Intelligence officials edited talking points on Libya attack

WASHINGTON — Authorities with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the CIA, decided to remove the terms "attack," "Al Qaeda" and "terrorism" from unclassified guidance provided to the Obama administration several days after militants attacked the U.S. mission in Benghazi, a senior official said Tuesday.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, relied on the so-called talking points when she appeared on several Sunday TV talk shows five days after the Sept. 11 attacks in eastern Libya. She asserted that the violence, which killed four Americans, erupted out of a protest over a film made in the U.S. that mocked Islam.

Critics accused Rice and other administration officials of twisting the intelligence for political reasons when it later emerged that the CIA had concluded that the lethal assault involved militants, some of whom had links to Al Qaeda's North African affiliate. The White House has argued that Rice was relying on information provided by the CIA and other agencies and didn't deviate from it.

U.S. intelligence officials supported the administration claims Tuesday, contending that language in the talking points was changed by intelligence officers to protect information that was classified at the time.

"Early drafts of the talking points included several analytic judgments that were debated and adjusted during the internal intelligence community coordination process," said the senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue involved classified material. "The adjustments were focused on producing talking points that provided the best information available at the time, protected sensitive details and reflected the evolving nature of rapidly incoming intelligence."

Officials at the CIA and at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, headed by James R. Clapper, "were all communicating on an email chain, which is normal in our coordination process," the official said. "Suggestions were being made and implemented in a collaborative manner."

The CIA drafted the initial talking points, and they were not "edited to minimize the role of extremists, diminish terrorist affiliations, or play down that this was an attack," said a second U.S. official familiar with how the material was edited.

David H. Petraeus, the former CIA director, told the House and Senate intelligence committees in closed hearings Friday that he believed almost immediately that the Benghazi assault was an organized terrorist attack, according to lawmakers who attended the hearings. But he said the CIA initially withheld reports that extremists with links to Al Qaeda were involved to avoid tipping off the terrorists.

Petraeus also said some early classified reports supported the possibility that some attackers were motivated by violent protests in Cairo earlier that day over the anti-Islam video.

When the CIA drafted language that Rice could use for her TV appearances, it circulated the language to officials at Clapper's office, which has a supervisory role in the intelligence community. In the editing process, the word "attack" was changed to "demonstration," and the phrase "with ties to Al Qaeda" was removed, officials said. The word "terrorism" also was removed.

If intelligence professionals were responsible for the changes, it might dispel charges from some Republicans that political operatives at the White House had manipulated the narrative to downplay the possibility of an Al Qaeda attack when the Obama administration was campaigning on its successes in degrading the terrorist group.

One of the most vocal critics, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), said he was "somewhat surprised and frustrated" Tuesday after CBS broke the news.

During the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last week, McCain said, "senior intelligence officials were asked this very question, and all of them, including the director of national intelligence himself, told us that they did not know who made the changes. Now we have to read the answers to our questions in the media."

McCain said the episode "is another reason why many of us are so frustrated with, and suspicious of, the actions of this administration when it comes to the Benghazi attack."

Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and an embassy computer specialist were killed when the militants stormed and set fire to the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi. Two CIA contractors were killed several hours later when mortar rounds were fired at a CIA compound about 1 1/2 miles away.

ken.dilanian@latimes.com

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Nov. 21

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

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Singer Fiona Apple cancels tour dates to be with ailing dog

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Grammy award-winning singer Fiona Apple said in a handwritten letter posted on her website on Tuesday that she has canceled upcoming tour dates in North and South America to be with her ailing dog.

Apple, who vowed to make up the concerts, called off three shows in Brazil between November 27 and 30, a Buenos Aires festival appearance on December 1-2 and a December 9 performance in Mexico City, according to her record label, Epic.

The “Criminal” singer and pianist said her 13-year-old pit bull Janet has been suffering from a tumor in her chest among other ailments and appears to be dying.

“She’s my best friend and my mother and my daughter, my benefactor and she’s the one who taught me what love is,” Apple wrote in the four-page letter she penned last week but did not release until Tuesday. “I can’t come to South America. Not now.”

Apple, 35, said that she wants to appreciate the final days with her dog. “I will not be the woman who puts her career ahead of love and friendship,” Apple wrote.

The singer-songwriter, who is touring in support of “The Idler Wheel … ” album, was arrested in September in Texas and charged with felony drug possession for having four grams of hashish, a form of cannabis.

(Reporting By Eric Kelsey; editing by Patricia Reaney and Todd Eastham)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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New H.I.V. Cases Falling in Some Poor Nations, but Treatment Still Lags

New infections with H.I.V. have dropped by half in the past decade in 25 poor and middle-income countries, many of them in Africa, the continent hardest hit by AIDS, the United Nations said Tuesday.

The greatest success has been in preventing mothers from infecting their babies, but focusing testing and treatment on high-risk groups like gay men, prostitutes and drug addicts has also paid dividends, said Michel Sidibé, the executive director of the agency U.N.AIDS.

“We are moving from despair to hope,” he said.

Despite the good news from those countries, the agency’s annual report showed that globally, progress is steady but slow. By the usual measure of whether the fight against AIDS is being won, it is still being lost: 2.5 million people became infected last year, while only 1.4 million received lifesaving treatment for the first time.

“There has been tremendous progress over the last decade, but we’re still not at the tipping point,” said Mitchell Warren, the executive director of AVAC, an advocacy group for AIDS prevention. “And the big issue, sadly, is money.”

Some regions, like Southern Africa and the Caribbean, are doing particularly well, while others, like Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East, are not. Globally, new infections are down 22 percent from 2001, when there were 3.2 million. Among newborns, they fell 40 percent, to 330,000 from 550,000.

The two most important financial forces in the fight, the multinational Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the domestic President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, were both created in the early 2000s and last year provided most of the $16.8 billion spent on the disease. But the need will soon be $24 billion a year, the groups said.

“Where is that money going to come from?” Mr. Warren asked.

The number of people living with H.I.V. rose to a new high of 34 million in 2011, while the number of deaths from AIDS was 1.7 million, down from a peak of 2.3 million in 2005. As more people get life-sustaining antiretroviral treatment, the number of people living with H.I.V. grows.

Globally, the number of people on antiretroviral drugs reached 8 million, up from 6.6 million in 2010. However, an additional 7 million are sick enough to need them. The situation is worse for children; 72 percent of those needing pediatric antiretrovirals do not get them.

New infections fell most drastically since 2001 in Southern Africa — by 71 percent in Botswana, 58 percent in Zambia and 41 percent in South Africa, which has the world’s biggest epidemic.

But countries with drops greater than 50 percent were as geographically diverse as Barbados, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, India and Papua New Guinea.

The most important factor, Mr. Sidibé said, was not nationwide billboard campaigns to get people to use condoms or abstain from sex. Nor was it male circumcision, a practice becoming more common in Africa.

Rather, it was focusing treatment on high-risk groups. While saving babies is always politically popular, saving gay men, drug addicts and prostitutes is not, so presidents and religious leaders often had to be persuaded to help them. Much of Mr. Sidibé’s nearly four years in his post has been spent doing just that.

Many leaders are now taking “a more targeted, pragmatic approach,” he said, and are “not blocking people from services because of their status.”

Fast-growing epidemics are often found in countries that criminalize behavior. For example, homosexuality is illegal in many Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa, so gay and bisexual men, who get many of the new infections, cannot admit being at risk. The epidemics in Eastern Europe and Central Asia are driven by heroin, and in those countries, methadone treatment is sometimes illegal.

Getting people on antiretroviral drugs makes them 96 percent less likely to infect others, studies have found, so treating growing numbers of people with AIDS has also helped prevent new infections.

Ethiopia’s recruitment of 35,000 community health workers, who teach young people how to protect themselves, has also aided in prevention.

Mr. Sidibé acknowledged that persuading rich countries to keep donating money was a struggle. The Global Fund is just now emerging from a year of turbulence with a new executive director, and the American program has come under budget pressures. Also, he noted, many countries like South Africa and China are relying less on donors and are paying their own costs. The number of people on treatment in China jumped 50 percent in a single year.

Mr. Warren’s organization said in a report on Tuesday that the arsenal of prevention methods had expanded greatly since the days when the choice was abstain from sex, be faithful or use condoms. Male circumcision, which cuts infection risk by about 60 percent, a daily prophylactic pill for the uninfected and vaginal microbicides for women are in use or on the horizon, and countries need to use the ones suited to their epidemics, the report concluded.

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U.S., Mexico reach pact on Colorado River water sale

SAN DIEGO — After years of sporadic negotiations, U.S. and Mexican officials Tuesday are set to sign a major agreement aimed at improving binational cooperation over the Colorado River.

Under the five-year deal, regional water agencies in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada will purchase a total of nearly 100,000 acre-feet of water from Mexico's share of the Colorado River — enough to cover the needs of 200,000 families for a year.

In exchange, Mexico will receive $10 million to repair damage done to its irrigation canals by the magnitude 7.2 earthquake that struck the Mexicali Valley in 2010.

Jorge Zazueta Camacho, president of an irrigation district area near the quake's epicenter, said the repair of hundreds of miles of canals is desperately needed to bring thousands of acres of farmland back into production. Only 20% of his district's alfalfa, cotton and wheat fields currently were being cultivated, he said.

"The reconstruction effort has been very slow, and sometimes it stops for months because there's no money," Camacho said.

Beyond providing money to rebuild the Mexican infrastructure, the U.S. is promising to buy additional water from Mexico, at a quantity and price to be determined later, and allow it to flow to the delta south of the border — an area depleted in recent years by drought and increased consumption upstream.

To the dismay of Mexican fishermen and of environmentalists on both sides of the border, the river often is barely a trickle when it finishes its 1,400-mile journey to the delta and the Gulf of California.

The U.S.-Mexico agreement "is a major accomplishment for everyone who has worked to restore habitat in the delta and for the local communities who benefit," said Francisco Zamora, director of the Colorado River Delta Legacy Project for the Sonoran Institute.

Under the accord, Mexico will agree to take a lesser amount of water during times of drought and be allowed to store water in Lake Mead — on the Nevada-Arizona border — during times of surplus or when, because of infrastructure problems, it cannot use its entire annual allocation.

Officials hope the deal will lead to longer agreements between the two nations that depend on the Colorado River.

"It's a good way to open the door," said Jeff Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

And, said Michael Connor, commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the deal "ensures a strong partnership" on Colorado River issues.

"We share a culture, a border and resources with our neighbors in Mexico, and it's entirely appropriate that we also share solutions to the challenges we face in the Colorado River basin," Connor said.

The Metropolitan Water District will pay half of the $10 million and receive about 47,500 acre-feet of water. The Southern Nevada Water Authority, which supplies Las Vegas, and the Central Arizona Water Conservation District will split the remaining $5 million in cost and each receive 23,750 acre-feet.

Absent from Tuesday's signing ceremony at the Hotel del Coronado near San Diego will be representatives of the Imperial Irrigation District, the largest single user of Colorado River water. That entity has refused to participate because some of its officials see the deal as a water-grab by the Metropolitan Water District.

The deal does contain a promise by Metropolitan to negotiate with Imperial about possibly sharing some of the Mexican water. But that promise "amounts to little more than a wish list," said Kevin Kelley, general manager of the Imperial Irrigation District.

tony.perry@latimes.com

richard.marosi@latimes.com

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Best and Worst Movies Based on Sci-Fi/Fantasy Books (Sez You)

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 enjoyed a blockbuster opening last weekend, but none of the sparkly vampire flicks in the series made the cut when we asked Wired readers to name their favorite movies based on books.

Maybe there just aren't enough Twi-hards among our snarky readers, who had plenty to say about other memorable book-to-screen crossovers. Most divisive: David Lynch's phantasmagoric 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi novel Dune.

Wired's readers didn't stop at that books-based experiment gone wrong (or right, depending on your position). Click through our gallery for other speculative-fiction movies that commenters couldn't help but dissect. (For the record? The only reason we passed on Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange in our original list, "Novel Approaches: 10 Books That Became Great Sci-Fi and Fantasy Films," was so the director didn't hog the spotlight with 2001: A Space Odyssey.)

Above:

I love the Dune saga, and would kill for a good film adaptation. David Lynch has made some very interesting-looking movies, and I like a lot of them, but as a Dune fanboy, his film adaptation of the book is atrocious. —LHL2500

Which version have you seen? If you're talking about the original theatrical release, that was actually hated by Lynch himself, as the film company forced him to excise a lot of it to get within a specific running time. It's why he had his name withheld as director on it, and stuck the name "Alan Smithee" on instead, a tradition amongst directors who don't like the finished product. —Beeblebrox888

How can you miss David Lynch's Dune from Frank Herbert's classic? Although maligned by critics, IMO it ranks as one of the best sci-fi movies ever. —rpensotti

Lynch effectively invented the visuals associated with universe, even while deviating from the text's description significantly at times. I think that two consequent attempts of bringing Dune to the screen only highlight how much work was put into visuals. —LoudRambler

Worst ever? Dune. Great book, terrible movie. —Damian Brennan

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Why Oscar’s “Simple” Date-Change Is a Ticking Time Bomb

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – The press release didn’t look as if it contained big news.

“Key Dates Announced for the 85th Academy Awards,” read the headline on the September 18 announcement, which came significantly later than usual for the Academy and contained one seemingly innocuous line:

“In an effort to provide members and the public a longer period of time to see the nominated films, the Academy will reveal the 85th Academy Awards nominations on January 10, five days earlier than previously announced.”

But that little change – those five days, which moved the nominations from what was already an unusually early slot to the Thursday before the Golden Globes – has shaken all things Oscar, essentially detonating a time bomb across the Academy Awards landscape.

As advertised, the move will give members of the Academy and prospective viewers extra time to see the 35 or so features that will be nominated (plus another 10 documentaries and foreign-language films) – but it’ll give them significantly less time to see the 250 to 300 films that are eligible to be nominated.

“As an Academy member, I’m not happy about it,” said one voter, who was typical of those TheWrap has spoken to. “It’s short-sighted and unfair to members, and they’re limiting the number of movies that might get nominated because members won’t see as many. And as a marketer, it hampers you in every way and forces you to flood people with emails and mailings and screenings and screeners to get all your stuff out by January 1.”

Grumbling, moaning and the occasional gnashing of teeth over the compressed timeline has been almost constant since the announcement. One commonly heard phrase is, “What were they thinking?” Another is, “I know what they were thinking, and it has nothing to do with what they say they were thinking.”

To this latter camp, which includes both outsiders and AMPAS members, the clear intent of the move was to hurt the Golden Globes, the tacky show whose importance on the awards calendar has always rankled the Academy.

The governors were said to be determined to make the Globes (and its presenting body, the much-maligned Hollywood Foreign Press Association) irrelevant by announcing Oscar nominations before the Globes even happen … as if that would stop people from tuning in or persuade NBC, Dick Clark Productions or the HFPA to pull the plug on a multimillion-dollar cash cow that they would no doubt move to Thanksgiving weekend before they’d ever consider giving it up.

Yes, the move will put the Globes in the awkward position of taking place at a point where trade ads are more likely to proudly trumpet “six Oscar nominations!” than “Golden Globe winner!” And by the time Academy members are able to vote, the Globes results will most likely forgotten by anybody casting an Oscar ballot.

The move won’t impact the Globes ratings, but it could conceivably reduce attendance at the show: If a star hoping to use a fabulous Globes acceptance speech to boost an Oscar candidacy winds up not being nominated, will he or she still feel inclined to show up for the HFPA’s dog-and-pony show?

Among other awards shows, the real casualty could be the Broadcast Film Critics Association‘s Critics’ Choice Movie Awards, a reliable Oscar precursor that this year is scheduled to take place the evening of the day on which Oscar noms are announced.

It’s hard to imagine too many actors wanting to put on a brave face and mingle with nominated colleagues only a few hours after learning that Oscar voters have ignored them; I’m guessing the BFCA may find itself with at least a few last-minute cancellations and lame excuses.

But the move’s repercussions go far beyond other awards shows.

A voting window that ends on January 3, immediately after the Christmas/New Year’s holidays, will mean more pressure to book early screenings, more of a push to get parties and Q&As done before the holidays, and outright desperation to have screeners in voters’ hands before they head to Aspen or Hawaii for the break.

And for films released in December – a typical Oscar slot that has been utilized quite effectively in the past by the likes of “Million Dollar Baby” and “Shakespeare in Love” – the new calendar could be a killer: With nominating ballots due so soon after the holidays, films had better be must-sees if they want to get voters to check them out before casting their ballots.

Obviously, that won’t hurt the December releases “Django Unchained,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Les Miserables” and “The Hobbit” – those are no-brainers for any Academy member who wants to be the slightest bit thorough. But what about a lower-profile film like Michael Haneke’s “Amour,” which Sony Classics is releasing on December 19?

The Cannes Palme d’Or winner is strong enough to escape the foreign-language category and become a viable Best Picture contender if enough members see it, but SPC may have to push awfully hard to get it in front of voters already facing a year-end crunch.

The move also puts a hit on the Palm Springs International Film Festival, whose annual Awards Gala, which typically honors an array of Oscar hopefuls, now falls three days after polls close.

And the late-January Santa Barbara International Film Festival now sits in the 29-day no-man’s-land between the nominations and the opening of final voting, long enough after nominations that some potential honorees might want to wait for the Academy’s verdict before committing to an SBIFF tribute.

Still, it’ll make things easier for Oscar-watchers who also want to go to the Sundance Film Festival; rather than noms coming in the middle of that fest, they will happen two weeks before Park City kicks off.

And yes, the new calendar will, as advertised, give viewers and voters more time to watch the nominated films.

The same voter who slammed the move as unfair for members and terrible for marketers did concede one thing: “From the exhibition point of view, I think it’s a good thing. You get an additional two weeks in theaters with the films that have been nominated, and we all know that’s where the money is made.”

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Responding to Illnesses Manifesting Amid Recovery From Storm

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Dr. Aaron Gardener, center, attended to a patient at an ad hoc medical unit in Long Beach, N.Y. Many people have coughs, rashes and other ailments.

Day and night, victims of Hurricane Sandy have been streaming into ad hoc emergency rooms and relief centers, like the MASH-type medical unit on an athletic field in Long Beach, and the warming tent in the Rockaways the size of a small high school gym.

They complain of rashes, asthma and coughing. They need tetanus shots because — house-proud and armed with survivalist instincts — they have been ripping out waterlogged boards and getting poked by rusty nails. Those with back pain from sifting through debris receive muscle relaxants; those with chest pain from overexertion are hooked up to cardiac monitors.

“I’ve been coughing,” said Gabriel McAuley, 46, who has been working 16-hour days gutting homes and hauling debris in the Rockaways since the storm hit. “I’ve never felt a cough like that before. It’s deeper down.”

It is impossible to say how many people have been sickened by what Hurricane Sandy left behind: mold from damp drywall; spills from oil tanks; sewage from floodwater and unflushable toilets; tons upon tons of debris and dust. But interviews with hurricane victims, recovery workers, health officials and medical experts over the last week reveal that some of the illnesses that they feared would occur, based on the toxic substances unleashed by the storm and the experience of other disasters, notably Hurricane Katrina, have begun to manifest themselves.

Emergency rooms and poison control centers have reported cases of carbon monoxide exposure — and in New Jersey, several deaths have been attributed to it — from the misuse of generators to provide power and stoves to provide heat.

In Livingston, N.J., the Burn Center at St. Barnabas Medical Center had 16 burn cases over about six days, three times as many as usual, from people trying to dispel the cold and darkness with boiling water, gasoline, candles and lighter fluid.

Raw sewage spilled into homes in Baldwin and East Rockaway, in Nassau County, when a sewage plant shut down because of the surge and the system could not handle the backup. Sewage also spilled from a huge plant in Newark. “We tried to limit our presence in the house because the stink was horrible,” said Jennifer Ayres, 34, of Baldwin, who has been staying temporarily in West Hempstead. She said that she felt ill for several days, that her son had a scratchy throat, and that her mother, who lives in the house, had difficulty breathing, all problems she attributed to the two days they spent inside their house cleaning up last week. “I had stomach problems. I felt itchy beyond itchy on my face.”

Coughing — locally known as the Rockaway cough — is a common symptom that health officials said could come from mold, or from the haze of dust and sand kicked up by the storm and demolitions. The air in the Rockaways is so full of particles that the traffic police wear masks — though many recovery workers do not, worrying people who recall the fallout of another disaster.

“It’s just like 9/11,” said Kathy Smilardi, sitting inside the skeleton of her gutted home in Broad Channel, wrapped in a white puffy jacket, her breath visible in the afternoon cold. “Everyone runs in to clean up, and they’re not wearing masks. Are we going to wait 20 years to figure out that people are dying?”

Health officials and experts say the risks are real, but are cautioning against hysteria. Some coughing could be due to cold, damp weather. Lasting health effects from mold, dust and other environmental hazards generally require long-term, continuous exposure, they said. And the short-term effects can be mitigated by taking precautions like wearing masks, gloves and boots and removing mold-infested wallboard. “The reality is that cleaning up both muck and sewage and spills and removing walls and reconstruction and dealing with debris all do in fact pose concerns,” Daniel Kass, New York City’s deputy commissioner for environmental health, said Friday. “Are they vast or uncontrollable? No. But they depend on people doing work correctly and taking basic precautions.”

The Katrina cough was found to be temporary, said Roy J. Rando, a professor at Tulane’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Felicia Rabito, an epidemiologist at the school, said that healthy children exposed to mold after Hurricane Katrina showed no lasting respiratory symptoms when they moved back to new or renovated homes.

Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, lead levels in New Orleans’s soil dropped after the top layers of dirt, where lead from paint and gasoline can accumulate, were washed away. But in the two years afterward, soil testing found extremely high lead levels, Dr. Rabito said, which she theorized came from renovating old homes. “That’s a cautionary tale,” she said. Lead in soil can be tracked into homes and pose a health hazard to children playing inside or outside.

Though at least one outbreak of norovirus, a contagious gastrointestinal virus, occurred in a Brooklyn high school that was used as a shelter, New York and New Jersey health officials said they had not seen any significant spike in respiratory or gastrointestinal diseases related to the storm.

In Broad Channel, most homes on Noel Road, where Ms. Smilardi lives, have outdoor oil tanks that were overturned by the storm. The innards of many homes, built when asbestos was used, lie spilled among major and minor roads.

Ominous red spots covered both sides of Paul Nowinski’s burly torso. After the storm, Mr. Nowinski, a musician, waded into the basement of his childhood home on Beach 146th Street in the Rockaways to try to salvage records, books and instruments. He was up to his chest in water, which he thinks might have been contaminated with sewage. He said that he did not know the cause of the red marks; and that he had been too busy “schlepping” to go to the doctor.

Angela Macropoulos contributed reporting.

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Living with threats, making peace with the past

A whirring mechanical lift raised Davien Graham's wheelchair to the witness stand in Department X on the fourth floor of the Los Angeles County courthouse in Alhambra.

Pain burned at the base of his spine.

His eyes met Jimmy Santana's for the first time since the shooting. He thought Santana seemed much smaller sitting at the defense table than he had with the gun in his hand. In his baggy blue jail uniform, he looked like a child.

Two months earlier, on Jan. 12, 2008, Davien had been gunned down as he rode his bike in front of his church, a bystander in a gang war that had raged in Monrovia for two years.

He recognized Santana as the shooter. They had gone to school together. Still, Davien was afraid to identify him to police. He had been raised by a father and an uncle who were Crips, who taught him that victims don't snitch.

But Davien had shunned gangs for a Christian life, and believed lying was wrong. So when asked by detectives, he had circled Santana's photo in a lineup of mug shots.

Now he was being asked to set aside fears of retaliation and testify.

Staring at Santana, Davien said the first thing he remembered telling his family after the shooting was, "I forgive the person who did this to me."

Santana stared back, appearing unmoved.

Sitting in his wheelchair, legs paralyzed, Davien could see Santana's mother in the gallery, a small woman with a strained face. A group of young people lounged behind her.

Maybe they were in the car with Jimmy that day.

Police never caught the getaway driver.

The prosecutor asked a question, addressing Davien as John Doe, an effort to protect his identity. It didn't matter. Everyone involved in the case knew Davien.

"Do you see the man who shot you here in court today?"

"On the right side of the courtroom, and he's wearing a blue uniform," Davien said.

That was all the judge needed to hear. He ordered Santana to stand trial. Davien was free to go.

But he didn't feel free.

Sheriff's investigators said he wasn't at risk, and his family didn't need protection. But he didn't trust the Sheriff's Department. The sheriff had sent a task force to Monrovia to stop the gang violence. They dropped warnings at gangsters' homes.

His uncle got one. So did Davien.

That upset him. Unlike his uncle, Davien had never joined a gang.

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<em>Observation Deck</em>: On Narratives and TV Scripts

Messing with some terminology this week on Observation Deck. I’m interested in what constitutes the narratives we tell ourselves about narratives — stories behind stories, making-of stories, stories that characters tell themselves, stories that characters can’t hear but viewers and readers can. Partially that’s because I watch a lot of television, and I wonder how they make it. And partially it’s because … well, watch the video and you’ll see.

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