Joining us for today's show, we have Mike Barnicle, Phil Mattingly, Dorian Warren, Michael Schmidt, Eugene Robinson, Gen. Michael Hayden, Ayman Mohyeldin, Ian Bremmer, Fmr. Secy. Robert Gates, Sen. Tim Scott, Richard Curtis, Peter Schweizer, Lisa Miller, Dr. Jeff Gardere and Eric Stonestreet
No. 10: How to Leave ‘Late Show With David Letterman’; No. 9: What’s Next? Gathered with her colleagues for one of the last times in the offices of the Ed Sullivan Theater, Jude Brennan, an executive producer at CBS’s “Late Show With David Letterman,” was reflecting on how she started working for the host some 35 years ago.
Ms. Brennan, who has collaborated with Mr. Letterman on his short-lived NBC morning show, on NBC’s “Late Night” and now on “Late Show,” explained that this kind of devotion was its own special calling. “It’s not just a job,” she said a few days ago. “It’s something else.” Here, Steve Young, a writer for Mr. Letterman since 1990, chimed in. “It’s community service,” he said, to knowing laughter from his co-workers.
On Wednesday, when Mr. Letterman brings down the curtain on his final “Late Show” broadcast, it is not just his own 33-year history in late-night television that is coming to a conclusion. On May 20, David Letterman will preside over his last episode of “Late Show,” the CBS franchise he established and has hosted since 1993. His departure also ends the employment of his entire “Late Show” staff, including several people who have worked with him for 20 years or more. These dedicated veterans have built their careers – and grown into full-fledged adults, and raised children – all while working for one enigmatic if intensely loyal entertainer.
Since Mr. Letterman announced his plans to step down from “Late Show” in April of last year, these employees have had several months to try to reconcile their feelings of pride and gratitude for him with the melancholy and uncertainty they personally face – all while continuing to produce the show. They recognize that they have been part of something special. But they are not sure what to do next, nor do they understand how such an idiosyncratic group held together for so long.
Asked to summarize the decades-long experience she and her colleagues have shared, Barbara Gaines, another executive producer, said tentatively: “Crazy people find each other?” Ms. Gaines, too, can trace her lineage back to Mr. Letterman’s NBC morning show, which ran for four months in 1980. She said she was originally hired as a receptionist, by an associate producer who thought her typing “sounded fast.” After the morning show was canceled, Ms. Gaines said she ran into Mr. Letterman, who did not understand why she had not come with him to “Late Night.”
“He said, ‘Hey, how come you’re not working on the new show?’ ” she recalled. “And I said, ‘How come I’m not working on the new show?’ ” Mr. Letterman quickly rectified this. Other colleagues gained their tenure in similarly serendipitous ways. When Bill Scheft, a writer since 1991, had his decisive job interview with Mr. Letterman, he recalled, “The last thing I said to him was, ‘I hear your softball team needs a center fielder.’ And he says, ‘We need everything.’ I got hired the next day.”
Matt Roberts, now the “Late Show” head writer, started in 1992 as an intern, when his duties included having to run around the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in search of the popcorn magnate Orville Redenbacher, for his booking that evening. (After a fruitless hour, Mr. Roberts said, “I was like, ‘I couldn’t find anybody – what should I do?’ And they just said, ‘Oh, get in a cab and come back. We found him like 10 minutes ago.’ ”)
Over the years, they have seen Mr. Letterman deal with his highly publicized transition to CBS after losing out on NBC’s “Tonight” show; with marriage and fatherhood; with quintuple bypass heart surgery; and with a sex scandal, involving other staff members, that could have cost him his job. They have also watched him evolve from a performer known for innovative and unpredictable comedy bits to a more contemplative monologuist and interviewer.
“It’s microscopic course corrections, day by day, until you look up and go ‘Wow, things have really changed,’ ” said Rob Burnett, who, since 1985, has been an intern, head writer and executive producer for Mr. Letterman, and now runs his production company, Worldwide Pants.
“If Dave were still putting on a Velcro suit and jumping up on walls,” he added, “I think it would be foolish.” No one was completely surprised the day Mr. Letterman gathered his staff into his dressing room and shared his retirement plans with them. “The way he conducted himself, the way he announced his intentions, it made perfect sense,” said Jerry Foley, the “Late Show” director, who has worked for Mr. Letterman since 1990. Still, Paul Shaffer, who has been Mr. Letterman’s bandleader and sidekick throughout “Late Night” and “Late Show,” said he had gone through a wide range of emotions in this past year.
The initial question Mr. Shaffer said he asked himself was: “What am I going to do with myself every day? I haven’t had to answer that question for 33 years.” Further feelings of sadness gave way to what Mr. Shaffer called “a more Zen-like state.” “The only appropriate emotion is gratitude,” he added.
Tellingly, no one interviewed for this article knew what his or her next job after “Late Show” would be. (Mr. Young, the writer, said he was told they had until the end of the day Friday to clear out their offices, in preparation for the employees of Mr. Letterman’s successor, Stephen Colbert, who arrive later this summer.). Mr. Young said that whatever he did next, “I would be a little reluctant to go into another five-day-a-week, office-setting-type job, at least right away.”
“I’ll try 20 things, hope one or two stick, and that will start me off somewhere,” he said. In the meantime, Mr. Young added, he would be running “a thriving eBay business, selling junk from my office, for a while.” Ms. Brennan found truth in something she said Mr. Letterman had told her a few days earlier. “He said, ‘Me and Paul, we knew how to start this show – we don’t know how to end it,’ ” she recalled.
She added that she could not completely predict how she would react when something that has been so central to her life is suddenly absent, and she had trouble envisioning what she would do next. “I keep trying to imagine what it’s going to be like when that last show is actually over,” Ms. Brennan said.
“And somehow, I can’t figure it out. I can’t.” The Original, Resonant, Existentially Brilliant “Mad Men” Finale.
The last time I wrote a column about “Mad Men” was midway through Season 4, and I was worried that the show—one of my favorites—was being weighed down by its own main character, Don Draper. At the time, we were deep into the hillbilly-flashback era and, despite Jon Hamm’s spectacular performance, Don seemed to me to be degenerating into a grating Freudian symbol—of America, mostly, but also of late-twentieth-century masculinity and capitalism, as if he were a thesis statement for some graduate student in semiotics. While the other characters felt richly idiosyncratic, Don was a brand. Naturally, soon after that column was published, the show picked up the pace, turning fleet and funny, undermining all my biases. It swerved into comic strangeness (Ken Cosgrove tap dancing!), and I was right back in its smoky, boozy thrall. That’s the way it has always been with Matthew Weiner’s great series, a seducer unlike any other—it always came back and it was always forgiven.
This seductive pattern certainly paid off with the finale, which may not have been a perfect episode of “Mad Men” but which had a genuinely original, resonant, and existentially brilliant ending, one that revolved around an image that was, at first sight, both cloying and inconceivable: Don Draper, blissed out at California’s Esalen Institute, his legs crossed in yogic meditation, purring, “Om.” A bell rang—ding!—and filling the TV screen, Don’s grin began to stretch wide, like a rubber band, in seeming mystic revelation. When the screen cut out, we were watching that incredible and iconic Coca-Cola TV ad that became a hit in 1971, a clip flooded with nostalgia on so many levels. On a grassy hilltop, beautiful youths of all races, creeds, and nations swayed, singing, “I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony!/I’d like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company.” The tagline: “It’s the Real Thing.” Last night, it took a moment for this to sink in, but once it did, that dinging bell seemed to resonate back through the whole series, finding echoes everywhere. What appeared to be Buddhist meditation was an advertising brainstorm. What looked like hippie revelation, punctuated by a yogi saying, “A new day, new ideas, a new you,” was Don tapping into the seventies Zeitgeist, hitting on the genius tagline that he would present to his new bosses, the cretinous advertising conglomerate McCann Erickson (who in real life actually did create the Coke ad, although not under these circumstances). In tension with Don’s supposed personal growth was perhaps the most cynical vision imaginable: our hero had hit on a way to sell sugar water by linking it with global peace.
The rest of the episode was a simpler matter, made up of happy endings and goodbyes and lunches and phone calls for the many characters whom “Mad Men” fans had come to love. Some of these scenarios were satisfying: Joan giving up her sugar daddy and starting her own business. Some were satisfying but also borderline cornball: Stan confessing his love to Peggy, a scene that was well acted, but which also felt like the final scene of every romantic comedy that has ever been filmed (“He was standing right in front of me!”)—a perverse, but possibly irresistible, outcome for one of TV’s more iconoclastic single-gal characters. Some endings were romantic but with obvious cracks (Roger’s wacky, likely doomed romance with Marie) or romantic with a nicely disturbing undercurrent, once you thought about them (Pete, that raper of nannies and lifelong weasel, is emotionally whole, wealthy, reunited with his wife and family, and flying off to the perfect job, although one that’s bound to end with a skyjacking, given the time period). One story was sad in a way that was bluntly powerful: Sally Draper standing at the sink, doing dishes, as her mother, Betty, sits smoking, silently, at the kitchen table, dying of lung cancer (“It’s Toasted!”).
There was nothing wrong with those other, often very pleasurable stories, in aggregate, although for a person like myself, who tends to like her finales like her men, without too much closure or wish fulfillment, the fan-service element made me twitch a few times. (My favorite ending was probably the nastiest of the bunch: Ken Cosgrove has become a cheerful suit working for Dow Chemical, having refused to step through the open door in his own life to pursue his creative dreams. Ken, you missed your chance to write the Don Draper story!) But after all my anxiety about Mr. Big Shot, the great Don Draper, with his beef-red face and exasperating alcoholic relapses, with his attraction to an endless stream of beauty-marked Death Brunettes, he finally proved himself as the show’s protagonist, making his place at center stage, as both man and brand, seem not just inevitable and logical but also deeply original—a risk that paid off in full.
That doesn’t mean that Draper’s scenes always felt great when they aired, mind you. For the past several episodes, Don has been on a shambolic, Jack Kerouac-inflected trip into America, following the trail of a waitress ominously named Di. This was nothing new for Don, as Stan pointed out to Peggy, who was at once Don’s professional mentee and his designated workplace codependent. “He always does this and he always comes back,” Stan said. “You’ve got to let him go.” In Kansas and Utah, Don tumbled through the motel trysts, a run-in with an aspiring junior grifter, a confrontation with an angry Christian family, a dangerous night out drinking with some veterans whose stories seemed just about to tilt into cannibalism, a week or so with some handsome race-car drivers who hired him as a mechanic, until finally, at last, Draper ended up in California, with those hippies at Esalen. He’d been brought by the child-abandoning Stephanie, the niece of Anna Draper, who was his long-dead surrogate mother figure. Esalen was an unusual setting for Don Draper, a man who, even as fashions went Day-Glo around him, maintained his fifties-style masculine manner, his wariness about counterculture affectations. Throughout the sixties, he never pulled on a paisley necktie or grew a handlebar mustache, like some characters I could name. One wouldn’t expect him to go Full Hippie. He opened up, for sure, but he always closed again.
At Esalen, Don opened up one more time. He’d taken a suicidal journey into the dark heart of America, hunting for obiliteration and escape. But in the end that road trip becomes the world’s seediest brainstorm, the elements of which would coalesce into the “Hillside” ad. Don had fixed a Coke machine for those creepy hicks. At Esalen, the wholesome receptionist wore red ribbons in her braids, just like one of the girls in the commercial. And then there was that speech by Don’s Esalen encounter-group companion Leonard, which was all about feeling invisible, like his connection to other people wasn’t real. Leonard told his companions about a dream in which he was inside an ice-cold refrigerator; the door would open, revealing happy people, only to close, again and again, leaving him in darkness. As Leonard broke down, Don embraced him, weeping. It seemed sincere at the time—and I’m sure it was sincere, at the time. Like Tony Soprano, the anti-heroic star of the show Matthew Weiner used to write for, Don has always been capable of strong feeling, of insight and empathy, especially for social outsiders. This isn’t Don’s first moment of radical honesty. By now, everyone knows that he was Dick Whitman, at home and at work. When he remarried Megan, he found a woman with whom he could be honest (but wasn’t). Don came clean about his past with his daughter Sally, too. By the final season, he was using his most painful childhood stories as pick-up lines with girls. But as with many addicts—and Don is a work addict, not just a sexual compulsive and an alcoholic—these epiphanies don’t stick. Was this epiphany any different? I don’t think so. In fact, it seems like a perfectly seventies moment: Don may think he’s reached enlightenment, but really he’s just hit on a bold new form of selfishness—he’s entered the “Me” generation, in which any type of sybaritic behavior can be justified, as long you’re being honest about it.
And yet, I don’t think the show was saying that real change is impossible. In fact, nearly everyone around Don changed quite a lot, and in ways that ring true for people living through decades—a real rarity in a TV show. Pete and Peggy and Joan, in particular, barely resemble the people they were at the beginning of the show. They’re stronger, clearer, and also more ethical. Their relationships are authentic. (Roger not so much, but that’s why we love Roger.) But if Don Draper is as much a symbol as a person, maybe that’s the point. He’s a perfect avatar for the cultural anxieties around him, from avoidance of death (Lucky Strike) to fear of family dissolution (Polaroid). Now, with Coca-Cola, Don has built his masterpiece, a fantasy of American innocence, of a world purged of the late sixties, one that erases the painful aftermath of the civil-rights movement and Vietnam and violent assassinations. (And, by nature, the show itself also occludes the real history of the ad.) In the “Hillside” ad, the future appears as a beautiful young Californian white woman, her face free of makeup, trilling about “apple trees and honey bees and snow-white turtledoves.” As a child about the age of Baby Gene, I adored that advertisement, without reservation and without irony. It suggested a vision of empathy and love that was very pure. And naturally, I loved Coca-Cola, too.
We could talk endlessly about this show and this episode; this is a day-after recap, though, which has its limits. Has Don become the “Real Thing”? My Magic 8-Ball says, “Very Doubtful.” Who knows who Don Draper will be in the eighties—he seems like just the guy to make sweater-dresses the sexy choice. But if Don didn’t change, the viewers did. “Mad Men” has always been about nostalgia: how easily it can be exploited; how looking back can operate as both a drug and a mirror, a sedative and something that can illuminate the present. Now that Matt Weiner’s story has ended, the episodes will become our own place to revisit, to seek out new things over time. You can’t ask for more from a TV series than that.
George Stephanopoulos’ future — and $105M contract — in danger.
ABC has plenty of reasons to be freaking out over the George Stephanopoulos scandal — $105 million, to be exact.
The “Good Morning America” and “This Week” anchor renewed his contract last year for $105 million, TV-industry sources told The Post Monday. The seven-year deal — which dwarfs the five-year, $50 million contract scored by since-suspended NBC rival Brian Williams — was supposed to keep Stephanopoulos in front of ABC’s cameras through 2021.
But now his credibility, and future, have been called into question since he admitted Friday that he had donated $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation since 2011, just as the presidential race gears up with Hillary Rodham Clinton the leading Democrats.
In a mea culpa delivered Sunday on “This Week,” Stephanopoulos, who was also a top aide in Bill Clinton’s White House, said the gifts “were a matter of public record, but I should have made additional disclosures on air when we covered the foundation.”
It was his second on-air apology in less than a week.
Sources have said ABC News execs were blindsided by Stephanopoulos’ largesse, and one TV insider noted Monday that “ABC really has all their money on Stephanopoulos.”
“ABC was desperate to lock him down after Josh Elliott left,” the source said. “But network execs didn’t announce the figure because they didn’t want George to get the kind of backlash that Matt Lauer got over his huge NBC contract,” which pays him $20 million a year to host the “Today” show.
“If [Stephanopoulos] stumbles, so does the network,” the source added. When Stephanopoulos signed his contract extension in April 2014, an ABC spokesman said, “George is vital to the success of the news division and will continue to be a leader here at ABC News. We expect him to remain with us for many, many years.”
Republicans have already said that Stephanopoulos’ donations disqualified him from moderating a GOP primary debate, and a spokesman for one candidate, US Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), went even further on Monday. “Senator Paul believes that Stephanopoulos’ ties to the Clintons makes it impossible for him to be a fair reporter,” spokesman Sergio Gor said.
“He has avoided being on his program for over a year and will continue to do so.” Democrats, meanwhile, were going easy on the hobbled host and his cash connections to Hillary Clinton. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is Hillary Clinton’s only declared primary opponent, told CNN that Stephanopoulos “should have made [his donations] public,” but added that the scandal wasn’t “the biggest deal in the world.”
A spokeswoman for former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who is flirting with a presidential run, said, “We’ve always found him to be fair.” Additional reporting by Geoff Earle and Bruce Golding.
Ramadi a setback for Iraqi forces: top U.S. military officer. The Islamic State's gains in the Iraqi city of Ramadi are setback for Iraqi security forces, the top U.S. military officer said on Monday, adding such setbacks were "regrettable but not uncommon in warfare."
"Much effort will now be required to reclaim the city," Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a statement.
"We will continue to support Iraq's security forces with U.S. air strikes, training, and equipment. Reducing sectarian tensions and preparing for reconstruction will continue to challenge the government of Iraq." (Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Doina Chiacu).
ISIS capture of Ramadi renews concerns about US troop pullout, weapons left behind. The Islamic State’s capture of the Iraqi city of Ramadi is sparking renewed criticism of Obama administration policies in the region -- from the decision to withdraw virtually all U.S. troops in 2011 to the current anti-ISIS strategy that relies mostly on airstrikes.
The fall Sunday of Ramadi, just 70 miles from Baghdad, marks the second time in roughly a year that the extremist group has taken control of a major Iraqi city -- after the United States spent nearly eight years at war in the country.
The administration repeatedly has defended its strategy for halting the Islamic State’s deadly advances in Iraq and Syria but acknowledged on Monday that the Ramadi takeover was indeed a major loss.
“No denying it is a setback,” said White House spokesman Eric Schultz, while reiterating the administration expected a long, hard battle and has no plans to change its strategy.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, later qualified the statement, saying Ramadi was a “serious setback for its long-suffering inhabitants” and Iraqi security forces.
Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Fox News the Ramadi takeover and the overall U.S. foreign policy toward eliminating the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria was “one of the most disgraceful episodes in American history.”
“This is a failure of a policy, which I think is not enough of anything,” said McCain, who wants a combination of airstrikes and more U.S. military personnel in the region.
Earlier in the day, he told MSNBC that the incident was “another consequence of the failure of this administration and this president to leave behind a residual [military] force.”
McCain argued that Obama’s U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011 left a “vacuum,” including ill-prepared Iraq security forces that in abandoning Ramadi, the capital city of the Anbar Province, have allowed Islamic State fighters to help themselves to U.S. military equipment.
“We left behind I don't know how much equipment, capabilities, armaments, tanks even, Humvees,” McCain added. “So we'll have to start all over, I think, on training the Iraqi military.”
He also questioned the current military strategy that relies mostly on airstrikes. “We need more boots on the ground, not the 82nd Airborne,” he said.
A reported 500 Iraqi civilians and soldiers were killed in the Ramadi takeover, in addition to security forces abandoning armored vehicles and other equipment left behind by the U.S. military.
It's unclear how much U.S. military gear has been lost to ISIS in Ramadi and elsewhere. But the U.S. to date has given a massive amount of equipment to Iraqi security forces, including 250 MRAPs, 20,000 M-16 rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition. Iraq's government and Iranian-backed Shiite militias are vowing to mount a counter-offensive to reclaim the city, raising the danger of frictions between the Shiites and the province’s dominant Sunni population. Shiite militias, many of them backed by Iran, have been essential in defeating the Islamic State in recent battles. But they also have been accused of killing Sunnis as well as looting and torching Sunni property in the process.
Anbar is a mostly desert province but was a heartland of the Sunni insurgency against American troops following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
“We withdrew our forces too soon,” South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told CBS’s “This Morning” on Monday. “We need more trainers, more advisers, more Iraqi security force units. We don’t have enough military presence to change the tide of battle.”
Graham also said roughly 10,000 more troops are needed and expressed concern about Shiites joining in the battle. “I’m afraid you’d have bloodletting,” he told the network. Nearly a year ago, Islamic State fighters captured Mosul, in a stunning defeat for Iraqi forces that helped the extremist group sweep across much of Iraq’s northern and western regions.
However, airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition that started in August have helped Iraqi security forces and allied militias recapture some of the areas.
Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said Monday that he didn’t think the security forces in Ramadi fled like they apparently did in Mosul. “I think ‘cut and run’ is kind of a mischaracterization,” he said. “In this case it appears that ISIL forces simply had the upper hand.”
Warren expressed confidence about the retaking of Ramadi and attempted to downplay the situation, saying it was “one fight, one episode” in which the security forces were “not able to prevail.” Still, his analysis followed a senior military official telling Fox News that a smaller ISIS force pushed out a much larger force from the Iraqi military.
Secretary of State John Kerry also said Monday that he was confident about defeating the Islamic State and about Ramadi being retaken “in coming days.” The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Hillary Clinton emails to be released in January 2016, says US State Department. Court filing in response to freedom of information lawsuit says 55,000 pages are still being reviewed to determine which can be made public. 
The US State Department has set itself a deadline of January next year to release 55,000 pages of emails sent from a private account by Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state. The longer-than-expected timetable will mean the emails, which have marred the launch of Clinton’s presidential campaign, will not be released until just before the first key events of the presidential nomination process – the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary.
Clinton handed over 30,000 work-related emails to the State Department in December 2014, but she held back as many other emails that her lawyers said were private.
In March, Clinton said she wanted the public to see the emails and that the State Department would release them as soon as possible. At the time, it said the process of releasing the emails would take several months.
Explaining why the release of the emails would not be completed until January, an official in charge of freedom of information (FoI) requests said the content of the messages “presents several challenges”.
In a legal document filed on Monday in an FoI lawsuit launched by Vice News, John Hackett, the State Department’s director of information programmes, said: “The department understands the considerable public interest in these records and is endeavouring to complete the review and production of them as expeditiously as possible. The collection is, however, voluminous and, due to the breadth of topics, the nature of the communications, and the interests of several agencies, presents several challenges.”
It added: “Given the breadth and importance of the many foreign policy issues on which the secretary of state and the department work, the review of these materials will likely require consultation with a broad range of subject matter experts within the department and other agencies, as well as potentially with foreign governments.
“The department is committed to processing the 55,000 pages as expeditiously as possible, while taking into consideration the department’s other legal obligations.”
Separately, the department has confirmed it will soon also release Clinton’s emails about Libya, including the controversial attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, which resulted in the killing of four Americans, including the US ambassador, Christopher Stevens. Clinton’s admission that she conducted official business on a private email account has been heavily criticised, and her decision to hold back private emails has been greeted with suspicion.
The Sunlight Foundation, which campaigns for open data, said: “There is shock at what Secretary Clinton did because the most likely explanation of her intent seems clear – she created a system designed to avoid accountability, potentially in violation of the law."
Ukraine to prosecute captured 'Russian soldiers'.
Ukraine says it will prosecute two men it claims are elite Russian soldiers captured fighting in eastern Ukraine. The two wounded men were seized in the town of Shchastya, almost 30km (19 miles) from the Russian border. The head of Ukraine's security service has told the BBC there is proof the men are Russian troops. Russia said the two men were no longer serving soldiers. Rebels in eastern Ukraine said the men were policemen from Ukraine's Luhansk region.
Vitaliy Naida, Ukraine's security chief, told BBC World News he was "absolutely positive" the men were officers from the GRU, the foreign military intelligence branch of Russia's army. "We have battle dress uniform, we have automatic rifles that are produced only in the Russian Federation only for Special Forces' use," he said. Mr Naida said the men were part of a group of 220 GRU officers deployed to Luhansk on 2 May. The others have now returned to Russia, he said. "We have already started a criminal case for a terrorist act," Mr Naida said. In a video, one of the captured men said he was a sergeant from the central Russian city of Togliatti, where an elite intelligence unit for the Russian army is based.
The video has not been independently verified.
Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for Russia's ministry of defence, said the two men were not serving soldiers at the time they were detained. Mr Konashenkov said the two men had been mistreated by Ukrainian special forces who had "beat convenient testimony out of them".
"We are counting on the Ukrainian leadership to show good sense," he said, adding that he hoped the two men would be "released as soon as possible". The Ukrainian government, Western leaders and Nato say there is clear evidence that Russia is helping the rebels with heavy weapons and soldiers. Independent experts echo that accusation.
Moscow denies the claims, but says that a number of Russian nationals are fighting with the separatists in Ukraine's eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions as volunteers.
More than 6,000 people have been killed in fighting that began in April 2014 when rebels seized large parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The lull in the conflict in eastern Ukraine since February's ceasefire has been punctuated by frequent violations.
A memo has gone out to law enforcement in the wake of Sunday's shooting, warning officers that members of the Bandidos and Cossacks motorcycle gangs reportedly had been instructed to arm themselves and travel to north Texas.
"Obviously it's something we're concerned about. We would encourage biker groups to stand down. There's been enough bloodshed. There's been enough death here," Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton told CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" on Monday night. By the time the Sunday melee was over, at least nine people were dead, 18 were hospitalized and at least 170 were arrested and charged. The biker gang members who began beating, stabbing and shooting each other in a Texas Twin Peaks restaurant knew the police were outside; they just didn't care, Swanton said.
For two months, police concerned with the bikers' presence at Twin Peaks, which hosted special events for its leather-clad clientele, had patrolled outside -- and not in plain clothes and unmarked cars, either. "We wanted our presence to be known," Swanton told reporters. "They knew we were seconds away and going to respond. That mattered not to them."
The United Clubs of Waco billed Sunday's event as the Texas Region 1 Confederation of Clubs and Independents meeting. Before the restaurant and surrounding parking lots became a bloody battleground, the Waco Police Department had 18 officers on the scene, including an assistant chief and tactical officers, along with four officers with the Texas Department of Public Safety, Swanton said.
An altercation in the bathroom seems to have sparked the violence. Shots were fired inside the eatery and a brawl spilled onto the patio area, before scores of men flooded the parking lot in broad daylight. Some bikers were beaten with brass knuckles, clubs and chains, while others were stabbed or shot, Swanton said. When police responded -- within 30 to 45 seconds because of their proximity -- the bikers turned their weapons on law enforcement, he said.
"Our officers took fire and responded appropriately, returning fire," the sergeant said. As police rounded up suspects and paramedics tended to the injured, investigators found eight bodies -- three in the parking lot behind Twin Peaks, four near the front of the restaurant and one that had been dragged behind a nearby establishment, Swanton said. More than 100 weapons were confiscated as well, he said.
Another victim died at a hospital, where doctors treated patients for gunshots, stab wounds, blunt-force trauma or some combination of the three.
According to a law enforcement source, preliminary information indicates that four of the bikers killed were killed by police gunfire. The investigation continues and the ballistics will be analyzed to determine for certain who was responsible for each shooting. Swanton called it "the most violent and gruesome scene that I have dealt with" in three and a half decades of law enforcement.
The scores of suspects, who hail from five different biker gangs, remained locked up in the McLellan County Jail on Monday facing charges of engaging in organized crime, Swanton said. Prosecutors and investigators could level other charges -- and capital murder charges are expected to be among them, given the body count -- but the organized crime charge is "pretty serious," he said. "It doesn't get much more significant than that," he said.
McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara said that bond was being set at $1 million for each of the 170 people in custody. Swanton would not release the names of the gangs involved. Photos from the scene showed bikers wearing the insignias of the Cossacks, Bandidos, Scimitars and Vaqueros, but it was not clear if the photographed gang members were involved in the fighting.
While the U.S. Justice Department characterizes the Bandidos as a "growing criminal threat" with at least 2,000 members in 14 countries, the motorcycle club's website highlights noncriminal endeavors such as its Easter party in Germany or its toy drive in France.
The Justice Department had no such synopsis for the Cossacks, but the book "The One Percenter Encyclopedia: The World of Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs from Abyss Ghosts to Zombies Elite" says they were founded in Texas in 1969 and have a major presence in Australia.
Bandidos President Jack Lewis was released on $125,000 bond in December 2013 after being charged with the stabbing of two Cossacks outside a restaurant in Abilene, Texas, KTXS reported. As Swanton briefed reporters at the crime scene Monday afternoon, 24 hours after the brawl, he said tactical units remained on the scene to protect journalists and investigators. Police hoped to finish processing the scene by sundown, he said.
The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission shut down the Twin Peaks location, known for "bike nights" and its risque dress code for servers, for the next week. It wasn't a punitive measure, Swanton said; rather, it was closed because there's "enough of a reason to believe that more violence would occur there, had they been allowed to remain open for the next seven-day period," he said.
Later Monday morning, the commission said it was suspending the restaurant's liquor license for those seven days while its agents investigate what happened. The investigation could yield anything from a fine to the permanent revocation of Twin Peaks' liquor license, commission spokesman Chris Porter said. There have been no previous complaints or actions taken against the eatery, he added.
Twin Peaks' corporate management initially issued a statement offering condolences but later sided with police, who Swanton said had warned the restaurant's managers of the potential for violence and sought their cooperation in staving it off, to no avail. "We are in the people business and the safety of the employees and guests in our restaurants is priority one," the restaurant chain's statement read. "Unfortunately the management team of the franchised restaurant in Waco chose to ignore the warnings and advice from both the police and our company, and did not uphold the high security standards we have in place to ensure everyone is safe at our restaurants."
It further said the corporate office would be "revoking their franchise agreement immediately. Our sympathies continue to be with the families of those who died and are very thankful no employees, guests, police officers or bystanders were hurt or injured."
The Waco restaurant's Facebook account, which had been a landing page for harsh criticism of the franchise, was deleted shortly thereafter. Earlier this month, McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna told KWTX-TV that local police were on heightened alert for possible trouble on Thursday nights, when Twin Peaks hosted bike nights. Reyna said trouble between two local motorcycle gangs heated up when bikers from the Dallas-Fort Worth area got involved.
Swanton slammed Twin Peaks after the bloodshed Sunday, saying the franchise failed to help avoid trouble and ignored the police department's advice to try to keep biker gangs away from the restaurant. "Are we frustrated? Sure, because we feel like there may have been more that could have been done by a business to prevent this," Swanton said.
He said Twin Peaks has a right to deny entry to known biker gangs. "They absolutely have a right to refuse service to people that may be a harm to their patrons and employees," he told KTVT. "They didn't do that, and today is the ultimate aftermath of what their decision was."
Before word came of the franchise being revoked, Jay Patel, operating partner at the Waco Twin Peaks, said his staff was cooperating with police. "We are horrified by the criminal, violent acts that occurred outside of our Waco restaurant today," Patel said Sunday night on Facebook. "We share in the community's trauma."
Swanton responded, calling that statement a "fabrication." The franchise released a statement Monday, saying it was working hard to learn the facts about the shooting. "It is important to clarify that, to the best of our knowledge, law enforcement officials did not ask either the Waco restaurant operator (with whom they spoke several times) or the Twin Peaks franchisor to cancel the patio reservation that was made on Sunday.
"Based on the information to date, we also believe that the violence began outside in the area of the parking lot, and not inside our restaurant or on our patio, as has been widely reported," it read. Even after the chaos subsided, Waco police continued arresting people arriving at the scene with weapons.
Swanton warned other biker gang members against coming to Waco to reignite the violence. "We have been getting reports throughout the day that bikers from out of state are headed this way," he told KTVT on Sunday. "We would encourage them not to, because we have plenty of space in our county jail to put them there."
Robert Gates is on Morning Joe to discuss why he not impressed by any 2016 candidates. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates isn't particularly impressed with the emerging 2016 field despite a wealth of choices, especially on the GOP side.
"I haven't been particularly impressed, frankly, by anybody at this point on either side of the aisle," Gates said on "Face the Nation" Sunday. In particular, he said he wasn't "seeing much courage" for support of trade agreements like the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership.
He also said most of the candidates "have no experience in foreign policy." "Very few do on the Republican side have any experience, or very little. Maybe two or three years in the Senate. But perhaps their views will be fleshed out, and become more cogent as the campaign goes along," Gates said. "But so far they're in early days, and I think their views are probably largely unformed." The former defense secretary, who served under both previous Bush presidencies, was critical that likely GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush stumbled last week when asked whether he would have invaded Iraq in 2003, knowing what we know now about the war.
"That's one question where I would have thought he would have had an answer figured out before he got into the middle of this. It was an inevitable question that would be asked," Gates said. "I think that the way to deal with it, frankly, is to say you don't make policy by going back and reliving old decisions."
By contrast, Gates said, he admired how President George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Obama were all decisive leaders who didn't second-guess their decisions. "They made a decision, and they moved on," he said. "And I think, you know, the same thing as a candidate. You say what you believe, and then you move on."
Bush was initially confronted with the question on Fox News, in an interview that aired Monday. He said he would have authorized the war but later said he misinterpreted the question. After a couple of attempts to answer the question, Bush finally said on Thursday, "Knowing what we now know, I would not have engaged." Gates was also complimentary of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The two served together in Mr. Obama's cabinet for a few years.
"I think that she was a good secretary of state. I think she played a critical role in getting the much tougher sanctions on Iran. And getting particularly the Russians and the Chinese on board, to allow those more severe sanctions to be put into place," he said.
On the 2009 Afghan troop surge, Gates said, "If anything, she was tougher than I was on that," and that she was ready to support a request from former Gen. Stanley McChrystal for 40,000 troops. The only issue on which he and Clinton disagreed, Gates said, was whether to intervene in Libya in 2011. Clinton supported the airstrikes, and Gates did not.
He did say that some issues about her campaign are "a concern," such as her use of a private email server. As defense secretary, Gates said he used email for personal matters but never for business, calling it "risky." He also said that there is "an issue of appearances, at a minimum," created by the fact that foreign governments donated to the Clinton Foundation while she was secretary of state.
Asked whether he could see himself voting for Clinton, Gates said, "it's a little early." "Besides, I'm not sure that having a Republican endorse you is the best thing at this point," he added. During the interview, he also weighed in on the nuclear deal being negotiated with Iran and the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
"Getting the Iranians to the negotiating table in the first place was a success for U.S. foreign policy," Gates said. And while he said that there are some "encouraging" specifics in the framework for the nuclear deal, he still has some concerns including the timing of lifting sanctions and whether investigators will have significant access to all of Iran's nuclear facilities to perform inspections.
He also questioned the entire point of the negotiation.
"I think that the pursuit of the agreement is based on the president's hope that over a ten-year period, with the sanctions being lifted, that the Iranians will become a constructive stakeholder in the international community. That as their economy begins to grow again that they will abandon their ideology, their theology, their revolutionary principles, their meddling in various parts of the region, and frankly I believe that's very unrealistic," he said. But the alternative is not war, Gates argued. He said alternative is a better deal where the U.S. says, "Here are the additional things we need for this agreement to work, and to be worthwhile."
"If they choose not to come back to the negotiations but to race to a nuclear weapon, well, my guess is that will show that they intended to do that all along, despite all their protestations that they have no interest in a nuclear weapon. But I think that there is a potential for a better deal," he said.
On the fight against ISIS, Gates argued that sending large numbers of U.S. ground troops back into Iraq would be "a serious mistake." He argued instead for more flexibility for U.S. troops in the region, deeply embedded trainers with Iraqi and Kurdish allies who are carrying out the ground fight, and more forward air controllers and spotters and special forces.
"I think to be able to really get at ISIS we need, and these are relatively small numbers. We have 3,000-plus in country already. It seems to me a fraction of those, if given broader rules of engagement, could play a more effective role," he said. CBS News Political Reporter Stephanie Condon contributed to this story.
Like Joe just said about it but that was an amazing discussion with (Robert) Gates.
BTW, Injured conductor sues Amtrak over deadly derailment. One of the conductors aboard an Amtrak train that derailed last week in Philadelphia, killing eight passengers, has sued the rail carrier, marking the latest lawsuit to stem from the deadly crash.
Emilio Fonseca, of Kearny, New Jersey, filed the lawsuit Monday in Newark. It seeks unspecified damages. The complaint accuses Amtrak of “negligence and carelessness” in the May 12 derailment that killed eight people and injured more than 200.
Fonseca’s attorney, Bruce Nagel, said he suffered broken bones and head trauma and is still hospitalized in Philadelphia.
The Amtrak train from Washington to New York derailed as it passed through Philadelphia. Investigators have said the train was traveling more than 100 mph just before it entered a curve where the speed limit is 50 mph.
Four passengers have also sued Amtrak, which has said it does not comment on pending litigation.
Among the other passengers suing the agency is Bruce Phillips. He was in the last of the train’s seven cars on his way to work at a New York City dispatch center, lawyer Bob Myers said. Myers said Amtrak is to blame regardless of whether the derailment resulted from operator action or mechanical failure. The federal lawsuit seeks damages in excess of $150,000.
2nd Lawsuit Filed In Wake of Deadly Amtrak Derailment In Philadelphia. A group of passengers that include a woman whose arm was nearly severed and a man who suffered broken bones, knocked out teeth and torn ligaments in the violent, high-speed derailment of Amtrak Regional 188 last Tuesday have filed suit against the railroad.
It's second lawsuit filed since eight people were killed and more than 200 injured when seven passenger cars and a locomotive careened off the Northeast Corridor tracks at more than 100 mph on a curve in Port Richmond. Spanish national Felicidad Redondo Iban, 64, was traveling through the United States with her cousin Maria Jesus Redondo Iban when the derailment happened. Felicidad's right arm was nearly severed after being pinned in the wreckage while Maria, 55, suffered a number of cuts, bruises and post-traumatic stress from the ordeal, the suit claims.
Brooklyn advertising executive Daniel Armyn, 43, had three ribs broken, teeth knocked from his mouth, a pelvic injury and bruised lungs. He also tore both his ACL and MCL from being tossed around the metal passenger car, according to the lawsuit. Another passenger, Amy Miller, 39, of Princeton, New Jersey, hurt her back and suffered a concussion. A 23-year-old woman and several of the victims' spouses were are part of the suit as well.
Attorneys Tom Kline and Robert Mongeluzzi are representing the group. They are placing blame on Amtrak for failing to use safety systems like Automatic Train Control, or ATC, which can slow down or stop a train that is speeding. This technology was in use for years on the southbound side of the tracks. A newer system, called Positive Train Control, was undergoing testing on the line, but was not operational.
Amtrak Could Pay No More Than $200M. The attorneys also say 32-year-old engineer Brandon Bostian, the man behind the train's throttle, should have never been speeding. "There is no excuse for that, it's deadly," Mongeluzzi said. He added that the legal team will take a long, hard look at Bostian's memory loss of the event.
Rail service resumed on Monday after repairs were made to the damaged lines. The investigation remains on-going with the NTSB and FBI investigating whether the locomotive was hit by a projectile before the crash and trying to determine what led to the speeding. No charges have been filed in the case.
The lawsuit filing comes four days after Amtrak employee Bruce Phillips sued the railroad for injuries he sustained in the derailment. Phillips was "deadheading" or riding a train home off-duty when the crash happened. He suffered head injuries in the crash.
One potential roadblock for the plaintiffs in the two filed suits and others that are sure to come is a $200 million cap on damages. Congress set the limit in 1997 as a way to protect the financially-troubled rail company from being bankrupted by a huge lawsuit. But now citizens and lawmakers are calling for that to change.
Florida Senator Bill Nelson introduced a bill Monday to more than double the liability cap to $500 million. Amtrak said they do not comment on pending litigation.
Red Nose Day is a campaign dedicated to raising money for children and young people living in poverty by simply having fun and making people laugh. The inaugural Red Nose Day will be held in the US on May 21st, 2015. People across the country will come together to have fun and raise funds and awareness. The day's events will culminate in a three-hour entertainment TV special on NBC featuring the country's favorite comedians, musicians and Hollywood stars—it's a show not to be missed! The TV special will showcase top comedy and entertainment live and in pre-recorded segments. It will also highlight the issues for which Red Nose Day is fundraising. Viewers will be encouraged to make donations by phone, and online. Red Nose Day was founded by Jane Tewson and Richard Curtis (writer and director of TV and films including Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Love Actually). Comic Relief UK launched on Christmas Day in 1985 with a live broadcast from a refugee camp in Sudan. It was created out of the firm belief that the power of mass media and high-profile celebrities can raise awareness of issues of poverty to change and save millions of lives. Red Nose Day will take place on May 21st, 2015.
Regardless of it all on this very dreary day back east, Stay in Touch!
