Updated 6:28 PM ET, Mon November 20, 2017
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Cayey, Puerto Rico (CNN)People on this part of the island knew Quintín Vidal Rolón for two things: his white cowboy hat, which he seemed to wear every day of his 89-year life; and his beat-up Ford pickup truck, which he’d been driving for at least 50 years.
The U.S. government redesignated North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism Monday. The move, announced by President Trump during a brief photo op at a Cabinet meeting, was designed to put pressure on Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.
“It should have happened a long time ago,” Trump told reporters. “It should have happened years ago.”
This isn’t North Korea’s first time on the list. The country was designated a state sponsor of terrorism in 1988 and stayed on the list until it was removed in 2008.
What is a state sponsor of terrorism?
Since 1979, the State Department has kept a list of countries that are alleged to have “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.” The designation results in a variety of unilateral sanctions, including a ban on arms-related exports and sales, prohibitions on economic assistance, and other punitive measures.
The list is determined by three laws: Section 6j of the Export Administration Act, Section 40 of the Arms Export Control Act and Section 620 of the Foreign Assistance Act.
Exactly what makes a country a sponsor of terrorism is kept relatively vague: Joseph DeThomas, a former State Department official who focused on North Korea and Iran and is a professor of international affairs at Pennsylvania State University, has called it “more of an art than a science” and noted that “political and diplomatic context plays a considerable role in such designations.”
When first released in 1979, the list included only four nations: Libya, Iraq, South Yemen and Syria. Over the years, a number of countries have been added to the list and some removed. Until North Korea was added this week, only Iran, Syria and Sudan remained on the list.
Why was North Korea first added to the list in 1988?
Before 1988, North Korea was implicated in a number of international plots, including hijackings, abductions, bombings and assassination attempts.
However, it was the bombing of Korean Air Flight 858 in 1987 that sealed North Korea’s place on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. In that attack, later linked to North Korean agents, a plane flying between Baghdad and Seoul was blown up over the Andaman Sea. All 115 people on board were killed.
The bombing of Flight 858, as well as a 1983 attack in Rangoon, Burma, that killed 17 South Koreans and four Burmese that was linked to Kim Jong Il, prompted the Reagan administration to decide that North Korea should be added to the list.
Why was North Korea removed from the list in 2008?
Two decades after being designated a state sponsor of terrorism, North Korea was removed from the list in 2008 by the administration of President George W. Bush. It was a controversial move; then-Sen. Barack Obama was among those who supported it, calling the decision “an appropriate response.”
For a nation to be removed from the list of state sponsors, Bush had to certify to Congress that its government had either fundamentally changed its stance on providing support to terrorism, or had not provided support for international terrorism for six months and had given assurances to the United States that it would not support international terrorism in the future.
North Korea was able to meet those criteria relatively simply: The State Department’s 2007 Country Reports on Terrorism noted that North Korea was not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since 1987, and the U.S. government later announced that Pyongyang had issued “an authoritative and direct public statement affirming that it does not support international terrorism now and will not support international terrorism in the future.”
Another major important factor in the move to drop North Korea from the list was faltering talks over nuclear disarmament with Pyongyang that the Bush administration hoped could be salvaged by the delisting move. Notably, U.S. officials said North Korea had agreed to not restart the partially disabled Yongbyon nuclear reactor, which had been producing fissile material for weapons tests.
Why is the Trump administration redesignating North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism?
The 2008 decision to delist North Korea has long divided experts, some of whom have called for the country to be redesignated.
One key bone of contention is whether North Korea has committed acts of terrorism in recent years. For example, in 2015, Joshua Stanton wrote a report for the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea arguing that although it was commonly thought that North Korea had not been directly linked to high-profile terrorism plots since 1987, Pyongyang had been actively involved in suspected arms transfers to terrorists as well as other threats and assassination plots that met the legal definitions of “international terrorism” and terrorism “support.”
These arguments were bolstered in recent years by the alleged hack of Sony Pictures in 2014 and the assassination of Kim Jong Nam, half brother to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in 2017 — the latter of which was called an “act of terrorism” by South Korea soon afterward.
There is also widespread frustration that the detente the Bush administration sought in 2008 amounted to little. In fact, North Korea conducted its second nuclear weapon test less than a year after it was removed from the list. It also has repeatedly claimed that it will reopen the Yongbyon reactor.
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Why haven’t sanctions on North Korea worked? Two very different theories.
Eight women have told The Washington Post that longtime television host Charlie Rose made unwanted sexual advances toward them, including lewd phone calls, walking around naked in their presence, or groping their breasts, buttocks or genital areas.
The women were employees or aspired to work for Rose at the “Charlie Rose” show from the late 1990s to as recently as 2011. They ranged in age from 21 to 37 at the time of the alleged encounters. Rose, 75, whose show airs on PBS and Bloomberg TV, also co-hosts “CBS This Morning” and is a contributing correspondent for “60 Minutes.”
There are striking commonalities in the accounts of the women, each of whom described their interactions with Rose in multiple interviews with The Post. For all of the women, reporters interviewed friends, colleagues or family members who said the women had confided in them about aspects of the incidents. Three of the eight spoke on the record.
Five of the women spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of Rose’s stature in the industry, his power over their careers or what they described as his volatile temper.
“In my 45 years in journalism, I have prided myself on being an advocate for the careers of the women with whom I have worked,” Rose said in a statement provided to The Post. “Nevertheless, in the past few days, claims have been made about my behavior toward some former female colleagues.
“It is essential that these women know I hear them and that I deeply apologize for my inappropriate behavior. I am greatly embarrassed. I have behaved insensitively at times, and I accept responsibility for that, though I do not believe that all of these allegations are accurate. I always felt that I was pursuing shared feelings, even though I now realize I was mistaken.
“I have learned a great deal as a result of these events, and I hope others will too. All of us, including me, are coming to a newer and deeper recognition of the pain caused by conduct in the past, and have come to a profound new respect for women and their lives.”
Within hours of the publication of this story, PBS and Bloomberg LP immediately suspended distribution of the “Charlie Rose” show. CBS announced that it was suspending Rose as it looked into the matter.
Most of the women said Rose alternated between fury and flattery in his interactions with them. Five described Rose putting his hand on their legs, sometimes their upper thigh, in what they perceived as a test to gauge their reactions. Two said that while they were working for Rose at his residences or were traveling with him on business, he emerged from the shower and walked naked in front of them. One said he groped her buttocks at a staff party.
Reah Bravo was an intern and then associate producer for Rose’s PBS show beginning in 2007. In interviews, she described unwanted sexual advances while working for Rose at his private waterfront estate in Bellport, N.Y., and while traveling with him in cars, in a hotel suite and on a private plane.
Two women who worked for Charlie Rose say he emerged from a shower and walked naked in front of them while they were working at his home or traveling with him for business. Above, Rose at home in Bellport, N.Y. (Ben Baker/Redux)
“It has taken 10 years and a fierce moment of cultural reckoning for me to understand these moments for what they were,” she told The Post. “He was a sexual predator, and I was his victim.”
Kyle Godfrey-Ryan, one of Rose’s assistants in the mid-2000s, recalled at least a dozen instances where Rose walked nude in front of her while she worked in one of his New York City homes. He also repeatedly called the then-21-year-old late at night or early in the morning to describe his fantasies of her swimming naked in the Bellport pool as he watched from his bedroom, she said.
“It feels branded into me, the details of it,” Godfrey-Ryan said.
She said she told Yvette Vega, Rose’s longtime executive producer, about the calls.
“I explained how he inappropriately spoke to me during those times,” Godfrey-Ryan said. “She would just shrug and just say, ‘That’s just Charlie being Charlie.’ ”
In a statement to The Post, Vega said she should have done more to protect the young women on the show.
“I should have stood up for them,” said Vega, 52, who has worked with Rose since the show was created in 1991. “I failed. It is crushing. I deeply regret not helping them.”
Godfrey-Ryan said that when Rose learned she had confided to a mutual friend about his conduct, he fired her.
Megan Creydt worked as a coordinator on the show from 2005 to 2006, overlapping with Godfrey-Ryan.
“It was quite early in working there that he put his hand on my mid-thigh,” said Creydt, who agreed to be interviewed on the record to support other women who were coming forward with what she deemed to be more serious claims concerning Rose.
She said that during the incident, Rose was driving his Mini Cooper in Manhattan while she was sitting in the passenger seat.
“I don’t think I said anything,” she said. “I tensed up. I didn’t move his hand off, but I pulled my legs to the other side of the car. I tried not to get in a car with him ever again. I think he was testing me out.”
Her then-boyfriend confirmed to The Post that she told him the story at the time.
In addition to the eight women who say they were harassed, The Post spoke to about two dozen former employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Six said they saw what they considered to be harassment, eight said they were uncomfortable with Rose’s treatment of female employees, and 10 said they did not see or hear anything concerning.
“He was always professional with me,” said Eleonore Marchand Mueller, a former assistant of Rose’s who worked for him from 2003 to 2005. “I never witnessed any unprofessional incidents.”
The show’s small, informal structure, with roughly 15 employees, and the centrality of Rose’s authority on a program he owns led to uncertainty over how to respond, said the women who felt victimized. “There wasn’t anybody to report this to if you felt uncomfortable,” one of them said.
The employees worked for Charlie Rose Inc., and not Bloomberg LP or PBS, which said they did not provide human resources support for the show.
The environment brimmed with the young and potentially vulnerable, hungry for scarce television jobs. “There are so few jobs,” said one of the women who said Rose groped her. “You know if you don’t behave a certain way, there’s someone else behind you.”
Rose traveled frequently, jetting off to interview world leaders across the globe and splitting time between two New York City residences and homes in Bellport — on Long Island — and North Carolina. Often at his side was a rotating cast of young assistants and producers.
The informal structure of Rose’s small show — with roughly 15 employees — and the centrality of the veteran journalist’s authority on a program he owns led to uncertainty over how to respond, said the woman who felt victimized. “There wasn’t anybody to report this to if you felt uncomfortable,” one of them said. Above, Rose at a gala in New York on Oct. 30, 2017. (Mike Coppola/Getty Images for the National Committee on American Foreign Policy)
The young women who were hired by the show were sometimes known as “Charlie’s Angels,” two former employees said. Rose frequently gave unsolicited shoulder rubs to several of them, behavior referred to among employees as “the crusty paw,” a former employee said.
Rumors about Rose’s behavior have circulated for years. One of the authors of this report, Outlook contributing writer Irin Carmon, first heard and attempted to report on the allegations involving two of the women while she was a journalist at Jezebel in 2010 but was unable to confirm them. In the past several weeks in the wake of accusations against Harvey Weinstein, Carmon and Post investigative reporter Amy Brittain jointly began contacting dozens of men and women who had worked on the “Charlie Rose” show or interviewed for jobs there.
A woman then in her 30s who was at the Bellport home in 2010 to discuss a job opportunity said Rose appeared before her in an untethered bathrobe, naked underneath. She said he subsequently attempted to put his hands down her pants. She said she pushed his hands away and wept throughout the encounter.
A woman who began as an intern in the late 1990s and was later hired full time described a “ritual” of young women at the show being summoned by Rose to his Manhattan apartment to work at a desk there. The woman described a day when Rose went into the bathroom, left the door open and turned on the shower.
She said he began to call her name, insistently. She ignored him, she said, and continued working. Suddenly, he came out of the bathroom and stood over her. She turned her head, briefly saw skin and Rose with a towel and jerked back around to avoid the sight. She said he said, “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
She said she told someone in the office, and word got around. A few days later, she said, a male colleague approached her, laughing, “Oh, you got the shower trick.” The woman’s sister confirmed that her sibling had told her about the shower incident soon after it occurred.
Another woman said that during her internship in the early 2000s, Rose groped her breasts and stomach as she drove him from Bellport back to Manhattan. Her then-boyfriend, now husband, confirmed that she described the incident to him immediately after it occurred. When Rose invited her to work regularly and stay overnight at Bellport, her boyfriend told her to refuse the offer, and she did, both told The Post.
Rose’s eponymous show, with its trademark black background and round oak table, has been in production since 1991. What it lacks in mass viewership, the “Charlie Rose” show makes up for in prestige and high-profile bookings of the likes of former president Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Warren Buffett. Rose’s show is produced by Charlie Rose Inc., an independent television production company, and distributed by PBS. It is filmed at Bloomberg headquarters in Manhattan.
Rose’s stature has only grown in recent years.
CBS tapped him in 2011 to help revamp its ailing morning show, now called “CBS This Morning,” expanding his audience. He has also been a contributing correspondent for “60 Minutes” for nearly a decade. His 2013 interview of Syria’s president won Emmy and Peabody awards. (None of the women who made accusations against Rose to The Post worked for PBS or CBS.)
Representatives from PBS, CBS and Bloomberg said they have no records of sexual harassment complaints about Charlie Rose.
When Time magazine named Rose one of its 100 most influential people in 2014, billionaire and former New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg described him as “one of the most important and influential people in journalism.”
Rose joined “CBS This Morning” in 2011. Here, he’s seen with co-anchor Norah O’Donnell, left, and Gayle King on March 13, 2017. (Michele Crowe/CBS via Getty Images)
Rose, who was divorced in 1980, has long had a reputation as a ladies man. His “CBS This Morning” co-host, Norah O’Donnell, introduced him at a 2014 fundraiser dinner by joking, “We’re all here because with Charlie Rose, one woman is never enough.” Rose graciously accepted honors that night by saying that he was lucky to have worked throughout his career with “women who were smarter, more thoughtful and more eloquent than I was.”
There was also less flattering coverage. The now-defunct Radar magazine in 2007 called him a “toxic bachelor” and repeated an unnamed woman’s claim that Rose had “palmed her buttock like a honeydew.” His then-attorney, David Boies, who has recently drawn criticism for his representation of Harvey Weinstein, demanded a retraction. The magazine refused.
The “Charlie Rose” show prides itself on its highbrow intellectual ambition, but his life is glamorous, full of black-tie galas and famous friends. He can be charming and generous, consulting favored employees for their opinions on what to ask heads of state or whisking them off to exotic locations for interviews. But his wrath was swift and often fiercely personal, according to interviews with multiple former employees.
“Everybody is terrified of him,” said one of the women who said that Rose groped her when she was an intern. “He creates this environment of constant fear. And then he’ll shine a spotlight on you and make you feel amazing.”
Multiple women said they had at first been reassured by the presence of Vega, Rose’s executive producer, who has worked with him for decades. Two women who spoke to The Post said they repeatedly reported Rose’s inappropriate sexual behavior to Vega.
Working for the “Charlie Rose” show was a longtime dream for Reah Bravo, who in 2007 was a 29-year-old graduate student studying international affairs at Columbia University. She struggled to make ends meet during her unpaid internship, accruing credit card debt and eating free cereal in the Bloomberg food court.
One day, several months into the internship, Rose offered her a side gig at his home in Bellport on Long Island.
“Here is the deal: I’ll pay you $2,500 for the week plus all expenses for food, movies etc.,” he wrote to her on Aug. 9, 2007. “You will be there from Monday August 13-Friday afternoon, August 17. Your primary responsibilities are to organize and catalogue all my books and tapes and files … It will help me a lot, be fun for you, and you will have a car all the time for whatever you need to do.”
Before she left for Bellport, Bravo said Vega told her that personal time with Rose was a key to becoming part of the team.
(Obtained by The Washington Post)
Bravo said she took the train to Bellport, where she said Rose met her at the Ronkonkoma station and took her to a bank to withdraw money to cover her expenses. She stayed at the Bellport home for about a week, sleeping in a bedroom in the main house. Rose was gone much of the time.
While she was there, Bravo said she received a message from a male producer. If Rose did anything “sketchy,” she said he told her, she should not hesitate to call the show’s car service to return home.
Late one night, Bravo said, Rose returned home after a night out. She said she tried to hurry out of the library in the guesthouse to return to her bedroom in the main house before Rose came in, but he intercepted her. She said he insisted that they have a glass of wine at the dining room table in the main house.
Then, he suggested they walk out to his dock and look at the moon, Bravo said. Once there, “he came up from behind me and he put his arms around me,” she said, remembering that she felt a mix of apprehension and confusion. “It reflected his poor judgment. How could a man of his stature and his power be doing something so inappropriate? . . . It seemed reckless.”
Caught off guard, she said she did not know how to respond and endured his embrace.
A day or two later, Bravo said, Rose drove her back to Manhattan. She said he began to tell her that he felt very alone in life, despite his wealth and success. He recalled a brush with death a year earlier during heart surgery in Paris and began to tear up, and she said she patted him on the shoulder to console him.
“I didn’t necessarily buy it,” she said. “I thought, ‘I’ll keep my distance and I feel sorry for him.’ But I didn’t think of him as a predator at that time.”
Bravo soon returned to Bellport for a second trip. She was working in the guesthouse and caught a glimpse of Rose rinsing off nude in an unenclosed outdoor shower. She said she quickly averted her eyes and moved away from the window.
Later, he asked if she had seen him showering, she said, and seemed disappointed when she said no. While at Bellport, Bravo said Rose repeatedly insisted that he needed to hear that she was comfortable at Bellport and how much she enjoyed it there.
She emailed him about her work ideas and also mentioned Bellport.
“Have I told you how much I absolutely enjoy it out there?” she wrote him on Sept 1, 2007. “The company, the conversation, the comfort…that said I’m happy to go out there for both the remainder of this weekend AND parts of the next in an effort to finish the books faster.”
That fall, she traveled with Rose to Aspen for a conference. On Oct. 1, after the trip, Bravo wrote an email to Vega, alluding to earlier issues with Rose:
“On a personal note, I know working for Charlie requires one to embrace his uniqueness and develop a professional relationship that can account for it. It’s taken a couple straight forward conversations between the two of us, but I feel I’m in a better place than previously. And that’s not to say that I was previously in a really bad place! It all might sound cryptic, but you seem to play somewhat of a motherly role for staff members and I just wanted you to know that I’m okay : )”
Vega responded the same day:
“I have some concerns for you especially in what you are trying to tell me in this email. Please know the following about me, I have worked with Charlie for 16 years, so there is nothing that I haven’t heard or possibly experienced – and that anything you ever reveal to me would be kept in confidence from anyone and from the top down, so that you can feel comfortable in that confidence…”
From left: Rose, “Charlie Rose” show executive producer Yvette Vega and Beth Hoppe, a PBS executive, speak at the 2013 Summer Television Critics Association tour in Beverly Hills, Calif. Two women who spoke to The Post said they repeatedly reported Rose’s inappropriate sexual behavior to Vega. In a statement, Vega says she regrets not doing more to protect the young women on the show. (Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
Toward the end of 2007, Bravo was given more responsibilities and Rose occasionally paid her for helping him prepare for interviews, speeches and conferences. Her new duties required more travel with Rose, and he frequently requested her company for working dinners, she said.
Rose would regularly hire drivers to take them around town. On more than one occasion, she said, he groped her in the back seat. One time, she said, he “grabbed me by my hair, holding a fist of it at the base of my scalp.” More than once, “he would grip my head tightly while talking to me. He held it so tightly that I couldn’t turn my neck in any direction. I was forced to look at him or to let him talk directly into my ear.”
In Indiana for a speaking engagement in March 2008, Rose summoned Bravo to his hotel suite to work on his speech. While she was working at a desk in the room, she said, he emerged naked from the shower and stood before a mirror where she could see him. She said she ignored him and kept working.
Later, flying on a small private plane alone with Rose, she said he requested that they watch a documentary about Algeria on a portable DVD player. Suddenly, she said, Rose got out of his seat and pressed his body onto hers.
“I felt at a loss. I mean, what am I going to do? We were how many feet up in the air?” she said, adding that they remained clothed. “I remember him being on top of me.”
Bravo said Rose’s advance was bizarre, brief and “animalistic.” Then he returned to his seat.
“I felt an immense sense of shame that I had greenlighted his actions because I didn’t fight back,” she said.
Bravo said she locked eyes with one of the two pilots as she disembarked. She said she interpreted his expression as one of “sympathy or maybe disgust.”
Later in 2008, she was hired as an associate producer but was already looking for another job. The same year, Bravo was offered a job that paid three times as much as the one at the “Charlie Rose” show. In response, Rose took her to the Spotted Pig, a well-known restaurant in Manhattan, and dangled a position as a producer in Washington. She could even live in a Georgetown residence where he sometimes stayed, she said he told her.
She said she declined.
“I was leaving because I was getting away,” she said. “I would never want to live someplace where he had keys.”
Since then, Bravo has worked as a corporate speechwriter and now lives in Europe with her husband and their young son.
In retrospect, Bravo said she feels shame and embarrassment about her warm correspondence with Rose.
“I read old emails, and I sound so sycophantic, it makes me sick,” she said. “But it was what he wanted, it made my work easier, and to an extent, it was the same game most staff members played. Male staffers did it, too. They just weren’t feeling as pathetic about it.”
Looking back, she is struck by how calculated Rose’s approach seemed.
“He most definitely said, on numerous occasions, ‘I’ve never forced you to do something you didn’t want to do,’ ” she said. “He would say this forcefully and wait for my confirmation after he said this. I remember once wondering if I was being recorded.”
Kyle Godfrey-Ryan was in her early 20s and had taken time off from her college studies in the mid-2000s when a friend offered to introduce her to Charlie Rose. She was unfamiliar with his show but was soon hired to be his assistant.
From the beginning, there was a blurring of the boundaries between Rose’s professional and private life, she said. On her first day on the job, Rose injured his foot. She tended to him as he recovered.
But soon, Godfrey-Ryan said, he began yelling at her, calling her stupid and incompetent and pathetic.
“He repeatedly attacked her in front of other people,” recalled a former producer who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “He once said that because she hadn’t gotten a college degree she would never amount to anything better than his secretary.”
After the bouts of rage, Godfrey-Ryan said, Rose would often be conciliatory.
“It would usually entail some version of him also touching me,” she said. “A hand on the upper thigh. He’d give a hug but touch the side of the breast.”
She said she ignored his actions. Then he began calling her as late as midnight and as early as 6 a.m.
“It would be wanting to know details of my sex life,” she said. “ ‘Who’s next to you? What do you do? Is he touching you?’ And I was like, ‘Okay, Charlie, I’ll see you tomorrow.’ I just acted like it wasn’t happening.”
She said other calls involved a “very specific, repetitive fantasy” of her disrobing at the Bellport home and swimming “back and forth in the pool in the moonlight” as he watched from his bedroom.
Her boyfriend at the time, now her husband, told The Post that he was often present for these calls but said he did not know what was being discussed. The content of the calls, however, was openly discussed in the office and even joked about, according to Godfrey-Ryan and the producer who worked there at the time.
Godfrey-Ryan also said Rose would repeatedly walk in front of her naked at one of his New York City residences. Her husband confirmed that she complained to him about it at the time.
She said she ignored the nudity. “He was getting more and more frustrated that I wouldn’t engage,” she said.
Godfrey-Ryan said she reported the touching and the calls to Vega, but nothing happened.
“She just made me feel like I was being a dramatic little girl,” Godfrey-Ryan said. She stopped reporting the behavior.
Godfrey-Ryan said she eventually confided to a mutual friend outside the show about Rose, and the friend told Rose.
She said Rose fired her.
“He took me out to lunch and told me how embarrassed he was, how he didn’t treat me like that,” she said. “It was really about how I got it wrong, and, obviously, I couldn’t work there anymore.”
She later went back to school at Columbia. She has since launched her own business, Tune.Studio, which uses infrasonic wave technology to treat stress and improve moods, leading to “peace and happiness.”
“It makes me a little upset to see him on television,” she said. “Everything I experienced with journalism there made me not want to stay.”
Another woman gave multiple interviews to The Post about her experience with Rose but requested anonymity out of concern for her privacy.
In 2009, she was in her mid-30s, looking to break into broadcast journalism after studying politics and earning her graduate degree in Europe. While working at a cultural foundation in New York City, her boss offered to put her in touch with Charlie Rose.
Rose responded with interest.
The meetings that followed, she said, were unconventional: a dinner at a restaurant, late at night with Rose’s prominent friends, where he drank a lot of wine. A sudden weekend invitation to lunch continued with her tagging along as Rose shopped for furniture. When he drove her home, she said she listened in alarm as he berated a producer over the phone.
Then he turned to the job applicant. “He put his hand on my knee and said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry about that,’ ” she said. “He said, ‘I hope you don’t mind, I’m from the South, we’re touchers.’ ”
No job offer came, but on June 8, 2010, Rose got back in touch, according to an email the woman provided. She was still unemployed and the job Rose described sounded ideal.
“He talked about this position, which he referred to as being his intellectual partner, that I would be the executive producer for global content,” she recalled.
By now, she had been told the unorthodox interview process was standard because of Rose’s packed schedule and desire to do the hiring for all positions by himself.
As part of the process, she visited Bloomberg’s Manhattan office and also discussed the job with Rose at his apartment.
“My producers come here all the time to work,” she said he told her.
She said Rose mentioned a salary of $120,000, described the job as involving frequent international travel and asked for references. Rose soon suggested they see how they traveled together by having her visit his Bellport house, she said.
On June 18, Rose sent her an email inviting her to the house that evening.
“As I mentioned, I’m going to my place on long island tonight to write…and then coming back tomorrow for a dinner. This is to invite to visit…
“You have your own wing of the house, or even a guesthouse, It’s on the water, plus Olympic pool, tennis court, plenty of movies and books and sailing and I run on the beach at sunrise and sunset…This has no influence on our dialogue about work projects.”
He added near the end of the email: “Bring someone if you like. I’m on deadline, so i will be writing all the time and will not be entertaining except breaks for exercise and meals. Let me know…before noon.”
(Obtained by The Washington Post)
Eager to land the job, the woman agreed to travel with Rose to Bellport, which is about 60 miles from Manhattan.
She gave the following account:
That evening, after stopping for dinner and getting lost, they arrived at the house after midnight. She did not see anyone else there. Rose proposed she choose a DVD of his show that they could watch together. After the show, Rose gave her a tour of the property. The guesthouse, she noticed, was packed with clutter, uninhabitable.
At the pool, Rose dangled his legs in the water and then said that he needed to change because his pant legs were wet. He returned wearing a white bathrobe, which was open; he wore nothing underneath.
“I thought, I’m doomed,” she said. “I was completely panicked. In retrospect, I thought of a million things I could have done.”
She said she was not intoxicated — Rose had drunk his wine and then hers at the restaurant — but said he appeared to be. It was nearly 2 a.m. and she was exhausted, she said. She also said she felt alone and powerless. It was the middle of the night, they were on his secluded property, and she did not know how to drive.
“I started talking in this feeble and compulsive way,” she said. “I started talking about power, how the abuse of power can be. He completely lost it. ‘What are you talking about? That’s certainly not the case.’ ”
She said he then tried to put a hand down her pants.
“By the time he touched me the first time, he was already very angry,” she said. “I was scared, and I was also kind of frozen.”
After that, her memory is “hazy,” she said. They ended up in his bedroom.
“I really, honestly, I’ve tried so hard, especially recently, since I’ve been thinking about this, to try to remember what happened between sitting by the pool and being in his bed,” she said. “I have no recollection of how we went from here to there. I do remember I was crying the entire time.”
He reached down her pants again, she said, and she pushed his hands away. As she wept, she said, Rose asked her, “Baby, oh baby, why are you crying?”
The encounter ended when he appeared to be asleep and she felt she could leave the room, she said.
The next day, she said there was little mention of what had happened. She described the previous night to him “as a bit of a disaster” and he said, “What do you mean?”
A few days later, she followed up about the job.
In retrospect, she said, “Remaining silent allowed me to continue denying what had occurred. It was in that state of denial that I wrote to him asking about the job.”
He replied with his regrets.
“The whole thing was really the most humiliating and most degrading experience I’ve ever had,” the woman says now. A friend she confided in at the time described her as having been “distraught” in recounting what happened.
“To have been used in the way she was left her feeling really confused and really distressed,” the friend told The Post. The friend encouraged her to write about her experience, and she chose to do so as a short story.
In one of the drafts that she shared with The Post, a tall, drawling television host named “Johnny Pose” brings a young woman to his country home on Long Island to discuss a job opportunity.
The woman said she changed some key details about what happened by the pool. And in the story, unlike in real life, she said, she viewed the host with contempt rather than fear.
She said she submitted the story to several magazine editors in 2010 and 2011. Paris Review editor Lorin Stein declined to publish the story but wrote to her in March 2011, “It has the ring of truth (alas).”
The woman titled the story, “The Hunt.”
The double entendre, she said, was intentional.
“I was hunting for a job,” she told The Post, “and he was hunting for me.”
Julie Tate and Alice Crites contributed to this report.
Republicans are feeling the pressure to move quickly on tax legislation ahead of next month’s Senate election in Alabama.
Senate Republicans already have little margin for error, as they can afford only two defections and still pass their tax-cut bill if Democrats are united against it.
But that margin would fall to one vote if the Democrat in the Alabama race, Doug Jones, defeats GOP candidate Roy Moore on Dec. 12. Polls have suggested a Jones victory is a real possibility in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against Moore.
An Alabama election official on Friday said the winner of the race could be seated as early as Dec. 26, giving Republicans a short window for action.
Republicans had already talked of getting a bill to President Trump’s desk by Christmas — and that deadline appears even more critical now, likely forcing a furious push in December.
“They’ve got to find a way to get to 50 votes [on a tax bill] as fast as possible,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell.
The House has already passed its version of the tax bill. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellAddison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellMcConnell expects Paul to return to Senate next week Former Hill staff calls for mandatory harassment training Gaming the odds of any GOP tax bill getting signed into law MORE (R-Ky.) is planning to start floor consideration of the upper chamber bill’s next week, when senators return from the Thanksgiving recess.
Looming over the push is Alabama’s special election, which pits Moore, a former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice, against Jones, a former U.S. Attorney.
The winner of the election will succeed Sen. Luther StrangeLuther Johnson StrangeGOP rushes to cut ties to Moore Cruz’s Democratic challenger fundraises off support of Roy Moore Moore digs in amid mounting GOP criticism MORE (R-Ala.), who was appointed to the seat after Jeff SessionsJefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsCurtis wins Chaffetz’s former Utah House seat Overnight Cybersecurity: What we learned from Carter Page’s House Intel testimony | House to mark up foreign intel reform law | FBI can’t access Texas shooter’s phone | Sessions to testify at hearing amid Russia scrutiny FBI can’t unlock Texas shooter’s phone MORE became Attorney General. Strange is expected to vote yes on the tax bill.
Jones, on the other hand, would likely join other Democrats in voting against the tax legislation, cutting the number of GOP senators who can oppose it to one. He signaled his opposition to the measure at a rally in October.
“What I see now troubles me a lot. I don’t care about the wealthiest in this country getting huge tax cuts … while the poor suffer,” Jones said, according to AL.com.
White House aide Kellyanne Conway noted Jones’s opposition to the tax bill in a Fox News interview on Monday.
“Doug Jones in Alabama, folks, don’t be fooled. He’ll be a vote against tax cuts,” she said.
Moore would be expected to vote for the GOP’s legislation, but also has his own ideas for what an overhaul of the tax code should look like, making his vote far from assured.
“Roy Moore will work hard to pass any plan that cuts taxes but believes the Senate should be even more aggressive about bringing long-term relief to the middle class,” said Brett Doster, a paid media strategist for the Moore campaign. “He wants a national sales tax system that will equitably spread the overall burden, eliminate the IRS, and help make America the most competitive economy in the world.”
Moore also has been antagonistic toward McConnell, repeatedly calling for him to step aside.
Until several weeks ago, it seemed certain that the Alabama seat would stay in GOP hands. But that changed after several women accused Moore of pursuing them when they were teenagers, in some cases with forcible touching.
The RealClearPolitics polling average of the race from Nov. 9 to Nov. 15 shows Jones narrowly ahead.
“The scandal that rocked Alabama has really put Republicans and their tax bill in very difficult situation because we may actually have a Democrat coming from Alabama,” said one GOP strategist who asked not to be named.
The Alabama Senate race only adds to the sense of urgency that Republicans feel on taxes following their failure earlier this year to repeal ObamaCare. They want to be able to deliver a major legislative victory ahead of the midterm elections, and they also argue that their tax bills would help to boost the economy and increase job and wage growth.
“There is a widely held sense of necessity on tax reform,” the strategist said.
GOP lawmakers and their staffs are working to keep McConnell’s timetable on the Senate’s tax bill. The Senate Finance Committee approved the measure last week on a party-line vote and is working to turn its plain-English proposal into legislative text.
Still, turning the bill into law will be no small task.
One GOP senator, Ron JohnsonRonald (Ron) Harold JohnsonDemocratic Homeland Security members request additional DHS nominee testimony Key differences between the Senate and House tax plans Senate panel delays vote on Trump’s Homeland Security pick MORE (R-Wis.), has come out against the bill in its current form, saying it helps corporations more than other businesses, though he told a Wisconsin radio station on Monday that he’s “encouraged” by the cooperation he’s getting from the Finance Committee.
Several other senators have raised concerns about the bill’s repeal of ObamaCare’s individual mandate and its impact on the debt.
If the Senate passes a bill, it will still have to be reconciled with the bill approved by the House. The compromise measure would then need to be voted on again in each chamber.
Negotiators from the House and Senate may have trouble reaching an agreement, given that their tax bills have significant differences.
The House bill, for example, contains a deduction for property taxes up to $10,000 while the Senate bill does not, and the Senate bill delays cutting the corporate tax rate until 2019, while the cut would take effect in 2018 under the House’s measure.
But the pressure on the conference committee negotiators to reach a deal will be intense, particularly if Jones wins in Alabama.
“This Jones guy’s not going to help us on anything that Trump wants to do,” Sen. Lindsey GrahamLindsey Olin GrahamCNN to air sexual harassment Town Hall featuring Gretchen Carlson, Anita Hill Trump wrestles with handling American enemy combatants Flake: Trump’s call for DOJ to probe Democrats ‘not normal’ MORE (R-S.C.) said Monday.
The Department of Justice sued Monday to block ATT’s $85 billion bid for entertainment conglomerate Time Warner, setting the stage for one of the biggest antitrust cases to hit Washington in decades.
The move by the Justice Department’s antitrust division is unusual because it challenges a deal that would combine two different kinds of companies — a telecom with a media and entertainment company. Antitrust officials are relatively untested in the courts on opposing such deals and have rarely tried to squash them.
If successful, however, the government’s case would send a strong signal across the business world that Washington is no longer looking as kindly on such mergers.
“It may be one of the most important antitrust battles of modern times,” said Gene Kimmelman, a former federal antitrust official and president of Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group.
There is also political risk for the Justice Department. Some Democrats have expressed concern that antitrust officials could be seeking to block the deal because the Trump administration has been highly critical of CNN, which is owned by Time Warner – a charge that the department and the White House have denied.
ATT has said it is willing to use the court process to unearth communications between White House and antitrust officials over the case. If such evidence is uncovered, analysts say, ATT could argue that Trump abused his position as president to carry out a politically motivated attack against a private actor.
Beyond his frequent criticisms on CNN, Trump said on the campaign trail that the deal would concentrate control of the media in the hands of too few firms.
The administration’s lawsuit seeks to prevent a deal that would combine ATT — one of the country’s largest providers of Internet and subscription television — with Time Warner’s enormous library of films, HBO, live TV programming and other content.
ATT said it plans to challenge the Justice Department’s suit in court.
“Today’s DOJ lawsuit is a radical and inexplicable departure from decades of antitrust precedent,” said David R. McAtee II, ATT’s general counsel. “Vertical mergers like this one are routinely approved because they benefit consumers without removing any competitor from the market. We see no legitimate reason for our merger to be treated differently.”
Justice officials argued that a combined ATT-Time Warner company could use its power to raise prices on consumers and corporate rivals.
“This merger would greatly harm American consumers,” said Makan Delrahim, the Justice Department’s antitrust chief. “It would mean higher monthly television bills and fewer of the new, emerging innovative options that consumers are beginning to enjoy.”
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the government’s complaint accuses ATT’s deal of violating section 7 of the Clayton Act, the nation’s top federal law governing mergers and acquisitions. In making their argument, antitrust officials pointed to what they said were ATT’s earlier criticisms of Comcast’s purchase of NBCUniversal in 2011, a similar type of deal involving a content company and a content distributor.
Back then, ATT argued that allowing Comcast to merge with NBC Universal would give the combined company the ability to use programming to hinder competition, antitrust officials said.
The Justice Department cited ATT’s control over DirecTV, which it bought in 2015, as a reason why the current deal raised even more concerns than Comcast’s.
“We concluded [the ATT tie-up] was even more harmful than the Comcast-NBC matter,” said a DOJ official, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal agency deliberations.
But in a press conference Monday, ATT disputed the account of the antitrust officials, saying that it had not commented on the Comcast NBCUniversal merger, adding that it was DirecTV, not ATT, that had made those arguments before the two companies combined.
Still, some critics, such as the premium cable channel Starz, have argued that a merged ATT-Time Warner conglomerate could force rival television networks to raise their prices, providing an incentive for viewers to subscribe to HBO or other channels that ATT would own.
Consumer advocates said ATT could withhold Time Warner’s content from other TV and Internet providers. Consumers could then be compelled to switch to ATT’s services from those of Comcast or Verizon to get Time Warner shows and movies.
ATT’s chief executive, Randall Stephenson, has said such a move would not make sense for its business, since the company would want to ensure that its content is consumed by as many people as possible.
DOJ’s lawsuit reflects a potential turning point in antitrust enforcement. The government has rarely brought legal complaints against mergers or acquisitions involving companies that do not directly compete. Instead, it has preferred to impose enduring conditions on a combined company to make sure it behaves in competitive ways.
But Delrahim, who was nominated by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate in September, largely rejects the use of so-called “behavioral” remedies to address potentially anti-competitive tie-ups.
“That approach is fundamentally regulatory, imposing ongoing government oversight on what should preferably be a free market,” Delrahim said in a recent speech to the American Bar Association. The antitrust division, he continued, is likely to return to applying “structural” changes to problematic mergers that force two merging companies to sell off assets.
In a closed-door meeting in Washington earlier this month, antitrust officials told ATT executives that the acquisition would fail to pass regulatory muster unless the company agreed to spin off some properties, such as either Turner Broadcasting or its DirecTV service.
ATT responded that it has no intention of making any major divestments, according to multiple people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private discussions.
DOJ’s suggestion to ATT that it sell Turner Broadcasting was interpreted by some executives and analysts as a veiled attempt by the White House to punish CNN for its critical reporting on the Trump administration.
Even beyond the politics surrounding the case, the Justice Department may not have an airtight economic argument against the ATT-Time Warner deal, some analysts said.
“DOJ isn’t that great when it actually has to go to trial to block mergers, and the jurisprudence on blocking vertical deals is bad for any case the government would bring,” said Robert McDowell, a former commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission, referring to the lack of precedent for a successful lawsuit against deals involving firms in different industries.
If ATT ultimately wins the case, it would be allowed to close its deal with Time Warner without needing to divest any assets or make other concessions to government regulators — dealing Delrahim a major blow early in his tenure, according to Rich Greenfield, an industry analyst at BTIG. But, he added, losing the case could give Trump a stronger argument against media consolidation.
“We could envision President Donald Trump saying ‘Fake Courts’ and taking the populist approach that he tried and failed to stop big media from getting bigger,” said Greenfield in a research note last week.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — UCLA fired football coach Jim Mora on Sunday with one regular-season game left in his sixth season.
Athletic director Dan Guerrero announced the shocking move one day after rival Southern California’s 28-23 victory over UCLA (5-6, 3-5 Pac-12). Offensive coordinator Jedd Fisch will coach the Bruins in their regular-season home finale against California on Friday night.
UCLA must pay more than $12 million to buy out the remainder of Mora’s contract, which runs through 2021. The school announced that Mora’s contract will be “honored by UCLA Athletics, exclusively using department-generated funds.”
The extraordinary buyout indicates the depth of frustration in Westwood with Mora, whose tenure got off to an outstanding start before a precipitous decline. The Bruins even fired Mora on his 56th birthday.
“Jim helped re-establish our football program, and was instrumental in so many ways in moving the program forward,” Guerrero said in a statement. “While his first four seasons at UCLA were very successful, the past two seasons have not met expectations.”
Guerrero said his coaching search will be aided by wealthy Bruins booster Casey Wasserman and Hall of Famer and former UCLA quarterback Troy Aikman.
Mora went 46-30 in his first significant collegiate coaching job, but the Bruins are on the brink of their second consecutive losing season despite a roster filled with elite recruits led by quarterback Josh Rosen.
Mora won at least eight games in each of his first four seasons, giving the Bruins four straight winning seasons for the first time since 1988 under Terry Donahue. But UCLA finished 4-8 last year with one of the nation’s worst offenses, and its record hasn’t improved significantly this season despite getting a full season from Rosen, who missed the second half of 2016 with a shoulder injury.
UCLA still could become bowl-eligible with a season-ending victory over the Golden Bears (5-6) under Fisch, who joined the program from Michigan this season and immediately rebuilt the Bruins’ offense into a solid unit. The Bruins haven’t lost at the Rose Bowl all season, going 5-0.
The Bruins won 10 games in Mora’s second and third seasons, tying the modest school record for victories in a season. Mora, the former coach of the Atlanta Falcons and the Seattle Seahawks, was the widespread subject of NFL speculation at the time, but he repeatedly vowed to stay with the Bruins.
UCLA is 17-19 since 2015 with Rosen in the program, including 10-16 in the Pac-12. The Bruins won just 10 of Mora’s last 27 games.
Former Oregon coach Chip Kelly is likely to be a top target for the Bruins, who had an incompetent offense last season before Fisch fixed it this fall. The defense has let down the Bruins this season, with particularly awful run defense under veteran coordinator Tom Bradley and Mora, a longtime defensive coach.
The Bruins are third-worst among the Power Five conference with 37.6 points allowed per game, and second-worst in the FBS with 288.7 yards rushing allowed per game. UCLA is tied for 110th in the FBS with just 11 takeaways in 11 games.
UCLA outgained USC 421-264 in the rivals’ crosstown showdown on Saturday night, but Trojans coach Clay Helton improved to 3-0 against Mora.
___
More AP college football: www.collegefootball.ap.org and www.twitter.com/AP_Top25
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
On ABC’s This Week Sunday morning, George Stephanopoulos drilled White House Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short for answers as to whether President Trump still supports Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore in the wake of multiple allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct. At least half a dozen times, Short dodged blatant yes-or-no questions, leaving room for Trump to be satisfied if Moore ends up winning the special election next month.
Short started the interview by hanging his hat on the “if true” caveat — that Trump would believe the allegations are disqualifying only if they were somehow proven to be true. As the White House has said on other occasions, Trump is essentially washing his hands of it by leaving it up to the people of Alabama to decide.
But Stephanopoulos was unsatisfied with these responses and pressed Short to clarify whether Trump actually believes the women who have made accusations against Moore. “Obviously, George, if he did not believe the women’s accusations were credible, he would be down campaigning for Roy Moore. He has not done that. He has concerns about the accusations,” Short said. The implication seemed to be that Trump’s lack of campaigning should be seen as a condemnation of Moore.
But then Short immediately began defending Moore too. “But he’s also concerned that these accusations are 38 years old, Roy Moore has been in public service for decades, and the accusations did not arise until a month before the election,” he continued. “So we’re concerned about several aspects of the story; we’re very concerned about the allegations, but at this point, as I’ve said, we think it’s best for the people of Alabama to make the decision for them.”
Stephanopoulos pointed out that Short still had not actually answered whether Trump believes the women, but Short insisted that he had. As the back-and-forth continued, Stephanopoulos asked Short several times to clarify with yes-or-no answers about Trump’s ongoing support for Moore and whether he believes the accusers, but Short could not provide those simple answers, again leaning on the people of Alabama.
Eventually, Stephanopoulos asked whether it would be the “right decision” if the people of Alabama did, in fact, elect Moore. “I think that the right decision will be what the people of Alabama decide,” Short replied.
Before the allegations came to light, Trump openly supported Moore, having quickly endorsed him after he won the Republican primary. When asked about Moore’s many controversial opinions, such as past support for criminalizing homosexuality and barring Muslims from serving in Congress, Trump dodged the question, crediting the people of Alabama for liking Moore.
Short’s waffling responses reflect comments White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders made Friday when she defended Trump for attacking Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) over allegations against him, despite having called his own accusers liars and not similarly attacking Moore. “I think in one case specifically, Senator Franken has admitted wrongdoing. The president hasn’t. It a very clear distinction,” she explained, seeming to pin liability on specific admissions of guilt. She also went on to say that Moore could still sue his accusers, a point that Short echoed Sunday.
It’s also not a new tactic for Trump to defer to the states to avoid taking a side on a controversial issue. Over the course of his campaign, for example, Trump’s position on transgender rights (which Moore notably opposes) slowly shifted from indifferent support to “hopefully the states will make the right decisions.” Just like the equivocating over the allegations against Moore, Trump said at one point, “I don’t view it as civil rights or not civil rights.” By relying on ambiguous language and deferring responsibility to other decision-makers, Trump attempts to play both sides of the issue while still holding out for an outcome that benefits him.
In this case, if Moore wins, Trump stands to gain by holding onto a Republican seat in the Senate, while creating the appearance that he’s not standing by someone accused of sexual abuse. When Stephanopoulos asked Short if Trump would work with Moore as a Senator, Short confirmed, “The president works with all members of Congress. That’s his role.”
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Nov. 19, 2017
HARARE, Zimbabwe — Robert Mugabe, 93, who ruled Zimbabwe with an iron grip until the military placed him under house arrest last week, stunned the nation on Sunday night by refusing to say whether he would resign.
Many political observers and fellow Zimbabweans had been expecting Mr. Mugabe to step down as president after nearly 40 years in power. But the embattled president gave a 20-minute televised speech that acknowledged problems in the nation — and he vowed to soldier on.
“The era of victimization and arbitrary decisions” must end, Mr. Mugabe said while sitting at a table, flanked by members of the military and other officials, including a priest.
He also declared that he would preside over his governing party’s congress in a few weeks. “I will preside over its processes, which must not be prepossessed by any acts calculated to undermine it or to compromise the outcomes in the eyes of the public,” he said.
Observers questioned how Mr. Mugabe could oversee the congress if he was no longer leader of the party: His address came hours after he was expelled as leader of his party, ZANU-PF, which gave him until noon on Monday to resign or face impeachment by Parliament.
Party officials earlier on Sunday also removed his wife, Grace Mugabe, as head of the ZANU-PF Women’s League and barred her from the party for life. So were Jonathan Moyo, Zimbabwe’s minister of higher and tertiary education; and Saviour Kasukuwere, the minister of local government. Mr. Mugabe’s second vice president, Phelekezela Mphoko, who had served for three years, was fired.
Mrs. Mugabe, who had amassed wealth and power in the party and was her husband’s likely successor, has not been seen in public since Wednesday.
ZANU-PF appointed her rival, Emmerson Mnangagwa, the vice president previously fired by the president, to take Mr. Mugabe’s place as leader of the party.
The harsh rebuke by the party’s central committee came after emergency talks to address the political crisis. Under the Constitution, Mr. Mugabe remains president despite the party’s expulsion.
Announcing the decision on Sunday, Patrick Chinamasa, the party’s secretary for legal affairs, said that Mr. Mugabe “hereby is recalled as first secretary and president of the ZANU-PF party.”
“He is therefore asked to resign forthwith,” Mr. Chinamasa said. “In the event that the resignation would not have been tendered by midday 20th of November, 2017, the ZANU-PF chief whip was ordered to issue proceedings for the removal of the president.”
Cheers and dancing broke out in the building after the decision to expel Mr. Mugabe as party leader.
“There is a case at the end!” a group of youths chanted after storming an open space outside ZANU-PF headquarters.
Many Western news outlets had alerted the world to a pending resignation, citing confidential sources. But it was not to be — at least in the speech on Sunday night.
Mr. Mugabe made the rambling address to the southern African nation about 9 p.m. local time after intense negotiations at the State House with Army generals over the conditions for his departure, the state broadcaster reported.
Among the men sitting off to the side during Mr. Mugabe’s speech was Constantino Chiwenga, the very Army commander who had placed him under house arrest. Mr. Mugabe spoke haltingly but deliberately, sometimes repeating phrases and appearing to lose his place among the pages before him. He alluded to the military takeover and his talks with the generals.
“I as the president of Zimbabwe and their commander in chief do acknowledge the issues they have drawn my attention to,” he said, “and do believe that these were raised in the spirt of honesty and out of deep and patriotic concern for the stability for our nation and for the welfare of our people.”
Among the issues discussed was the economy, which, Mr. Mugabe allowed, was “going through a difficult patch.” He later said the government would unveil business and entrepreneurial programs to help the economy.
“Today’s meeting with the command element has underscored the need for us to collectively start processes that return our nation to normalcy,” he said, “so all our people can go about their business unhindered, in an environment of perfect peace and security.”
As his speech came to a close, he invoked a “wartime mantra.” He then said, “I thank you, and good night.” Then he shook the hands of the men who had appeared on camera with him.
Some Zimbabweans reacted to the speech with disgust. Trevor Ncube, an entrepreneur and newspaper publisher, said on Twitter: “Robert is finished,” adding, “He is likely to be impeached. Worst speech ever.”
On Saturday, thousands of Zimbabweans took to the streets to celebrate the autocratic ruler’s apparent downfall after the military seized control on Wednesday but was careful not to call it a coup. The military said it wanted to target the criminals around Mr. Mugabe who had pillaged the country’s economy.
Once respected as a liberation icon who went into exile after fighting colonial rule, Mr. Mugabe had become isolated from fellow party officials. Zimbabwe’s only leader since the country gained independence from Britain in 1980, he had faced little opposition from the party rank and file.
But on Saturday, even his fellow veterans of the fight for independence joined the march of tens of thousands of Zimbabweans who danced sang with joy at the prospect of Mr. Mugabe’s rule ending.
On Sunday, Mr. Mugabe met for a second round of talks with the generals to negotiate a dignified departure, the state-run broadcaster said. A Catholic priest, Fidelis Mukonori, mediated.
Last week, a majority of the party’s leaders recommended that Mr. Mugabe should be expelled. In a resolution, they said he should be removed for taking the advice of “counterrevolutionaries and agents of neo-imperialism”; for mistreating his vice president, Mr. Mnangagwa; and for encouraging “factionalism.”
They urged the “immediate and unconditional reinstatement” of Mr. Mnangagwa, at least until the national elections scheduled for next year. On Sunday, the leaders put force behind their recommendations.
The party elevated Mr. Mnangagwa, 75, to the role of party leader and nominated him as its sole presidential candidate for the 2018 elections — a position that the committee said would be confirmed by the party’s congress in December.
Mr. Mnangagwa’s firing had positioned Mr. Mugabe’s wife to succeed him as president, but it appears to have been an overreach that singled out an erstwhile ally with strong support from the military.
The vice president, however, is seen as no salve for a nation facing steep unemployment and crumbling public infrastructure. Critics accuse him of being politically ruthless. He is also unpopular in parts of the country.
He lost his parliamentary seat at least twice, once after being accused of firebombing his opponent’s house, according to an editor of The Zimbabwean newspaper.
Norimitsu Onishi contributed reporting.
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A day after Mr. Ball downplayed President Trump’s involvement in getting three U.C.L.A. players safely out of China, the president fired back.
Revisiting the 1990s and realizing that impeachment was reasonable.
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Investigators in Pennsylvania are looking for the man who they say killed a police officer after a traffic stop Friday night.
Officer Brian Shaw, a 25-year-old patrolman, was shot just after 8 p.m. in New Kensington, Pa., about 20 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. Authorities said the suspect, 29-year-old Rahmael Sal Holt, got out of his car and ran away after Shaw pulled him over. He shot the officer during the chase, New Kensington Police Chief James Klein said at a news conference.
Shaw died at a hospital. He had been with the police department for less than a year.
A visibly upset Klein addressed reporters for just less than a minute, taking a deep breath before he started speaking. He did not take questions.
“I’m asking anybody, anybody with any information, as minute as they think it might be, please, please give us a call. We need to find the person that did this. Thank you very much,” Klein said before he walked away with a few uniformed officers.
Authorities have remained tight-lipped about the investigation. Police have not said why Holt was pulled over, or why he ran away. It also remains unclear how many shots were fired, or whether one of them came from the officer’s gun.
Nicole Drum told the Pittsburgh Tribune Review that she was sitting in her living room Friday night when she heard gunshots just outside her New Kensington home. She looked outside and saw Shaw fall to the ground and ran out to help him. Drum said she heard at least six shots, two of which hit her house.
[ Parolee’s anger at police may have led to shooting ]
“I was trying to talk to him,” Drum said. “He wasn’t responding.”
The Drum home had a surveillance camera mounted under the second-story eave, Wayne Drum told the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. He said investigators had taken his hard drive to see what the camera had captured.
Another neighbor, Brad Larocca, said he looked out the window after hearing gunshots and saw the officer struggling to sit up.
“I don’t know if he was trying to talk,” Larocca told the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. “He was gasping for air.”
Multiple law enforcement agencies and several residents have offered a total of $43,500 to anyone who can provide information leading to Holt’s capture.
Holt has a lengthy criminal history that stretches to at least 2007. Court records show he had pleaded guilty on drug and gun charges, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.
Shaw began working for the New Kensington Police Department in June, the Associated Press reported. He had also worked as a part-time officer for three other towns.
Shaw left behind not only his parents, but also his brother, a grandmother and his girlfriend, according to his obituary. He loved working out, hunting and playing with his dogs, Satie May and Gus. He was also a fan of sports and enjoyed playing soccer and football.
[ ‘Thank God you missed one’: Bodycam records cop mistakenly shooting photographer he knows ]
He graduated from Burrell High School and attended Slippery Rock University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and played football for four years. He also graduated from the Allegheny County Police Academy.
“Our hearts are broken this morning as we mourn the loss of former Rock football player Brian Shaw, who was killed last night while serving as a police officer in New Kensington,” the university’s athletics department said Saturday on Twitter. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the Shaw family and The Rock football brotherhood.”
A procession to move Shaw’s body to the Rusiewicz Funeral Home in Lower Burrell, Pa., where the officer lived, took place Saturday morning. Residents, many of whom carried American flags, and firefighters, all wearing their gear, waited on the streets to pay their respects.
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