropped, so the number monitored in this country may have reached into the thousands since the program began, several officials said. Overseas, about 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties are monitored at one time, according to those officials.

Several officials said the eavesdropping program had helped uncover a plot by Iyman Faris, an Ohio trucker and naturalized citizen who pleaded guilty in 2003 to supporting Al Qaeda by planning to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with blowtorches. What appeared to be another Qaeda plot, involving fertilizer bomb attacks on British pubs and train stations, was exposed last year in part through the program, the officials said. But they said most people targeted for N.S.A. monitoring have never been charged with a crime, including an Iranian-American doctor in the South who came under suspicion because of what one official described as dubious ties to Osama bin Laden.

The eavesdropping program grew out of concerns after the Sept. 11 attacks that the nation's intelligence agencies were not poised to deal effectively with the new threat of Al Qaeda and that they were handcuffed by legal and bureaucratic restrictions better suited to peacetime than war, according to officials. In response, President Bush significantly eased limits on American intelligence and law enforcement agencies and the military.

But some of the administration's antiterrorism initiatives have provoked an outcry from members of Congress, watchdog groups, immigrants and others who argue that the measures erode protections for civil liberties and intrude on Americans' privacy.

Opponents have challenged provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the focus of contentious debate on Capitol Hill this week, that expand domestic surveillance by giving the Federal Bureau of Investigation more power to collect information like library lending lists or Internet use. Military and F.B.I. officials have drawn criticism for monitoring what were largely peaceful antiwar protests. The Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security were forced to retreat on plans to use public and private databases to hunt for possible terrorists. And last year, the Supreme Court rejected the administration's claim that those labeled "enemy combatants" were not entitled to judicial review of their open-ended detention.

Mr. Bush's executive order allowing some warrantless eavesdropping on those inside the United States - including American citizens, permanent legal residents, tourists and other foreigners - is based on classified legal opinions that assert that the president has broad powers to order such searches, derived in part from the September 2001 Congressional resolution authorizing him to wage war on Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, according to the officials familiar with the N.S.A. operation.

The National Security Agency, which is based at Fort Meade, Md., is the nation's largest and most secretive intelligence agency, so intent on remaining out of public view that it has long been nicknamed "No Such Agency." It breaks codes and maintains listening posts around the world to eavesdrop on foreign governments, diplomats and trade negotiators as well as drug lords and terrorists. But the agency ordinarily operates under tight restrictions on any spying on Americans, even if they are overseas, or disseminating information about them.

What the agency calls a "special collection program" began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, as it looked for new tools to attack terrorism. The program accelerated in early 2002 after the Central Intelligence Agency started capturing top Qaeda operatives overseas, including Abu Zubaydah, who was arrested in Pakistan in March 2002. The C.I.A. seized the terrorists' computers, cellphones and personal phone directories, said the officials familiar with the program. The N.S.A. surveillance was intended to exploit those numbers and addresses as quickly as possible, they said.

In addition to eavesdropping on those numbers and reading e-mail messages to and from the Qaeda figures, the N.S.A. began monitoring others linked to them, creating an expanding chain. While most of the numbers and addresses were overseas, hundreds were in the United States, the officials said.

Under the agency's longstanding rules, the N.S.A. can target for interception phone calls or e-mail messages on foreign soil, even if the recipients of those communications are in the United States. Usually, though, the government can only target phones and e-mail messages in the United States by first obtaining a court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which holds its closed sessions at the Justice Department.

Traditionally, the F.B.I., not the N.S.A., seeks such warrants and conducts most domestic eavesdropping. Until the new program began, the N.S.A. typically limited its domestic surveillance to foreign embassies and missions in Washington, New York and other cities, and obtained court orders to do so.

Since 2002, the agency has been conducting some warrantless eavesdropping on people in the United States who are linked, even if indirectly, to suspected terrorists through the chain of phone numbers and e-mail addresses, according to several officials who know of the operation. Under the special program, the agency monitors their international communications, the officials said. The agency, for example, can target phone calls from someone in New York to someone in Afghanistan.

Warrants are still required for eavesdropping on entirely domestic-to-domestic communications, those officials say, meaning that calls from that New Yorker to someone in California could not be monitored without first going to the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court.

A White House Briefing

After the special program started, Congressional leaders from both political parties were brought to Vice President Dick Cheney's office in the White House. The leaders, who included the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House intelligence committees, learned of the N.S.A. operation from Mr. Cheney, Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden of the Air Force, who was then the agency's director and is now a full general and the principal deputy director of national intelligence, and George J. Tenet, then the director of the C.I.A., officials said.

It is not clear how much the members of Congress were told about the presidential order and the eavesdropping program. Some of them declined to comment about the matter, while others did not return phone calls.

Later briefings were held for members of Congress as they assumed leadership roles on the intelligence committees, officials familiar with the program said. After a 2003 briefing, Senator Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat who became vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee that year, wrote a letter to Mr. Cheney expressing concerns about the program, officials knowledgeable about the letter said. It could not be determined if he received a reply. Mr. Rockefeller declined to comment. Aside from the Congressional leaders, only a small group of people, including several cabinet members and officials at the N.S.A., the C.I.A. and the Justice Department, know of the program.

Some officials familiar with it say they consider warrantless eavesdropping inside the United States to be unlawful and possibly unconstitutional, amounting to an improper search. One government official involved in the operation said he privately complained to a Congressional official about his doubts about the program's legality. But nothing came of his inquiry. "People just looked the other way because they didn't want to know what was going on," he said.

A senior government official recalled that he was taken aback when he first learned of the operation. "My first reaction was, 'We're doing what?' " he said. While he said he eventually felt that adequate safeguards were put in place, he added that questions about the program's legitimacy were understandable.

Some of those who object to the operation argue that is unnecessary. By getting warrants through the foreign intelligence court, the N.S.A. and F.B.I. could eavesdrop on people inside the United States who might be tied to terrorist groups without skirting longstanding rules, they say.

The standard of proof required to obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is generally considered lower than that required for a criminal warrant - intelligence officials only have to show probable cause that someone may be "an agent of a foreign power," which includes international terrorist groups - and the secret court has turned down only a small number of requests over the years. In 2004, according to the Justice Department, 1,754 warrants were approved. And the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court can grant emergency approval for wiretaps within hours, officials say.

Administration officials counter that they sometimes need to move more urgently, the officials said. Those involved in the program also said that the N.S.A.'s eavesdroppers might need to start monitoring large batches of numbers all at once, and that it would be impractical to seek permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court first, according to the officials.

The N.S.A. domestic spying operation has stirred such controversy among some national security officials in part because of the agency's cautious culture and longstanding rules.

Widespread abuses - including eavesdropping on Vietnam War protesters and civil rights activists - by American intelligence agencies became public in the 1970's and led to passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which imposed strict limits on intelligence gathering on American soil. Among other things, the law required search warrants, approved by the secret F.I.S.A. court, for wiretaps in national security cases. The agency, deeply scarred by the scandals, adopted additional rules that all but ended domestic spying on its part.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, though, the United States intelligence community was criticized for being too risk-averse. The National Security Agency was even cited by the independent 9/11 Commission for adhering to self-imposed rules that were stricter than those set by federal law.

Concerns and Revisions

Several senior government officials say that when the special operation began, there were few controls on it and little formal oversight outside the N.S.A. The agency can choose its eavesdropping targets and does not have to seek approval from Justice Department or other Bush administration officials. Some agency officials wanted nothing to do with the program, apparently fearful of participating in an illegal operation, a former senior Bush administration official said. Before the 2004 election, the official said, some N.S.A. personnel worried that the program might come under scrutiny by Congressional or criminal investigators if Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, was elected president.

In mid-2004, concerns about the program expressed by national security officials, government lawyers and a judge prompted the Bush administration to suspend elements of the program and revamp it.

For the first time, the Justice Department audited the N.S.A. program, several officials said. And to provide more guidance, the Justice Department and the agency expanded and refined a checklist to follow in deciding whether probable cause existed to start monitoring someone's communications, several officials said.

A complaint from Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the federal judge who oversees the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court, helped spur the suspension, officials said. The judge questioned whether information obtained under the N.S.A. program was being improperly used as the basis for F.I.S.A. wiretap warrant requests from the Justice Department, according to senior government officials. While not knowing all the details of the exchange, several government lawyers said there appeared to be concerns that the Justice Department, by trying to shield the existence of the N.S.A. program, was in danger of misleading the court about the origins of the information cited to justify the warrants.

One official familiar with the episode said the judge insisted to Justice Department lawyers at one point that any material gathered under the special N.S.A. program not be used in seeking wiretap warrants from her court. Judge Kollar-Kotelly did not return calls for comment.

A related issue arose in a case in which the F.B.I. was monitoring the communications of a terrorist suspect under a F.I.S.A.-approved warrant, even though the National Security Agency was already conducting warrantless eavesdropping.

According to officials, F.B.I. surveillance of Mr. Faris, the Brooklyn Bridge plotter, was dropped for a short time because of technical problems. At the time, senior Justice Department officials worried what would happen if the N.S.A. picked up information that needed to be presented in court. The government would then either have to disclose the N.S.A. program or mislead a criminal court about how it had gotten the information.

Several national security officials say the powers granted the N.S.A. by President Bush go far beyond the expanded counterterrorism powers granted by Congress under the USA Patriot Act, which is up for renewal. The House on Wednesday approved a plan to reauthorize crucial parts of the law. But final passage has been delayed under the threat of a Senate filibuster because of concerns from both parties over possible intrusions on Americans' civil liberties and privacy.

Under the act, law enforcement and intelligence officials are still required to seek a F.I.S.A. warrant every time they want to eavesdrop within the United States. A recent agreement reached by Republican leaders and the Bush administration would modify the standard for F.B.I. wiretap warrants, requiring, for instance, a description of a specific target. Critics say the bar would remain too low to prevent abuses.

Bush administration officials argue that the civil liberties concerns are unfounded, and they say pointedly that the Patriot Act has not freed the N.S.A. to target Americans. "Nothing could be further from the truth," wrote John Yoo, a former official in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and his co-author in a Wall Street Journal opinion article in December 2003. Mr. Yoo worked on a classified legal opinion on the N.S.A.'s domestic eavesdropping program.

At an April hearing on the Patriot Act renewal, Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, asked Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I., "Can the National Security Agency, the great electronic snooper, spy on the American people?"

"Generally," Mr. Mueller said, "I would say generally, they are not allowed to spy or to gather information on American citizens."

President Bush did not ask Congress to include provisions for the N.S.A. domestic surveillance program as part of the Patriot Act and has not sought any other laws to authorize the operation. Bush administration lawyers argued that such new laws were unnecessary, because they believed that the Congressional resolution on the campaign against terrorism provided ample authorization, officials said.

The Legal Line Shifts

Seeking Congressional approval was also viewed as politically risky because the proposal would be certain to face intense opposition on civil liberties grounds. The administration also feared that by publicly disclosing the existence of the operation, its usefulness in tracking terrorists would end, officials said.

The legal opinions that support the N.S.A. operation remain classified, but they appear to have followed private discussions among senior administration lawyers and other officials about the need to pursue aggressive strategies that once may have been seen as crossing a legal line, according to senior officials who participated in the discussions.

For example, just days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon, Mr. Yoo, the Justice Department lawyer, wrote an internal memorandum that argued that the government might use "electronic surveillance techniques and equipment that are more powerful and sophisticated than those available to law enforcement agencies in order to intercept telephonic communications and observe the movement of persons but without obtaining warrants for such uses."

Mr. Yoo noted that while such actions could raise constitutional issues, in the face of devastating terrorist attacks "the government may be justified in taking measures which in less troubled conditions could be seen as infringements of individual liberties."

The next year, Justice Department lawyers disclosed their thinking on the issue of warrantless wiretaps in national security cases in a little-noticed brief in an unrelated court case. In that 2002 brief, the government said that "the Constitution vests in the President inherent authority to conduct warrantless intelligence surveillance (electronic or otherwise) of foreign powers or their agents, and Congress cannot by statute extinguish that constitutional authority."

Administration officials were also encouraged by a November 2002 appeals court decision in an unrelated matter. The decision by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, which sided with the administration in dismantling a bureaucratic "wall" limiting cooperation between prosecutors and intelligence officers, cited "the president's inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance."

But the same court suggested that national security interests should not be grounds "to jettison the Fourth Amendment requirements" protecting the rights of Americans against undue searches. The dividing line, the court acknowledged, "is a very difficult one to administer.