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THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 2010

washingtonpost.com • 75¢

Pakistan charges 5 N.Va. men in alleged terror plot
by Jerry Markon, Karin Brulliard and Rizwan Mohammed Authorities in Pakistan filed
terrorism charges Wednesday against five Northern Virginia men and, for the first
time, outlined an extensive plot that included plans to fight U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan
and possibly an attack in the United States. The men, who lived and grew up in the
Alexandria area, were arrested in Pakistan in December. They were each charged with
five counts in a special anti-terror court, three of which carry a possible life
prison term. Prosecutors say they were in the planning stages of attacks against
a Pakistani nuclear plant and an air base and other targets in Afghanistan and “territories
of the United States.” Defense lawyers said that referred to attacks inside the
United States, though the government presented no evidence of such a plot. Ever since
the men were arrested at a time of growing concern about homegrown terrorists, there
have been questions about whether they are hardened jihadists, as described by Pakistani
police, or humanitarians who left the United States to help other Muslims, as they
say. Pakistani prosecutors said they concluded the men posed a serious security threat.
“They wanted to be part of an operation,” said prosecutor Napakistan continued
on A10

CIA director says attacks have hobbled al-Qaeda
LEADERS DEEP IN HIDING
Panetta credits efforts with Pakistan
by Joby Warrick and Peter Finn
BILL O’LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST

CIA Director Leon Panetta says al-Qaeda is “having a very difficult time putting
together any kind of command and control.”

Aggressive attacks against alQaeda in Pakistan’s tribal region have driven Osama
bin Laden and his top deputies deeper into hiding and disrupted their ability to
plan sophisticated operations,

CIA Director Leon Panetta said Wednesday. So profound is al-Qaeda’s disarray that
one of its lieutenants, in a recently intercepted message, pleaded with bin Laden
to come to the group’s rescue and provide some leadership, Panetta said. He credited
improved coordination with Pakistan’s government and what he called “the most
aggressive operation that CIA has been involved in in our history,” offering a
near-acknowledgment of what is officially a secret war. “Those operations are seriously
disrupting al-Qaeda,” Panetta said. “It’s pretty clear from all the intelligence
we are getting that they are having a very difficult

time putting together any kind of command and control, that they are scrambling.
And that we really do have them on the run.” Panetta is one of several senior officials
who have stepped forward to argue that the administration is making gains against
extremists, in part to rebut Republican criticism that President Obama has weakened
national security. He is not the first CIA director to point to progress in the war
against al-Qaeda, claims that sometimes prove too ambitious. “I have an excellent
idea of where [bin Laden] is,” then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss told an interviewer
panetta continued on A16

Obama sways Kucinich to a ‘yes’
President says he’s ‘confident’ health-care measure will pass
by Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane President Obama claimed his first convert on health-care
reform Wednesday, as senior Democrats, labor unions and an array of interest groups
intensified their efforts to sway wavering lawmakers before a climactic vote in the
House this weekend. House leaders expressed increasing optimism about pushing Obama’s
top domestic initiative to final passage, even as they continued to tinker with the
last element of the package and their day for a vote appeared to slip to Sunday.
Taking a break from his face-to-face efforts to win support for the measure, Obama
made a rare appearance on Fox News Channel to declare that, after a year-long battle,
Congress is finally poised to deliver the farreaching overhaul to his desk. “I’m
confident it will pass. And the reason I’m confident that it’s going to pass
is because it’s the right thing to do,” the president said in a sometimes testy
interview with reporter Bret Baier, who repeatedly prodded him about special deals
in the package that were used to win over recalcitrant lawmakers, as well as a much-criticized
parliamentary maneuver that the House may employ. The interview interrupted a presidential
schedule packed with calls to Capitol Hill, where House leaders said Obama has focused
on the 37 House Democrats who voted against healthcare legislation in November but
may be open to supporting the latest package. Over the past few days, Obama has met
privately with at least half a dozen dissenting Democrats in the Oval health care
continued on A4

SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST

Democrat Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania says he has not decided yet how to vote on
the new House health-care reform measure. That answer doesn’t seem to sit well
with anyone.

As House vote nears, pressure builds on the undecided
by Sandhya Somashekhar and Paul Kane Rep. Jason Altmire has met with President Obama
twice this month and received a phone call from Air Force One. Two planes circled
his western Pennsylvania district, trailing banners urging him to vote against the
healthcare bill. And conservative “tea party” activists confronted him at his
office, trying to force him to answer: “Are you for or against the bill?” The
pressure has been extreme over the past two weeks on Altmire and the few dozen House
Democrats who say they still have not decided how they will vote on ambitious legislation
designed to remake the nation’s health-care system.
on washingtonpost.com/politics

Get the latest on the upcoming House vote on the health-care reform legislation,
including a breakdown of where lawmakers stand.

For many of the fence-sitters, the sticking point has been their concern that the
bill could allow tax dollars to subsidize abortions. For others, it is the cost of
implementing reform as the economy continues to founder. Virtually all face intense
opposi-

tion at home and the possibility that November’s elections could derail their political
careers. Unlike many of them, though, Altmire has defended his ambivalence to constituents
and partisan talk show hosts alike. “I have a district that on al-

most every issue is politically split, and this is the biggest hotbutton issue you
can possibly imagine,” he said Wednesday from his Washington office. “It’s
uniquely personal to everybody. So we’re in the position where we have a constituency
that is weighing in in every possible way, and I think I have a responundecided continued
on A4

Fairfax clinic’s giveaway of donor eggs sparks uproar
by Rob Stein A Virginia infertility clinic sparked an international ethical controversy
Wednesday by sponsoring a seminar in London that gave away an attempt to get pregnant
using an American woman’s eggs. More than 100 people attended the 90-minute session
at the Millennium Gloucester Hotel, which was organized by the Fairfax Citybased
Genetics & IVF Institute, one of the United States’ largest infertility clinics.
As organizers had promised, one of the attendees learned at the end of the seminar
that she had won a free cycle of in vitro fertilization using the eggs of a woman
from the Washington area, worth about $23,000. The seminar, designed to entice infertile
British women to seek donor eggs in the United States, drew intense criticism from
infertility experts, bioethicists and others in Britain and the United States, who
likened the event to a crass, commercial come-on similar to a lottery, with the prize
being a human body part. “We strongly have the view that using a raffle to determine
who eggs continued on A13

A hot spot for diplomacy
Inside the Finnish Embassy sauna, a select few sweat away the stress
by Jason Horowitz On a recent Friday evening in the basement of the Finnish Embassy,
a half-dozen men, all sweating profusely and wrapped in white towels, turned to resident
sauna authority Kari Mokko to settle a dispute. “Kari,” Josh Block, a spokesman
for the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, said through the vapor, “ ‘schvitz’
isn’t a Finnish term, is it?” “Shivit?” a bewildered Mokko replied when asked
about the Yiddish word for steam room. He stood up, sans towel, to ladle some more
water onto the sauna’s rocks. “Shwi? What?” Despite his unfamiliarity with
the term, Mokko, the embassy’s press secretary, is running a monthly Power Schvitz
for the policy staffers behind Washington’s power players — and the journalists
who cover them. The Diplomatic Finnish Sauna Society of D.C. counts among its 150
members the operatives who make Washington spin: Capitol Hill staffers, public-policy
wonks, lobbyists, administration officials — and reporters eager to pick up some
off-message analysis. “You don’t wear your politics on your sleeve when you are
not wearing sleeves,” said Alex Conant, a former RNC spokesman currently working
for Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota. “Mostly you just talk about how
damn hot it is.” The society’s founder and gatekeeper, Mokko is a 43-year-old
Tampere native, with a trimmed goatee and chiseled cheekbones. On hiatus as the anchor
of “Silminnäkijä,” or Eyewitness, a Finnish Broadcasting Co. current-affairs
program, he is at sauna continued on A11

G Obama’s planned trip

abroad draws fire. A4
G The president’s good-

luck charm. Sketch, A2

INSIDE
L O CA L L I V I N G 1 C O L L E G E B A S K ET B A L L 1 OPINIONS

Spring back
Adrian Higgins gives advice on restoring your garden after winter’s storms.
T H E WO R L D

The Hoya hope
Georgetown’s fate in the NCAA tournament may well hinge on Greg Monroe, who’s
never been there. D1
BASEBALL

Nationals release Elijah Dukes
The team says the decision about the sometimes volatile right fielder was strictly
about baseball. D1
M ET R O

Low-tech warfare
The Taliban is thwarting a U.S. effort against roadside bombs by making primitive
devices without circuitry or metal parts. A10

A health-care challenge from Virginia
The attorney general plans a suit if the bill passes. B4

MARJORIE MARGOLIES Take the risk I did and vote your conscience, Democrats. A19 DAVID
IGNATIUS In Afghanistan, outsourcing our spies. A19

ST Y L E

Franken’s comity
The comedian-turnedsenator seems to be showing his softer side more often. C1
CONTENTS © 2010 The Washington Post Year 133, No. 103

BUSINESS NEWS.......A12-14 CLASSIFIEDS .....................F1 COMICS ..........................C6-7

EDITORIALS/LETTERS...A18 FED PAGE.........................A17 LOTTERIES.........................B4

MOVIES ..............................C4 OBITUARIES ...................B7-9 STOCKS............................A14

TELEVISION .......................C5 WEATHER ........................B10 WORLD NEWS
.............A8-10

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