Los Angeles Times - 09.11.2019

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reporters, slamming the
“fake whistleblower” as a
“disgrace to our country.”
The individual’s identity, he
added, “should be revealed.”
Although a parade of
White House, State Depart-
ment and other officials
have confirmed and ex-
panded on the whistleblow-
er’s account, the president
and his allies have suggested
that anonymity is proof of
partisan bias.
Trump long has attacked
anyone who criticizes him as
biased or corrupt. In Sep-
tember, days after the com-
plaint was revealed, Trump
likened the whistleblower
to a spy inside the White
House who had committed
treason.
At a Louisiana rally on
Wednesday, Trump read a
tweet that the whistleblow-
er’s attorney, Mark Zaid, had
sent soon after Trump’s in-
auguration in 2017 that said

“a coup has started” and

“impeachment will follow ul-

timately.”

“His lawyer, who said the

worst things possible two

years ago, he should be sued

and maybe for treason,”

Trump told reporters Fri-

day.

The whistleblower’s law-

yers warned the White

House this week that the

president’s efforts to un-

mask the whistleblower

were putting their client in

danger.

Zaid warned in a state-

ment that anyone identify-

ing a suspected name for the

whistleblower would put

“that individual and their

family at risk of serious

harm,” and would deter fu-

ture whistleblowers from

coming forward. He said he

would not confirm or deny

any name published or pro-

moted by the president or

his supporters.

Zaid’s co-counsel, An-

drew P. Bakaj, sent a letter to

White House Counsel Pat

Cipollone on Thursday

warning of “the legal and

ethical peril” that Trump

could face if anyone is “phys-

ically harmed as a result of

his, or surrogates’ behavior.”

So far, no mainstream

news organization has

named the individual. Don-

ald Trump Jr. linked on

Twitter to an article in Breit-

bart, a far-right website,

which cited another conser-

vative news outlet that pur-

ported to name the person.

Trump Jr. denied coordinat-

ing with the White House,

and the name has not been

confirmed.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.),

who appeared with Trump

at a rally Monday in Lexing-

ton, Ky., urged the media to

out the whistleblower while

declining to do so himself.

“Do your job and print his

name,” he said.

On Wednesday, Paul

blocked a Senate resolution

that would have reaffirmed

support for whistleblower

protections, prompting an

exchange with the bill’s

sponsor, Sen. Mazie Hirono,

a Hawaii Democrat.

“Let’s be clear. The real

purpose of these attacks is

to scare anyone else who

may be thinking of coming

forward to stay silent,” Hi-

rono said on the Senate

floor.

Trump’s daughter

Ivanka offered a different

view from her father, telling

the Associated Press on Fri-

day during a visit to Morocco

that the whistleblower’s

identity is “not particularly

relevant aside from what the

motivation behind all this

was.”

“The whistleblower

shouldn’t be a substantive

part of the conversation,”

she said, because the person

“did not have firsthand in-

formation.”

Transcripts from closed-

door impeachment hearings

released this week show that

Republican attorneys have

asked questions in several

hearings intended to reveal

or confirm the person’s iden-

tity. None of the witnesses

did so.

Republicans have also

sought to force the whistle-

blower to testify in Congress,

rejecting Zaid’s offer to have

his client answer their writ-

ten questions.

“All whistleblowers are

not created equal,” Sen. Ron

Johnson (R-Wis.) said

Thursday on Fox News. He

called the whistleblower an

“anonymous informant” and

said “it was pretty unreason-

able for the whistleblower to

expect to remain anony-

mous.”

Trump has claimed that

the whistleblower gave false

information in a complaint

that alleged Trump pres-

sured Ukrainian President

Volodymyr Zelensky to in-

vestigate Democrats, in-

cluding former Vice Presi-

dent Joe Biden, after freez-

ing nearly $400 million in

U.S. aid to Ukraine.

But a memorandum of

the call released by the

White House and testimony

by multiple witnesses have

borne out the whistleblow-

er’s narrative.

Three witnesses are

scheduled to testify next

week in the first public hear-

ings of the impeachment in-

quiry.

The current circum-

stances do not directly echo

Plame’s. But there are simi-

larities.

She was thrust into the

spotlight after her husband,

Joe Wilson, a former di-

plomat, had written an op-

ed that publicly contra-

dicted part of President

George W. Bush’s justifica-

tion for going to war in Iraq.

The CIA had sent Wilson

to the African nation of Ni-

ger to investigate whether it

had sold a uranium concen-

trate to Iraq for a suspected

nuclear weapons program.

Wilson, who died in Septem-

ber, quickly determined the

claim was false.

But administration offi-

cials, in an apparent act of

retaliation, suggested Wil-

son only got the job because

he was married to a CIA offi-

cer, and leaked her name to

several reporters. A subse-

quent investigation led to

the jailing of a New York

Times reporter who refused

to reveal her source and the

conviction of a top White

House official for lying and

obstruction.

Plame sees a common

thread: “Shoot the messen-

ger. Trump is fantastic at

this tactic — ‘Look at the

shiny ball,’” she said.

Plame said she fears the

whistleblower could face

personal danger as the rhet-

oric escalates. She said she

was denied protection for

her and her family after they

received a credible threat.

“I felt somewhat, frankly,

abandoned by the leader-

ship of the CIA. They didn’t

know what to do with me. I

was such a political hot po-

tato,” she said.

In the end, Plame said

she relied on friends and

family for support — and

urged the whistleblower to

do the same.

“This will be a storm, you

will need them,” she said.

“He’ll just have to hunker

down and try to weather

this.”

Ex-CIA officer has advice for whistleblower

[Plame, from A1]

VALERIE PLAME’Srole as an undercover CIA

operative was blown in an act of political retribution.

Mark WilsonGetty Images

In a perfect world, ROSS
would rapidly identify which
fire departments are best
positioned to respond to a
developing blaze and alert
them. But commanders say
the system is so outdated it
hinders them from getting to
the scene of a fire quickly.
As a workaround, the
chiefs of Southern Califor-
nia’s biggest firefighting
agencies — Los Angeles,
Ventura and Orange coun-
ties along with Los Angeles
City Fire — say they now cir-
cumvent the mutual-aid sys-
tem altogether in the first
stages of fighting a fast-mov-
ing fire.
When the Saddleridge
fire broke out in Sylmar in
late October, Fennessy said
he dispatched firefighters
before the request arrived at
his station. When the 46 fire
broke out in Riverside
County in the middle of the
night amid powerful winds,
Los Angeles County sent
two teams of engines and
firefighters even though the
request didn’t reach dis-
patchers until 9:30 a.m., offi-
cials said.
“From the perspective of
accountability and tracking
resources, it’s a good tool,”
Los Angeles County Fire
Chief Daryl Osby said of the
mutual-aid software. “But
from a perspective of getting
resources to an incident
quickly, it creates delays.”
The system is essentially
facing challenges on two
fronts: not enough resources
and aging technology.
The lack of resources was
highlighted last month
when Los Angeles County
released its after-action re-
port on the Woolsey fire.
In the Woolsey fire’s first
10 hours, commanders re-
quested 299 additional fire
engines and received only
42% of what they’d asked for.
By the time the worst of the
blaze was over, requests for
874 engines had gone unful-
filled, or 50% of what com-

manders asked for never ar-

rived. Crews had been

stretched thin by the time

the Woolsey fire broke out

due to the Camp fire in Para-

dise and the Hill fire in Ven-

tura County, which started

less than an hour before

Woolsey and was a more im-

mediate threat to nearby

structures.

“It’s a domino effect. The

more fires you have, the big-

ger the fires, the longer that

they last, that is resource-

taxing,” said Brian Marshall,

the fire and rescue chief for

the California Office of

Emergency Services, which

coordinates the mutual-aid

program statewide. “The

mutual-aid system is alive

and well, but you can only

tax it so much.”

Fire chiefs say that the

farther away the request for

resources goes, the less

likely they are to receive a full

order and the longer it will

take for those firefighters to

arrive. Crews that are de-

ployed to major fires can be

away for weeks at a time.

“If it’s my neighbor, I’m

going to send a lot out there,

even if I’m experiencing

[bad] conditions,” Fennessy

said. But in the Kincade fire,

he sent just one strike team

up to Sonoma County. “I

couldn’t send 10 up north be-

cause of the weather that

was forecasted. At least in

L.A., San Diego, I know

they’ll come back.”

The report revealed a

dramatic increase in the

number of mutual-aid re-

quests that have gone unful-

filled since at least 2012.

In 2012, requests for 134

fire engines and water ten-

ders were unfulfilled

through the system. By 2015,

the year that the wind-driv-

en Valley fire burned Clear

Lake, that number climbed

to 954.

In 2016 the stubborn So-

beranes fire took months to

put out, and unfilled mutu-

al-aid requests jumped to

more than 3,000 engines.

The number hit an all-time

high the next year when re-

quests for 6,134 engines and

water tenders went unful-

filled amid the wine country

fires and the Thomas fire in

Ventura and Santa Barbara

counties. Unfilled mutual-

aid requests dropped to

2,724 last year.

Marshall said the state is

slowly trying to build up its

fleet to match the increasing

need.

But it has been slow going

so far.

Following the 2003 fire

siege, a blue-ribbon commis-

sion set up by the state

called for the California De-

partment of Forestry and

Fire Protection to add 150

engines and more aircraft.

Some of those engines could

be deployed in 2020, Mar-

shall said. The department

is also adding nighttime fly-

ing helicopters and fixed-

wing aircraft that can drop

retardant over the next few

years, though those have lit-

tle use against the wind-

driven fires that cause the

most damage.

Once they’re all incorpo-

rated into the state’s fleet,

commanders will still have

to negotiate the state’s

software to deploy them.

When the situation is urgent,

local agencies opt to just

work around it in the short

term.

Local fire chiefs reach out

to each other individually

when resources are needed

immediately, said Los Ange-

les Fire Department Chief

Ralph Terrazas. “I texted

[Ventura County Fire Chief

Mark] Lorenzen when the

Easy fire began and showed

him a projection of where it

would go and told him we’re

sending a strike team and a

helitanker. On the same text

was Osby and Fennessy,

and they texted they were

sending two strike teams

each.”

Sometimes such re-

quests can take hours to

flow through the system. Af-

ter the 2007 recession, when

local governments every-

where began to tighten their

spending, a culture of “wait-

ing for the order to come

through” took hold when the

requests were big and far

away.

“I may not know the

chiefs, so they are essentially

waiting for the coordination

center to fill them in,” said

Glendale Fire Chief Silvio

Lanzas, who similarly relies

on close relationships with

his neighboring depart-

ments. “There is definitely a

slowdown in the resource or-

dering process.”

Despite its flaws, every

fire chief interviewed said

that California’s mutual-aid

system continues to serve as

a global model for moving

massive amounts of re-

sources relatively efficiently.

But after the Woolsey fire re-

port, others are less confi-

dent.

In October, Los Angeles

County Supervisor Janice

Hahn said the system was

essentially “broken” and

called for the county to hire

more firefighters.

“It has been 20 years

since we invested in our Fire

Department, and it is about

time we get them the re-

sources they need,” she said

in a statement.

Delays in fire agencies’ aid system

[Firefighting,from A1]

FIREFIGHTERSmop up the hillside along the 14 Freeway in the Newhall Pass last month. When the Sad-

dleridge fire broke out, Orange County firefighters were dispatched before the request for aid even arrived.

Irfan KhanLos Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — Two
senior National Security
Council officials told House
investigators that they were
alarmed by Rudolph W. Giu-
liani’s efforts to conduct a
shadow U.S. foreign policy in
Ukraine, including his push
for what one called “partisan
investigations” that could
help President Trump, ac-
cording to transcripts re-
leased Friday by House
Democrats.
Lt. Col. Alexander Vind-
man, an expert on Ukraine
who still works in the White
House, and Fiona Hill, who
resigned in July as the presi-
dent’s national security ad-
visor on Russian and Euro-
pean affairs, voiced similar
concerns about Giuliani’s
unconventional demands to
leaders in Ukraine and how
to work with — or around —
him.
They also said Mick Mul-

vaney, the acting White

House chief of staff, and

Gordon Sondland, a Trump

donor who was appointed

U.S. ambassador to the Eu-

ropean Union, operated out-

side traditional channels in

the alleged quid pro quo —

withholding nearly $400 mil-

lion in U.S. aid while de-

manding Ukraine investi-

gate Democrats — that is at

the heart of the House im-

peachment inquiry.

Sondland, who testified

last month, amended his

original testimony this week

to say he recalled telling

Ukrainian officials that re-

lease of the U.S. aid would be

contingent on Kyiv opening

the investigations that

Trump wanted.

Release of the lengthy

transcripts Friday helps set

the stage for a historic shift

in the impeachment inquiry

as the House Intelligence

Committee prepares to

launch the first televised

hearings next Wednesday

and Friday. Three veteran

U.S. diplomats involved in

Ukraine are scheduled to ap-

pear as the first witnesses.

Former national security

advisor John Bolton ap-

peared to share concerns

that Giuliani, Sondland and

Mulvaney were conducting

an off-the-books foreign pol-

icy, according to the tran-

scripts. Hill said Bolton de-

scribed Giuliani, the presi-

dent’s personal lawyer, as “a

hand grenade that is going

to blow everybody up.”

Hill said matters came to

a head after Sondland told

visiting Ukrainian officials

on July 10 that Mulvaney

would only commit to invit-

ing Ukrainian President

Volodymyr Zelensky to the

White House “if they were

going to go forward with in-

vestigations.”

“Ambassador Bolton

asked me to go over and re-

port this to our NSC counsel,

to John Eisenberg,” Hill said.

“And he told me, and this is a

direct quote from Ambas-

sador Bolton: ‘You go and

tell Eisenberg that I am not

part of whatever drug deal

Sondland and Mulvaney are

cooking up on this.’”

Eisenberg, who is legal

advisor to the National Se-

curity Council and deputy

counsel to the president for

national security affairs,

also has declined to testify.

Bolton, Hill said, “made it

clear that he believed that

they were making, basically,

an improper arrangement”

and were “predicating the

meeting in the White House”

on the Ukrainians agreeing

to launch the investigations

Trump wanted.

Democrats had subpoe-

naed Bolton to testify this

week, but he declined, say-

ing he would await a court

ruling on whether he must

comply.

His lawyer, Charles J.

Cooper, told House lawyers

in a letter Friday that Bolton

had more information on

Ukraine that hadn’t been

disclosed. But he reiterated

that Bolton won’t testify

without clarity from the

courts, seemingly pressing

the House to not give up on

hearing his testimony.

Bolton was “personally

involved in many of the

events, meetings and con-

versations about which you

have already received testi-

mony, as well as many rele-

vant meetings and conver-

sations that have not yet

been discussed in the testi-

monies thus far,” Cooper

wrote.

Mulvaney also defied a

subpoena to testify Friday in

the closed-door hearings.

In October, Mulvaney ap-

peared to admit that the ad-

ministration had in fact held

up aid to push Kyiv to inves-

tigate a debunked claim that

Ukraine had meddled in the

2016 election, and to investi-

gate former Vice President

Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

Bolton considered Giuliani a ‘hand grenade’

National security

officials were worried

about Trump lawyer’s

efforts in Ukraine,

transcripts show.

By Jennifer Haberkorn
and Eli Stokols