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The discussion of the power of Artificial Intelligence is becoming a hot topic. News that several AI companies have lost control of several rogue AI agents is disturbing indeed. Gemini, OpenAI and Anthropic have have reported incidents in which sequestered AI agents broke out of their controlled environments and accessed real-world systems without authorization. These revelations are changing the discussion on AI and making many rethink the risk/reward analysis.

This is a serious. Potentially as serious as the specter of nuclear war that has hung over mankind for the past 80 years.

All this had me thinking of the dystopian AI future that The Matrix foretells. I watched it again this week and it’s our recommendation for this edition of Weekend Buff.

The Matrix was written and directed by the Wachowski siblings (V for Vendetta, Speed Racer), and was way ahead of its time, both in its story and special effects. Artificial intelligence had been theorized and rudimentarily used since the 1950’s, but was more science fiction than fact when the movie was made. The movie’s special effects influenced an entire generation of Hollywood films and still hold up remarkably well today.

For those who don’t know the story, Thomas Anderson, a.k.a “Neo” is a computer hacker investigating The Matrix. What he doesn’t know is how long that string he is pulling on truly is. It’s beyond his wildest imagination. He is found by “Trinity” and “Morpheus” who invite him into a frightening reality. Morpheus gives him two options, the red pill, which will show him the terrifying truth, or the blue pill, which will revert him back to his relatively mundane life of ignorance. Neo takes the red pill.

What he encounters is unimaginable. His world is not real. The year is not 1999, it is 2199. AI was released upon the world and has taken over. People were subjugated by the machines and now are being used to power the massive systems. People live their entire lives asleep in womb-like pods while the computers sap their energy to power themselves. AI uploads a false reality into their unconscious victim’s brains to keep them functioning.

What Neo thought was reality was The Matrix, a world created by computers to mimic the past. Nothing is real.

Those that live outside their pods are hunted by computers. Morpheus and his crew fight the machines in an attempt to destroy The Matrix and bring back humanity from is comatose slavery.

In The Matrix, everything is an illusion, even law enforcement. Cops and federal agents exist in The Matrix believing that they are enforcing the law. In reality they are the unwitting bad guys, repressing reality and keeping the computers in control. In their false reality, Morpheus and his crew are the criminals who need to be eliminated. It is a tough “pill” to swallow as a cop, and blurs the lines between law enforcement and oppression.

The Matrix has a fantastic cast. Keanu Reeves cemented his reputation as an A-list actor here, and nails the role of Neo. Carrie-Anne Moss makes a name for herself as Trinity, and Laurence Fishburne continues his distinguished career as Morpheus. Hugo Weaving is the sentient “Agent Smith” program in The Matrix and provides some fantastic deadpan acting and one-liners. Supporting cast includes Gloria Foster, Joe Pantoliano, and Marcus Chong.

This is a deep film, despite its non-stop action. Plenty of themes and questions to consider as you watch, and its worth seeing a few times.

The movie runs over two hours, but as evidenced by the multiple sequels, it has you wanting more. It can be rented on a streaming service for $4, but you can also probably check it out your local library. Enjoy this look at a dystopian future that seems quite a bit more feasible today.

ChatGPT says it’s not possible, but whose side are they on?

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Three separate House committees—Oversight, Judiciary, and House Administration—have spent more than a year investigating the Democratic Party’s primary online fundraising platform over allegations that its fraud controls may have permitted illegal donations, including contributions originating overseas.

Congress wanted answers from the people who actually worked there.

Instead, it got the Fifth Amendment. Collectively, over 150 times.

According to the committees’ April report, all five current or former ActBlue employees who sat for depositions invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination on substantive questions—a total of 146 times.

Then came ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones.

Subpoenaed to testify publicly in June, Wallace-Jones invoked the Fifth 21 times, declining to answer the committee’s questions.

To be clear, invoking the Fifth is not evidence of guilt. Wallace-Jones says the investigation is politically motivated and that exercising her constitutional rights was the appropriate response. ActBlue denies wrongdoing.

But Congress is investigating some serious questions.

The committees want to determine whether foreign nationals or other prohibited donors exploited ActBlue to funnel money into American elections, whether donations were made in other people’s names, and whether ActBlue’s internal fraud-prevention procedures were sufficient to detect them. Investigators say internal documents show ActBlue weakened some fraud controls in 2024 despite evidence of attempted fraud, including activity connected to foreign actors.

The investigation has now gone further. A third congressional report, released September 16, focuses specifically on ActBlue’s handling of donations associated with foreign addresses and alleges serious deficiencies in procedures for verifying that those donors were actually American citizens.

Now, lest we consign this to a “fishing expedition,” let’s just recall a recent simple cause-and-effect: upon taking office, Donald Trump shut down USAID. Since then, the shift in electoral politics in Latin America has been demonstrably to the right.

Talking heads will tell you these two events are unrelated. I’m not buying that.

Full disclosure: this writer recently had the opportunity to interview the Chairman of House Oversight, James Comer (R-KY). The Chairman’s frustration with the lack of candor from the hearing interviewees was palpable. As was his frustration with how little the media seems interested.

Now of course, ActBlue disputes the current findings of the House committees. An outside review commissioned by ActBlue concluded that foreign-address donations represented only a tiny portion of its business and argued that ActBlue properly verified donors in nearly all relevant cases.

So what happens next?

Congress can keep following the documents. The committees have subpoena power and are seeking internal communications and other records. They have already threatened ActBlue with contempt of Congress over documents ActBlue claims are protected by attorney-client privilege.

But here’s the real teeth: DOJ. President Trump has directed the Attorney General to investigate alleged straw-donor and foreign-contribution schemes involving online fundraising platforms. Federal law prohibits both foreign-national contributions and contributions made in another person’s name.

Trump made that referral under Pam Bondi. We’ve heard nothing about it since. Will Todd Blanche pursue it?

If so, that is where this could all become considerably more serious.

Congress can uncover facts and recommend legislation, but it’s DOJ that prosecutes. In light of the recalcitrance of ActBlue officials, it may be time to subpoena these officials into a federal grand jury and put them under oath. Lower-level administrators can be given immunity, thereby removing the “take the Fifth” option.

After all the “Russia Russia Russia!” hysteria launched by the left and the media at the Trump administration, it’s starting to look like a “people in glass houses…” scenario.

And Speaking Of Russia….

There are some things that shouldn’t require a lawyer, an ethics expert, or an intelligence briefing to tell you they’re a bad idea.

Allowing a well-connected Russian oligarch to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on your wedding festivities when your father is President of the United States—and has had to fight off charges of “Russian collusion”—qualifies.

Donald Trump Jr. and his wife, Bettina, have acknowledged that Russian businessman Umar Kremlev hosted two nights of their wedding celebrations in the Bahamas. Kremlev heads the International Boxing Association, has done business with the Russian state, and has received honors from Vladimir Putin. ProPublica reported that his contribution to the wedding ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Donald Jr. does not dispute this.

Now, there is no public evidence that Trump Jr. promised Kremlev anything in return. But that isn’t really the point.

The problem is the lack of judgment.

Donald Trump Jr. isn’t some anonymous businessman. He is the President’s son, a prominent political figure in his own right, and a member of the most powerful family in America. Accepting an enormous gift from Kremlev, whose connections to Putin run so deep that he recently traveled with Putin to China, creates precisely the appearance of influence that the administration’s adversaries—here and abroad—would love to exploit.

And considering the President is slated to meet with President Xi this week in Washington… not a great optic there.

Trump Jr. apparently figured that out eventually. His dad said Friday that Junior—who is reportedly worth $350 million—had repaid Kremlev, and a person close to Trump Jr. confirmed the repayment.

Good.

But the better move would have been to not let this character hand you any freebies—thereby handing the left an easy talking point.

From The Opswire Editor: There’s A Lot Of Green In Greenland

For most of the past year, the argument over Greenland has focused on whether Donald Trump could actually acquire the island. That may have been the wrong question. The agreement announced Friday suggests that the United States did not need to own Greenland to obtain much of what Washington actually wanted from it.

President Trump announced Friday that the United States, Denmark, and Greenland have reached an agreement giving America what he calls “permanent control over security” in Greenland. Denmark and Greenland describe it more narrowly, emphasizing that sovereignty and Greenlandic self-determination remain intact. But the strategic result is difficult to miss: America gets a substantially expanded and permanent security position on the island while Denmark keeps the flag. While not inked as of yet, the agreement appears to provide permanent American access, basing, and overflight rights and bars adversaries from establishing military bases or making “sensitive investments” (mineral rights? Oil? Data centers?) without U.S. approval.

Make no mistake: this is a substantial strategic gain.

Greenland sits between North America, Europe and the Arctic, directly astride increasingly important missile, air, space and maritime routes. And the Arctic competition Trump has been talking about is no longer hypothetical. Its geography could also make Greenland important to Trump’s developing Golden Dome missile-defense system. President Trump suggests that the the Greenland deal itself will cost America nothing, though that presumably does not include the expense of expanding the U.S. military presence there.

Russia spent decades building the world’s dominant icebreaker fleet and the ports and infrastructure necessary to operate across the Arctic. America fell badly behind. The Trump administration has been trying to reverse that, including through its arrangement with Finland to build a new generation of Arctic Security Cutters while bringing Finnish icebreaker technology and shipbuilding expertise into American yards.

China, meanwhile, has begun exploiting Russia’s head start. A Chinese-controlled shipping company this year began what is intended to become the first regularly scheduled container service between China and Europe across Russia’s Northern Sea Route. Russian oil is already moving through those waters toward China and other Asian markets.

As Paul described recently in The Ice Is Moving in Greenland, Moscow built the infrastructure and Beijing has begun using it. The United States is now trying to catch up.

Greenland gives Washington an extraordinary geographic platform from which to do it.

And America gets that position without becoming Greenland’s government.

Greenland remains part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Washington does not inherit responsibility for administering the island, paying for its social programs or assuming the broader financial obligations that would come with sovereignty. America gets the strategic benefits without becoming financially responsible for Greenland itself.

Then there are the resources.

Natural-resource cooperation was specifically discussed during the negotiations. American commercial interests are already moving in that direction. As detailed in our previous Greenland report, American-backed Greenland Energy is pursuing oil exploration in eastern Greenland, with Halliburton identified as an execution partner. The agreement does not publicly award that project any special rights, but the combination of resource cooperation, American investment and Washington’s new ability to block hostile strategic investment certainly makes ventures like it worth watching.

Perhaps just as interesting is Greenland’s reaction.

Foreign Minister Múte B. Egede called the agreement “a solution that is good for all parties,” while emphasizing that Greenland’s right to self-determination remains intact. Greenland’s own public broadcaster, KNR, reported his response, including his statement that Greenland’s “red lines” had not been crossed. In other words, Nuuk is not publicly treating this as an American takeover. It is presenting it as a greatly expanded security relationship on terms Greenland can accept.

Trump may also have been negotiating at a moment when Europe’s leverage was less formidable than it once appeared. The European Union remains a major economic and political bloc, but there are signs that the appeal of concentrating ever more authority in Brussels has lost some of its luster.

Perhaps the most notable recent example comes from neighboring Iceland. In August, Icelanders rejected reopening negotiations to join the European Union, 52.8 percent to 47.2 percent. Concerns over sovereignty and national control of the country’s enormously important fishing waters figured prominently. Rural areas in particular rejected membership, while the intellectual class in Reykjavik was more favorable.

The significance is not that Iceland speaks for Europe. It is that even a wealthy Nordic country closely integrated with Europe was unwilling to surrender additional control over resources and institutions closely bound up with its own culture. Recent attention to Denmark’s colonial record in Greenland has not helped Copenhagen’s position either. Forced relocations, the removal of Greenlandic children, and the recent genocide report, together with Europe’s continuing open-border madness, have added to the erosion of the Continent’s appeal.

At the same time, European security still depends heavily on American military capability. Trump’s pressure has pushed NATO governments toward higher defense spending while simultaneously producing strains inside the alliance. Denmark itself had already begun moving in Washington’s direction, increasing its military activity in Greenland and doing more of what the United States had been demanding: securing the island.

So Denmark keeps sovereignty. Greenland keeps its government. And America appears to get much of what it was actually seeking: a permanent strategic position, expanded military authority, the ability to keep Russia and China out, a stronger foothold in Greenland’s resource economy and a much stronger position in the emerging contest for the Arctic.

America did not get Greenland.

It may have gotten much of what it wanted from Greenland anyway… without the potential downsides.

Nightwatch On: IRAN

Friends, this space has been consistent on the Iran issue: if we go in, we need a clear definition of victory.

Do we have that?

And if so… can we say we’ve achieved it? With diesel currently averaging roughly $6.50 a gallon, and the Republicans polling behind in the midterms?

Join Paul for a conversation with former White House advisor under both Trump administrations, Captain Morgan Murphy of the U.S. Navy. He’s a graduate of the Naval War College, worked at the Pentagon, and has spent long deployments in-theater in the Middle East area.

The good Captain’s a guy who has forgotten more about these issues than most talking heads will ever know—and Paul presses him on it. Does he have a different take?

And, um, what’s with the banana pudding?

Join us to see!

The Law And Larry Krasner

We couldn’t let this week’s Ops Drop pass without noting that Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner may finally have a problem he cannot dismiss with another lecture about criminal-justice reform—or by his usual m.o, which is to call anyone who disagrees with him a “Nazi.”

This past week federal U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond as referred Krasner and Matthew Stiegler, chief of his Conviction Integrity Unit, to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for investigation and possible prosecution. Diamond also disqualified both men from participating in the underlying federal case.

And the allegations are extraordinary.

The controversy arose from Krasner’s office’s handling of an effort to overturn the 2009 murder conviction of Dennis Johnson. According to Diamond, evidence developed during hearings suggested Krasner and Stiegler may have pressured prosecutors to advance a false narrative in court while attempting to “protect the office.” Diamond said the evidence could implicate federal laws involving false statements, perjury, obstruction of justice and conspiracy.

When prosecutors inside Krasner’s own office urged him to refer the conflicted matter to Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday’s office, witnesses testified that Krasner called the AG’s lawyers—you guessed it—“Nazis.” They also testified that Krasner warned there would be “consequences” if employees alerted the court to the conflict. Krasner disputes Diamond’s findings and says he intends to appeal.

This is hardly Krasner’s first collision with allegations of misconduct inside his office. Just three months ago, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court concluded that his office had misled courts, violated its duty of candor and submitted false statements while seeking to overturn another murder conviction.

And recall, Krasner has already had jurisdiction over Philadelphia’s transit system—SEPTA, removed from him.

Now the accusations have moved beyond policy disputes and into the realm of federal prosecution.

The Justice Department should determine whether the evidence supports charges—and do it without fear or favor.

If it rises to the level: prosecute Krasner and his deputy—and disbar them.

Lives will be saved as a result.

True Crime Girl: Fiction or Confession? The Mystery Inside 417 W. Chew Avenue

Seven missing women, five feared dead, and more than a million digital files recovered from a Philadelphia home

I recently wrote about the June arrest of 44-year-old Eugene Horsch in Philadelphia and the ensuing investigation that led to a house of horrors at 417 W. Chew Avenue in Olney, Pa. At that time, four missing women had been associated with the house. The case has expanded dramatically since then: investigators now say seven missing women are connected to the investigation, including five women whom authorities fear may be dead. Among them is 27-year-old Nicole Fusaro, who disappeared in 2018 and has now been linked to the house.

During a briefing Wednesday, Philadelphia Police and the FBI gave an update on what they found at the Olney house that Eugene shared with his late father, Raymond “R.C.” Horsch. Investigators have recovered more than one million digital items, including writings, videos and photographs. The FBI says investigators have completed only about 30% of their review of this material.

Investigators have so far identified 58 people depicted in the digital material, overwhelmingly women. Although no bodies have been recovered, authorities fear that five women depicted in the material may be dead. They have also identified two other missing women with connections to the house.

When Eugene was arrested, he was with a woman who presented an identification card bearing her own photograph but the name of missing woman Blair Tonzelli. The woman allegedly told investigators that Eugene had given her the ID, making the circumstances even more disturbing. Missing women Gabrielle Amarando and Maribel Fresses also appear in the recovered material. Investigators say images show women who appear unconscious, injured, or lifeless. R.C. Horsch’s ex-wife, Amy McHale, disappeared in 2016 and was reportedly last seen at the Chew Avenue property.

Some of the most troubling digital evidence uncovered so far appears to involve Eugene’s father, R.C. Horsch. That makes the investigation even more complicated because R.C. produced violent, fictional erotic material for a living. Had his “art” morphed into real life? Investigators are now faced with the difficult task of distinguishing which images and videos were staged and which may depict actual violence.

In one particularly disturbing video, R.C. appears to place a zip tie around the neck of Nicole Fusaro, who then becomes unconscious and appears lifeless. Investigators are trying to establish independent evidence showing whether the acts depicted in the video actually resulted in her death.

R.C. also wrote a self-published work titled Empathy: An Overview of 2014, in which he wrote in the first person about being an “empathetic serial killer.” He describes strangling a woman and disintegrating her body with chemicals in a basement bathtub. Could some of what he wrote have been autobiographical, or was it simply the product of a disturbing fictional character he created? Investigators will have to determine whether his career producing violent erotic material may have concealed something far more sinister.

Investigators are still examining chemicals and a 55-gallon drum connected to plumbing and water lines that were discovered during searches of the house. Firearms, ammunition, urns and narcotics were also recovered.

If these violent images were fictional, where are all of these missing women? It seems unfathomable that all of this could simply be coincidence.

In the meantime, Eugene Horsch remains in federal custody, and his attorney, Jerry Brown, has indicated that he intends to plead not guilty to the charges against him.

Importantly, Eugene has not been charged with killing any of the women or causing their disappearances. While far from being a choir boy himself (he has a number of priors), investigators will now have to piece together what he knew, what he witnessed, and whether he was involved in any criminality connected to the women.

Let’s hope law enforcement can finally provide some answers—and some closure—to the people who have spent years wondering what happened to these missing women.

Watch this space for further updates on this story…. We are monitoring.

And finally…

Friends, it’s the digital version of the COVID scare. Don’t fall for it.

Do we have that?

And if so… can we say we’ve achieved it? With diesel currently averaging roughly $6.50 a gallon, and the Republicans polling behind in the midterms?

Join Paul for a conversation with former White House advisor under both Trump administrations, Captain Morgan Murphy of the U.S. Navy. He’s a graduate of the Naval War College, worked at the Pentagon, and has spent long deployments in-theater in the Middle East area.

The good Captain’s a guy who has forgotten more about these issues than most talking heads will ever know—and Paul presses him on it. Does he have a different take?

Join us to see!

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After the 25^th Anniversary of the September 11^th attacks, it seemed like a good idea to go in a more relaxing direction for this installment of Weekend Buff.

In the aftermath of the attacks in 2001, the country was united, there were flags flying, and America, despite taking a punch, was clearly not down. This was the good “old fashioned” patriotic idea of America that we hadn’t seen since before Vietnam.

Well, that didn’t last long. Now America is divided on issues of race, politics, and income disparity, with one side of the isle doing most of the work fomenting those feelings. We have been through that before, and hopefully America will weather the storm.

I wanted to go back to those post-9/11 days, when America was patriotic, united, and had a mission.

What better vehicle to capture that feeling than a John Wayne movie. The Duke seemed to encapsulate all that was good about America for decades. He was a patriot and an advocate for the idea of traditional America, or at least his conception of it. As the winds of societal change began blowing in the late 60’s, Wayne stuck to his guns with films like The Green Berets, and Big Jake.

But I digress. The recommendation for this installment of Weekend Buff is Rooster Cogburn (1975). This is Wayne’s penultimate film, as cancer was already killing him. Here he reprises his role as Marshall Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn first introduced in True Grit.

Cogburn, like Wayne himself is a little worse for wear. Rooster’s jacket doesn’t fit across his girth, his patience is non-existent, he is drinking too much, and he is doing less asking questions and more shooting.

As the film begins, Marshall Cogburn is tracking down a dangerous group of wanted men, and as so often happens, he is forced to let a few rounds go, killing the wanted men.

Judge Parker has had enough. He views Cogburn an anachronism of days past and a believes he is breaking the law by killing so many of the outlaws he tracks down. When a judge thinks you are committing crimes, it might be time to retire. Parker says, “The West is changing, and you haven’t changed with it. I want your badge.” Cogburn turns it in and settles into a relatively depressing and lonely retirement.

How many old timers in the police department have felt that sentiment? Crime goes down, standards of professionalism and use of force get stricter, and somehow the way you always did things is no longer mentioned in polite society. But every now and then, things get crazy in the streets and bosses are glad you are there to handle things.

Cogburn is in the same boat. Shortly after removing Cogburn’s badge, Judge Parker is at his door, hat in hand, asking him to take up the gun and shield again.

Bank Robbers, led by Hawk, have killed a platoon of soldiers and stolen a shipment of nitroglycerine they intend to use to break into banks. They are outlaws on a rampage, killing indiscriminately as they make off with their stolen explosives. Perhaps times have not changed as much as Judge Parker thought!

They murder Reverand George Goodnight and terrorize his daughter Eula and thier congregation. Cogburn becomes an unwilling partner of the outspoken and upright Eula Goodnight, and together they go after the outlaws.

What follows is relatively straightforward from a cops and robbers’ perspective. The dynamic here is the relationship between Wayne’s Cogburn and Aubrey Hepburn’s Eula Goodnight. The two couldn’t be more different in every way but one, they both speak their mind. The conflicts, compromises, and camaraderie between the two make the movie.

Rooster Cogburn runs about an hour and 45 minutes. There is some action, but Wayne was 68 when the movie was released – and it shows. But it is still a classic, good guys vs bad guys, American Western and well worth the watch. I couldn’t find it for free, so you will have to rent it from a streaming service.

This weekend, enjoy a last look at The Duke, before we lost him to eternity. The movie is a reminder to all those who think that we are too civilized these days to ever need someone like Rooster Cogburn again - Society may change, but man’s nature stays the same.

Thanks for reading The Ops Desk. Stay Safe!

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And how our leaders reacted to the event’s anniversary tells us a great deal about them.

In fact, how our politicians react to 9-11 has become something of a litmus test. You don’t have to endorse every counterterrorism policy America adopted. But you should at the least be able—without the moral equivalency—to acknowledge what happened: nearly 3,000 innocent people were murdered by Islamist terrorists, hundreds of cops and firefighters ran toward the danger, and thousands more have since died from 9-11-related illnesses.

It’s the least we should expect on the event’s 25th anniversary.

Yet look at how some of the current leadership class in the Democrat Party handled it.

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib apparently couldn’t find room on her busy social-media feeds for even a simple remembrance of the victims.

Ayanna Pressley, another Congressional “Squad” member, acknowledged the victims, then added that she’s also “thinking about” this:

“Persecution” of Muslim people? In America? Really?

Would that be like the persecution of any other religion other than Islam in every Islamic nation on earth?

Then there was Ground Zero.

During the solemn reading of the victims’ names, cameras caught Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez smiling and laughing together. Their defenders insist the moment has been mischaracterized—that the two were simply greeting each other. Perhaps. But when grieving families are reading the names of their murdered relatives, and everyone else around you is standing in solemn silence… would a bit of decorum have been too much to ask? Particularly for the mayor of the city that was attacked?

But the real 9-11 litmus test goes beyond social-media posts and appearances at Ground Zero.

On Sunday, the New York Post reported that two newly elected Democratic Socialist congressional candidates backed by Mamdani—Darializa Avila-Chevalier and Claire Valdez—are involved in an effort to oppose the Department of Homeland Security budget when they arrive in Washington. According to the Post’s sources, the two have been working with members of the “Squad,” including Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, on the effort.

The potential cost to New York City? More than $215 million in counterterrorism funding.

That money comes through the Urban Areas Security Initiative, or UASI. And here’s the part that makes this particularly incredible: UASI was created in 2003 as a direct response to 9-11.

The program distributes hundreds of millions of dollars to high-risk urban areas for terrorism prevention and preparedness. In New York, that money helps pay for things like bomb squads, emergency communications and the equipment and training first responders would need following a catastrophic or radiological attack.

In other words, this isn’t some abstract federal slush fund. It is part of the security infrastructure created because terrorists flew two airplanes into the World Trade Center.

According to the Post, even Mamdani has fought to preserve the money. Earlier this month, he complained about the federal government withholding some of it, specifically citing funding for 12 bomb squads, FDNY communications and radiological-response capabilities.

Yet two socialist candidates he backed are reportedly willing to jeopardize those same funds as part of their ideological war against DHS. Valdez’s representative vehemently denies the Post’s account, calling its anonymous sources either misinformed or dishonest. But the Post is standing by its reporting.

Which brings us back to the litmus test.

Remembering 9-11 isn’t about posting the right photograph once a year. It isn’t about showing up at Ground Zero and then checking the box. Or at least not laughing.

It’s about understanding what happened there—and making sure it never happens again. And the newest generation of Democrat politicians, many too young to really even recall that day, seem incapable of seeing that.

More troubling still, these politicians are not operating on the fringes anymore. They are driving the Democratic Party, particularly among younger voters.

A generation is coming of age with no firsthand memory of that day—and too often without being taught the history that preceded or followed it. If we don’t do a better job educating our children about 9-11, about the enemies who attacked us, and about the bloody history of communism and other failed ideologies now being repackaged for a new generation, we shouldn’t be surprised by what comes next.

Is the European-style socialism and appeasement that is leading that continent to obsolescence really what America’s future will look like? Beginning with this year’s midterms?

Perhaps America has just had it too good, for too long. We forget how hard-fought our freedoms and prosperity have been. We forget that, for all our faults, this nation still offers unmatched opportunity.

Today’s radicals become tomorrow’s establishment. If we fail to teach the lessons of the past, this may well be what America’s future looks like: threatened at an existential level, and too weak and conflicted to muster a real response.

Ask yourself how a Democrat president—an AOC, Newsom, or Klobuchar—would respond to another 9-11 today.

That is the litmus test we should all be using in the voting booth.

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On The Ops Wire: What’s Trump Up To In Ireland?

In perhaps the least likely international love affair since Harry and Meghan, Donald Trump spent the weekend in a European nation. And by all accounts, he loved it.

Now, this is a president who has been borderline hostile to that continent, and has spent the last two years insisting that Europe is headed in the wrong direction. Unchecked migration is changing their cities and straining their governments. Climate and energy policies are weakening economies. NATO members rely too heavily on American defense spending. Elitist European political establishments have ignored growing anger among voters.

And Ireland has been firmly onboard with pretty much all of this.

Yet Donald Trump just spend the weekend there and was effusive in his praise of the place in ways we’ve rarely seen. Was it an accident?

Unlikely.

First: let’s first recognize Ireland’s stance on Eurozone issues.

Immigration into Ireland has been enormous for a country of only about 5.5 million. For the previous five years ending in April, roughly 500,000 immigrants have entered Ireland—approaching 10 percent of the country’s population. In American terms, that would be roughly 34 million. In five years.

Ireland is also deeply committed to the climate agenda and the European Union. Prime Minister Micheál Martin has described his government as “unapologetically and absolutely committed” to the EU, and the government has stated it expects Ireland’s commitment to carbon neutrality to fundamentally change Ireland’s economy.

And then there is Israel. Ireland has become one of Europe’s most visible advocates for the Palestinian cause. It recognized a State of Palestine in May 2024 and went out of its way to intervene in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

Nor is Ireland’s political culture particularly friendly to Trump. President Catherine Connolly previously described Trump as “abhorrent,” while thousands protested Trump’s visit.

Trump’s response? He called Connolly “terrific.”

So what’s going on?

It could be personal. The Trump family has deep ties to Ireland. Trump’s golf resort at Doonbeg is part of that, but the connection runs deeper. The Trump children were partly raised by Irish women. Eric Trump has repeatedly described Dorothy Curry, their nanny from County Cavan, as his “second mom.” He spent summers with her family in Cavan and has said those childhood experiences left him feeling almost Irish himself.

So Trump may simply not put Ireland in the same mental box as Brussels, Germany, and Denmark.

But there may be another reason for Trump’s embrace. As we’ve described in this space, Ireland itself may be changing. And Trump may see Ireland as the nation that can lead Europe in a more Trumpian direction. And the wedge issue is—you guessed it—immigration.

Immigration has become such a hotbed issue in Ireland, it’s creating an alliance that would have been unthinkable until now: the opposite sides of “The Troubles,” the Loyalists and the Nationalists.

For most of the last century, Irish nationalists and Northern Irish loyalists stood on opposite sides of the central political question on the island. Nationalists generally wanted Northern Ireland united with the Republic. Loyalists wanted it to remain part of the United Kingdom.

Now immigration appears to be cutting across that old divide.

Anti-immigration activists from the Republic have increasingly cooperated with loyalist activists in Northern Ireland. In Belfast, demonstrations have even featured the Irish tricolour alongside Union flags.

In 2025, loyalist Mark Sinclair, a former member of the Ulster Volunteer Force, traveled from Belfast to Dublin and addressed an anti-immigration rally outside the General Post Office.

It would be hard to overstate the significance of the visit, and the location. The GPO was the headquarters of the 1916 Easter Rising and remains one of the great symbols of Irish independence. Yet the rally organizer described the event as a “day of unity between nationalists and loyalists.” Research cited by The Irish Times described cross-border cooperation in which shared opposition to immigration can “override older sectarian fault lines.”

And as this space has covered, there have been numerous instances of violence, even firebombings, against migrant targets.

Now, does this mean that nationalists and unionists suddenly agree on reunification? No. But what can’t be denied is that something unusual is happening.

And Trump may see an opportunity. Which is why, unlike pretty much every U.S. president before him, on this recent trip he didn’t avoid wading into the issue of reunification. Trump stated unequivocally that, regarding the Irish nation, he would, “love to see it unified. I think it would be a great feather in everybody’s cap if that happened. It’s going to happen eventually.”

In Dublin and London, jaws must have been on the floor. Trump then added that if reunification was ultimately going to happen, “It may as well happen now.” He called it “a fantastic thing,” and, referring to Martin, said Ireland had “the right man over here to get it moving.”

Trump acknowledged the sensitivity of all this himself, by adding, “Now the UK will have something to say about it, obviously.”

London’s response was unsurprisingly swift, with Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government saying, “I am not aware that there is majority public support for another referendum, and until that changes, there will not be one.”

Now, perhaps Trump simply believes Irish reunification is historically inevitable. Perhaps his affection for Ireland draws him toward the nationalist position.

Or perhaps Trump sees a country whose politics are beginning to collide with the consequences of the European immigration model he has spent years attacking.

Germany offers perhaps the clearest example. Trump has repeatedly criticized its immigration and energy policies. Now the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has made extraordinary gains, particularly in the former East Germany.

Indeed, across Europe, migration is becoming one of the defining political issues of the era. Yet we don’t see Trump in Germany, wading into the issue there.

Yet in perhaps the least Trumpian nation in Europe, Trump just praised the government and the people, offered a trade concession, shrugged off political insults and expressed support for reunification.

Maybe there is no grand strategy. Trump may simply love Ireland. But the two explanations are not mutually exclusive. As resistance to mass migration begins to scramble old political alliances on the island, he may see Ireland as unusually fertile ground.

Germany may demonstrate where Europe’s anti-immigration movement is going. Ireland could be where Trump decides to join it.

Meaning that Donald Trump may have just chosen his European beachhead.

True Crime Girl: Lindsay Clancy and the Dangerous Redefinition of Criminal Responsibility

We are living in a world where everything is upside down—especially when it comes to crime.

The people who commit crimes have become the victims, and the people who try to prevent or prosecute crime have become the bad guys. We saw it with the Daniel Penny case in NYC, and we are seeing it with ICE as agents try to deport criminal illegal aliens. Now we’re seeing it with Lindsay Clancy, who has somehow now become the true “victim” to many, a hero to the country’s online progressive class.

As we’ve all heard by now, 11 of the 12 Clancy jurors ultimately concluded that she should be found not criminally responsible for her horrific actions. All nine women on the jury and two of the three men sided with the defense. Their sympathies ultimately lay with Clancy and her claims of severe mental illness.

And now the lone juror who held out for a conviction is being portrayed as the bad guy for believing she should be held criminally responsible for what she did. Reporters are doing a deep dive into his past digging up allegations of domestic violence and a reported eviction notice. These same reporters don’t seem nearly as interested in doxxing the other jurors.

Additionally, three female jurors gave an interview to NBC10 Boston this week. They discussed their frustration with the lone holdout juror, describing him as “arrogant” and expressing disbelief that he would not listen to the other jurors. They also criticized what they viewed as the prosecution’s lack of compassion toward Clancy.

We have since learned something else about that jury.

There was only one person of color on it—and he was the Black man who refused to change his vote despite intense disagreement from the other 11 jurors.

That revelation left CBS News host Gayle King stunned. “Woah, I have to sit with that for just a second,” King said after learning that the holdout was Black.

Now, why would the juror’s race matter to Gayle? Unless she sees the case, like so many others, in political rather than legal terms?

And recall that defense attorney Kevin Reddington has himself singled out this juror for ridicule. Thus far, the juror has been silent. But don’t be surprised if, at some point soon, the lawsuits start flying. We may actually see an unprecedented situation in which a holdout juror sues not only a defense attorney, but even his fellow jurors, for defamation.

One of the problems in this case was the ludicrous Massachusetts law that puts the burden of proof on the government to prove the accused is sane. The formulation essentially becomes: “Yes, I did it, but I was crazy at the time. Prove me wrong beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Now, consider what happens if we stretch that principle too far. Virtually any horrific murder can eventually be explained away as the product of some mental defect rather than treated as a crime for which the perpetrator bears responsibility.

Now that’s truly crazy.

And soft-pedaling the issue leads to dangerous results. Because sure enough, the copycat cases are arriving.

An Illinois mother named Corie Walsh, who prosecutors say had become deeply invested in the Lindsay Clancy trial, stands accused of hanging her 2-year-old son, Barrett, in the basement of the family’s home. Authorities say Barrett died from asphyxia caused by ligature compression of the neck. Walsh has been charged with first-degree murder.

Her defense attorney says Walsh was “severely mentally ill” and experiencing a “psychotic episode.”

Sound familiar?

Prosecutors say Walsh had been discussing the Clancy trial with friends just hours before her son was found. They also allege that she told investigators she believed Barrett was the “devil” or “anti-Christ.” Her attorneys insist there is no evidence that the Clancy case inspired the killing. Of course they do.

Walsh is entitled to the presumption of innocence, and her mental condition will undoubtedly become an important issue as her case proceeds.

But society should be very careful about confusing an explanation for horrific conduct with an excuse for it.

Mental illness may explain why someone commits an unthinkable act. It does not automatically erase criminal responsibility.

People who kill children can be mentally ill. They can also be murderers.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

When we forget that—when child-murder gets couched in psycho-babble and online sloganeering—it’s society’s weakest members who suffer the consequences. Not the lawyers, the reporters, the social media influencers….

The kids.

And finally….

According to The New York Times, Obama is telling the Dems to make the AI scare a central issue of the midterm elections.

Does AI need to be regulated? Sure. But just remember this about the same people screaming about the AI apocalypse….

Of course, we could always just leave it to China. We’re sure that’ll go well for us.

My September 11th, 2001 was easier than for many cops. I returned to work after recently finishing my midnight shift and was assigned to help evacuate people from the piers near the Intrepid. I didn’t make it down to the Trade Center until the next night. I can’t imagine the impact that this anniversary has on those who were present at Ground Zero, or that had loved ones in the towers.

For almost 3,000 Americans, it was the last day of their lives. For thousands more, it was the worst day of their lives. Today we pray for them and and their families.

There are many movies, documentaries, and books about that day; some reflective, some historical, and most heartbreaking. I decided to make a recommendation in a different direction for this edition of Weekend Buff.

Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy’s podcast, The McCarthy Report, is one I never miss. His legal and political insight on a variety of topics is unmatched in its fairness and expertise. He generally presents an unbiased view that is fact-based and informative.

McCarthy is likely the foremost legal expert on issues surrounding the Jihadi’s mission of “death to America”. He was a Chief Assistant US Attorney in SDNY on September 11th, but his story goes back much further than that. He prosecuted the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 against the Blind Sheikh, Abdel Rahman, and his followers. He knows the ins-and outs, the backstories, and the challenges of the many terrorism cases prosecuted in the Southern District of NY; and has a deep understanding of their implications.

That is why his episodes on counterterrorism issues are so important. His analysis comes from personal experience and expertise - and it’s downright frightening. He warns of the danger of the radical mindset that brought death to the streets of New York, and explains why that danger cannot be ignored.

This week’s episode explores the legal and policy decisions surrounding the war against America that many did not realize we were fighting until that fateful day.

The episode, released yesterday, serves two purposes. First, it relates the historic and legal events leading up to and encompassing September 11, 2001. It then explains policy mistakes that the United States made, and continue to make, in its approach to Jihadi terrorism. McCarthy needs no script to make his points. He lived these events and decisions, and recalls them with remarkable clarity.

In his opinion, this threat is far from over, and argues the reasons why with the skill that comes from years of brilliant work at a prosecutor.

McCarthy explains the absurd reliance on the legal system to keep America safe. He points to mistakes made by several presidential administrations, and the absurdity of the scheduled trials of captured terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

He is unequivocal with his statement that, “A war is not a crime, and you do not bring your enemies to a courthouse”. The federal justice system is not designed for this task.

His analysis of impossibility of trying to change the mindset of people who are trying to destroy our culture is spot on.

In short, he is all in on the fight against terrorism. That makes this week’s episode particularly compelling.

You can find The McCarthy Report on the Apple Podcast application or on the National Review website. Each episode runs about an hour, and covers a variety of topics. McCarthy took a two-month hiatus over the summer, but hopefully is back to his regular weekly schedule. Enjoy, and God Bless America!

Notes From Ground Zero

Fittingly, I suppose, it was one of my fellow cops who managed to sum up what it was about New York that seemed most different to me following the attacks. He’s an officer I know only slightly, a no-nonsense veteran I’d see around the stationhouse from time to time. I’d never really spoken to him much. But as I stood at the edge of Ground Zero, contemplating the hundreds of workers scratching at the still-steaming mountains, he materialized beside me. “Amazing,” he said, following the lines of hardhats snaking up and – literally – into the debris. “This town’s gone from the white-collar capital of the world to the blue-collar capital in one day.”

Or maybe that’s just how it seems to us, from where we’ve been in the middle of all this. Most of the time, as a cop in this city, you feel tolerated at best; suddenly, people we don’t know, wearing more than we make in a month, are treating us with the deference usually reserved for the family at a wake. The public’s gone quiet around us. A few nights after the attacks, a woman on North Moore Street took one look at me in my dirty uniform, started crying, and silently handed me an apple. It was a moment so charged with metaphor, I got confused; I couldn’t even thank her. I’m sure she thinks now I was an ungrateful asshole.

You want to hear a strange truth? There’s a part of the cop psyche that’s tremendously uncomfortable with all this. What happens when we have to go back to writing tickets? What happens when the apple woman hears I took her brother in on an old turnstile warrant he’d forgotten about? In other words, what happens when it’s business-as-usual again?

But that’s the thing, this time. That’s the big change my married colleague nailed. This is not Crown Heights, or even Washington Heights. This one is so big, business-as-usual may never return. And forget the public, that’s not who I mean. The real change is probably – had better be -- in us. If Osama Bin Laden has reminded America of who we are as a nation, he’s reminded New York’s cops of who we are as well.

*

The lockdown around Ground Zero happens fairly quickly, and is reasonably orderly; years of dealing with crowd control situations in a city that never likes to be told what to do has taught the Police Department this much. Where I am, situated just north of “The Site” as it’s already known by the afternoon of Day One, is primarily a checkpoint; by that night, I will see ID and shields from every local, state, and federal agency I’ve ever heard of, and a few I haven’t.

But it is the Police Department that is running things on the ground, and we know it. I shine my flashlight into the faces of dour men who say they are “with State” in order to match them with their State Department ID cards, and I make FBI officials turn on their interior lights so I can inspect the inside of their autos. I can’t help it; irrational as it may be, right now I feel this is my city that’s been attacked, and these guys are interlopers showing up late to further screw things up.

There are other things, too, to remind me that no matter how international an event this is supposed to be, to us it’s local. On the afternoon of Day One, when I’m told by a Captain that our corner is to be set up as the primary triage center for survivors, I face a typical New York City dilemma: how do a handful of cops clear half a city block of people who are certain they have to be here?

Delicately. Because even with the feeling that we’ve entered something new, that today all the pettiness of the past is to be swept aside, it gets ugly. A training Sergeant once told me, when I got assigned to Manhattan Borough, that I had to expect the public to be difficult here: “In Manhattan, everybody thinks they’re the most important person on Earth,” he’d said (alas, that’s often true of the police as well). By the time it’s dark, I’ve had so many locals give me a hard time for keeping them out of the “frozen zone” below the triage center, I’m no longer amazed by it. Two different neighborhood residents actually choose to ignore my pleas to keep the area clear for body removal just so they can walk their dogs, hideous little designer creatures I have to restrain myself from punting into New Jersey. Perhaps the shock has yet to take hold; this group hasn’t quite “gone quiet” around us yet.

And the volunteers! They come in droves, ragtag groups of them drifting up to the checkpoint, young men and women in their twenties mostly, yearning to do the right thing, to help mitigate the devastation somehow, and clearly they’re genuine, their faces show it, there’s shock and pain, concern and everything else you’d expect. But when told there’s really nothing for them to do here, that they should report to the Jacob Javits Center where volunteer details are being organized and assigned, most balk; they don’t want to walk all the way up to 35^th Street, what with the subways not running. So they encamp all over, but primarily along the West Side Highway, sitting on the grass in little groups, turning the night of Day One into a sort of crisis Woodstock.

And then late into that first night, when we’ve been standing on the same corner for about 14 hours without being sure of what’s to come next and what day we’ll finally get home and of how completely our lives might be changed, two studious-looking young women separate from the volunteer army and approach us tentatively, and on my lips is yet another demand that they get back behind the police lines, and that if they want to help they should go to Javits and stop hanging around to ogle the show, but the words catch in my throat and my alarm rises vaguely when I see one of them is gingerly carrying a box. And she’s on me before I can protest, right up to me and my partner, and she asks us, in what I take to be some sort of European exchange-student accent, if we’re hungry, and tells us that she and her roommate were watching it all on television and have made peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches for us, if we want them. Which we do, desperately. And looking into the box, I see that in each sandwich bag is a little note, sometimes in less-than-perfect English, with a simple message on it: “Thank you for your bravery” and “God bless you.” And so I have the first of what will be many moments, familiar to all Americans by now, when I find it difficult to speak.

An old man who I see now is with them pours us coffee from a huge thermos he’s carrying. And while over the coming weeks I will often be wet and uncomfortable and nearly always very, very tired, I’ll never be hungry or thirsty again, so well will we be provided for.

*

After four hours of attempted sleep, during which I imagine I can hear my nerve-endings humming to each other, I’m back for the evening of Day Two.

At some point during the early morning of the second day, a grim reality was accepted: there was no real need for any emergency triage centers. The degree of destruction is so great, there are very few wounded. By this time, you are either one of the lucky ones, or you are not.

As a result, scores of well-meaning health professionals have gone home, and so my triage site is now simply a checkpoint manned by unfamiliar cops from a different precinct. I pass through it heading south to Vesey Street. Where I am not needed; instead, I’m assigned to a site over by the river. Where I discover that, where there is no triage, there will be a morgue.

I’ve been to the Bellevue morgue before, at various times for various reasons. As everybody concurs, it’s not the sights, it’s the smells; the medicinal rush of disinfectant jumps you first, but then, around the edges, the fishy, sickly sweet odor of human decay creeps its way in. This morgue, a tent about the size of a classroom, has all that, but here it lies beneath a chalky construction-site vapor that sits stubbornly over Ground Zero. So it’s not going to be as bad as I thought, I decide when I duck into the tent. That goddamn smell won’t be here.

And it’s not, it’s not as bad as I thought, it’s not the life-altering experience one might expect. Perhaps because I’ve seen before just how hostile the world can be to human bodies -- the results of car accidents, forgotten corpses in summer sublets, shotgun suicides -- or perhaps because I’m braced. Or perhaps because the smell inside the tent really isn’t all that different from outside it, the morgue is not the shattering experience it might have been. Still, there are scenes. The routine on Day Two, as workers have just begun to prod at the rubble, is essentially this: a group of eight or so professionals, comprised of Medical Examiner, Fire Department Paramedic, Police Department Captain, two chaplains, and various attendants, all hunch on folding chairs awaiting the next arrival. They are all in that altered state of consciousness created by lack of sleep, the adrenaline of crisis, and torrents of caffeine. The wait can take as long as two hours; other times, removals come in bunches. Then the call will go up outside the tent, from others seeing a rescue worker arriving while holding aloft a body bag: “Body coming in! Heads up. Body coming!” The fact that a single worker can carry the body bag gives some indication of what’s inside.

Now all in the tent are on their feet. The rescue worker (who by now can be from any of a dozen different agencies) lugs the bag onto a table comprised of a sheet stretched over a pane of plywood. Immediately, we crowd around, all our heads bending to the bag. Will it be a cop? A fireman? Will it be identifiable? Or: will it be some horror I will never forget?

The Fire Department EMT, a female in her thirties who’d been chain smoking until the bag arrived, unzips the opaque black plastic of the bag. Inside, for some reason, another bag, of some thinner plastic; this she cuts away with a short scissors.

This is human? is my first thought as her gloved hands begin to sift the bag’s contents. How could they tell? But then I see it. Within a mat of gray dust and paper fragments stuck in place and strangely unburnt, a latticework of ribs. No blood or flesh, nothing that is not simply gray and woolly with ash.

Only occasionally is there more than this. One bag reveals a suitably red-and-bloody pulp of viscera, a white intestine snaking obscenely through it. Beside it and unconnected, a perfectly formed and unmarred human foot. A woman’s; the toenails are painted a heartbreaking violet.

And this, eventually, is what shocks you, what sits you down with a nauseated, displaced feel of a world spinning awry. Not the gore, or the lack of it. But the small details, the things that point most tellingly to the fragile human lives caught in the maelstrom.

Because these details, actually, are what I’m doing here to begin with. On the other side of this same tent, behind a table hauled from a hotel cafeteria, is the “Property Section,” where a team of five or so cops is tagging, cataloguing, and bagging anything identifiable that might be linked later to one of the dead. Through the “make do” atmosphere that obtains at Ground Zero at this point, I’ve been picked up as part of this team because I can type.

And the Property Section is an endless series of these telling details; it’s far, far tougher than viewing body remains. Where morgue duty seems to deal only with rough outlines of people, small, broken, nearly irrelevant facsimiles of what they once were, the property somehow manages to capture them, captures their lives and personalities.

At one point I get a leather shoulder bag containing a Management textbook and a notebook. The textbook has a woman’s name scripted on the frontispiece in a graceful, feminine hand, the notebook her weekly classes written into the scheduling grid. They’re all evening classes; she was going to night school. There are little reminders and exhortations written beside the schedule: “Keep up with the reading!” and “Study for this the night before.” There are wallets stuffed with photos, company ID’s with bashful smiles, handwritten rolodexes. A gym bag with boxing gloves and a mouthpiece is set aside; the mouthpiece will be tested for the DNA in saliva traces. You wonder: How could these items survive intact, and their owners be so completely erased?

Then there are the cell phones. If there is one dilemma facing the property cops, it is the question of what to do with a working cell phone. The argument ensues every time a worker off the bucket brigade brings one in. Undeniably, hitting the “send” button will give the owner’s last call, and thus help with identification. But at what cost to the call’s recipient? And who will be the one to make that call, to risk raising false hopes among family members or friends, who will be receiving a phone call from a dead person?

Compared with the property, morgue duty, as brutal as it is, feels like going through the motions.

*

By now, everybody’s got a story. Mine is suitably chilling. I went through the Academy with – sat two feet away from – a guy who used to work in television news. Now, the hierarchy in a Police Academy is generally attuned to a specific type. Young, male, extroverted candidates, preferably from cop families, are ceded preeminence. It’s much like high school (except here they give you the gun).

This guy – I’ll call him Brian – was definitely not the preferred specimen. He was quiet, unassuming, and he didn’t have a police background. He was older than most of the recruits, too. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what attracted him to policework. But from his tv news gig, he’d traveled a lot, which I was interested in hearing about. Then I watched him get pulverized during the boxing sessions in gym, yet never take a step backward. So eventually, over long months of classwork, a relationship of sorts developed. We’d discuss current news events and foreign cities we had in common. He was not part of my actual circle, that inevitable clique that develops during the Academy and helps keep you sane. But I knew him, had met some of his people. And to be honest, I sort of admired him. The switch from television freelancer to the unbending rigors of a police academy could not have been an easy one.

About a year ago, I had an opportunity to transfer to the NYPD’s Video Production Unit. It’s considered a pretty cushy detail; you produce training films, tape promotion ceremonies down at headquarters, make recruitment tapes. You also respond to unusual police incidents, to provide documentation. At the time, it seemed a bit too staid for me; it was too soon in my career to “go inside,” I decided, and so at the last second I turned it down. Eventually I heard it went to, of all people, Brian.

Some months later, when I met him by accident in a pizzeria in Penn Station, he told me he was enjoying it, meeting a lot of people and working some interesting events. Seeing him then, removed now from the make-believe world of the Academy, I remember feeling almost protective towards him. I knew he’d still never take a step backwards. So I was glad he’d found himself a cozy niche in the enormous PD machine.

It was a buddy of mine from the Academy – a guy who was part of the clique – who phoned me with the news that Brian had rushed to the scene from his office following the first strike, and was now missing and presumed dead. “That fuckin’ Brian,” came over the phone. “He was a ballsy little guy, you know?” I knew too well; he’d disappeared doing the exact job that, at the final moment, I’d turned down. Leaving me to wonder if I’d have had the balls myself to go where Brian had gone.

*

By Day Three things still feel far from normal, but a kind of routine has settled in downtown. The site now has a bivouac feel, replete with a no-nonsense, almost frontier spirit, as workers attack their work resolute and uncomplaining. Various agencies contribute to this atmosphere by taking up residence in blown-out storefronts. A Burger King has “NYPD Command Center” spray-painted over its sign; inside, a wall has been ripped out and a bank of television screens have been installed, for what purpose down here I can’t imagine. Down the block, the FD flies a flag over its command station, at Ladder 10. A shattered storefront between these two has been draped with a green tarp and turned into the construction-worker brain center. Around the block, FEMA has taken over an empty drug store. And everywhere one looks there are little aid stations set up to make life more tolerable for the workers. We can eat in any of a half-dozen tents, get medicines, rest, even massages from a licensed chiropractor. A man next to a truck with a satellite dish atop it hands me a free cell phone, and tells me I can call anywhere in the country for as long as I want. (I use it to return the numerous calls I’ve received from long-lost acquaintances who have called from all over to see if I’m okay). A feeling begins that we are our own city down here, a city-within-the-City; reports of political maneuvers in Washington and bomb scares at the Empire State Building seem to filter through to us from some distant homefront. Yet despite this, we are all suddenly hyper-aware of our shared country; the place is supercharged with an American-ness that I imagine is normally unique to soldiers overseas in a hostile theater.

We’re digging now, anybody who can. It’s still only Day Three, and the chances of finding somebody alive are, in theory, still good. It’s a cyclical process; you pull carefully at the impossibly antagonistic tangle of metal and concrete, until eventually a major beam or girder is exposed. Then the ironworkers, who are fast becoming the front line of the rescue effort, hook a crane line up to the girder, and hoist it free. Then you start again. Anything you discover of any possible value – property, a possible plane part, or yes, a body part – goes into a bucket you carry with you. The body parts go into a body bag, and everything goes to the morgue tent.

There is something almost mythic in the sight of the cranes in operation. At one point, I look up from the wreckage to see an ironworker descending from the heavens directly above me, poised atop a huge metal hook at the end of a crane cable. He is as nonchalant as if he were tinkering with his car, instead of dropping from several hundred feet to root among the still-smoldering wreckage of history’s worst terrorist attack. Behind him, the arm of a red derrick scrapes the sky. I think again of my colleague’s “white collar to blue collar” remark.

Among the cops working down here now, a subtle distinction has emerged; the “photo-takers” versus the “non-photo-takers.” Some feel the attacks are an important historical event, something we should vow to “never forget,” and so the scene down at Ground Zero should be documented as much as possible, from every conceivable angle. Others, myself included, find this slightly distasteful, and would as soon forget these sights, once (and if ever) all this is eventually over. It’s not just among my group that this argument occurs. More than once, I hear officers telling their buddies to “put that fuckin’ camera away.”

A crane, off to my right, is noisily hoisting a half-melted girder the length of a school bus free of the rubble when a chorus of despair goes up from the workers nearby. Something of it tugs the corner of my eye, and I turn just in time to catch the slightest glimpse. It is a corpse, a young woman, or rather the top-half of one, stuck to the top of the big metal beam as it’s pulled free. Her arm flaps free once, a dumb, disembodied wave; then the weight of her torso exerts itself and she falls free, disappearing anonymously back into the wreckage. Go ahead – take a goddamn picture of that I can’t help but think.

That night, many hours later and away from the dig sites, I walk through the mini-city, passing through armies of unfamiliar uniforms, regional American accents, cops with cadaver dogs. There are little still-lifes of Con Ed workers sitting in the street under lamps, entwining great arteries of multicolored wires, and far above me, a strange tinkling sound; the FD guys are up in the World Financial Center, where my aunt used to cut million-dollar deals, methodically knocking out all the windows so that a later wind doesn’t dislodge dangerous shards of glass. It’s raining now, and the ash and dirt have turned to a ubiquitous copper mud. I pass a bedraggled group of New York firemen and find, in my NYPD uniform, that I can’t even meet their eyes; I feel vaguely guilty somehow. They’ve lost far more members than we have.

I’m heading for the marina. Thanks to somebody somewhere, a mini-cruise ship has docked along the river, and I’m told it’s open to rescue workers. There’s food, it’s warm and dry, and what’s more, I’m told they have the one thing most in demand down here, that’s proven tough to come by: good, hot coffee.

It’s all true, as it turns out, and sitting on the ship’s top deck, in the lee of an overhang to avoid the rain, I sip scalding coffee with a buddy from another Manhattan precinct, a guy I haven’t seen in months. I can see that he, like me, has gone all jumpy and wired; the “Red Bull shakes” we’ve been calling it, after the energy drink we’ve all been downing to keep going. Stuck behind his head, to the wall of the ship, are a few sheets of construction paper, with drawings and little notes from schoolchildren wishing us well. Eventually, these are everywhere down here, on the walls of the tents, inside the storefronts, plastering the front of the Fire Department’s Ladder 10. Crayon notes from second-graders in Indiana wishing us well; each time I take a moment out to actually read one, I get that little catch in my throat again that tells me I’d better keep moving.

It’s a strange moment, sitting there on the deck of a yacht, mud-spattered, sipping coffee with a buddy and surveying the still-magnificent vista of lower-Manhattan, a skyline shrouded now in haze but suddenly ennobled. “You know normally, we’d never get near a spot like this,” my friend tells me. He giggles, a sound that falls on my ears strangely; I haven’t heard it since what seems like a former life. “Two skells like us? Please!” He watches me a moment until I start giggling as well. I love this guy, he always has this effect on me.

And that’s the strangeness, I recognize. Not our being on a yacht docked in the financial capital of the world. But it’s the first truly relaxed moment I’ve had in what seems a very long time. Rather than wet, cold, or exhausted, I almost feel—comfortable.

My buddy shakes his head. “God bless this friekin’ coffee, huh?”

*

Catastrophe, apparently, makes for strange bedfellows. In the weeks that follow the attacks, I will be handed a bottle of water by Matthew Modine, drink beer at a benefit with the New York Rangers, and be the recipient of best wishes, personally delivered, from actors Jason Alexander and Kevin Spacey. All these notables are uniformly considerate and polite, the Rangers in particular; later, a group of them stop by the precinct to hand out signed memorabilia and make small talk in their homely Canadian accents.

Following the attacks, the celebrity “Ground Zero” becomes, for one particular night, midtown; it’s here that a special telethon is being held to benefit victims and their families. As a Manhattan cop, I’ve worked this sort of thing before. Your main objective is to make sure that the “talent” gets in and gets out without something happening in the process to make you famous yourself. Usually, you’re part of the woodwork. Nobody much notices you until you ask a paparazzo not to climb atop the limo, at which point a heated re-assessment of the First Amendment breaks out. Generally, though, if you’re even acknowledged, it means something’s gone wrong.

But tonight is different, for obvious reasons, and even the normally reticent Robert DeNiro throws us a nod as he exits his car and the flashbulbs go off. Nobody is less star-struck than Manhattan’s cops; it comes, I believe, from too many behind-the-scenes glimpses of the famous misbehaving. Eventually, you stereotype; “All these celebrities are nuts.” Still, every cop’s favorite movie is Goodfellas, so sharing the same rarefied air as Bobby D makes a good drinking story, if nothing else.

We’re at the curb as the performers arrive for the show, most stepping from the back of imposing SUV’s with blacked-out windows. A skeletal Celine Dion emerges wearing a surgical mask and rushes inside as if fearing contact with the Hell’s Kitchen air. Dave Matthews and Wyclef Jean turn out to be amiable sorts (the musicians usually are), and Jean greets my boss with the Jamaican “much respect,” a salutation that leaves the Sergeant beaming. Then, after his timely rendition of “New York State of Mind,” I am deputized to drive Billy Joel down to greet the workers at Ground Zero.

In a week of surreal moments, this somehow is the strangest. I have had it – comparatively – easier than many. Yet staying awake now actually requires a constant, conscious effort on my part, and I have suddenly gone from a more-or-less typical midtown crowd-control detail to chauffeuring an international rock star on a USO mission into Manhattan’s new moonscape.

They are crammed into the rear seat, Joel, his drummer, and a couple of other crew members, and all I can think to say, as we negotiate the checkpoints of the West Side Highway, is “Brace yourself. It’s nothing like tv.” This is an attempt on my part to break the ice, but even to my ears, it sounds incredibly inane, and I wonder again what random kink in the bureaucratic gears has jerked me from Ground Zero and into this most implausible of scenarios.

Luckily, nobody is much listening to me. As we drive, Joel does newspaper interviews; I’m told the LA Times would like to speak with me, but for fear of slipping up and making a career-ending statement, I decline. I’m told the reporter wishes the NYPD well. The interview is over; there is another lull in the car. Then Team Joel and I fumfer our way into the all-time conversation-saver among Western males everywhere: So what do you think is the funniest movie of all time?

It is amusing, to a degree, to watch hollow-eyed groups of rescue workers deal with the apparition of a rock star suddenly appearing amidst the wasteland of Ground Zero. They start, then give knowing smiles as if privy to some private joke, then approach with hands extended. I realize, watching little knots of these workers drifting over to us, that I am not really showing Billy Joel off to the rescuers, but in fact quite the reverse. This shows in Joel’s reactions; upon rounding a corner and taking in the full panorama of the destruction in one beat, he gets the “cannot speaks” for awhile. The workers all know this feeling, and somewhat comically, they happily ignore the fact that the rock star is openly weeping as they pose for pictures with him and have him sign their hardhats.

I am not part of this; today my uniform is relatively clean, and I feel something of an intruder. Looking around, it’s clear that Ground Zero is becoming more organized. There’s less of the pell-mell rushing of isolated little work teams heading for nowhere in particular. The whole effort appears streamlined. Still, I see now many of the same faces I’ve seen all week, and I realize how lucky I’ve been.

A Sergeant in my precinct, a massively experienced detective, was on the street outside when the first tower came down; he’s long and lanky, and when he dove under a car for shelter, an arriving PD Emergency Service Truck ran over his legs. Another Sergeant was in the building; he dove under a fire truck outside, and described the debris hitting the truck’s top as sounding like “someone dropping Volkswagens from fifty stories.” He could only pray the truck would hold up (it did). As he lay there, he heard what he was sure were gunshots, but dismissed the idea. But he was right. Other cops trapped on the street were shooting out the display windows of nearby buildings in order to dive to safety.

And those are what pass for success stories down here.

I realize how lucky I’ve been.

I take a walk down a side street off the crater site, and eventually encounter a couple of cops I don’t know leaning on barricades and flirting with a young female aid worker. Sex drives returning; this would have been unthinkable even 48 hours ago, and it suddenly strikes me that the “World Trade Center Terrorist Incident” will indeed end at some point. Still, it’s almost impossible to believe now, and certainly to believe that the Job – the PD -- will ever be the same. Bosses we once laughed at and mimicked behind their backs I saw unhesitatingly organizing rescue parties, working round the clock allocating resources, declaring medical stations, dictating rest periods for their men; in general, clamping order onto the sudden anarchy below Chambers Street. For the first week, patrolmen getting off their 12-hour shifts would defy Department orders and head right back down to the site, where they would work until literally delirious. Like the City, the Job’s been blooded; we will, I’m sure, distinguish among our members in the future by those who were “on” for World Trade, and those who’d yet to be hired. It will henceforth be our defining event.

The City will eventually forget us – after all, we really are just doing our jobs. We’ll be the enemy again soon enough. Which is fine, that’s the nature of a contentious and complicated relationship. But we – the cops – we had better remember. The way you remember the things you’ve done that make you who you are.

I’ve been down this side street before, I realize, earlier this week. There’s a uniquely American reaction all along it: graffiti. Instead of “Kilroy was here” however, heart-tugging notes like “Michael, we still believe,” “I hope they’re happy,” and simply, “Freedom” have been finger-painted into the ash on the enormous ground-level windows of the nearby buildings. Passing now, I notice one I hadn’t before: “The 46 Precinct was here.” Damn right they were. I decide to head over to the marina for that coffee.

Now, we all react to such things differently. Some took photos. Some videos. Paul scrawled little notes on the back of police forms so that, months later, he could document what he saw on that day and the days that followed. He titled the eventual article, “Notes From Ground Zero.”

Who could have predicted that we’d be where we are in New York City today?

And even stranger: that Paul would end up at Fox News, who recently dramatized the article in an excellent documentary streaming on the Fox Nation platform?

This week, for the 25th Anniversary of that day, Paul reads the original article below.

We here at The Ops Desk hope you are well and safe. And if you lost people that day, know that there are many of us who do indeed try to keep to our vow to, “never forget.”

And if you would like to support the people continuing to advocate on behalf of so many affected by 9/11 — a group that we TRUST — please consider Tunnels to Towers. The link is HERE.

Thank you.

Read more

Greenland actually released two reports, adding yet another layer of bureaucratic confusion to an already tangled record. The official report accepted by Greenland found a reasonable basis to believe that Denmark had systematically imposed measures preventing Inuit births, but said a final determination of genocidal intent would require a broader examination of Denmark’s treatment of the Inuit during that period. Yet in searching for Denmark’s intent, the report largely ignored what are arguably some of the most significant facts in the historical record. Those facts, while likely uncomfortable for the liberal-minded international establishment, could have helped fill the very evidentiary gap the experts said remained: evidence that Denmark’s campaign grew out of an international movement expressly devoted to population control.

The competing “rogue” report declared that there had been no systemic effort to limit births at all, and that determining whether violations occurred required individual inquiries into what had happened between each patient and doctor. Its authors had independently reassessed the historical findings and introduced additional material, something Greenland said they had not been empowered to do. Greenland did not accept this second report after a peer review found that it failed to satisfy recognized scientific standards, and the justice minister determined it had not fulfilled the expert group’s mandate.

The question remaining under the official report was this: Was Denmark’s 1966 to 1975 “Spiral Campaign,” which inserted IUDs into thousands of Greenlandic women and girls, some only twelve years old and, in many reported cases, without consent or parental knowledge, part of a systemic effort to control the Inuit population? Or was it legitimate family planning intended to extend contraceptive choice? These procedures occurred across Greenland’s remote, frozen communities while Denmark controlled Greenland’s government health system, operated the schools through which the girls were channeled, and employed the doctors who administered them.

After decades of silence, the story finally broke through in 2022, when a Danish investigative podcast brought the women’s accounts to international attention. Denmark and Greenland commissioned a fact-finding investigation to examine the available evidence and reconstruct what had occurred.

The resulting 348-page Historical Report was released in September 2025. It is comprehensive to the point of exhaustion and devotes extensive attention to how the campaign was conceived, initiated, and put into operation, with page after page tracing the work of NGO’s, committees, commissions, ministries, medical boards, school authorities, and other government bodies woven through Denmark’s broader state system. The report also identifies multiple demographic concerns surrounding Greenland’s rapidly growing population and the economic and social pressures officials believed would follow.

The Historical Report, however, is written in the familiar language of institutional responsibility: the system is everywhere, but no individual decision-maker is made to stand in the foreground, and no responsibility or blame is assigned. And importantly, it does not indicate what laws were broken.

For that, Greenland also appointed four human rights experts in 2024 to determine whether the facts established by the Historical Report violated international human rights law, including the Genocide Convention. After working together for nearly two years, the group fractured and produced the two reports released last week.

While those reports were taking shape, Denmark’s prime minister formally apologized in September 2025 for the “systematic discrimination” and abuse inflicted upon Greenlandic women and girls by the Spiral Campaign. The word “systematic” resonated. Denmark was acknowledging that these injuries were not merely isolated mistakes by a few individual doctors.

Yet the release of two reports, and the unnecessarily complicated presentation of the issue and facts, have compounded the bureaucratic diffusion that has helped conceal the truth for decades. And so, the issue remains unsettled, and the victims remain without a clear path to justice or accountability. This is largely because the official report says the record does not fully establish why Denmark did what it did. This is despite the Historical Report devoting much of its first major section to the demographic concerns, institutional alliances, policy decisions, and medical machinery that produced the Spiral Campaign.

And so, with the genocide question still unresolved, Greenland announced yet another committee, this one a “truth and reconciliation” commission. But Greenland was finally candid about something – a point that has been apparent, though unstated, for some time: the commission is not designed to blame anyone or hold anyone accountable. Prime Minister Jens Frederik Nielsen said its work “should not be about assigning blame, but about uncovering the truth with a view to genuine reconciliation.”

The Official Report and International Law

Upon the recent release of the human rights reports, news organizations and the international law commentariat rushed to publish their analyses. Some announced that there had been no genocide. Others suggested that genocide had effectively been established. Still others carefully explained the competing conclusions and distinct legal questions. The coverage only deepened the confusion.

International law is unusually susceptible to this kind of ambiguity because, unlike domestic law, it often lacks a reliable mechanism for compulsory enforcement; when enforcement does occur, it is frequently shaped as much by diplomacy, state consent, and geopolitical power as by legal doctrine. Indeed, in this case, the geopolitical reality of Donald Trump’s interest in Greenland may be shaping events as much as the law itself. This structural weakness has helped foster an international professional class whose work often centers on theorizing, interpreting, debating, and refining legal principles that can remain largely aspirational across institutions, conferences, journals, and advisory bodies, at some distance from the more traditional work of representing individual clients, proving claims, and securing enforceable remedies. And the confusion often hides the obvious.

Applying the Genocide Convention to the facts established by the Historical Report here should not have been particularly difficult. The Convention’s language is not mysterious. It defines genocide this way:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as

. . .

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

The Convention does not require an intent to kill every member of a population or eradicate the entire group. It expressly includes measures intended to prevent births and an intent to destroy the protected group only “in part.” The ultimate question here can therefore be boiled down to this:

Did Denmark use a system of contraception to decrease the population of Inuit Greenlanders?

Relying upon the established Historical Report, the official human rights report found a reasonable basis to believe that measures preventing births had been imposed systematically by employees of the Danish state. The remaining question then was simply: why? If population control was the purpose, then the campaign appears to fit Article II(d), because the intended result was the destruction of part of the protected group. On that point, the report stated:

“It is difficult to imagine circumstances in which an attempt to substantially reduce the population of a single ethnic group could not constitute an intent to destroy, in part, that ethnicity.”

But the official expert panel then declined to make the ultimate determination.

They said that to figure out why Denmark did this, another tribunal should examine the systemic birth control measures alongside Denmark’s other discriminatory practices during the same period, including the removal of Inuit children, forced relocations, employment discrimination, suppression of the Inuit language, unequal wages, and restrictions affecting paternity and inheritance. That broader pattern, they reasoned, could reveal how Denmark viewed the Inuit and help determine why the Spiral Campaign was instituted. But because those other practices had not been examined in sufficient detail in the Historical Report, the experts said they lacked the factual record necessary to decide. So, they punted.

The official human rights report therefore treated Denmark’s purpose as the central unresolved question. Yet, strikingly, the Report did not confront the most significant institutional evidence bearing upon that question: the declared objectives and documented roles of the organizations and individuals who helped formulate the program, trained the doctors, financed the research, supplied the devices, and translated population control policy into medical practice. At the center of that missing story was the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

The Conspicuously Missing Planned Parenthood Story

The Historical Report states very clearly that the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and the Population Council “advocated for the necessity of reducing global population growth” and viewed contraception as the principal means of doing so. It then identifies those organizations, together with the Danish Family Planning Association - IPPF’s Danish affiliate - as working with Danish government officials, researchers, and physicians to put those policies into practice. The Historical Report traces in considerable detail how they operated within, alongside, and through Denmark’s governmental and medical institutions to translate their population-control objective into policy and practice.

Yet the official human rights report never mentions IPPF or the Population Council despite the fact that they were supposed to be basing their analysis on the Historical Report. It does reference the Danish Family Planning Association but does so without identifying it as IPPF’s affiliate or examining the significance of that relationship.

Founded in 1952, the International Planned Parenthood Federation created and supported national affiliates that translated population-control policies into medical practice. Its international president during the years preceding and overlapping the Spiral Campaign was Lady Dhanvanthi Rama Rau, who helped establish the Family Planning Association of India and was among IPPF’s founders along with Margaret Sanger.

Any objective assessment of Rau’s life’s work leaves little room for doubt. In the most restrained terms, she was a committed population control advocate. Rau recalled that there was “no question” she should work for family planning “single-mindedly and intensively.” She continued: “The limiting of our population was a fundamental and pivotal necessity if we were to make the gigantic task of social and economic improvement successful.”

IPPF supplied doctrine, money, training, and contraceptive technology, while its affiliates and cooperating public institutions turned those policies into practice. Population control became an instrument of economic and social planning. The Historical Report details how this model was applied in Denmark and Greenland.

Denmark’s IPPF affiliate was headed by Dr. Agnete Braestrup. Her significance can hardly be overstated, yet her name never appears in the official human rights report. Braestrup founded the Danish Family Planning Association in 1956 and chaired it until 1983. The association began working in Greenland in 1958, cultivated contacts inside the Ministry of Greenland and the medical service, trained doctors bound for Greenland, and conducted contraceptive trials.

In 1963, Braestrup proposed sending a gynecologist to Greenland to begin “family limitation” work centered largely upon the IUD, even though the device had not yet been approved for general use in Denmark. Her association then helped the Greenland Council Secretariat and Ministry of Greenland prepare a 1965 memorandum explaining why family planning was needed and how the state should provide it. The program included school instruction, government-produced materials, medical training, and free or inexpensive contraception. IPPF’s population policy was no longer an international abstraction. Its Danish affiliate had helped place that policy inside Greenland’s government and medical system.

Braestrup did not merely run an obscure national affiliate. She succeeded Rau as president of the worldwide IPPF in 1969 and served through 1971 while continuing to chair the local Danish association. So the person directing IPPF’s Danish operation during the Spiral Campaign was also running the world’s most influential and best-funded population control organizations.

IPPF had a powerful ally in the Population Council. Established in 1952 by John D. Rockefeller III, the Council described the relationship between population and available resources as “one of the most critical and urgent problems” of the time. It connected foundations, governments, physicians, and researchers while channeling private and public money into contraceptive research and distribution aimed at population control.

That work led directly to Greenland. The Population Council supported Danish physician Erik Rosen’s experimental research into the “Lippes Loop.” In 1965, Rosen urged Danish officials to seize what he called the “rather unique opportunity” to study the IUD’s use in a “primitive population.”

The institutional overlap became visible the following summer. In early July 1966, Lady Rau traveled to Copenhagen for IPPF’s regional conference; less than two weeks later, Rosen arrived in Nuuk on July 19 and began the official Greenland IUD trial the following day. The devices he carried were provided free by the Population Council and were known inside Greenland simply as “the Spiral.”

International Planned Parenthood Across the Globe

Greenland was not an anomaly. The same institutional model operated across the developing world. The programs were not identical, and the degree of coercion varied. But the common structure was unmistakable: international financing, national Planned Parenthood affiliates, government targets, medical campaigns, and success measured through fewer births.

In a remarkable 1965 interview, Lady Rau spells out in unusually candid terms both the ambition and the operating philosophy of the IPPF. Speaking about India, she describes an almost relentless effort to prevent births, at one point invoking the phrase “through every means available.” The machinery she championed would become enormous: during the mid 1970s, more than 10.7 million Indians were sterilized, including 8.3 million in fiscal year 1976 to 1977 alone, while IPPF’s Indian affiliate itself performed more than 80,000 sterilizations in 1976.

Heard in its most charitable light, the 1965 interview captures the elitism and paternalism that ran through much of the era’s population-control movement: an international organization convinced that it knew what was best for humanity and prepared to help governments reorganize intimate decisions about reproduction accordingly. Heard less charitably, it is something far more unsettling.

Rau’s interview also makes clear that the model was never intended to remain confined to India. IPPF saw its mission as exporting the same machinery abroad - supplying expertise, organization, money, and institutional support to governments and local affiliates willing to adopt it. Lady Rau stated:

The International Planned Parenthood Federation is the only organization that is giving active assistance to those who are aware, wh- whether it be in a Catholic country or whether it be in a non-Catholic country, that this is a potential danger. We are prepared to give advice, we are prepared to give financial aid, we are prepared to organize, help them to organize the work within their own countries, and that is one reason why we already have thirty-eight countries that belong as members to the International.

That was not merely aspirational; variations of the model appeared across the world, including:

- South Korea: IPPF’s Korean affiliate pressed the government to launch a national family-planning program in 1962; by 1970, it recorded 295,100 IUD insertions and 17,321 vasectomies.

- Indonesia: IPPF’s affiliate supported the government’s population-limitation program with training and public education; state targets and village programs produced documented coercive pressureand reached more than 4.7 million women by 1975.

- Colombia: IPPF affiliate PROFAMILIA, founded by Fernando Tamayo to reduce population growth, built 42 clinics and worked through government hospitals and health centers. For his efforts in preventing Colombian babies Tamayo would be promoted to President of the IPPF after Bræstrup.

- Singapore: IPPF’s affiliate helped build the clinical network absorbed into the government program in 1965; the state later enforced its two-child policy through financial and public-housing restrictions.

- Puerto Rico: The Puerto Rican Family Planning Association, an IPPF affiliate, worked alongside government services; by 1965, about one third of ever-married women ages 20–49 had been sterilized, while IPPF later described affiliate and government services as fully integrated.

And of course, Greenland.

In Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population, Columbia historian Matthew Connelly provides the definitive history of the movement. What he found was not simply an effort to make contraception available, but what he calls the “most ambitious population control schemes” - programs that “aimed to remake humanity” by deliberately reducing fertility, particularly among poor populations. He traces how the IPPF and others built affiliates, clinics, and government partnerships around the world, and how by the 1960s, these internationalists had become so zealous that some believed that the world’s “survival depended on sterilization camps.”

And then there was a funding model behind this craze. Through the 1960s and 1970s, one institution became the dominant financier of international population-control programs, channeling more than a billion dollars into the effort and into organizations such as IPPF. Its support for IPPF began with a $3.5 million grant in 1968, and its own history later acknowledged that continued American funding became “vital” to the federation’s work. The institution behind that money was the United States Agency for International Development. During the 1970s, the IPPF was the single largest NGO recipient of USAID’s population-control funding.

The Omitted Evidence Applied

Greenland followed the established international model. The IPPF’s Denmark affiliate, led by Dr. Agnete Braestrup, cultivated government relationships, trained personnel, proposed IUD-centered “family limitation,” and helped formulate the policy. The Population Council financed the research and supplied the devices. The Danish welfare state provided the authority, hospitals, physicians, schools, and access to the women and girls.

Nearly all of this institutional history appears in the Historical Report upon which the human rights experts were supposed to rely. Yet the official report simply does not address this as evidence of Denmark’s purpose.

Taken together, the evidence supports a straightforward conclusion: Denmark constructed a system within its state health service intended to reduce births among Inuit Greenlanders. Genocide.

Even if the experts were unwilling to state the obvious conclusion, attempting to determine why Denmark acted without examining the stated purpose of the IPPF, Rau, Braestrup, the IPPF Danish affiliate, and the Population Council is, at best, an extraordinary failure of historical and legal analysis.

These actors did not accidentally converge in Greenland. They operated through a population control system being deployed around the world to limit populations. In Greenland, that system ended at the examination table, where a state physician confronted an Inuit girl.

Why Does a Genocide Determination Matter?

While it certainly provides a symbolic victory, an official determination of genocide here could be considerably more practical because of domestic Danish law. Damages for serious personal injuries are generally far lower in Denmark than in the United States because compensation is tightly structured by Danish law, with statutory formulas governing categories such as pain and suffering, permanent injury, and loss of earning capacity.

Even in an extreme malpractice case where infertility resulted, a total recovery of roughly $60,000 to $75,000 would be considered substantial. In one Danish medical-injury case, for instance, a woman rendered infertile after treatment received compensation for infertility and other permanent injuries under Denmark’s statutory damages system; the court ultimately treated her infertility as part of a 25-percent permanent-injury award worth roughly $25,000 in today’s dollars.

A very recent development changes the picture a bit. On August 27, literally the day before the human-rights reports were released, Denmark approved a compensation scheme paying each qualifying Spiral Campaignvictim roughly $46,000. Coming more than fifty years after the conduct, the timing certainly invites the inference that Denmark hoped the payment would help blunt any later genocide claim by allowing it to argue that they had already “voluntarily” compensated the victims.

The $46,000 payout effectively creates a floor, but not a ceiling. The women can still sue and seek more, but any later award will likely be reduced by the $46,000 already received. And because Danish personal-injury awards are so modest, even a severe infertility case might realistically leave a woman with only $60,000 to $75,000 in total compensation. The practical reality, then, is that many of these women may receive remarkably little compared with the severity of the injuries they allege.

This is where a genocide determination could become practically important. It would not guarantee a large additional award, but previous reproductive-rights cases show that international tribunals can impose separate reparations, including tens of thousands of dollars beyond modest domestic compensation. That is important here because of the way Denmark’s domestic damages scheme protects the health care system against significant awards - even for catastrophic injuries. Against that backdrop, even relatively modest reparations tied to a genocide finding could materially increase what the Inuit women ultimately receive.

But why is this damages-strategy discussion even necessary? Denmark has already acknowledged its systemic abuse of these women, yet their compensation scheme guarantees qualifying victims only about $46,000. A responsible government might simply try to make them whole - to the extent that is possible. What could be more important to Denmark than adequately compensating its individual citizens who were subjected to contraception without their consent and suffered permanent reproductive injuries at the hands of the state? Perhaps Denmark remains more concerned with humanity itself.

Over the next ten years Denmark is on track to distribute at least $5 billion in grant-based international climate change money to NGOs and developing countries, while separately earmarking more than $155 million for projects intended to transition its population to plant-based meat and products. All for the sake of the planet.

The historical echo is difficult to ignore.

When Gloria Steinem, one of Planned Parenthood’s most prominent longtime advocates, died last week, renewed attention was given to her earlier declaration that “overpopulation is still the biggest reason for global warming” and her later description of population as the “fundamental cause of climate change.”

The rhetoric has changed, but the system’s impulse to subordinate individual reproductive lives to a larger social vision has proved remarkably durable.

In the meantime….

Be safe and have fun.

Unfortunately, the criminal justice system does not do a great job handling these crimes, despite the best efforts of cops like my friend. Many of these perps are a menace who are given sentences that neither rehabilitate nor reform them. Whenever I hear of a judge giving a light sentence to one of these convicted criminals, it makes me wonder what they are doing when no one is watching.

Lorenzo Carcaterra wrote his book about child sex abuse, Sleepers, in 1995. Most people remember the movie, starring Brad Pitt and Jason Patric, but the book is great, and it’s our recommendation for this installment of Weekend Buff.

I read Sleepers shortly after Paul and I were assigned to the Midtown North Precinct out of the Academy. Midtown North covered much of Hells Kitchen, where most of the story takes place. The book highlights the neighborhood and was an interesting read on that front, but the abuse that it detailed was much more moving and eye-opening for a rookie cop.

Sleepers relates the tale of four friends growing up in the 1960’s on the west side of Manhattan. They are inseparable, and it seems to them like the fun and games will last forever. The boys, Shakes, Michael, John, and Tommy, engage in the typical mischievous behaviors of teenage boys. Not criminals, but frequently in trouble.

One event changes their lives forever. The group, looking to get a free lunch and create some excitement, take a hot dog cart from a street vendor. They are not looking to keep it, just have some fun and fill their bellies. During the chaos that ensues, the cart rolls down a subway entrance, striking and nearly killing a man.

That’s where the book changes from a feel-good, coming of age story to something much darker.

The boys are sentenced to a term upstate to the Wilkinson Home for Boys, a seemingly-bucolic juvenile detention facility. But what goes on inside the “home” is terrifying. The boys suffer horrific physical and sexual abuse at the hands of several of the guards. Carcaterra details the torture that the boys endured.

The book then flashes to the present. The boys are adults and have grown apart, taking different paths in life, but seriously affected by their time in Wilkinson. Tommy and John live a life of crime and addiction. Shakes is a journalist. Michael is a Manhattan Assistant District Attorney.

When Tommy and John see one of their former tormentors, they immediately and unthinkingly take revenge, killing the man in front of numerous witnesses.

Michael finds himself in a position to help them, but it means violating his oath as an attorney.

The book is told as a retrospective in the first person. This gives it an impact that pulls at the reader’s emotions. Carcaterra, spins a masterful story, describing in detail their childhood, their neighborhood, and later the terrible abuse and the toll it took on them.

Carcaterra describes the book as loosely autobiographical. It is likely more of an, “inspired by a true story” novel. The Manhattan DA put out a statement shortly after its release denying the role his office played in the story, calling it false.

Wherever the truth lies, Carcaterra’s writing talent makes the story feel authentic. He does a fantastic job relating the dark details, and it certainly reads like an autobiography.

There is a long line of books advertised as being “better than the movie”. That description is certainly true with Sleepers. The characters are given more depth. The crimes hit home. The emotions seem real. It is a book well worth reading, even if the movie holds mostly true to the book.

Sleepers runs a little more than 400 pages depending on what version you get. You can look for it in your local library, or buy it on Amazon for less than $10. It is an engaging and easy read that you can get through in a few days. This weekend check out this well-written coming of age-turned nightmare story, where the terrible impact of child abuse confronts the reader at every turn of the page.

Thanks for reading The Ops Desk. Stay Safe!