California national park site vandalized with hazardous chemicals, hate speech
Sometime between the evening of March 15 and the morning of March 19, someone vandalized the SF-88 Nike Missile Site magazine in the Marin Headlands, which is known for its scenic views and hiking trails, according to the National Park Service.
The vandal or vandals spray-painted hate speech throughout the building and spilled gallons of hazardous chemicals, the park service said in a news release. It's unclear how many people were involved, but officials said whoever participated may have sustained chemical burns.
According to the park service, the SF-88 site was one of almost 300 Nike missile sites built by the U.S. Army during the Cold War and is the most fully restored one in the country.
'These sites were designed to be the last line of defense against H-Bomb carrying Soviet bombers that had eluded the Air Force's interceptor jet aircraft,' the park service said.
The Golden Gate National Recreation Area works with volunteers to preserve the site, according to the park service.
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Washington Post
9 hours ago
- Washington Post
‘Swap' is a riveting look at U.S.-Russia hostage deals
There's so much to like in 'Swap: A Secret History of the New Cold War,' a deeply reported account of the dealmaking that has gone into prisoner exchanges between the United States and Russia: the galloping narrative, the excruciating and often unexpected obstacles confronted and overcome, and most of all the appealing and appalling cast of characters. On the one side, among others, there is Brittney Griner, the outstanding WNBA basketball player; the former Marine Paul Whelan; and Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who on his way out of Lefortovo prison asked if Russian President Vladimir Putin would sit for an interview. (So far, he hasn't.) On the other side, we have Maria Butina, who cozied up to American gun advocates while living in the U.S. as an undeclared foreign agent; Viktor Bout, who sold guns to warring groups around the world; and Vadim Krasikov, who murdered a Chechen exile in broad daylight in a park in Berlin. Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson, the authors of 'Swap,' are investigative reporters with the Wall Street Journal. They write about several different trades, going back as far as 2010, but they focus on the exchange in 2024 in which 24 people — including Krasikov and their colleague Gershkovich — were sent back to their respective home countries. As reported at the time, it was a vastly complicated deal, a 'Rubik's cube,' as Hinshaw and Parkinson put it, involving not only Russia and the U.S. but Poland, Germany and Slovenia, with Turkey playing an important supporting role. The timing had to be exact, doubters had to be assuaged, and calculations as to which ones of theirs would balance which ones of ours had to be politically acceptable. I mention 'theirs' and 'ours' because this is a story told, not surprisingly, almost entirely from the American point of view. Were there arguments within the Kremlin? Debates over timing or methods? That we don't know. Early in the book, the authors suggest that there was a sort of symmetry between Moscow and Washington. The Russians nabbed Americans; in response, U.S. intelligence services identified undercover Russian spies in Slovenia and Poland, and persuaded those countries' authorities to move in and make arrests, with an eye toward using them in an exchange. 'In the fog of this new pirate world,' the authors write, 'a careful observer could glimpse a discomforting truth: To play this game of snatch-and-trade, America and its high-minded allies would have to ask themselves, how much were they willing to be like Russia?' But that analogy doesn't take us very far, as this book itself eventually makes clear. Putin's principal aim was to secure the release of Bout, who was serving a long sentence in an Illinois penitentiary, and Krasikov, who was in a German prison. Griner, traded for Bout in an exchange that preceded the larger 'Rubik's cube' swap, is in no way comparable to him. Nor are Gershkovich, Whelan or Alsu Kurmasheva — a Radio Free Europe reporter arrested after she returned to Russia to visit her mother — at all analogous to Krasikov, a colonel in the elite Alpha Group within Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB. The people rounded up in Europe at the request of the Americans were Russian intelligence agents, not journalists or tourists or high school teachers or basketball players. Russian criminals were swapped for Western hostages. The German government was loath to release Krasikov, a convicted killer. 'Swap' argues that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz just needed a little push from Washington, which Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden's national security adviser, was slow to green-light. A key element was the inclusion of the imprisoned Alexei Navalny in the deal. Putin's most effective opponent, Navalny had recovered in a German hospital after the FSB attempted to kill him with a nerve agent. And then he had gone back to Russia, where he was immediately arrested. The authors mention but don't elaborate on the notion that the Germans could portray an exchange involving Navalny as an act of especial righteousness, which would make the release and trade of Krasikov palatable to them. But Navalny died in his Arctic prison camp before the swap could take place. One possible interpretation, which this book doesn't address, is that Putin, who detested and feared Navalny, had him killed. Once Putin saw that Berlin had relented and was willing to trade, this theory suggests, he was confident that some other deal not including Navalny could be made, even if it would take some time. And he would never have to worry about Navalny again. Eight Russian dissidents were released along with the Americans, most prominent among them Vladimir Kara-Murza, a leading figure in the Putin opposition, the target of two botched poisonings and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post's opinion section. Kara-Murza had been convicted of 'discrediting' the military and treason after Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The possibility of securing Kara-Murza's freedom was what convinced Germany to play its crucial part in the deal and release Krasikov; without Krasikov, the Russians most likely would have made no deal at all. The authors mention Kara-Murza almost in passing and don't even identify the other Russian dissidents. It's an unfortunate gap in an otherwise wonderfully detailed account. These men and women were not hostages — they were prisoners unjustly incarcerated by their own government. Their inclusion elevated the exchange. 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Remarkably, he found U.S. officials who were receptive and who went to work to make it happen. There's a type of news story called a ticktock, beloved by editors, that strives to present a blow-by-blow account of the tense meetings, anguished decisions, crossed messages and outright miscommunications that all led up to some important event. 'Swap,' compelling and sprawling, delivers on that score. It's a book-length ticktock packed with colorful details. I doubt there's a deeper lesson to be drawn from it — unless it's the rather self-evident truth that, for now, Americans should steer clear of Russia. Will Englund is a former Moscow correspondent. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize, he is the author of 'March 1917: On the Brink of War and Revolution.'
CBS News
a day ago
- CBS News
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Yahoo
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