> Continued from Part 2
=== Hate Groups
24. Bertollini plans suit over arrest
25. Situation warrants independent probe (Bertollini)
26. It's ironic, but Aryans have their rights
27. White supremacist David Duke takes crusade to Russia
28. Dog's Owner Says Victim Failed to Save Self
29. Controversial anti-gay preacher leads protest in Traverse City

=== Rebirthing
30. Seeking Child's Love, a Child's Life is Lost
31. `Candace's Law' to be introduced this week

=== Other News
32. Church cult 'taxed members at £2,000 a month' (Peniel Pentecostal Church)
33. Psychics link Indonesia's political rumblings to volcanoes
34. Astrology fuels panic in quake city
35. Police arrest Indian astrologer who predicted new quake
36. The Presidential Corruption Index (Clinton)
37. Behind 4 Pardons, a Sect Eager for Political Friends

> Part 4
=== Noted
38. A Desire to Duplicate (Raelians)
39. Go forth ... by 2000? (AD2000 & Beyond)
40. Praise the Lord and gas up the Harley

=== Films
41. 'Left Behind' leaves the audience behind as well
42. Complaints Against Harry Potter Series Triple

=== The theme park critics around the corner
43. Christian theme park opens amid controversy


=== Hate Groups

24. Bertollini plans suit over arrest
The Spokesman-Review, Feb. 3, 2001
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
SANDPOINT -- Vincent Bertollini has sent out another mass mailing.

Instead of attacking Idaho human rights activists, this time the man known for sending out racist literature is attacking local law enforcement.

Bertollini is soliciting plaintiffs for a class action suit he plans to file against Sandpoint and Bonner County law enforcement agencies.

Bertollini said he's distributed 7,500 notices to file suit, either by mail or over the Internet.

He's looking for anyone with complaints of police brutality, harassment, intimidation and other allegations against law enforcement. The notice followed Bertollini's accusations that Sandpoint police beat him up during a recent arrest for suspicion of driving under the influence.

Bertollini faces charges of resisting arrest and felony DUI at his arraignment Tuesday.
(...)

After bonding out of jail, Bertollini took photos of his bloodied face and posted them on the Internet, prompting a few dozen outraged e-mails to city officials.

Bertollini, an outspoken advocate for the Aryan Nations and co-founder of a Christian Identity ministry called the 11th Hour Remnant Messenger, said he's been harassed by the police for his nonconformist views about the white race.

Sandpoint Police Chief Mark Lockwood said his officers haven't harassed Bertollini.
(...)

At Lockwood's request, the FBI is reviewing the DUI arrest.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


25. Situation warrants independent probe
The Spokesman Review, Jan. 18, 2001
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
It has been said that pictures don't lie. But photos sometimes do not reveal the truth, either.

After Sandpoint white supremacist Vincent Bertollini was arrested Friday night for drunken driving, he used e-mail to circulate a photo of his face, bruised and badly cut with an eye that appeared to be swollen shut. Sandpoint police, he claimed, beat him after they followed him to his home and arrested him on a drunken driving charge.

A less dramatic photo, taken during booking at the Bonner County Jail, showed Bertollini with an extensive cut above his eyes and a smaller one across his nose. The police mug shot revealed wounds that Bertollini could have suffered by falling against the side of a garage. Sandpoint police contend that Bertollini did just that as he tried to escape an arresting officer's grasp.

Currently, it appears to be Bertollini's word against the police - and that doesn't help the supremacist. In the last five years he has been arrested three times and convicted once of drunken driving, including one instance in which he tried unsuccessfully to evade police. Also, he has earned the ire of fellow North Idahoans by regularly sending out mass mailings of venomous hate literature. However, Bertollini's charges can't be dismissed out of hand.
There's still the photo.

Sandpoint Police Chief Mark Lockwood should request an independent investigation of Bertollini's arrest, preferably from an agency outside Bonner County. A
(...)

An independent investigation should reveal Bertollini for what he is - a troubled man who has a drinking problem.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


26. It's ironic, but Aryans have their rights
The Spokesman-Review, Feb. 5, 2001 (Opinion)
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Cpeur d'Alene _ There's no greater irony than holding an Aryan World Congress at the former U.S. Navy training center for troops gearing up to battle Adolf Hitler in World War II.

Or is there?

What's possibly more ironic is that Farragut State Park officials can't prevent the Aryan Nations from gathering there because of the freedoms those American troops fought to protect.

''The initial reaction is probably a little spittin' and cussin,''' said Kootenai County Commissioner Ron Rankin, a World War II veteran. ''But one of the things we fought for was the right of individuals to freely assemble.
(...)

Shaun Winkler, staff leader for the white supremacist group, has put down a $325 deposit to use the park from July 5 to July 9. Park officials, after conferring with the Idaho attorney general's office, said they probably will approve the permit.

Members of the Aryan Nations have as much right to the park as anyone else, Assistant Park Manager Al Leiser said Sunday.

''As long as they abide by the park rules, they're as welcome as anyone else,'' Leiser said. ''As a public park, we are open to the public.''

The rules the Aryans must follow include observing quiet times from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. No open burning is allowed, which means no crosses or swastikas can be set on fire. And no displays of firearms are permitted, even if the weapons are not real.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


27. White supremacist David Duke takes crusade to Russia
AP, Feb. 2, 2001
http://www.salon.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Feb. 2, 2001 | MOSCOW (AP) -- Under investigation by federal agents at home in the United States, white supremacist David Duke has taken his crusade against Jews and non-Europeans to Russia, which he now sees as ''the key to white survival.''

During several trips to Russia over the past year and a half, Duke has spoken in public, exchanged views with hard-line Russian nationalists and published a book, according to his Web site.

The 412-page Russian version of ''My Awakening'' is now on sale in the Russian parliament's bookstore for 50 rubles, or about $1.75, in hardcover. The Russian title translates as ''The Jewish Question Through the Eyes of an American.''
(...)

Duke's ideas -- that white people are threatened by the growth of nonwhite populations and by ''Jewish supremacism'' -- are largely the province of tiny, splinter groups of extremists in Russia. Parties with openly anti-Jewish or racist platforms get only microscopic support.

Nonetheless, the country has a long history of anti-Semitism running back through the czarist and Soviet periods. Some current politicians have made anti-Semitic remarks, there have been vandalism and bombings aimed at synagogues, and a Jewish official was stabbed by a man who reportedly had a swastika painted or tattooed on his chest. Political and religious leaders condemned the attack.
(...)

Duke's visits have drawn little news media attention. He spoke to several hundred nationalists at a Moscow museum in August, and in December appeared to promote the book at an auto factory auditorium, according to news media reports.
Alexander Axelrod, head of the Anti-Defamation League's Moscow office, said Duke was dangerous because his knowledge of how to market hate could help unite scattered extremists.

While extremist numbers are small, there is also little social or governmental resistance to them, Axelrod said, adding that the government should not have given Duke a visa because his book possibly violates Russia's law against inciting ethnic hatred.

''What is worrisome is the attitude of the state, which is no attitude,'' he said. ''If this is not stopped, he will take it farther.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


28. Dog's Owner Says Victim Failed to Save Self
Los Angeles Times, Feb. 5, 2001
http://www.latimes.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
CRESCENT CITY, Calif.--Standing in a soft, cold rain with the low-slung walls of Pelican Bay State Prison behind him, attorney Robert Noel seemed prepared for what he now considers the inevitable.

He and his wife, he said, fully expect to be arrested for the mauling death of their neighbor, a San Francisco lacrosse coach who was killed by the couple's ''lovable mutt.''

Noel, 59, had come to the front gates of the remote prison--home to the dog's original owner, a violent white supremacist whom Noel and his wife adopted just last week--to mount a defense for his family and his pets.

''All she had to do was close her door,'' Noel said, insisting that 33-year-old Diane Whipple played a part in her own death Jan. 26 in the hallway of the apartment building they shared in San Francisco.

Noel had come back to this prison town Friday the same way he had left it a few years ago, swirling in controversy and putting forth an explanation of events that most everybody found bewildering.

It was here in 1997 that his career took a strange turn that endeared him to members of the Aryan Brotherhood and ultimately led to the mauling death. That turn began during a lengthy criminal trial when Noel wove an extravagant conspiracy theory to defend guards and their white supremacist cohorts accused of brutality. In one court filing after another, Noel unsuccessfully argued that the local district attorney, FBI agents and state corrections investigators framed the guards and directed inmate murders.

His contentions seemed quite a departure for the former tax attorney and federal prosecutor who once won a U.S. Justice Department award for his vigilant pursuit of lawbreakers. ''I suggest to you the possibility that the [district attorney] and his team of associates from the Department of Corrections have complicity in the deaths,'' Noel wrote to a federal prosecutor in one of several letters alleging a widespread conspiracy.

It was also here, inside one of the nation's most restrictive prisons, that Noel and his 45-year-old wife, Marjorie Knoller, met one of California's most notorious and deadly inmates, an Aryan Brotherhood enforcer who would become their adopted son and alter the course of their lives.
(...)

Perhaps the biggest mystery is how two attorneys twice honored by the San Francisco Bar Assn. for their advocacy for the homeless, could end up adopting Schneider and caring for two animals that investigators say were part of the inmate's plan to breed ''dogs of war.''

An expert in weapons manufacture and concealment, Schneider stands 6 foot 2, with a muscular body marked by bold tattoos, including the letters ''AB'' on his left hand and ''White Supremacist'' scrawled in German around his navel, according to James Aiello, his court-appointed private investigator.
(...)

In the mid-1990s, he and Knoller got on the list of attorneys representing members of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. It was a time of much turmoil at Pelican Bay, which sits at the edge of an old logging and fishing town along the California-Oregon border. A federal judge in San Francisco had declared the high-tech prison an instrument of wholesale brutality.

Testimony in a 1995 class action lawsuit showed that guards were not only brutalizing inmates in the Security Housing Unit but also that the violence had spilled into the general prison population.

Guards had shot and killed prisoners engaged in routine fistfights. Inmates who defied prison rules were thrown naked into outdoor cages and left in the freezing rain. The judge found that the brutality was sanctioned by higher-ups in the Corrections Department and that the prison's internal investigative staff was helping cover up the incidents.

As part of the prison's reform, a new team of internal investigators was brought in to stop the abuse of inmates and root out problem guards. It was this team that ran into the legal buzz saw of Noel and Knoller.

In the summer of 1995, the team began investigating a large number of fights and stabbings in the main yard, which was under the command of a clique of officers that included David Lewis and Jose Garcia.

According to corrections investigative reports and court exhibits, Lewis and Garcia were sneaking into confidential prison files and retrieving paperwork that identified inmates as child molesters. They passed the secret files to white supremacist gang members, demanding that the molesters be attacked.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


29. Controversial anti-gay preacher leads protest in Traverse City
Associated Press, Jan. 29, 2001
http://www.detnews.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
TRAVERSE CITY -- Kansas preacher Fred Phelps, who proclaims that God hates homosexuals, is drawing little reaction as he crusades in a town sharply divided over gay rights.
(...)

Phelps, 71, of Topeka, Kan., said he has led anti-gay demonstrations in 45 states over the past decade. He and others picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student killed in Wyoming in 1998.

Homosexuality has been a divisive issue in Traverse City over the past year.
A petition drive is under way to amend the city charter to prohibit ordinances that would outlaw discrimination against gays. Supporters were collecting signatures over the weekend but distanced themselves from Phelps' group.
(...)

A furor arose in December when city officials distributed bumper stickers with a rainbow background and the words ''We Are Traverse City.'' Supporters said it was a call for unity, while critics said the rainbow was a symbol of the gay-rights movement.

Phelps said the sticker controversy had prompted his visit. City officials, clergy and activist groups urged residents to ignore him.
(...)

Worshipers entered and exited the five targeted churches Sunday morning, paying little attention to the protesters and refusing to answer their taunts.

''These people preach such intense hatred,'' said Arno VonWalthausen, 79, gazing at the pickets outside Central United Methodist Church. ''We will come away from this stronger as a church. This is testing our faith.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Rebirthing

30. Seeking Child's Love, a Child's Life is Lost
Los Angeles Times, Feb. 4, 2001
http://www.latimes.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Ten-year-old Candace Newmaker died in the midst of a treatment meant to heal her. The therapists, and their methods, are going on trial.

EVERGREEN, Colo.--Of all that can be said about Jeane Newmaker--and there is not much, for she has gone into retreat now--what seems most certain is that by last April, she was a desperate woman.

It had been her dream to give and receive affection, to make someone happy, to cradle a needy, grateful child. So at age 42, single and living alone, she adopted a 6-year-old girl, Candace. Newmaker apparently did not get back from Candace what she had expected. Instead, she found herself struggling with an angry, defiant child who--like others from broken, abusive homes--did not want her adopted mother's love or hugs or parenting.

What followed over the next four years was a litany of troubles. There were fruitless visits to a series of therapists and doctors in their home state, North Carolina. There were numerous diagnoses. There were experiments with various medications. There was, for Jeane Newmaker, a fair share of depression and exhaustion. Finally there was the journey--increasingly familiar among parents in her situation--here to Evergreen, a remote mountain town 30 miles west of Denver.

Evergreen is the epicenter of therapy for ''reactive attachment disorder,'' a mecca for parents who have been told that's what their kids have. Fourteen attachment therapists toil in six clinics in this hamlet of 8,000. Theirs is a world regarded by many in mainstream medicine as being filled with ''wackos'' and ''cultists,'' but it's also an expanding world. The number of attachment disorder diagnoses, therapists and acolytes has multiplied in recent years, particularly since the adoptions of traumatized Eastern European orphans began in 1989. Evergreen has become the trail's end for distraught parents who find that mainstream medicine provides them neither solutions nor understanding.

Connell Watkins--the particular Evergreen therapist chosen by Jeane Newmaker--was among the best known and most controversial in her field. It was to Watkins' home on Meadow Drive that Jeane and Candace reported last April 10 to begin a two-week intensive therapy program. And it was from Watkins' home eight days later that someone placed a frantic 911 emergency call.

Even for a mountain town as accustomed to the unconventional as Evergreen, this call sounded unusual. A 10-year-old girl in cardiac arrest; a 10-year-old girl not breathing. Within minutes, two paramedics and a sheriff's deputy were rolling.

Connell Watkins' two-story house, which served as both her home and clinic, had a look poised halfway between comfortable and disheveled. Green shutters framed some windows. Scattered out front were a pile of logs, a wheelbarrow, a small red bicycle and--behind a split wood fence--a yard full of toys. As the paramedics' ambulance pulled up, a man stood on Watkins' dirt driveway, waiting for them.

We were doing a ''rebirthing session,'' the man told paramedic Larry Ferree. We left the girl alone for five minutes, then found her not breathing.
(...)

Hours after being airlifted from Watkins' house, Candace Newmaker was pronounced brain-dead by doctors at Children's Hospital in Denver. Her severe brain injury, they said, was due to ''mechanical asphyxiation,'' which occurred while she ''was restrained during therapy session.''

A horrible accident, Connell Watkins explained in an e-mail to supporters. We don't know why this happened. We could never have caused this little girl's death.

Watkins had videotaped the rebirthing session, though, and the tape provided a somewhat more graphic tale. Investigators watched it over and over with mounting dismay. This is not a horrible accident at all, the Jefferson County district attorney's office eventually decided. This is a horrible crime.

In late May, prosecutors filed charges of reckless child abuse resulting in death against Connell Watkins and three of her associates. Days later they charged Jeane Newmaker as well, on a lesser count of negligent child abuse resulting in death. Now the trials loom--the first, of Watkins and an associate, is set to begin March 29. ''This is a big national issue,'' one of the prosecutors told a reporter. ''This whole medical approach will be on trial.''

That's just what many in the world of attachment theory fear. Evergreen therapists, shuddering at the sudden scrutiny from journalists and state regulators, scramble to distance themselves from Watkins. Supporters, including many parents of children she has treated, rise passionately to her defense. Various critics point fingers at mainstream medicine for driving parents into the arms of fringe therapists. Others denounce the Colorado Legislature for allowing unlicensed therapists such as Watkins to operate. Here and there, questions arise about those who expect perfection--or images of themselves--from the troubled children they adopt.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


31. `Candace's Law' to be introduced this week
Denver Rocky Mountain News, Jan. 31, 2001
http://www.insidedenver.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
''Candace's Law,'' a bill that would outlaw the rebirthing therapy that killed 10-year-old Candace Newmaker, will be introduced this week.

Rep. Debbie Stafford, R-Aurora, said she was touched by Candace's torturous death while in therapy in Evergreen last April and wants to create penalties for using the practice.

The bill would make ''rebirthing'' a misdemeanor under Colorado's mental health laws, punishable by up to six months in jail or a fine of $50 to $750.

Caught again within three years of the first conviction, a person could be charged with a felony, punishable by up to two years in prison, a year of mandatory parole and fines ranging from $1,000 to $100,000.
(...)

Rebirthing is defined in the bill as ''the reenactment of the birthing process through psychodrama techniques, including, but not limited to, physical restraint creating a situation in which a patient may suffocate.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Other News

32. Church cult 'taxed members at £2,000 a month'
The Sunday Times (England), Feb. 4, 2001
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Members of a religious sect linked to a constituency Conservative party are alleged to have taken tithes, fees and insurance totalling up to £2,000 a month from families in their congregation.

One married couple was persuaded to take out up to 14 insurance policies covering everything from endowments on their home to critical illness injury cover from companies run by pastors of the church, it is claimed.

When an archbishop of the church visited, families were asked to give an additional ''love offering'' of up to £2,000.

A young mother is suing 12 members of the Peniel Pentecostal Church in Essex, including her former husband, seeking £160,000 in compensation.

Caroline Green, 33, accuses the church of brainwashing, undue influence and mis-selling insurance policies. She also alleges that church members beat her children.

The church has also been accused of attempting to infiltrate and take control of Brentwood and Ongar Conservative party. More than 100 members joined a local Tory association after the sect had its planning application for a school sports hall turned down.
(...)

The church's bishop, Michael Reid, a former policeman, has told his 800-strong congregation they cannot ''out-give God''.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


33. Psychics link Indonesia's political rumblings to volcanoes
AP, Feb. 3, 2001
http://www.timesofindia.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
JAKARTA, Indonesia: Psychics in Indonesia believe that a spate of volcanic eruptions are an omen of political chaos - and they may not be alone.

Permadi Satrio Wibowo, a legislator and self-styled fortuneteller, said Friday an upsurge in volcanic rumblings is a worrying sign. He said it is a spiritual reflection of mounting anger against President Abdurrahman Wahid, who is embroiled in two corruption scandals, but won't quit despite the threat of impeachment.
(...)

Permadi, who frequently appears on television to put a mystical spin on social and political events, said that for centuries Indonesians have looked to the mood of the archipelago's 500 volcanoes to forecast the future and things look bad now.
(...)

Even though Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim country, ancient beliefs in the existence of the spirit world have remained embedded in the country's culture. Indonesians point to several calamities coinciding with past political upheavals to support their belief.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


34. Astrology fuels panic in quake city
Reuters, Feb. 2, 2001
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/
AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) - A week after a brutal earthquake ripped through western India, people in the city of Ahmedabad have been gripped by panic following reports of Hindu astrological predictions of an even more devastating quake.

''We will go inside only after the third or fourth of February when the ill effects of the planets is over,'' said Naresh Singhvi, who runs a small ''paan'' (betel leaf) shop in Gujarat's prosperous commercial capital, Ahmedabad.
''There is going to be a very severe earthquake, more powerful than this one,'' he added.

Rumours of a fresh disaster have been flying thick and fast since a Gujarati publication quoted a Hindu astrologer as saying a powerful quake would tear through Gujarat on Saturday.

Hindu astrologers say that Pluto, the planet of death in Hindu astrology, and Mars, the planet that spells aggression, are aligned ominously at the moment.

Many of the city's five million people, including some panic-stricken Muslims, have been staying away from their high-rise apartments.

People say the fresh quake would be bigger than the one which hit Bhuj, the town closest to the epicentre of last week's calamity. That measured 7.9 on the Richter scale.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


35. Police arrest Indian astrologer who predicted new quake
Reuters, Feb. 2, 2001
http://reuters.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) - An astrologer who predicted an even more deadly earthquake than the one that struck western India last week has been arrested and accused of creating panic, a state government minister said on Friday.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


36. The Presidential Corruption Index
Washington Post, Feb. 2, 2001 (Opinion: Charles Krauthammer)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Advocates of campaign finance reform have seized on the Marc Rich pardon -- and the $1 million Rich's ex-wife gave to the Democratic Party -- as a powerful new argument for reform. Now, reform may be needed, but it is hard to believe that a different campaign finance law would have made Bill Clinton any less likely to abuse the pardon power.

After all, he didn't just pardon for money. He also pardoned for votes. Perhaps even more outrageous than the Rich pardon was the commutation he issued to the four New York Hasidim who set up a totally fraudulent religious institution to bilk the government out of millions of dollars.

We can't prove that Bill Clinton traded this pardon for this isolated sect's political support of Hillary Clinton. But we do know that this village voted 1,359 to 10 for Mrs. Clinton. Not since the 1982 presidential election in Albania in which the Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha won by 1,627,959 to 1 -- the one is still at large -- have so many people agreed so wholeheartedly on the virtues of one candidate.

Mrs. Clinton admits that she was at a meeting of New Square village Hasidic leaders with the president in which they pleaded the case for clemency. There is no way to prove a quid pro quo. But then, the Clintons have been especially diligent in covering their tracks in similar dealings over the past 20 years.
Perhaps the best measure of a president's corruption -- a Presidential Corruption Index -- is how many laws are changed in order to prevent future presidents from acting as scandalously as this one. One of Nixon's legacies, for example, is the Watergate campaign finance laws. There is now a flurry of proposed changes in the law to prevent future presidential couples from doing what the Clintons have done. Ever since his outrageous 1999 pardon of Puerto Rican terrorists, and for the first time in modern memory, there is serious discussion of curbing the pardon power.
(...)

In his last few months in office, Clinton was frantically searching for a legacy. Now he has it: We may end up with a whole slew of laws -- on soft money, pardon power, senatorial gifts, ex-presidential financial support -- that will stand as a monument to his arrogance and vulgarity.

On the Presidential Corruption Index, he racks up a 4. Has any president scored higher?
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


37. Behind 4 Pardons, a Sect Eager for Political Friends
New York Times, Feb. 5, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
From the moment in 1999 when four men from this Hasidic village were convicted of swindling millions of dollars from the government, the campaign to protest the convictions, and perhaps win the men's early release from prison, was started. It was straightforward from the outset.
(...)

The push for political help, while fervent in this case and driven by the belief that the convicted men had stolen the money only to finance the village's schools, was not unusual for the leaders of New Square. They discovered long ago what it took to keep afloat a village where traditional work is eschewed in favor of religious study: government subsidies and the political maneuvering - like voting as a bloc - needed to keep those subsidies coming.

And so over the years, New Square enjoyed the parade of politicians that passed through, and rewarded those deemed most supportive or influential, regardless of party, with its thousand or so votes.

In that light, the candidate who came calling on New Square on Aug. 8, Hillary Rodham Clinton, seemed best positioned to help the cause of its leaders. Mrs. Clinton's husband, after all, held the power to pardon or reduce the sentences of the jailed men. Over a few hours that day, Mrs. Clinton talked with schoolchildren and met with the grand rebbe, David Twersky, the community's spiritual leader.

But everyone involved in that meeting says clemency never came up. Spokesmen for the rebbe insist on that point, as do Mrs. Clinton and former aides. A local assemblyman who was present throughout and who served as a translator also says clemency was not broached.

Two things, though, did grow out of Mrs. Clinton's August meeting: Mrs. Clinton got the village's roughly 1,400 votes, and the participants said they would do what they could to get President Clinton to come to New Square for the formal dedication of a street that, like a number of other streets that honored other presidents, had been named after him.

The president did not, in the end, come, but in December he invited Rebbe Twersky and several associates to the White House, where, with Mrs. Clinton looking on but by all accounts not participating, they made clear their desire for clemency for the four men.

Three weeks later, clemency was granted, setting off cries of protest from the prosecutors who had won the convictions and from politicians of all parties. Questions were raised about the propriety of the clemency - the men had their sentences reduced to a maximum of 30 months from a maximum of 78 months - and whether more had been brokered in that first meeting in August than anyone has admitted.

The crux of the story of the clemency - whether it was negotiated explicitly before the election - may never be known. But the episode involving the New Square clemency deal sheds light on both the perceived political value of Hasidic sects and their often naked efforts to seek political assistance for their very specific needs.

Laminated signs posted on trees tell, in Yiddish, which side of the street is for men and which is for women, in keeping with the Hasidic practice of publicly separating the two sexes. The winding streets are dotted with large but no-frill yellow and brown houses, the strollers and bicycles reflecting the large families living within. Clothed in black, the men of the Skevere sect of Hasidim hustle to and from the center of life here, the Yeshiva Avir Yakov.

The spiritual leader, Rebbe Twersky, is the sixth-generation head of a branch of a rabbinical dynasty that started in Chernobyl and moved to Skver, or Skvira, Ukraine, a name later Anglicized to become New Square.
(...)

If politically savvy, the village remained impoverished and, according to prosecutors, it was Chaim Berger who, starting in the late 1970's, did something about it.

Exploiting Government Aid
Mr. Berger, who headed the village's housing authority and guided its educational institutions, was well acquainted with governmental programs and found vulnerable targets in the state's Tuition Assistance Program and the federal government's Pell Grant program, both of which offer grants to low-income students trying to earn a degree or certificate.

Using his reverence to sway others and silence questions, he enlisted others in a scheme that, in addition to the Department of Education, eventually tapped money from the Small Business Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and other agencies. A fictitious school was created in Brooklyn, complete with his men posing as administrators when monitors went to visit.

The hundreds of students enrolled through 1993, including some unknowing people living in Israel, never received degrees or even attended classes.

In all, seven men were indicted and four went to trial; the others fled, including Chaim Berger, who is fighting extradition from Israel.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


> Part 4