The Washington Post - 06.08.2019

TUESDAY, AUGUST 6 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU B5

BY COLIN CAMPBELL

When the Howard Street Tun-
nel opened in 1895, the 1.4-mile
bore under downtown Baltimore
was a modern marvel. Iron-
arched and lined with bricks, it
used electricity to light the tunnel
and power the Baltimore & Ohio
Railroad engines pulling passen-
gers and freight through it.
The 124-year-old passage
evolved into a critical link for East
Coast commerce on what is now
the CSX railroad, but it’s about 18
inches too short for today’s
freight trains to carry truck-size
shipping containers stacked two
high. For years, officials have
wanted to fix the tunnel, a choke
point for shipments between the
Northeast and points west and
south.
Jim White, executive director
of the Maryland Port Administra-
tion, considered the tunnel the
port of Baltimore’s Achilles’ heel,
limiting the port’s container busi-
ness. So when the federal govern-
ment announced last month it
would pony up $125 million to
help pay for a $466 million tunnel
expansion, White immediately
began spreading the word to ma-
jor Asian shipping alliances
about the project, which stands to
make Baltimore a more attractive
and cost-effective port.
“We’ll be selling our future
ability to compete with all the
other major U.S. ports in double-
stack,” White said. “We’ll go from
not having good rail service here
to having competitive rail service.
Once we get the Howard Street
Tunnel done, we’ll have a tremen-
dous package here to offer con-
tainer lines.”

One hitch remains to be re- solved, and of course it’s money. The federal grant is $103 million less than the state had sought. Maryland has promised $147 million for the work, and CSX, which owns the tunnel, committed $91 million. Gov. Larry Hogan, who called the project Maryland’s “most sig- nificant economic development accomplishment,” is preparing to negotiate with the Jacksonville, Fla.-based railroad and other un- named stakeholders over how to cover the shortfall. The Republican governor called the shortfall “minuscule, compared to the potential return on investment.” The project would double the tunnel’s freight capacity, remove trucks from highways and bring economic benefits valued at more than half a billion dollars to 25 Eastern states, he said. Citing “sensitive negotiations,” Hogan declined to say whether the state might contribute more money, but he promised to “push in all directions,” seeking invest- ments from those who stand to benefit from the project and the thousands of jobs it is expected to create. CSX declined to discuss the negotiations but said in a state- ment that it “will continue our collaborative relationship with our state and federal partners as they evaluate” the project. Not two years ago, the railroad backed off an earlier $135 million commitment to the project, say- ing it couldn’t justify such an investment. CSX came back to the table in December but with less money.

Originally, White said, the port administration was authorized only to match CSX’s $91 million contribution, but Hogan was will- ing to make a larger bid, signaling to railroad and federal officials Maryland’s desire to move for- ward. “We’re going to find a way to make it happen,” Hogan said. “The journey’s not over yet.” The original cost estimate for the tunnel expansion was far higher — to the tune of billions. Rerouting the freight train traffic was expected to be an expensive, logistical nightmare. The project’s timeline was expected to be about five years. But it became more attainable when CSX’s engineering depart- ment came up with a far less expensive strategy, called the Tunnel Enlargement System, us-

ing 20-foot supports and a machine inside the tunnel that al- lows trains to run underneath it continuously during the work, White said. “Through the Tunnel Enlarge- ment System, they felt they could get it done in three years or less, while running trains 24 hours a day,” he said. To create the needed clearance for taller trains, the tunnel’s arched ceiling would be notched, its floor would be lowered and steel crossties, which lie lower than wooden ones, would be in- stalled. The long-sought tunnel expansion became even more critical for Maryland after the Panama Canal’s expansion in 2016. The larger, deeper canal allowed a new generation of mammoth container ships carrying goods

from Asia to more quickly reach the U.S. East Coast. Since the expanded canal opened, the port of Baltimore has experienced double-digit growth in container volume. A record 1.02 million 20-foot-equivalent units — the standard measure because containers generally come in 20- or 40-foot sizes — crossed the docks at the port’s piers last year. The port of Baltimore has the advantages of deep berths, large cranes, the nation’s fourth-largest local consumer base and conven- ient highway connections. Its po- sition as the farthest-inland port on the East Coast is a mixed blessing, requiring ships to travel an extra 155 miles up the Chesa- peake Bay and back, but lowering costs for inland shipments once they arrive. It has led in the country in shipments of cars, trucks, farm equipment and other four-wheeled cargo for years. But the port’s container business has long lagged well behind that of its East Coast competitors in New York and Norfolk, partly because of the railroad bottle- neck. Most of the containers im- ported in Baltimore are picked up from the port on trucks, and 90 percent of those containers stay within 150 miles. Because of its heavy reliance on trucking, the spiking container volume led to such horrible con- gestion on the Seagirt docks that truckers picketed outside the ter- minal in freezing temperatures last winter to protest hours-long waits to pick up cargo. Ports America Chesapeake has spent tens of millions in the past nine months to upgrade about

80 percent of its container-han- dling equipment in an effort to reduce those wait times to under an hour, White said. The company, which did not respond to a request for com- ment, will implement an auto- mated operating system in the next two months, dredge an addi- tional 50-foot container ship berth and install four more tow- ering container cranes at Seagirt by 2021, White said. Increased capacity at the How- ard Street Tunnel is expected to transfer some of the long-haul trucking business to rail, but truckers, too, could see an in- crease in cargo headed to distri- bution centers in Philadelphia and southern New Jersey if more shipping companies opt to make Baltimore one of their first East Coast ports of call. “You get the lion’s share of discretionary cargo if you’re the first or second port of call,” White said. Members of Maryland’s con- gressional delegation held joint phone calls with U.S. Transporta- tion Secretary Elaine Chao to push for the federal funding. Maryland now needs to “negotiate hard” with CSX and other stakeholders and look for other sources of federal money that can be used to help pay for the project, said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.). He called the railroad’s $91 million bid “a good starting offer” which, he said, “should have been higher.” “There are ample opportuni- ties to make sure we have all the funding we need,” he said. “This is doable.” — Baltimore Sun

MARYLAND

Hogan seeks deal with CSX on Howard Street Tunnel project after shortfall

obituaries

BY WILLIAM BRANIGIN

Nuon Chea, the infamous
“Brother Number Two” who pre-
sided over some of the worst
atrocities of Khmer Rouge rule in
Cambodia in the late 1970s and
ultimately was convicted of
crimes against humanity and
genocide, died Aug. 4 at a hospital
in Phnom Penh. He was 93.
The country’s U.N.-assisted
genocide tribunal confirmed the
death but did not disclose the
cause.
As the secretive chief ideo-
logue and deputy of the radical
communist regime led by Pol Pot,
he was the official mainly respon-
sible for devising and operating
the Khmer Rouge killing ma-
chine — carrying out a policy of
mass executions that became a
hallmark of Cambodia’s holo-
caust. It is estimated that about
2 million people died, roughly a
quarter of the country’s popula-
tion, from summary executions,
famine, disease and overwork
during the Khmer Rouge’s brief
but brutal reign of terror from
1975 to 1979.
Known as “Pol Pot’s shadow,”
Mr. Nuon Chea was convicted of
crimes against humanity by a
special U.N.-backed tribunal in
2014 and sentenced to life impris-
onment. He was 88, the oldest
and most senior surviving Khmer
Rouge leader and one of two
defendants in the case. Khieu
Samphan, the regime’s former
titular president, was convicted
with him.
After a second lengthy trial, the
tribunal in 2018 also found Mr.
Nuon Chea guilty of genocide
against minority Cham Muslims
and ethnic Vietnamese and hand-
ed him another life sentence.
According to a notorious for-
mer Khmer Rouge security chief
and prison warden, Mr. Nuon
Chea personally oversaw massive
purges of suspected “traitors”
within Khmer Rouge ranks.
Thousands were tortured into
making bogus confessions at the
Tuol Sleng prison in the capital,
Phnom Penh, and were subse-
quently executed. At least 14,000
prisoners passed through the for-
mer high school’s gates. Only
seven survived.
It was Mr. Nuon Chea, not Pol
Pot, who directly ordered the
killings, the former security chief,
Kaing Khek Iev, better known as
Duch, told journalist Nate Thayer
during interviews in 1999. Duch’s
account was supported by docu-
ments left behind at Tuol Sleng.
In the regime’s final days be-
fore invading Vietnamese forces
captured Phnom Penh in January
1979, Mr. Nuon Chea also “or-
dered me to kill all the remaining
prisoners” at Tuol Sleng, Duch
said. Among them were at least
two Americans, who were cap-
tured while sailing a yacht off the
Cambodian coast in late 1978 and

tortured into “confessing” that they worked for the CIA. For some purge victims, Duch recalled, Mr. Nuon Chea demand- ed that Duch bring photos of their bodies to his office to prove they had been executed, Thayer re- ported in the Far Eastern Eco- nomic Review. Unlike other former Khmer Rouge leaders who were called to account for the regime’s crimes, Mr. Nuon Chea was largely unre- pentant. “Believe me, if these traitors were alive, the Khmers as a people would have been finished,” he said, referring to those purged, in a video recorded by a Cambodian journalist before the former Khmer Rouge second-in-com- mand was arrested in 2007. “So I dare to suggest our decision was the correct one. If we had shown mercy to these people, the nation would have been lost.” He added: “We didn’t kill many. We only killed the bad people, not the good.” Video clips of his remarks were played at his trial. Born Lao Kim Lorn on July 7, 1926, in Cambodia’s western Bat- tambang province, Mr. Nuon Chea grew up in a Sino-Khmer family of modest means, the third of nine children. His father was a trader and a corn farmer; his mother was a seamstress. His early education was in the Thai, French and Khmer languages. In 1942, he traveled to Bangkok in neighboring Thailand to com- plete high school and pursue higher education. (Thailand took control of Battambang during World War II, making him a Thai citizen.) Using the pseudonym Runglert Laodi, he stayed at a temple with Buddhist monks and attended a school on the prem- ises. Starting in 1946, he studied law at Bangkok’s Thammasat University. He also joined a leftist Thai youth group and worked as a clerk in the Thai Finance Minis- try. In 1950, Mr. Nuon Chea joined the Communist Party of Thailand while still at Thammasat. Later that year, a month after starting a clerical job at the Foreign Minis- try, he abandoned his studies, joined the Vietnamese-led Com- munist Party of Indochina and returned to Cambodia to partici- pate in the struggle against French colonialism. He adopted Nuon Chea as his “revolutionary name.” He made his way to North Vietnam in 1953 and underwent two years of training. He then returned to Phnom Penh, where he met Pol Pot for the first time. In 1960, he was elected deputy secretary of an underground party whose members were dubbed the “Khmers Rouges” (Red Khmers) by Cambodia’s leader at the time, Prince Norodom Siha- nouk. It later became the Com-

munist Party of Kampuchea, known as the shadowy “Angka,” or Organization, and unveiled publicly only in 1977. In a marriage arranged by the party, Mr. Nuon Chea in 1957 wed Ly Kim Seng, who would become a cook for Pol Pot, tasked with safeguarding him from poison- ing. She and their four children survive. When Sihanouk’s government published a list of 34 suspected “subversive agents” in 1963, Pol Pot, who was on the list under his real name, fled the capital with some of his top confederates. Mr. Nuon Chea, whose identity re- mained secret, stayed behind, working variously as a teacher, food vendor and company clerk while trying to build the party and occasionally traveling in dis- guise to visit Pol Pot in his jungle hideouts. Eventually, after Sihanouk was deposed in a 1970 military coup, Mr. Nuon Chea fled Phnom Penh as well. An outraged Sihanouk joined forces with his former adversaries, whose ranks then swelled dramatically. By April 1975, the U.S.-backed government’s forces were spent, and the Khmer Rouge swept into the capital. Government troops and officials were promptly massacred. Phnom Penh and other cities were evacuated, their residents forced at gunpoint to trek into the countryside to toil in the fields. Disobedience was met with summary execution. The country was transformed into a vast slave labor camp. People, especially

city dwellers, were completely expendable. It was all part of a half-baked plan — concocted in the jungles from a toxic brew of Marxism and what one scholar described as “badly digested Maoism” — to create a pure communist state in a single bound. When it failed, resulting in famine, widespread death and economic ruin, the revolution turned on itself. Mr. Nuon Chea and other leaders blamed inter- nal sabotage, and massive purges were launched. Driven from power by the 1979 Vietnamese invasion, the Khmer Rouge leadership retreated to western Cambodia and resumed guerrilla warfare. But the insur- gency gradually petered out in the 1990s following U.N.-backed elections, and Mr. Nuon Chea formally surrendered to the government in late 1998. He expect-

ed to be allowed to continue living modestly next door to Kh- ieu Samphan in the remote Pailin province, but both were arrested in 2007 on charges of crimes against humanity. At his trial, Mr. Nuon Chea defended the decision to evacu- ate Cambodian cities, claiming it was to save the population from feared U.S. bombardment and to ensure access to food supplies. He blamed Vietnamese agents for virtually everything that went wrong during Khmer Rouge rule. But prosecutors presented evidence that he had personally ordered torture and executions on a massive scale. Confessions recovered from the Tuol Sleng prison provided a chilling counterpoint to claims that “torture works.” Instead,

they showed that people will say anything under torture to make it stop. Among the torture victims was Hu Nim, Pol Pot’s former information minister, who con- fessed to being a longtime “officer of the CIA.” He wrote: “I’m not a human being, I’m an animal.” Hu Nim was executed in July 1977, after three months in Tuol Sleng. In April 1978, two Americans, James William Clark and Lance McNamara, were captured when their boat was fired upon and stopped by Khmer Rouge forces. In a 20-page typewritten confes- sion, Clark spun a bizarre tale of drug smuggling as a cover for espionage. Describing his pur- ported recruitment, he wrote that he signed a paper that “made me a member of the CIA with the number 1492.” One of the last of four Ameri- cans slain at Tuol Sleng was Michael Scott Deeds, who wrote that he was on a spying mission for the CIA when he was caught sailing a yacht with a fellow Californian, Christopher Edward Delance, off the Cambodian coast in November 1978. Deeds, 29, said he joined the Navy at age 18 and, after one week of training, was recruited into the CIA by a man named Lazenby, “a commanding officer of the CIA.” (Actor George Lazenby played James Bond in a 1969 film.) The document was dated Jan. 5, 1979, two days before the Vietnamese captured Phnom Penh. The voluminous records left behind at Tuol Sleng — including descriptions of torture and photos of victims before and after they were “smashed to pieces,” in Khmer Rouge parlance — consti- tuted a trove of incriminating evidence, and Mr. Nuon Chea was furious with Duch that all of it was not burned before the Khmer Rouge fled. But Duch had a retort for the furtive Brother Number Two. As he explained years later: “Nuon Chea didn’t tell me the Vietnam- ese were coming.” [email protected]

NUON CHEA, 93

Khmer Rouge’s ‘Brother Number Two,’ main operator of killing machine

MAK REMISSA/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK Nuon Chea was convicted of genocide by a tribunal.

HENG SINITH/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK Cambodian Khmer Rouge leaders, from left, Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Leng Sary, Son Sen and other supporters are pictured in 1975 in Phnom Penh. Their reign of terror resulted in millions of deaths.

JERRY JACKSON/BALTIMORE SUN Gov. Larry Hogan is negotiating after a federal grant to raise the tunnel’s height for more cargo was $103 million less than sought.

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