VANESSA FRIEDMAN ON
A RECLUSIVE JEWELER,
A MENORAH AND
HIS FAMILY TIES
A FEMALE
BIOGRAPHER
SHUNS THE
LEGEND
TO PARSE
HEMINGWAY
THE MAN
GRIME, WITH ALL ITS
GRIT, IS TOPPING
BRITISH CHARTS —
AND MINTING STARS
Weekend
SURF’S UP,
ONCE
AGAIN,
IN THE
FRENCH
RESORT
TOWN OF
BIARRITZ
PAGE 20 | MUSIC
‘TWIN PEAKS.’ IT’S BACK
AND COMING TO A TV
SCREEN NEAR YOU.
PAGE 16 | BOOKS
PAGE 23 |
TRAVEL
PAGE 14 | WEEKEND
PAGE 21 | STYLE
..
INTERNATIONAL EDITION | SATURDAY-SUNDAY, MAY 20-21, 2017
A chance
for Mideast
policy shift
Gray cloud
expected to
linger over
presidency
Michael Doran
NEWS ANALYSIS
WASHINGTON
OPINION
During his campaign, Donald Trump’s
Middle East policy seemed to begin
and end with his vow to “bomb the
hell” out of the Islamic State — a
pledge that played well with his base
but unsettled establishment foreign
policy experts, who worried that the
collateral damage would include everything else America has been trying to
build in the region.
The establishment was giving itself
too much credit: Our policies in the
Middle East have been blowing themselves up for a good while. As Mr.
Trump embarks on his first foreign
trip, including stops in Israel and Saudi
Arabia, he has a chance to put in place
a new long-term vision. In fact, the
outlines of one are already in place.
Despite the controversies at home, Mr.
Trump may come
away with a
legacy-cementAmerica
ing achievement:
has been
a Trump Docstumbling in
trine for the
the region for
Middle East.
years. The
The Middle
East is complex,
new president
but Mr. Trump’s
has an
predecessors
opportunity to
stumbled for a
change that.
singular reason:
the rise of Iran.
As a senior official in the George W. Bush administration, I saw firsthand how President
Bush’s democracy project in Iraq diverted attention from countering Iran
and its proxies. Mr. Bush seems to
have believed that a robust democracy
in Iraq would serve simultaneously as
a bulwark against Sunni Islamic
extremism and Iranian power. In the
end, Iran slipped into Iraq under Mr.
Bush’s nose, subverted the project, and
recruited proxy militias to promote its
interests.
Mr. Bush let Iran in by miscalculation. President Barack Obama, by
contrast, embraced Iranian ascendancy with open arms — and not just in
Iraq, but in Syria as well. Mr. Obama
dropped efforts to contain Iran and
sought a nuclear accord that would
allow the West to normalize relations
because he was convinced that recognition of an Iranian sphere of influence
would persuade Tehran to function as a
DORAN, PAGE 10
Special counsel’s inquiry
could be long distraction
for Trump administration
BY CARL HULSE
DMITRY KOSTYUKOV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Paradise lost
When Villaggio Coppola was built in the 1960s just north of Naples, Italy, it was intended to be a utopian residential area. Today, it is a site of abandonment and degradation, and a concentration of southern Italy’s abiding troubles: criminality, lax local governance and extreme poverty. PAGE 2
PROSECUTOR, PAGE 4
Seeking justice, finding death
U.N. investigators killed
after being sent to Congo
with little preparation
BY KIMIKO DE FREYTAS-TAMURA
AND SOMINI SENGUPTA
THOMAS MUKOYA/REUTERS
Peacekeeping forces in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. Two United Nations
investigators who were killed in the country had little training and no protection.
Zaida Catalán was on to something, and
it was making her jumpy.
“Exciting development,” she scribbled in her diary in late January. “I can
maybe nail this bastard. Damn!”
Weeks later, Ms. Catalán, a United Nations investigator with little training, no
safety equipment or even health insurance, headed into a remote area teeming
with militia fighters to find the culprits
behind a massacre in the Democratic
Republic of Congo.
A grainy cellphone video shows what
happened next: A cluster of men with ri-
Suffering for your art? Maybe a patron can help
Creators are finding hope
as more benefactors are
willing to invest in careers
BY JENNIFER MILLER
In 2013, the editors of The Toast, an online magazine of feminist humor and
commentary, asked Alexis Coe to write a
regular column. Ms. Coe, a historian,
was eager to accept, but could not. “It
was early in my career,” she said. “I
couldn’t do it for the nominal fee they
were offering early writers.”
Then the editors called with some unexpected news. They had found a woman (a lawyer in her early 30s) who liked
Ms. Coe’s work and had offered to subsidize the column, provided she could remain anonymous to the public. Suddenly, Ms. Coe had something she had
never considered herself worthy of —
something that she did not realize actually existed in the modern world.
She had a patron.
Ms. Coe wrote 15 columns, for which
Y(1J85IC*KKNMKS( +]!"!$!?!"
Nothing says serious business in Washington like the term special counsel.
It resonates solemnly through the
capital and inspires grave talk, including the possibility of significant wrongdoing at the highest levels with the potential of historic consequences.
The implied gravity of the term,
freighted with history, was a chief reason Democrats were so eager for a special prosecutor to investigate any connection between Russia and the Trump
campaign, and a chief reason Republicans were so leery of an appointment.
Both sides knew the naming of a special
counsel would elevate questions about
Russian meddling in the election and related matters to an entirely different level, from both a political and an investigatory standpoint.
Now Robert S. Mueller III, the former
prosecutor and F.B.I. director, takes his
she received checks exceeding the
standard pay rate. She said she and her
patron did not meet and only briefly “exchanged pleasantries” over email. And
yet the relationship, she said, “really did
feel significant to me — not necessarily
in monetary value, but in the knowledge
that the work that I was doing wasn’t insular, and the people who were reading
it weren’t just librarians in New England.”
It may seem incredible that a benefactor would simply drop from the sky like
this. But Ms. Coe’s experience is emblematic of a shift in how some arts enthusiasts, from wealthy individuals to
grant-making foundations, are relating
to creators.
They are moving away from merely
collecting and consuming art and toward a model reminiscent of the Renaissance, when royal houses provided
room, board, materials and important
professional connections to talented
artists of the day.
Patrons of the 21st century are far less
politically motivated than the Medici
PATRONS, PAGE 2
JASON HENRY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Shefali Kumar Friesen, a digital artist, at home in San Francisco. Ms. Friesen has patrons helping her turn her tech-art project into a profitable business.
NEWSSTAND PRICES
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(Europe) $ 1.90
Issue Number
No. 41,736
fles and red bandannas lead Ms.
Catalán, a 36-year-old Swedish-Chilean,
into a grove with her American colleague, Michael J. Sharp, 34. The two investigators are barefoot.
Mr. Sharp starts arguing. He and Ms.
Catalán are forced onto the ground. Suddenly, shots are fired, hitting Mr. Sharp
first. Ms. Catalán screams and tries to
run for cover. She is shot twice.
Their bodies were discovered weeks
later in a shallow grave, laid out carefully, side by side, in opposite directions.
Ms. Catalán had been decapitated. Her
head was, and still is, missing.
Their deaths raise tough questions
about the United Nations and its work in
the most dangerous places in the world.
Almost two months passed before the
United Nations even assembled a panel
to look into what went wrong. The
United Nations Security Council could
UNITED NATIONS, PAGE 3
DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES
President Trump is not the first president
to encounter a supercharged investigator.
EX-F.B.I. CHIEF SOUGHT DISTANCE
James B. Comey felt contact with
President Trump would be inappropriate during the Russia inquiry. PAGE 4
SPECIAL COUNSEL’S ROLE IN INQUIRY
How the decision to appoint Robert S.
Mueller III affects the investigation
into Russian meddling. PAGE 4
TIPS FOR A SUCCESSFUL VISIT WITH TRUMP
Foreign officials and their consultants
say it is best to keep things short and
offer the president a win. PAGE 6