2Newsweek USA september 16 2016

The Next Space Race / Sexual Harassment in the Media

9/11’S
SECOND
WAVE

09.16.2016

SOME 400,000 PEOPLE HAVE BEEN
AFFECTED BY DISEASES, CANCERS AND
MENTAL ILLNESSES LINKED
TO THE ATTACKS



09.16.2016

VOL.167

NO.10

+
ILLNESS IN THE AIR:

Placido Perez, an EMT
who was at the base
of the World Trade
Center in New York
during 9/11, suffers
from health issues
such as liver swelling

and post-traumatic
stress disorder.
22 Conspiracy

A Conspiracy
of Dunces

NEW WORLD
44 Tech

Take Two iPads
and Call Me in
the Morning
46 Drones

Drones Unleashed
48 Health

FEATURES

DEPARTMENTS

Fighting Fire
With Cancer
52 Images

BIG SHOTS
24

The Hurting Heroes of 9/11

4 Brasília, Brazil

The alarming death toll from the attacks on
September 11, 2001, is still rising. The reason,
doctors say: noxious chemicals released when the
towers fell that turned Ground Zero into a cesspool
of deadly disease. by Leah McGrath Goodman
34

Tchau!

DOWNTIME

6 Karkamiş, Turkey

Murky Motives
8 Caracas,

Venezuela
Flagging Spirits
10 Santa Clara, Cuba
Welcome to Cuba

Disruption From Outer Space

A massive stream of satellite photos will soon let
us track war crimes, spot environmental disasters
as they’re happening and hack the stock market
by counting the cars in Wal-Mart parking lots.

by Grant Burningham
DEV IN YALKIN FOR NEWSWEE K

A GIF-Wrapped
Present

54 Wealth

Fly Me to the U
57 Bookstore

Advanced
Western Lit 101
58 Photography

Life, Like
PAG E O N E
12 Politics

A Penalty Kick
in the Pants
16 Trump

COVER CREDIT: PHOTOGRAPH BY SPENCER PLATT/GETTY

Going, Go-Go’s,
Gone
60 Rewind

25 Years

The Point of
No Returns

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18 Harassment

Stories No One
Dares Tell

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1

0 9 / 1 6 / 2016

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EVA R I STO SA /A F P/G E T T Y


BIG
SHOTS

BRAZIL

Tchau!
Brasília, Brazil—The
Brazilian Senate voted
61-20 on August 31 to
remove Dilma Rousseff from the presidency on charges she
illegally used money
from state banks to
fund public spending,
marking the end of an
impeachment process
that has kept Brazilian
politics in turmoil for
months. Rousseff described her removal
as a “parliamentary
coup.” Many of the

politicians who voted
for her ouster have
also been caught up in
a graft scandal involving state oil company
Petrobras, and Michel
Temer, who has been
acting president since
May, is banned from
running for public
office because he
violated campaign
spending laws.

EVARISTO SA


BU L E N T K I L I C/A F P/G E T T Y


BIG
SHOTS

TURKEY

Murky
Motives
Karkamiş,
Turkey—Smoke rises
on September 1 near
the Syrian border

town of Jarablus,
where Turkey sent
ground and air forces
to help drive out
Islamic State militants
who had held the
town for three years.
Turkey launched its
incursion into Syria
not only to push back
ISIS but also to keep
Kurdish fighters there
away from its border.
Washington has
urged Turkey to avoid
confrontation with
the Syrian Kurdish
YPG militia, which
has been among the
most effective forces
fighting ISIS. Turkey
views the Kurdish
group as terrorists
allied with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party,
or PKK, which has
fought against Ankara
for decades.

BULENT KILIC

BIG
SHOTS

VENEZUELA

CARLOS GARCIA RAWL INS/ REUTERS

Flagging
Spirits
Caracas, Venezuela—
Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans
fill the streets of Caracas on September 1 to
demand the removal
of President Nicolás
Maduro, whose time
in office has seen
the collapse of the
economy, triple-digit
inflation, shortages of
food and medicines,
and widespread frustration over perceived
corruption. Opposition groups estimated
that at least 1 million
people took part in
the protest. Venezuela
refused entry to at
least six foreign journalists the day before
the protest, according

to the Committee to
Protect Journalists.

CARLOS GARCIA


BIG
SHOTS

CUBA

Santa Clara, Cuba—
The first scheduled
commercial flight
between the United
States and Cuba in
more than 50 years
brings U.S. government officials,
reporters and regular
travelers to the
central city of Santa
Clara on August 31
as part of the Obama
administration’s restoration of ties with
the Communist-ruled
island. U.S. airlines
have been lining up
to offer flights to the
capital city of Havana, as tourism and
travel by Americans

of Cuban descent is
expected to surge.

ALEXANDRE MENEGHINI

ALE XANDRE M E NEG HINI/ REUTE RS

Welcome
to Cuba



P
SYRIA

A
POLITICS

G

E

HARASSMENT

O
TRUMP

N

E

CONSPIRACY

MIGRANTS

A PENALTY KICK IN THE PANTS

THE YEAR WAS 1994, and a depressed Brazil
was desperately in need of a lift. Recent years
had seen a president impeached for corruption,
inflation in excess of 2,500 percent, horrendous massacres of innocents inside a prison
and outside a church, and a general feeling that
the country couldn’t do anything right. As June
approached, so did two seemingly unrelated
events that looked destined to add to this record
of failure: the launch of a new currency and soccer’s World Cup tournament.
Brazil hadn’t won a World Cup for 24 years—
an almost unprecedented stretch that had many
questioning whether its magical jogo bonito
(beautiful game) had vanished, perhaps forever.
As for the currency, there had already been five
new ones introduced in the previous decade to
try to “reset” the economy, each with miserable
results. There was no reason to believe this time
would be any different.
Yet as the tournament got underway in the
United States, Brazil easily dispatched decent

NEWSWEEK

teams from Cameroon and Russia. The country’s politicians sensed opportunity. The author
of the new currency plan, a theretofore obscure
sociologist named Fernando Henrique Cardoso,
believed that if Brazil did well in the World Cup,
the national malaise might ease just a bit. So he
began inviting journalists to take pictures of him
cheering on the team, hoping that the euphoria
would rub off on the currency, known as the real,
when it launched on July 1—just as the World
Cup’s elimination round began.
“Was it a slightly hammy bit of political theater? Of course,” Cardoso later admitted in his
memoirs. “A well-placed penalty kick was not
going to magically end inflation. But there was
something to be said about the mood of the
country and how that might impact the real.”
It turns out he was right. Brazil defeated the
host team in a hard-fought 1-0 victory before a
crowd that included a somewhat conflicted Pelé,
who was torn between the two nations he called
home. Wins against the Netherlands and Swe-

12

0 9 / 1 6 / 2016

BY
BRIAN WINTER
@BrazilBrian

C H R I STO P H E S I M O N /A F P/G E T T Y

In Brazil, the most soccer-obsessed
country in the world, politics often
tracks the beautiful game


+
YELLOW CARD: A

soccer fan holds
up a sign reading
“Dilma Out” at
a match against
Uruguay in March.
Rousseff was ousted as president at
the end of August.

NEWSWEEK

13

0 9 / 1 6 / 2016


den followed. Finally, on July 17, Brazil played
Italy to a scoreless draw before winning the tournament in a penalty shootout, 3-2. The nation
erupted in celebration, and a prominent columnist wrote of “a new phase in Brazil’s history:
the return of national self-esteem.” “The best in
soccer can also win the battle against misery and
backwardness,” crowed another. Coincidence or

not, the new currency began to work as planned,
and inflation slowed to just 2 percent that month.
By October, Cardoso had been elected president.
He served two largely successful terms, and the
real remains Brazil’s currency.
I couldn’t stop thinking of all this on the final
Saturday of the Rio Olympics, as Brazilian soccer and politics once again converged. By beating Germany in another dramatic shootout,
Brazil won Olympic soccer gold for the first
time, providing a depressed nation with its most
joyous moment in years. In doing so, the team
exorcised some of the demons from its 7-1 loss
to the Germans at the 2014 World Cup—which,
let’s say it again, “coincidence or not,” marked
the beginning of the country’s descent into two
long years of humiliation, scandal and recession. Brazil’s win also consolidated a nationwide
belief that, against all odds, the Rio Olympics
had been a (moderate) success. But for the vast
majority of Brazilians, who either don’t live in
Rio or couldn’t care less about wrestling or competitive swimming, the soccer victory was probably even more of a boost to morale.
Pundits drew larger parallels to the nation’s
fate. “I think the cloud that was hovering over
Brazil is starting to dissipate,” Guga Chacra,
a popular television commentator, wrote on
Facebook shortly after the match’s final whistle blew. “All of us, deep down, know this.” The
president who led Brazil into this awful recession, Dilma Rousseff, was removed from office
at the end of August. There are tentative signs
the economy is starting to turn around. In other
words, there’s a good chance the worst is over.
Lots of countries love soccer, but it’s safe to
say that Brazil, with its unmatched five World

Cup titles, is more obsessive than most. So is
it healthy for politics to so closely track the
national pastime? Does it give politicians the
power to cynically manipulate the public mood
and paper over Brazil’s real problems? Journalists and athletes alike have long debated these
questions. Pelé complained in his memoir that
at the 1966 World Cup, the Brazilian team suffered “tremendous pressure” from the newly
installed military government to win a third
consecutive championship to “cover up the
divisions in our society.” Brazil lost that year
NEWSWEEK

+
MORALE BOOST:

but won in glorious fashion in 1970, allowing
the military to rally around the flag during a particularly nasty phase of the dictatorship, when
dissidents were being arrested, tortured and
killed. (Rousseff, then a leftist guerrilla, was
jailed that same year.)
Another convergence occurred in 1950, when
Brazil hosted the World Cup for the first time.
Organizers built the world’s biggest stadium,
the Maracanã, then with a capacity of nearly
200,000, to show the world its people were not
“savages,” to quote Rio’s mayor at the time. Brazil’s infamous 2-1 loss to Uruguay in the final not

14

0 9 / 1 6 / 2016

As fans celebrated Brazil’s defeat
of Germany in
the gold medal
Olympic match,
President Michel
Temer said he
hoped the country
would follow the
team’s example in
other fields too.


P A G E O N E/ P O L I T I C S

allowed the Operação Lava Jato (Operation Car
Wash) probe into corruption at Petrobras, which
ultimately took down Rousseff, to keep burning
over the past year. If people are happier and take
their angry gaze off Brasília, it will become easier
for Congress (and factions within the judiciary)
to pass measures that would obstruct the work of
investigators and let part of the establishment off
the hook. Meanwhile, Rousseff ’s ouster means
her successor, Michel Temer, who is almost as
unpopular as she was, will work hard to draw a
line under the misery of the past two years. Sure
enough, in a newspaper editorial headlined “The

BARBARA WALTON/ E PA

“A WELL-PLACED
PENALTY KICK WAS NOT
GOING TO MAGICALLY
END INFLATION.”
World Rediscovers Brazil,” Temer congratulated
the soccer team for “passing from discredit to
the pinnacle, opening a road that Brazil should
also follow in other fields.”
Will history repeat itself? I believe Brazil has
matured, and the lessons of this crisis won’t be
easily forgotten. It’s also possible that another
event—such as upcoming plea bargains in the
Lava Jato case—could rekindle public rage. But I
also believe that nations have limits to their suffering and will eventually grasp at opportunities
to move on. Confidence and sentiment are critical to politics and to economies, and optimism
often becomes self-fulfilling. Furthermore, I
know that journalists are always looking for
grand narratives about the fate of nations. And
that’s why I would bet that Brazil’s soccer gold,
and the Olympics in general, will eventually be
remembered by some as the beginning of the
end of Brazil’s crisis. Coincidence or not.

only deprived the politicians of their storybook
ending but also devastated the nation’s self-esteem to the extent that legendary writer Nelson Rodrigues called it “our Hiroshima.” In the
ensuing years, Brazil would endure an economic
crisis, a corruption scandal and the suicide of a
beloved president. The national team wouldn’t
enjoy a shining moment at the Maracanã until

66 years later, when Neymar fired home the final
penalty kick against Germany on August 20.
It’s easy to imagine how “bread and circuses”
could once again be used to distract the masses.
The dour public mood has been the oxygen that

NEWSWEEK

BRIAN WINTER is the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly, where a version of this article was first published.

15

0 9 / 1 6 / 2016


PAGE ONE /TRUMP

THE SCOOP

THE POINT OF NO RETURNS

Is there a nasty October surprise
hiding in Donald Trump’s taxes?
LET’S TALK TAXES, specifically, Donald Trump’s
taxes, because if he is elected president of the
United States this November, that and his many
other financial secrets will be all anyone in Washington will be discussing for years to come.
Unlike every other nominee for the presidency
over the past four decades, Trump has refused to
release his tax returns. He uses the bogus claim

that he can’t because he is being audited, an argument Richard Nixon could have used to block
releasing his tax returns in the midst of the Watergate scandal, but didn’t (after a lot of delay). Also,
Trump’s returns from 2002 through 2008 can be
released without an issue—all audits involving
them are over. But he wants to pretend—or should
I say lie?—that turning over records more than a
decade old will somehow affect a current audit.
Let’s not pretend: Trump is hiding something. Is he a tax cheat? Does he give nothing
to charity? Does he derive income from investments in Ukraine and Russia? Who knows? He
has a labyrinthine collection of partnerships,
private corporations, holding companies and
other investments. America does not know
if he is a joint investor with unsavory characters (he has been before) or what financial
incentives drive him. So imagine the day after
Trump is elected president. If there is a Democratic majority in the Senate—which appears
likely—the first subpoena coming out of a congressional committee will be for his tax returns.
Whatever nasty secrets they contain will come
spilling out. The next set of subpoenas will be

NEWSWEEK

for the Trump Organization, the assorted partnerships and family trusts controlled by Trump
and his private company, and every other shred
of financial information he is hiding. As Nixon
once said, in declaring that he welcomed an

16

0 9 / 1 6 / 2016

BY
KURT EICHENWALD
@kurteichenwald


FAULTY
DEDUCTION:

E R I C T H AY E R / R EU T E RS

Trump claims
he can’t release
his returns
because he’s
being audited,
but tax experts
say that’s a
bogus excuse.
+

examination of his taxes, “People have got to
know whether or not their president is a crook.”
Normally, those subpoenas might be considered fishing expeditions, but in Trump’s case
it will be essential oversight of the executive
branch. No one would be able to know if Trump
travels to Russia to continue his game of kissyface with Vladimir Putin because he is acting in
the interest of the United States or because he is
in a financial deal with the Russian dictator or
some of his oligarch pals.
Republicans—and members of the media who

aren’t thinking this through—are yipping about
potential conflicts of interest for Hillary Clinton
because of contributions to the Clinton Foundation when she was secretary of state. This is a legitimate inquiry, but this “scandal” is about money
going to charitable efforts all over the globe, with
the names of contributors in the public domain.
No one has suggested Clinton or any member of
her family personally benefited, unless you count
the pleasure they might have received in helping battle neglected tropical diseases that ravage underdeveloped nations or from any of the
group’s other worthwhile endeavors.
Compare this with the Trump Organization,
which is private and secretive. It puts money
directly into his pockets and his kids’ pockets. How much? We don’t know. From where?
We don’t know. Is the financial benefit Trump
receives from the Trump Organization shaping
his foreign policy proposals, as vague as they are?
We don’t know.
Now dig into Trump’s lie about why he can’t
release his tax returns. Pretend the audit argument is legitimate. Fine. Let him keep them secret.
Instead, release the first two pages of his
Form 1040, plus his one-page Schedule A dating back to, say, 2006. A decade should suffice.
These documents, nothing more than a summary of his tax returns, could not affect any
audit. The only thing these three pages reveal
is the bottom line; they are like the back-cover
description of a book. Even if Trump insists he
must keep the metaphorical book hidden, he
can at least tell us what it’s about.
Here’s what we would learn from those three
pages: Trump’s gross, adjusted gross and net
income by type. His total claimed deductions.
His effective federal tax rate and the total

amount he paid in taxes. His total charitable contributions (since he brags about that so much, he
should be willing to reveal them). The amount he
paid in state and local taxes, by type. That information would resolve some of the big questions
about Trump and his finances.
Trump could release two other documents
NEWSWEEK

without affecting any audit. As my colleague
Matt Cooper has written, Trump has yet to
prove he is being audited. He could simply
release the letter the IRS sends to notify taxpayers their returns are being examined. If it exists,
why won’t he release it?
Trump can also make public a sworn affidavit identifying his investors and business partners, as well as his financial relationships with
them. It is all likely going to come out through
subpoena when he is president; why not let the
American people know the answers now?
As we move closer to the November election,
perhaps those reporters following Trump on the
campaign trail are going to start recognizing he
can release those three pages from his taxes, the
audit letter and the affidavit without causing a

“PEOPLE HAVE GOT
TO KNOW WHETHER
THEIR PRESIDENT
IS A CROOK.”
ripple at the IRS audit office. If they really want
to do their jobs, they will start pressing Trump
for those documents, and his excuses will put
the lie to this “I’m under audit” nonsense. My

colleagues in the press will come to realize that
the secrets and potential conflicts hidden in
Trump’s finances are far more important than
whether Clinton met with a Nobel Prize winner who contributed to the Clinton Foundation
when she was secretary of state—as the Associated Press recently huffed and puffed in what
was easily the worst article of the election year.
If there is something untoward about Trump’s
businesses and personal finances, Americans
need to know now, rather than waiting to discover later if that now-hidden information will
set off the rumblings of another impeachment
when the curtain is pulled back. Running for
president is not a game. The White House is not
some trophy anyone should be allowed to grab
without revealing basic information. Reporters,
Democrats and even Republicans should insist
that Trump release those three pages, the letter
and the affidavit.
And if he refuses? Then voters should reject
him. Trump may love Putin, but he shouldn’t be
allowed to keep his finances secret, as do all the
other cronies of the Russian dictator.

17

0 9 / 1 6 / 2016


STORIES NO ONE DARES TELL

After a scandal at Fox, sexual harassment

in the news business is making news
CLARA WAS AN 18-year-old high school student
and photography intern at a newspaper in the
southeastern United States when a section editor asked if she’d ever had sex. He also sent Clara
(not her real name) several flirtatious texts during
her two years at the paper, asking if she would
come to his house and whether she “would do
anything for him.” A teacher at her high school
sensed something bad was happening and told

NEWSWEEK

her to be careful, a warning Clara didn’t heed.
The editor implied that “I wouldn’t get a recommendation from him for any other internships, or further work, if I didn’t,” says Clara,
now a 23-year-old general assignment reporter
at a different news outlet. “I didn’t know what
else to do. I was afraid saying no would mean I
wouldn’t collect any more clips.”
After declining his invitation several times, she

18

0 9 / 1 6 / 2016

BY
LUCY WESTCOTT
@lvzwestcott


+

BURY THE LEDE:

After a male colleague screamed
at her for rejecting
his advances, this
journalist started
spending more
time away from
the office, and her
work suffered.

eventually went to his house. “I told him I didn’t
really want to fool around, that I had changed my
mind,” and asked him to watch a movie, she says.
Instead, he told Clara that watching a movie
wasn’t why she was there. He forcibly performed
oral sex on her before she grabbed her clothes
and ran out. She was able to avoid seeing him
again at the paper, but he continued to contact
her for two months, until she went to college. She
never reported the incident.
Clara is one of the 53 women and two men
who contacted Newsweek about sexual harassment related to their jobs in journalism. In midJuly, I emailed friends and colleagues seeking
stories and was soon inundated with recollections of inappropriate jokes, comments on
race and appearance, and unwanted touching
and worse by sources, colleagues, bosses and
the public. Newsweek has granted anonymity to
those who requested it; many women still work
at the companies where they say they were
harassed. While this is not a scientific survey,

it’s an opportunity to hear the stories of women
who have faced irritating, intimidating and, at
times, life-threatening behavior.
I’ve also decided to include a few of my experiences with sexual harassment. I was a 22-yearold intern at an international news organization
in Washington, D.C., when an older, married
male journalist invited me to go stargazing with
him in rural Virginia. When I declined, he sent
me an email: “I hope I can count on you as a very
mature person and not hear some
crazy rumors in the office.” That same
year, an older male sports photographer detailed the injury of a wellknown football player by reaching
under the table and tracing lines on
my knee and thigh.
Like many of the women who spoke
with Newsweek, Clara blames herself
for what happened. “It wasn’t until I
went to counseling and told my therapist what
happened did I realize it was rape. The question
of consent never crossed my mind at 18,” she says.
Five years after the attack, she says, she is unable
to cover stories that involve sexual violence due to
her post-traumatic stress disorder.
At her new job, she says, “it was humiliating,
not because my boss wasn’t accepting—just
because I had to admit I couldn’t [cover stories
about sexual trauma] and why,” she says. “No
one wants to tell that story to their boss.”

PAGE ONE/HARASSMENT

former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes by
numerous female staff members, including
anchors Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson.
Ailes was ousted in July over the claims, and in
late August Laurie Luhn, a former director of
booking at Fox News, told New York magazine
she had been harassed by Ailes for more than
two decades.
Sexual harassment is defined by the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission as
“unwelcome sexual advances, request for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct
of a sexual nature.” Sexual assault is defined as
nonconsensual physical contact and can include
rape, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest
National Network. But sexual comments, jokes
and insinuations are also not acceptable and can
make a workplace unbearable.
A 2013 study from the International Women’s
Media Foundation found that nearly two-thirds of
women journalists polled have experienced some
form of harassment or abuse in relation to their
work. The ever-changing nature of the media

JE N TSE FOR NEWSWEEK

“IT FEELS SO DANGEROUS
TO BURN BRIDGES
IN JOURNALISM.”
industry, including lack of job security, “absolutely” leads to fewer women telling their managers or other authorities about sexual harassment
due to the fear of retaliation, says Elisa Lees

Muñoz, executive director of the IWMF.
A recent British study found that more than
half of the women in a variety of careers had
experienced sexual harassment at work, rising to
63 percent of girls and women between the ages
of 16 and 24. In the U.S., a survey of 2,235 women
by Cosmopolitan last year found that one in three
women ages 18 to 34 has been sexually harassed
at work, and that the food service, hospitality
and retail industries had the highest reported
levels of harassment. The prevalence of sexual

DO THE TWIRL

Sexual harassment in the media industry made
headlines this summer after allegations against

NEWSWEEK

19

0 9 / 1 6 / 2016


around. “There I was, standing up in front of
the news director and head of news, both men.
I felt humiliated and disgusted as the head of
news looked me up and down as though he was
inspecting a piece of meat,” she says.
“I knew what had just occurred was wrong,”

says Miller, who was offered a job and a contract
after that demeaning audition. “I hated myself
for allowing it to occur,” she adds.
Andrea Tantaros, another former Fox News
employee who has made sexual harassment
claims against Ailes, recently told New York magazine that in 2014 he asked her to do “the twirl” so
he could look at her figure. In her lawsuit against
Ailes, Tantaros says, “Fox News masquerades as a
defender of traditional family values, but behind
the scenes it operates like a sex-fueled, Playboy
Mansion-like cult, steeped in intimidation, indecency and misogyny.” In her complaint, Carlson
says Ailes ogled her, asked “her to turn around so
he could view her posterior” and said Carlson was
“sexy” but “too much hard work.”

PAGE ONE/HARASSMENT

harassment in journalism is particularly disturbing when you consider that a reporter’s most
important job is to expose wrongdoing. And yet
so many women journalists are afraid to speak
up when they are the victims. “[Women] are
afraid to say something,” says Muñoz, “afraid of
being the squeaky wheel, afraid they wouldn’t
get assignments.”
Thinking back to her time working in a Washington, D.C., news bureau nine years ago, Elizabeth (not her real name) remembers that she
didn’t want to get her male colleague fired, even
though he was harassing her. She was a 23-yearold reporter; he was an assistant. They became
friends, but she was in a long-term relationship
and said no when he asked her out.
He began texting her all the time and shifting

his schedule to match hers, showing up when
she did in the morning. He tried to talk to her
about his anxiety problems and told her how
unfair it was that he didn’t get to write. Returning to the office one day after covering a meeting, Elizabeth found herself alone with him,
a situation she had managed to avoid for five
months. “He immediately came to my part of
the office. My desk was sort of in a corner, and
he walked all the way up to me. He was getting
angry: ‘Why are you such a bitch to me?’ ‘You
really strung me along.’ ‘You know I have anxiety issues, and you decided to fuck with me anyway,’” she recalls.
“At this point, he’s literally backed me into
a corner. I said a couple of times, ‘You need to
step back from me.’ He was yelling at me but
[also saying], ‘We would be perfect together. We
should really be a couple.’ It got really creepy.”
Despite this harrowing scene, Elizabeth did
not report him. “It feels so dangerous to burn
bridges in journalism, specifically because everyone ends up working together again and because
jobs are so tenuous,” she says.
The majority of women who spoke with Newsweek said their sexual harassment happened
early in their careers. Janille Miller was in her
mid-20s when she interviewed for a broadcast
journalism job. After an interview with the news
director, Miller went with him to meet the head
of news, who asked her to stand up and turn
NEWSWEEK

DANGERS ABROAD

While there are laws against harassment in U.S.

workplaces, women journalists abroad often
have little protection. Moreover, reporting from
countries regularly accused of human rights

“I FELT HUMILIATED
AND DISGUSTED AS
THE HEAD OF NEWS
LOOKED ME UP AND
DOWN AS THOUGH
HE WAS INSPECTING
A PIECE OF MEAT.”
abuses can be particularly dangerous—especially when sexual harassment is deliberately
used as a means of intimidation, as was the case
in Egypt during the Arab Spring.
In 2011, CBS journalist Lara Logan was sexually assaulted while covering protests in Cairo’s
Tahrir Square, in one of the most well-known
incidents of a woman journalist being violently
attacked while doing her job. She spoke about
the incident on 60 Minutes three months later,
and Jeff Fager, then-chairman of CBS News,
said he hoped that would break the “code of
silence” surrounding the risk of sexual assault

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+
ROGER AND OUT:

JE N TSE FOR NEWSWEEK

Bennetts, who has
been a journalist
for 45 years, says
harassment and
sexism are still
rampant in the
industry, but she is
encouraged by how
quickly Ailes was
booted from Fox.

faced by women journalists reporting overseas.
Amanda Mustard is a photojournalist who
lived and worked in Egypt for three years. In
Egypt, she says, reporting as a woman meant
the constant threat of rape. On multiple occasions, she was followed home and assaulted. “I
would regularly walk around with a can of Coke
in my hand in case I had to throw it at somebody,” she says. She wore a stab vest to prevent
unwanted touching and wore her belt inside out
because that made it harder to remove.
Mustard developed a “serious physiological
response to leaving the house,” and the stress
became so bad she had a small stroke known as
a transient ischemic attack. Even when she was
in the hospital, a doctor flirted with her and told
her she was just “being silly,” despite the right
side of her body going numb and her sudden

inability to speak.

generations need to work together more.”
Leslie Bennetts was a journalist for 45 years.
On the third day of her first job at a newspaper
in Philadelphia, she says, she was in the elevator
when a man grabbed her breasts and “jammed
me up against the wall.” That man was the book
editor, and her boss’s response when she told
her was “Oh, that dirty old man.” Harassment
from sources was constant, she says.
Bennetts says young women journalists need
to understand “how bad a lot of this has been.
If they haven’t experienced this personally, they
don’t know it exists.”
Despite the sordid stories and what she
endured as a woman in journalism, Bennetts
feels optimistic and has “a sense that the world
is changing.” She points to how quickly the
Murdoch family acted in removing Ailes, the
man who had made their company billions.
“It’s time for women to say we are absolutely
not going to participate in these systems anymore.
We are absolutely going to fight back, make it public, do whatever you have to do,” she says. “For my
generation, we owe it to our daughters.”

‘YOU DON’T KNOW HOW BAD IT HAS BEEN’

Mustard says there’s “a real need for older
female champions” to speak out about their

experiences of sexual harassment. “The two

NEWSWEEK

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PAGE ONE /CONSPIRACY

SPY TALK

A CONSPIRACY OF DUNCES

Hillary Clinton’s enemies are using the
death of DNC staffer Seth Rich to once
again portray her as a murderous criminal
IT WAS CLOSING time at Lou’s City Bar when Seth
Rich drained the last of his Bell’s Two Hearted
Ales and started walking home through a trendy
neighborhood of northwest Washington, D.C.
At 2:30 a.m. on July 10, the torrid heat that had
gripped the city for weeks had eased slightly.
Maybe it was the relative cool that prompted him
to walk through several dark, dicey blocks to his
apartment in Bloomingdale, a rapidly gentrifying
neighborhood a mile away. Or maybe he thought
the walk would do him some good after venting
to his longtime bartender about his unsuccessful

efforts to reconcile his love life with his 12-hour
days at the Democratic National Committee.
Whatever the reason, Rich, 27, a computervoting specialist at the DNC, would soon leave
family and friends grieving. His decision to walk
home would become part of a wild conspiracy
theory that once again portrays Hillary Clinton
and the Democrats as murderous criminals.
At 4:19 a.m., police patrolling nearby responded
to the sound of gunfire and found Rich mortally
wounded at a dark intersection a block and a half
from a red-brick row house he shared with friends.
He had multiple gunshot wounds in his back.
About an hour and 40 minutes later, he died at a
local hospital. Police have declined to say whether
he was able to describe his assailants.
The cops suspected Rich was a victim of an
attempted robbery. Strangely, however, they
found his wallet, credit cards and cellphone on his

NEWSWEEK

body. The band of his wristwatch was torn but not
broken. That was enough to fire up the right-wing
Twitterverse with conspiracy theories claiming
that Rich was murdered as he was on his way to
sing to the FBI about internal DNC emails.
Such notions might have evaporated had not
Julian Assange hurled a thunderbolt into the
affair a few weeks later. The WikiLeaks impresario, penned up in Ecuador’s London embassy
as he dodges a rape allegation in Sweden,

announced he was offering a $20,000 reward
for information leading to a conviction in the
Rich case. He hinted that the slain man had been
a source in his organization’s recent publication
of 30,000 internal DNC emails, which led to the
firing of several top Democratic Party officials.
“What are you suggesting?” a startled interviewer from Dutch television asked him.
“I am suggesting,” Assange said, “that our
sources, ah, take risks, and they, they become
concerned to see things occurring like that.” His
organization later “clarified” on Twitter that “this
should not be taken to imply that Seth Rich was a
source for WikiLeaks or to imply that his murder
is connected to our publications.”
But Assange had already lit the fire. No matter
that the Metropolitan Police Department issued
a statement saying there was “no indication that
Seth Rich’s death is connected to his employment at the DNC.” Police Chief Cathy Lanier,
normally cautious, may have inadvertently

22

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BY
JEFF STEIN
@SpyTalker


fueled the speculation during a crime-scene

press conference on August 5, when she said,
“Right now, we have more questions than
answers.” No suspects have been arrested.
Mary and Joel Rich are distressed by the apparent political exploitation of their son’s death. Seth
Rich had just accepted a promotion from the DNC
to a position in Clinton’s campaign, they
say. “It’s unfortunate and hurtful,” his
parents say, in a statement to Newsweek,
“that at the moment a murderer remains
at large, there remains unfounded press
speculation about the activities of our
son that night. We should be focusing on
the perpetrator at large.”
Residents of Bloomingdale, about 20
blocks north of D.C.’s Union Station, had
long complained about crime. One resident tells Newsweek her house was burgled a few years ago while she and her
husband were inside. Another resident
complained on the neighborhood blog
about “a small group of guys with a silver handgun
terrorizing this neighborhood for weeks with minimal response from public officials.” Residents
were particularly incensed about a deterioration
in security over the past two years related to a
massive water department tunnel project.

Meanwhile, sources involved with the DNC’s
investigation of the hack rule out the notion
that Seth Rich played any role in it. “There was
no indication that any insider was involved in
this,” says one source, demanding anonymity in
exchange for discussing the investigation. “Every

indication is this was a remote attack from a

M I K H A I L VOS K R ES E N S K I Y/SPU T N I K /AP

ASSANGE HAS AN AGENDA:
TO DAMAGE HILLARY
CLINTON, WHICH TRACKS
WITH MOSCOW’S APPARENT
DESIRE TO SEE DONALD
TRUMP ELECTED.

TRICKY WIKI:

WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange
fueled the conspiracy theories by
offering a $20,000
reward for information leading to
a conviction in the
Rich case.
+

NEWSWEEK

foreign government—the Russians. There is no
indication that…there was any nefarious action
taken by any employees in that environment.”
Nor is there any evidence Rich downloaded
and printed out the DNC’s internal emails, the
source says: “This is a very sophisticated actor.

This is not some kid coming in and downloading
documents and handing them to somebody.”
The Kremlin has denied any involvement in
the DNC hack. Assange has declined to discuss
who gave him the material.
Assange has an agenda here, the source adds:
to damage Hillary Clinton, which tracks with
Moscow’s apparent desire to see Donald Trump
elected. “This is a match made in heaven,” he
says. “Assange has the vehicle to leak it, and the
Russians have the vehicle by which to provide
him with the data.”
Since Rich’s killing, the police presence in
Bloomingdale has been beefed up, a local resident tells Newsweek. That is too late for Rich, and
for his family, his colleagues and his friends, who
gathered August 3 at Lou’s City Bar to honor his
memory. “His parents were here,” Joe Capone,
the general manager, said at Lou’s. “People got
up and said some words about Seth and what a
great guy he was and how they missed him.”
Capone pointed to Rich’s usual seat at the
corner of the bar. “He was a great guy,” he said.
“Just a couple-of-beers kind of guy.” One news
account describing Rich as despondent and
drunk the night he was killed, penned by a journalist in the conservative London Daily Mail,
missed the mark, he said. “That was just not
Seth. I never saw him drunk or even tipsy.”

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