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September 29, 1993

By RANDY KENNEDY

Andrew F. Tully Jr., an author who was one of the first American reporters to enter conquered Berlin in April 1945, died on Monday in a nursing home in Silver Spring, Md. He was 78 and lived in Washington.

The cause was complications from Alzheimer’s disease, said his wife, Molly.

Mr. Tully’s writing career spanned six decades. His work included several novels and popular nonfiction books on the workings of Washington, where he was a syndicated political columnist for more than 20 years. In 1962, Mr. Tully had both a novel, “Capitol Hill,” and a nonfiction book, “C.I.A.: The Inside Story,” on The New York Times’s best-seller lists.

He started working for newspapers while still in high school, as a sports reporter for his hometown daily newspaper in Southbridge, Mass. At 21, he bought the town’s weekly newspaper, The Southbridge Press, for about $5,000 with loans from friends, making him the youngest newspaper publisher in America.

He sold the paper two years later and became a reporter at The Worcester Gazette in Worcester, Mass., leaving there to become a correspondent in Europe for The Boston Traveler during World War II.

He began writing his own column in 1961, which came to be called “Capital Fare,” and was syndicated in more than 150 newspapers at its peak.

He was the author of 16 books in all, including “Where Did Your Money Go?” with Milton Britten, an examination of foreign aid, and “Supreme Court,” a novel.

He is survived by his wife, the former Molly Wood; three sons, Andrew F. 3d, of North Potomac, Md., Mark, of North Anson, Me., and John, of Santa Cruz, Calif.; two daughters, Martha Brown of Washington and Sheila Hamilton of Brunswick, Md., and seven grandchildren.

Bill Maher ::September 21 2007:: (Part Three)

 

Bill Maher ::September 21 2007:: (Part One)

By SELENA ROBERTS
Sports of The Times
September 18, 2007

There is Coach Hoodie, and then there is Coach Hoodwink.

Coach Hoodie is the Patriots’ Bill Belichick. He answers with growls, is hardwired to be ruthless, and would have lost a congeniality contest to the dearly departed Leona Helmsley. He comes as is: obsessive, cold, and brazen enough to have cheated with his video spy games out in the open of a sideline.

Coach Hoodwink is the Jets’ Eric Mangini. He replies to questions in his library voice, visits Sesame Street in his downtime and readily reveals his soft, fatherly side. He comes off as duplicitous: paranoid, brutal, and nakedly ambitious enough to have double-crossed the organization that nurtured his career.

Mangini didn’t just flip on Belichick, costing his former mentor a celebrated image that has been reflected in a shelf-full of Lombardi Trophies, as well as a $500,000 fine and a prime draft pick. He did more. He also humiliated the respected Patriots owner and league power player Robert K. Kraft.

That sin has left Mangini toxic to some team executives. After all, would you trust him? Is there anyone — a player, assistant, general manager, owner or mascot — that he wouldn’t betray in a pinch?

Bad karma can be a career killer. It took Ted Nolan years to land his current gig as the coach of the Islanders after he was blackballed, in part because he was labeled a traitor of management during his Sabres days.

False righteousness can boomerang. The track coach Trevor Graham once said he anonymously mailed the syringe that started the Balco circus in an effort to clean up the sport, but a grand jury witness told a different tale: He did it to implicate athletes and coaches that his runners competed against. Graham is awaiting trial on charges that he lied to federal agents about the distribution of performance-enhancing drugs.

•

Videogate isn’t a criminal issue — it’s more of a punch line by now — but it does cast shadows on the league’s integrity.

There is no doubt Belichick’s video trickery was wrong, hubristic and a below-the-belt maneuver of reckless proportion. Commissioner Roger Goodell — the N.F.L.’s overtaxed moral warden — was right in delivering a punitive blow as a scare tactic to a league full of teams that seek a competitive edge by tapping into their inner MacGyvers. Even Kraft understood Goodell’s logic, even if it took him a while.

“I must tell you I was quite upset and perturbed when I saw the penalty, because I didn’t think that the incident deserved this kind of punishment,” Kraft told NBC on Sunday night. “Over the last couple of days, I’ve been thinking about it and have cooled down. I realized he wasn’t just sending a message to the New England Patriots, he was sending it to all 32 teams.”

Belichick wasn’t alone in this race to the bottom of sports ethics. Mangini was very likely, at one point in his Patriot days, the spy who loved Hoodie.

How will we ever know? Maybe the lens will be the judge. In order to eliminate any competitive advantage Belichick might have tucked away in his film files, the Patriots said yesterday that they would comply with Goodell’s request to provide their videotape archive.

How about popcorn and a movie with Goodell? Imagine what’s on those old tapes. Is that Mangini holding the Cheat Cam in 2004? Is that Mangini wiretapping Bill Parcells’s headset in 2003?

A question to Jets officials yesterday about Mangini’s possible role in New England’s spy ring was greeted with the organization mantra: “It’s a league matter.”

The matter has revealed more about Mangini than Belichick. Already, Mangini was known for attempting to raid the Patriots’ cupboards upon his exit in January 2006. He slithered around Foxborough as if he were pilfering Whoville, trying to lift players, assistants and secretaries.

He wanted everything but the picture hooks on the walls. He also wanted to claim Belichick’s mind as his own intellectual property.

But who knew how far he would go for a gotcha of Belichick? Maybe Mangini’s betrayal was a little something he learned from Belichick’s school of calculated callousness. In a way, the two almost deserve each other. Someday, Belichick and Mangini may look up and realize teams can win — and play in Super Bowls — on the strength of a coach’s humanity, not his ability to humiliate.

•

Belichick is who he is. Mangini is the one with an identity crisis. He wants to portray himself as the anti-Bill — oozing charm when talking family values — and yet he longs to be Hoodie, to be known as wickedly smart.

Calling out his mentor lacked thought, though. It is not the wisest idea to mess with the N.F.L.’s version of Zeus. The wisdom of Mangini’s decision to flip Bill will play out all season — and maybe beyond. So far, it’s Coach Hoodie, 2-0; and Coach Hoodwink, 0-2.

E-mail: selenasports@nytimes.com

WASHINGTON POST
By Joshua Partlow and Megan Greenwell
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 17, 2007; 2:14 PM

BAGHDAD, Sept. 17 — The Iraqi government said today it has revoked the license of Blackwater USA, a private security company that guards U.S. Embassy personnel in Iraq, following a shootout in downtown Baghdad on Sunday that left at least nine people dead.

Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul-Karim Khalaf called the episode the “last and the biggest mistake” committed by Blackwater, whose black sports utility vehicles and agile “Little Bird” helicopters escort diplomatic convoys throughout Baghdad.

He said the decision of the Iraqi government meant that Blackwater “cannot work in Iraq any longer, it will be illegal for them to work here.”

“Security contracts do not allow them to shoot people randomly,” Brig. Gen. Khalaf said. “They are here to protect personnel, not shoot people without reason.”

Phone calls and e-mails to a Blackwater spokeswoman were not immediately returned.

The Iraqi government’s position toward Blackwater set up a confrontation with the U.S. government over what legal authority governs the behavior of private security contractors here. Blackwater, which has an estimated 1,000 employees in Iraq, plays a high-profile role because it guards U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and other diplomats. The company has faced criticism in the past for violent incidents in Iraq.

The shooting on Sunday started when a car bomb exploded near a State Department motorcade in the Mansour district of western Baghdad. In response to the explosion, Blackwater employees opened fire, U.S. Embassy officials said. The shooting killed at least nine people and wounded 14 others, according to police and hospital officials. Khalaf put the death toll at 11 people.

Embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo said the embassy discussed the incident with the Iraqi government, but she added that few details would be available while it was under investigation.

“We are taking it very seriously indeed,” she said. “We certainly regret any loss of life associated with this incident.”

Embassy officials would not say whether Blackwater had suspended its work in Baghdad after the Interior Ministry’s decision. W. Johann Schmonsees, another embassy spokesman, said, “No one has been expelled from the country yet.”

It was not immediately clear whether Iraq or the United States holds the authority to regulate Blackwater’s operations. A regulation known as Order 17 established under the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority headed by L. Paul Bremer effectively granted immunity to American private security contractors from being prosecuted in Iraqi courts.

Another CPA memorandum requires private security companies to register with the Interior Ministry, but some of the companies in Iraq operate without doing so.

Lawrence T. Peter, director of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq, said Blackwater was licensed by the Interior Ministry. But Blackwater acknowledged as recently as two months ago that a license it obtained in 2005 had lapsed, and the company was having trouble getting the license renewed.

“Many Iraqis have come to me and complained bitterly to me about CPA Order 17, I understand that,” said Peter. “But the fact that you complain bitterly doesn’t mean you can wave a magic wand and change it.”

Correspondent Steve Fainaru contributed to this report.