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VOL. CLXVI . . . No. 57,496
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2017
© 2017 The New York Times Company
Printed in Chicago
$2.50
CHAIN OF MISCUES
IN YEMEN ATTACK
ON QAEDA BRANCH
TRUMP EMBRACES
CHANGE IN RULES
FOR COURT PICK
CIVILIANS LIKELY KILLED
ENDING THE FILIBUSTER
Raising Questions Over
Planning and Trump’s
Approval of Raid
Democrats Contemplate
Showdown Over Seat
Many Call Stolen
By ERIC SCHMITT
and DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON — Just five
days after taking office, over dinner with his newly installed secretary of defense and the chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, President Trump was presented with
the first of what will be many lifeor-death decisions: whether to approve a commando raid that
risked the lives of American Special Operations forces and foreign
civilians alike.
President Barack Obama’s national security aides had reviewed
the plans for a risky attack on a
small, heavily guarded brick
home of a senior Qaeda collaborator in a mountainous village in a
remote part of central Yemen. But
Mr. Obama did not act because the
Pentagon wanted to launch the attack on a moonless night and the
next one would come after his
term had ended.
With two of his closest advisers,
Jared Kushner and Stephen K.
Bannon, joining the dinner at the
White House along with Defense
Secretary Jim Mattis and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., Mr. Trump approved sending in the Navy’s
SEAL Team 6, hoping the raid
early last Sunday would scoop up
cellphones and laptop computers
that could yield valuable clues
about one of the world’s most dangerous terrorist groups. Vice
President Mike Pence and Michael T. Flynn, the national security adviser, also attended the dinner.
As it turned out, almost everything that could go wrong did. And
on Wednesday, Mr. Trump flew to
Dover Air Force Base in Delaware
to be present as the body of the
American commando killed in the
Continued on Page A17
By MATT FLEGENHEIMER
AL DRAGO/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, left, at a news conference with Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, the Supreme Court nominee.
A Sinister Perception of Islam One Arrest, and Many Doubts,
Now Steers the White House In a German Terror Crackdown
This article is by Scott Shane,
Matthew Rosenberg and Eric Lipton.
WASHINGTON — It was at a
campaign rally in August that
President Trump most fully unveiled the dark vision of an America under siege by “radical Islam”
that is now radically reshaping
the policies of the United States.
On a stage lined with American
flags in Youngstown, Ohio, Mr.
Trump, who months before had
called for a “total and complete
shutdown” of Muslim immigration, argued that the United States
faced a threat on par with the
greatest evils of the 20th century.
The Islamic State was brutalizing
the Middle East, and Muslim immigrants in the West were killing
innocents at nightclubs, offices
and churches, he said. Extreme
measures were needed.
“The hateful ideology of radical
Islam,” he told supporters, must
not be “allowed to reside or spread
within our own communities.”
Mr. Trump was echoing a strain
of anti-Islamic theorizing familiar
to anyone who has been immersed in security and counterterrorism debates over the last 20
years. He has embraced a deeply
suspicious view of Islam that several of his aides have promoted,
notably retired Lt. Gen. Michael T.
Flynn, now his national security
adviser, and Stephen K. Bannon,
the president’s top strategist.
This worldview borrows from
the “clash of civilizations” thesis
of the political scientist Samuel P.
Huntington,
and
combines
straightforward warnings about
Continued on Page A14
By ALISON SMALE
BERLIN — Cloaked in body armor and bearing heavy weapons,
more than 1,000 German police officers swooped down Wednesday
on homes, offices and mosques in
shock-and-awe raids centered on
Germany’s financial capital,
Frankfurt. Nationwide, more than
50 sites were targeted.
For Germany’s security apparatus, the raid was intended as a
high-profile demonstration of official resolve to counter terrorism.
Yet the modest yield — just one arrest and 15 placed under investigation and released — muted any
chest thumping.
More disconcerting still, the
man arrested, a 36-year-old
Tunisian believed to be plotting an
attack in Germany, was known to
the authorities as a suspect in a
horrific 2015 assault on a national
museum in the Tunisian capital.
The case is already reviving familiar questions of whether the
German system is riddled with
loopholes and problems that pose
a risk to national security and
whether Germany’s post-World
War II structures are outmoded
for 21st-century terrorist threats.
Like Anis Amri, the Tunisian
suspected of killing 12 by plowing
a truck through a Christmas market in Berlin last year, the latest
Tunisian suspect, who was not
identified, entered Germany as an
asylum seeker. He then slipped
through the fingers of the authorities while his deportation was
thwarted by bureaucratic hurdles
Continued on Page A6
WASHINGTON — President
Trump, seeming to relish a fight
with Democrats over his nominee
to the Supreme Court, encouraged
the Senate majority leader, Mitch
McConnell, on Wednesday to invoke the so-called nuclear option
and abandon the 60-vote threshold for confirmation.
“If we end up with that gridlock,
I would say, ‘If you can, Mitch, go
nuclear,’” the president said.
Democrats are weighing strategies for opposing the nomination
of Judge Neil M. Gorsuch and debating how aggressively to pursue a battle over a seat that many
of them believe was stolen from
their party.
In selecting a respected, deeply
conservative jurist, Mr. Trump
has dared Democrats to pursue
the kind of blanket obstructionism
that they long accused Republicans of embracing during the
Obama administration.
“That would be an absolute
shame if a man of this quality was
put up to that neglect,” he said
from the Roosevelt Room of the
White House.
For the Democrats, who have
struggled to match the fury and
zeal of the party’s base during the
Continued on Page A18
AL DRAGO/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Senator Chuck Schumer of
New York, the minority leader.
After Visa Ban, Hints of Hidden Tension on Mississippi Campus 2 G.O.P. Senators Break Ranks
To Oppose Education Nominee
By STEPHANIE SAUL
and ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
STARKVILLE, Miss. — Coming from an Iranian city of around
150,000 people, Amir Rezazadeh
felt a little out of place when he arrived at Mississippi State University, more than 100 miles from any
metropolitan area and deep in the
heart of the Bible Belt.
But he soon came to like the quiet surroundings, where there was
little to distract him from his horticulture studies, and where there
was already a group of Middle
Eastern students and professors
to make him feel welcome.
Ignoring half-serious warnings
that he could be converted, he
even began spending time at the
Baptist Student Union, where he
honed his English, discussed
Christianity and Islam, played
games and watched movies, and
forged friendships with some of
the Mississippi-born students.
That is why he was more than a
little taken aback this past week
when students told him to his face
that they agreed with President
Trump’s order to temporarily ban
visa holders from Iran and six
By YAMICHE ALCINDOR and EMMARIE HUETTEMAN
BOB MILLER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Kimia Mortezaei, an Iranian with a Ph.D. in civil engineering, told of an episode at a local market.
other countries from entering the
United States.
“Some people say directly to
you that it’s a good order,” he said,
“that our country should have this
order to ban terrorists.” He finds
their position especially hurtful,
he said, in light of his fears of what
the order might mean for him and
his wife, and roughly 80 other students from the seven countries.
INTERNATIONAL A4-8
An estimated 17,000 students in
the United States are touched by
the ban, many of them in universities in the Northeast and California, where support for the president’s move has been thin. But
there are also sizable numbers in
universities like Mississippi State,
out-of-the-way pockets in states
that voted for Donald J. Trump.
The move may be bringing to
NEW YORK A22-23
SPORTSTHURSDAY B12-17
A Store’s Possible Family Ties
A Star’s Lesson in Humility
The owner of a corner store in Brooklyn
has been accused of taking part in a
gambling operation run by the Genovese crime family.
PAGE A22
Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan attended a Quaker school, where the
personal achievements of students are
not necessarily celebrated.
PAGE B12
BUSINESS DAY B1-9
‘New Era’ of Israeli Settlement
Security for the Smart Home
Even as settlers, above, fought evacuation from an illegal outpost, Israel approved thousands more housing units in
the occupied West Bank as well as an
entirely new settlement.
PAGE A4
As connected devices grow more popular, they will become bigger targets for
hackers. Secure them now with tips
from experts. Tech Fix.
PAGE B8
NATIONAL A9-21
Treatment for Prostate Cancer
Research shows that men whose
prostate cancer recurs after surgery are
more likely to survive if they receive
radiation and hormone drugs. PAGE A21
U.S. Is ‘Putting Iran on Notice’
President Trump’s national security
adviser, Michael T. Flynn, threatened
the Iranian government with reprisals
in light of a recent ballistic missile
launch.
PAGE A16
the surface hidden tensions between ambitious Middle Eastern
students who have been welcomed to the United States with
scholarships and job opportunities, and fellow students and other
residents who believe the threat of
terrorism necessitates a second
look at who is let into the country.
The Mississippi State presiContinued on Page A12
ARTS C1-8
THURSDAY STYLES D1-8
A Sensitive Singer Goes Solo
Fashion Statements
Sampha, who has lent his soulful voice
to works by Drake, Kanye West and
Beyoncé, is releasing a full-length album of his own.
PAGE C1
Buzz Aldrin was part of Nick Graham’s
Mars-themed collection at the men’s
wear shows in New York, where designers made political appeals.
PAGE D1
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A24-25
Gail Collins
PAGE A25
U(DF463D)X+"!.!&!=!_
WASHINGTON — Two Republican senators on Wednesday said
they would vote against President
Trump’s nominee for education
secretary, delivering a blow to the
White House and raising the possibility that Vice President Mike
Pence would have to break a tie to
win her confirmation.
The nominee, Betsy DeVos, a
billionaire with a complex web of
financial investments, had already faced fierce opposition from
Democrats and labor unions because of her political contributions to Republicans and her involvement in pushing alternatives to public education. But her
confirmation hearing in front of
the Senate Committee on Health,
Education, Labor and Pensions,
during which she flubbed answers
on education policy, also brought
concerns from Republicans.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said Ms. DeVos had failed to demonstrate that
she understood what public
schools needed to succeed. “I
have serious concerns about a nominee to be secretary of education
who has been so involved in one
side of the equation, so immersed
in the push for vouchers, that she
may be unaware of what actually
is successful within the public
schools, and also what is broken
Continued on Page A11
CONFIRMED By a 56-to-43 Senate vote, Rex Tillerson became secretary
of state as serious strains emerged with international allies. PAGE A11
HARSH WORDS A phone call between President Trump and the Austral-
ian prime minister led to a potential rift over a refugee policy. PAGE A7
DOCTOR’S NOTE The president takes a drug for hair growth. PAGE A20