Local Commissioners Memorandum - New York: Fill & Download for Free

How does one explain to an anti-semite that Barbara Lerner Spectre is not evidence of a Jewish conspiracy?Barbara Lerner Spectre has published that she’s an Armenian Genocide denier / Armenian Holocaust denier. Multiple articles by her as proof will be included. She shamelessly flat out said “it wasn’t genocide”. She has been promoting Armenian Holocaust denial conspiracy theories, which is illegal to do in several countries. She compares Palestinians and Armenians and calls both “incompetent at governing” and “propagandists”, and she blamed the victims for their own genocide, which is all extremely offensive, so she’s bigoted, racist, and an Armenian Holocaust denier. Disgusting.She has also been funded by the Swedish government after publishing her Armenian Holocaust denial conspiracy theories and hate. Barbara Lerner Spectre - WikipediaRevisionists typically argue the academic consensus of it being a genocide as anti-Turkish propaganda or as a conspiracy spread by the Armenians, instead claiming that it either did not occur or that it was somehow justified at the time.Denial of the Armenian Genocide is officially outlawed in Switzerland, Greece, Cyprus, and Slovakia.Currently, only the governments of Turkey and Azerbaijan deny that there was an Armenian genocide. [1][1] Armenian Genocide denial - WikipediaThe following quote is from an article by Barbara Lerner Spectre showing she denies the Armenian Genocide. She lies, and she also shows bigotry to Armenians and Palestinians, which is not surprising since she’s a Holocaust denier to Armenians.The bottom line here is that in actual historical fact, Turks were not like Nazis; Armenians were not like Jews; and attempts to convince Americans that they were are propaganda, not history. The Armenian tragedy was real and terrible, but it was not the only terrible tragedy in Turkey in 1915 and it wasn’t genocide; it was that in the midst of a wider war that brought death and destruction to millions on all sides, nationalist Armenians fought a war to claim a piece of Turkey for a country of their own, and lost. Later, they got a state of their own, but its development has been stunted from that day to this by high levels of poverty, corruption and political violence. If Armenians would accept their share of responsibility for the tragedies of 1915, trade with their increasingly prosperous Turkish neighbors could do much to alleviate that poverty. Some in Armenia have long wanted to do that, but most government leaders — and the powerful Armenian diaspora community those leaders rely on — have always insisted, instead, on demonizing Turks and whitewashing all Armenian actions in World War I. And, although they proved incompetent at governing, they achieved great success as propagandists. In this, Armenians are very similar to Palestinians; very different from both Jews and Turks. [2][2] http://www.tc-america.org/files/news/pdf/blerner_nro.pdfPress coverage during the Armenian Genocide - WikipediaSeptember 10, 1895, New York Times, Another Armenian Holocaust” - Web ArchiveShe’s the same as people who say Jews died in WW2, but it wasn’t a genocide. Jews did write the genocidal book titled Germany must Perish![3] in 1941. That is true, but that and various other excuses, including the Kapo[4] and Judenräte,[5] are not a “share of responsibility for the tragedies” that minimize the Jewish Holocaust and Barbara Spectre and others needs to stop being am Armenian Holocaust deniers and making bigoted and offensive excuses.[3] Germany Must Perish! - Wikipedia![4] Kapo (concentration camp) - Wikipedia[5] Judenrat - WikipediaHitler’s Jewish SoldiersOr saying Jews started it by doing the Armenian Genocide first, since several of the so called “Young Turks” and collaborators were important Jews, which is well documented. You can still find copies of major newspaper articles, such as The London Times, sourced below. It is relevant since Barbara Spectre has blatently denied the Armenian Genocide. Others like banker Max von Oppenheim from the wealthy Jewish Oppenheim banking family have openly approved[6][7][8] of the Armenian genocide. Disgusting.In late 1915, British High Commissioner in Cairo Henry McMahon claimed in a report that Oppenheim had been making speeches in mosques approving of the massacre of Armenians initiated by the Young Turk government earlier that year.[6][7][6] Max von Oppenheim - Wikipedia[7] Digitised Manuscripts"The attempts of the American Ambassador to procure some alleviation of the lot of Armenians have thus far proved unsuccessful. Mr Morganthau, in the opinion of good observers, wasted too much diplomatic energy on behalf of the Zionists of Palestine, who were in no danger of massacre, to have any force to spare. Talaat and Bedri simply own that persecuting Armenians amuses them and turn a deaf ear to American pleadings. German and Austro-Hungarian residents in Turkey at first approved of the punishment of Armenian 'traitors', but the methods of the Turkish extremists have sickened even Prussian stomachs. True the Jewish Baron von Oppenheim, now in Syria, has been preaching massacre, and the German Consular officials al Aleppo and Alexandretta have followed suit, perhaps with the idea of planting German colonists in the void left by the disappearance of the Armenians when the war is over.""THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES: EXTERMINATING A RACE: A RECORD OF HORRORS", Times of London, (8 October 1915),[8][8] The Armenian massacres :: www.haias.netMax von OppenheimOppenheim family - WikipediaOppenheim relatives. Warburg, Rothschild, et. al.Theodor Herzl (born Benjamin Ze'ev Herzl)The Armenian question has occupied the Zionist movement since a mass killing of Armenians was carried out by the Turks in the mid 1890s – prior even to the First Zionist Congress. Herzl’s strategy was based on the idea of an exchange: The Jews would pay off the Ottoman Empire’s huge debt, in return for the acquisition of Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish state there, with the major powers’ consent. Herzl had been working hard to persuade Sultan Abdul Hamid II to accept the proposal, but to no avail.“Instead of offering the Sultan money,” Herzl’s diplomatic agent Philip Michael Nevlinski (who also advised the Sultan) told him, “give him political support on the Armenian issue, and he’ll be grateful and accept your proposal, in part at least.” The Christian European countries had been critical of the murder of Armenian Christians at the hands of Muslims, and committees supporting the Armenians had been founded in various places, and Europe also offered refuge to leaders of the Armenian revolt. This situation made it very difficult for Turkey to obtain loans from European banks.Herzl eagerly took the advice. He felt that it was appropriate to try any means possible to hasten the establishment of a Jewish state. And so he agreed to serve as a tool of the Sultan, by trying to convince the leaders of the Armenian revolt that if they surrendered to the Sultan, he would comply with some of their demands. Herzl also tried to show the West that Turkey was in fact more humane, that it had no choice but to deal with the Armenian revolt this way, and that it aspired to a ceasefire and a political arrangement. After much effort, he also met with the Sultan on May 17, 1901.This drama involving Herzl – a leader who subordinated humanitarian considerations and served the Turkish authorities for the sake of the ideal of the Jewish state – is just one illustration of the frequent clash between political goals and moral principles. Israel has repeatedly been faced with such tragic dilemmas, as evidenced in its long-standing position of not officially recognizing the Armenian genocide, as well as in other more recent decisions that reflect the tension between humanitarian values and realpolitik considerations.[9][9] Haaretz (Israeli Newspaper): How Herzl sold out the ArmeniansDespite the image that we have of Herzl, there have been a few instances which seem rather deplorable, even if they were acts of realpolitik, in his search for a greater Yisrael. He lost some respect among other Jewish journalists when he supported the Ottoman cause of destroying Armenian Christians, although it was not clear that he actually knew what was happening to the Armenians at the time, in order to try and gain favor and support from the Sultan to allow Jews to immigrate to Palestine freely. More precisely in 1896, when he visited Sultan Abdul Hamid to try and persuade him to open up Palestine, he did not gain any ground, yet due to his fame as a journalist agreed to provide support for the Sultan in the papers, as he was ravaged by Europe’s press for his deplorable and unspeakable actions in Armenia. These are the instances when we must look at history and understand its reality, however much we wish we did not, for although Herzl was indeed a great figure, he was not by any means a perfect one.Most historians have given Herzl a great deal of criticism because of his support for the Sultan in the Armenian-Ottoman conflict which of course was a genocide, which infallibly has even led some to call it-unjustly by the way- the “first original sin of Zionism.”[10][10] The Jerusalem Post: Herzl: The interesting character that inspired a nationTheodor Herzl - WikipediaTalk:Theodor Herzl - WikipediaThe Palestine issue that cost Sultan Abdülhamid II the Ottoman throneRise and Fall of the Ottoman EmpireThe real purpose of the deportation was robbery and destruction; it really represented a new method of massacre. When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact.[11][11] —Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story pg. 309."The attempts of the American Ambassador to procure some alleviation of the lot of Armenians have thus far proved unsuccessful. Mr Morganthau, in the opinion of good observers, wasted too much diplomatic energy on behalf of the Zionists of Palestine, who were in no danger of massacre, to have any force to spare.[12][12] The Armenian massacres :: www.haias.netHenry Morgenthau (/ˈmɔːrɡəntaʊ/, with a /t/; April 26, 1856 – November 25, 1946) was an American lawyer, businessman and United States ambassador, most famous as the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. As ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Morgenthau has come to be identified as the most prominent American to speak about the Armenian Genocide.like other prominent Jewish Americans, Oscar Straus and Solomon Hirsch before him, Morgenthau would be posted as the ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.Wilson assured him that the Porte in Istanbul "was the point at which the interest of American Jews in the welfare of the Jews of Palestine is focused, and it is almost indispensable that I have a Jew in that post".[13][13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morgenthau_Sr.Abram Isaac Elkus (August 6, 1867 – October 15, 1947), was an American ambassador, judge and public official. He was one of the most prominent Jews in American government.[14][14] Abram Isaac Elkus - WikipediaAmbassador to the Ottoman Empire (1916–1917)The Ottoman Empire severed diplomatic relations with the United States on April 20, 1917, after the United States declared war against Germany on April 4, 1917. Normal diplomatic relations were reestablished with the Empire's successor state, Turkey, in 1927.[15][15] United States Ambassador to Turkey - Wikipedia“It is a well-known fact that the Salonika Committee was formed under Masonic auspices with the help of the Jews and Donmehs, or crypto-Jews of Turkey, whose headquarters are at Salonika, and whose organization took, even under Abdul Hamid, a Masonic form. Jews like Emmanuel Carasso, Salem, Sassun, Fardji, Meslah, and Donmehs or crypto-Jews, like Djavid Bey and the Baldji family, took an influential part both in the organization of the Committee and in the deliberations of its central body at Salonika. These facts, which are known to every Government in Europe, are also known throughout Turkey and the Balkans, where an increasing tendency is noticeable to saddle the Jews and Donmehs with responsibility for the sanguinary blunders which the Committee has made."Vienna Correspondent for The Times of London Times, "Jews and the Situation in Albania", The London Times, (11 July 1911), p. 5.[16][16] The New York Times from New York, New York on July 11, 1911Emmanuel Carasso or Emanuel Karasu (1862 in Salonica – 1934 in Trieste) was a lawyer and a member of the prominent Sephardic Jewish Carasso family of Ottoman Salonica (now Thessaloniki, Greece). He was a prominent member of the Young Turks..Karasu was a member (some sources say founder) and later president of the Macedonian Risorta Masonic lodge in Thessaloniki and pioneered the masonic movement within the Ottoman Empire. Masonic lodges and other secret societies in Salonica were meeting places for sympathizers of the Young Turks, including Talat Pasha.Karasu was one of the first non-Muslim members of the Ottoman Freedom Society, which later became part of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP); when the CUP came to power, he became the Salonica deputy in the Ottoman parliament. He was offered various positions in the Ottoman government, but turned them down. Karasu was one of the three men who told Sultan Abdülhamit II of his deposition in April 1909. He worked for the cooperation of various Jewish organizations in Turkey..[17][17] Emmanuel Carasso - WikipediaDönmeh “Dönmeh (Turkish: Dönme) refers to a group of crypto-Jews in the Ottoman Empire who, to escape the inferior condition of dhimmis, converted publicly to Islam, but were said to have retained their beliefs.The Dönmeh played an enormous role on the Young Turk movement, a group of modernist revolutionaries who brought down the Ottoman Empire.”[18][18] DönmehDr Nazim played a significant role in the Armenian Genocide and the expulsion of Greeks in Western Anatolia..From a Dönmeh background, Nazim was born and raised in Salonica;..In a speech delivered on during the closing remarks of a Committee of Union and Progress meeting, Dr. Nazim has said:“If we remain satisfied with the sort of local massacres which took place in Adana and elsewhere in 1909...if this purge is not general and final, it will inevitably lead to problems. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to eliminate the Armenian people in its entirety, so there is no further Armenian on this earth and the very concept of Armenia is extinguished.”And continued by saying, "the procedure this time will be one of total annihilation-it is necessary that not even one single Armenian survive this annihilation".During one of the secret meetings of the Young Turks, Dr. Nazim was quoted as saying, "The massacre is necessary. All the non-Turkish elements, whatever nation they belong to, should be exterminated". In February 1915, two months prior to the commencement of the Armenian Genocide, Dr. Nazim declared a new government policy which would "produce total annihilation" in which would be "essential that no Armenian survives".He has been noted to have said that the Ottoman Empire should be "freeing the fatherland of the aspirations of this cursed race" when referring to the Armenians.[19][19] Nazım BeyIn 1908, the Berlin Executive office of the World Zionist Organisation (WZO), sent Jabotinsky to the Ottoman capital Constantinople. Jabotinsky became editor-in-chief of a new pro-Young-Turkish daily newspaper "Jeune Turc", which was founded and financed by Zionist officials like WZO president David Wolffsohn and his representative in Constantinople Victor Jacobson. The journalists writing for that paper included the famous German Social democrat and Russian-Jewish revolutionary Parvus, who lived in Constantinople from 1910 until 1914.Quote“A Jew brought up among Germans may assume German custom, German words. He may be wholly imbued with that German fluid but the nucleus of his spiritual structure will always remain Jewish, because his blood, his body, his physical-racial type are Jewish. ... It is impossible for a man to become assimilated with people whose blood is different from his own. In order to become assimilated, he must change his body, he must become one of them, in blood. ... There can be no assimilation as long as there is no mixed marriage. ... An increase in the number of mixed marriages is the only sure and infallible means for the destruction of nationality as such. ... A preservation of national integrity is impossible except by a preservation of racial purity, and for that purpose we are in need of a territory of our own where our people will constitute the overwhelming majority.”[20][20] Ze'ev JabotinskyMehmet Cavit Bey, Mehmed Cavid Bey or Mehmed Djavid Bey (1875–1926) was an Ottoman Sabbatean (Jewish) economist, newspaper editor and leading politician during the last period of the Ottoman Empire. A member of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), he was part of the Young Turks and had positions in government after the constitution was established.Cavit was born in Salonica (Thessaloniki), then in the Salonica Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. His father was Naim, a merchant, and his mother was Pakize; they were cousins. He was of Dönmeh descent.[21][21] Mehmet Cavit BeyMarcel Samuel Raphael Cohen, [Moiz Cohen, Moise Cohen, or Moise Kohen] (aka Tekin Alp [or Munis Tekinalp]), born to a Jewish family in Salonica under Ottoman control (now Thessaloniki, Greece), became one of the founding fathers of Turkish nationalism and an ideologue of Pan-Turkism.[22][22] Young Turks - Wikipedia"The author of the standard exposition of the 'Pan-Turanian Movement,' who called himself by the pure Turkish name of 'Tekin Alp,' is believed to have been a Salonika Jew; and there is also reason to suppose that the secularizing, anti-Islamic tendency which is so remarkable a feature in Pan-Turanianism was partly the effect of this Jewish influence."The Times History of the War, Printing House Square, London, Volume 14, (1918), p. 308[23][24][23] The Times History of the War, Vol 14[24] Full text of "The Times history of the war"James Aratoon Malcolm, born 1868, was a British-Iranian Armenian financier, arms dealer and journalist.In early 1916, he was appointed by George V of Armenia as one of the five members of the Armenian National Delegation to lead negotiations during and after the war, and the effective representative in London (the other four members were all based in Paris).He was Chairman of the Royal Thames Yacht Club, and a founder in 1894 of the British Empire League.He was awarded an OBE in 1948.He was the son of Aratoon Malcolm, of Bushehr in Qajar Persia, whose family had lived in Persia "since before Elizabethan days", in shipping and commerce, having acted as treasurers to British Missions to the Shah of Persia. They had numerous contacts with significant financial families in the region such as that of David Sassoon.He came to England at the age of 13 years old in 1881, for his education, under the guardianship of Albert Sassoon. As a boy he was friends with Albert Goldsmid. [25][25] James Aratoon Malcolm - WikipediaSASSOON - JewishEncyclopedia.com(English Spelling as Sassoon, Sassun, Sasson, etc.)Alexander Lvovich Parvus born Israel Lazarevich Gelfand (1867-1924), was a Marxist theoretician, revolutionary, and a controversial activist in the Social Democratic Party of Germany..Israel Lazarevich Gelfand was born to an ethnic Jewish family on September 8 1867 in the shtetl of Berazino, now part of Belarus..Soon afterwards Parvus moved to Istanbul in Turkey, where he lived for five years. There he set up an arms trading company which profited handsomely during the Balkan War. He became the financial and political advisor of the Young Turks. In 1912 he was made editor of Turk Yurdu, their daily newspaper.He worked closely with the triumvirs known as the Three Pashas - Enver, Talat and Cemal - and Finance Minister Djavid Bey [26][26] Alexander Parvus (Born Israel Lazarevich Gelfand)Alexander Parvus (Real name: Israel Lazerivich Gelfand)Three Pashas - WikipediaAccording to various sources, Talaat Pasha had developed plans to eliminate the Armenians as early as 1910. Danish philologist Johannes Østrup wrote in his memoirs that in the autumn of 1910, Talaat talked openly about his plans to "exterminate" the Armenians with him. According to Østrup, Talaat stated: "If I ever come to power in this country, I will use all my might to exterminate the Armenians." In November of that year, a decision to carry out such a plan was made in Thessaloniki where a secret conference was held by prominent members of the CUP.In a memorandum sent to Berlin demanding the removal of German ambassador Paul Wolff Metternich because he interceded on behalf of the Armenians, Talaat reaffirmed such a commitment: "the work must be done now, after the war it will be too late." By the end of the war, the subsequent German ambassador Johann von Bernstorff described his discussion with Talaat: "When I kept on pestering him about the Armenian question, he once said with a smile: 'What on earth do you want? The question is settled, there are no more Armenians'".[27][27] Talaat PashaMustafa Kemal “Atatürk”These left-overs from the former Young Turk Party, who should have been made to account for the millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse, from their homes and massacred, have been restive under the Republican rule.[28](Note: The word “genocide” did not exist yet when he said this.)[28] Armenian Genocide QuotesRevisionists typically argue the academic consensus of it being a genocide as anti-Turkish propaganda or as a conspiracy spread by the Armenians, instead claiming that it either did not occur or that it was somehow justified at the time.Denial of the Armenian Genocide is officially outlawed in Switzerland, Greece, Cyprus, and Slovakia.[29][29] Armenian Genocide denial - WikipediaA quote by Barbara Spectre:On many blogs and websites, Armenians often accuse these scholars of being part of a Jewish and/or Zionist conspiracy because Israel has always steadfastly rejected the genocide charge, as Turkey’s own Jewish citizens do. In America, all of the existing long-established Jewish organizations also reject it (that is, until last month when one major American Jewish organization capitulated under mounting pressure).[30][30] Judgment Time by Barbara Lerner SpectreWe reject attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust and the Armenian allegations. Nothing similar to the Holocaust occurred. It is a tragedy what the Armenians went through but not a genocide."[31][31] Shimon Peres - WikipediaWilliam Cohen (Jewish), Madeleine Albright (Jewish) Grilled on Hypocrisy of Opposing Genocide Recognition While Leading New Genocide Prevention EffortSecretaries Albright and Cohen Should be Removed from Genocide Task ForceANCA Confronts Cohen/Albright Hypocrosiy on GenocideWatertown severs ties with the Jewish Anti-Defamation League for denying the Armenian GenocideUPDATE: MEMPHIS CONGRESSMAN STEVEN COHEN (Jewish) SHOVES ARMENIAN AMERICAN JOURNALIST OUT OF PRESS CONFERENCE - Armenian National Committee of AmericaYet again, Israel denies the Armenian genocideADL local leader fired on Armenian issueThe Armenian Genocide and the ADL - The Boston GlobeTrump Joins Grand Bipartisan Tradition Of Denying Armenian GenocideJerusalem archive yields Armenian genocide ‘smoking gun’‘Sherlock Holmes of Armenian Genocide’ Uncovers Lost EvidenceMemorandum of the “TEN COMMANDMENTS” by the “Committee of Union and Progress” outlining the strategy for implementing the Armenian Genocide, 1914-1915Harrowing photo collection shows true horror of Armenian ‘genocide’The Armenian Genocide Museum-institute Photo CollectionImagine that you’re walking in Manhattan a few days before Holocaust Memorial Day and see five airplanes skywriting in massive letters that the Holocaust was a hoax.How would you feel?Imagine that you later find out that a full-page advertisement had run the same day in the Washington Post explaining that although some Jews were killed during World War II, the Holocaust never occurred. Imagine if that advertisement directed readers to a website that explained that these same Jews were responsible for their own deaths.How would the American Jewish community react?And imagine that a massive billboard with the same advertisement was erected in Times Square shortly before tens of thousands of Jews were set to gather there to commemorate Kristallnacht.To whom would you turn? Would you still feel safe living in New York?For New York’s Armenian community, this is unfortunately not just a hypothetical situation. On April 20, a few days before the 101st anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian Genocide, five airplanes really did skywrite over the Hudson River that the Armenian Genocide is a “Geno-lie.” A full-page advertisement was really run in the Washington Post explaining that although some Armenians were killed during WWI, there was never a genocide against them, and the same advertisement directed readers to a website explaining that the Armenians were responsible for their own deaths. When tens of thousands of Armenian Americans gathered in Times Square to commemorate the 101st anniversary of the April 24, 1915 mass arrest and subsequent execution of 250 Armenian intellectuals, regarded as the first attack of the genocide, attendees really were confronted by a large billboard denying the slaughter.[32]Read more:[32] Why Jews Need To Recognize the Armenian Genocide Once and for AllFull-page ad denying the Armenian genocide in The Wall Street Journal spurs angerThe Armenian Genocide anniversary. It says: “101 YEARS OF GENO LIE”

I've been retired for a few years now, so to answer this question, I randomly pulled up a day from one of my old calendars and filled in the blanks with recollections of what would usually happen on such a day:5:30 AM: Wake up, check bedside notepad, do some stretches, make coffee, check calendar, voicemails and emails while I drink it, once I’ve had at least one cup of coffee respond to emails where I can without reference to my files, forward others to legal assistant with instructions, check a news site and the stock market briefly to see if there's been any national or local crisis.7:00 AM: Have breakfast, shower, dress, maybe pack a lunch if I'm not scheduled for a lunch meeting. Leave for office.7:45 AM: Arrive at office, gather files for court for the motions calendar, check to make sure argument notes and proposed orders are in each file, and that I have any documents I planned to file and my list of any court files I want to examine while at the courthouse. Grab a law journal to read if I have any down-time at the courthouse.8:00 AM: Leave for the drive to the courthouse.8:45 AM: Arrive at courthouse and park, meet briefly with each client on that morning's calendar (rarely more than two) if they’ve chosen to attend (usually not required). Check court's calendar for how busy it is, where my cases are on the docket.9:00 AM: Enter courtroom for calendar call. Depending on how busy it is and the placement of my cases, I may leave the courtroom for a while to confer further with one or both of the clients or opposing counsel, or to go to the County Bar office upstairs to make phone calls.Argue my cases as they come up on the calendar (10-20 minutes devoted to each), receive the commissioner's ruling, leave the courtroom briefly to explain the ruling to the client(s), make any necessary changes to my proposed orders and get opposing counsel's approval of them, return them to the commissioner for signature, go back to the Bar office to run copies, file the original orders with the Clerk and if needed, get certified copies. If I need to check any court files on any other cases, I'll do that now. Back to the Bar office to call my legal assistant, let her know outcomes, give instructions, find out what calls I need to return, return messages. Leave the courthouse between 11 AM and 12PM.12:30 PM Lunch meeting with the daughter of an old client. She (the daughter) is in college now, thinking of going to law school and her Mom called to ask if I'd meet with her and give her some insights.1:30 PM Back to the office for a new client consultation.3:00 PM Finish consultation. Introduce new client to legal assistant and leave the client with the assistant to start the process.3:05 PM Return phone calls and emails from opposing counsel, clients, experts, colleagues on bar committees, people referring clients, colleagues asking or responding to a “can I pick your brain” request, etc.3:35 PM Meet with legal assistant to review some letters she's drafted, go over new mail and give instructions, review and update calendars, discuss new case, deal with some administrative/office management issues.4:15 PM Review discovery responses on a case, make notes of follow-up records subpoenas needed, email assistant with instructions on going over responses with client.4:30 PM Return more phone calls. Review the new case schedule my legal assistant has prepared for our new case.5:15 PM Work on mediation memorandum and property spreadsheet for a mediation scheduled early next week; tomorrow morning I'll meet with the client to review and edit it.9:15 PM Finish draft of mediation memo and spreadsheet. Make sure my time has been entered for the day. Check voicemails and emails. Leave for home.9:45 PM Fix a quick dinner, throw in a load of laundry, relax over a glass of wine, do some escapist reading.11:30 PM Bed.3:00 AM Wake up with an important thought about the mediation memo. Jot down on bedside notepad. Back to sleep.Not all days were quite as busy or as long, and court was only once or twice a week, on average, so a typical day wouldn't have 1-1/2 hours devoted to driving, as this one did.

Port Authority commissioner James Rubin was frustrated. Appointed to the bistate agency’s board by New York governor Andrew Cuomo a year earlier (in 2011), he’d been around long enough to know that the Authority—charged with ensuring the safe operation of bridges, tunnels, trains, airports, and ports in New York and New Jersey, and with securing the nation’s highest-value terrorist target, the 16-acre World Trade Center complex—was a complete mess. Spending on security had doubled since 9/11 and now consumed roughly one-fourth of the agency’s massive budget. Police overtime, in particular, was soaring, but the Port Authority’s leaders seemed unable to manage their own cops, contending that the unions called the shots.As head of the Port Authority’s security committee, which oversees the agency’s police force and public-safety programs, Rubin decided to force the issue. He wrote to then–Port Authority chairman David Samson, reminding him of the exhaustive evaluation of security policies, personnel, and technology that Michael Chertoff, the former Homeland Security director who now heads a security-consulting firm, had conducted in 2011. The Chertoff team’s disturbing conclusion, he wrote, citing the secret report, whose key findings have never previously been disclosed, was that the Port Authority’s security practices were “profoundly deficient at every level, in every key functional area.”The main target of the report’s “devastating judgment,” as Rubin called it, was the Port Authority police force. Summarizing his findings in a closed meeting, Chertoff had told the board that the police department’s leadership was not only “derelict” but “wholly unprepared for security responsibility.” In light of this finding, Rubin wrote in his letter to Samson, a copy of which was obtained by City Journal, it was “imperative that we act expeditiously to remedy the problems identified.” Though neither Rubin nor Chertoff nor their legal consultants and analysts would respond to calls for comment, Chertoff’s team reportedly recommended that the board hire a chief security officer, who would centralize security functions. But this alone would not be enough, the report (and Rubin) stressed: the new security chief couldn’t reform or control his force, much less fulfill the Port Authority’s security mandate, if the board failed to empower him by adopting sweeping structural and legal changes—especially to contracts with its police unions.Though the board appointed Joseph Dunne, a respected former New York Police Department official, as its first security chief soon after Rubin’s impassioned plea for change, and Dunne and his successor hired more cops and tried to curb costs, almost none of the broader structural and legal reforms that Chertoff recommended were adopted. An examination of the Port Authority police and its operations—including correspondence secured under the Freedom of Information Act, other independent reviews of police performance and compensation, and interviews with more than a dozen veteran counterterrorism experts, scholars, and law-enforcement officials—suggests that the Authority’s police remain poorly managed, overcompensated, and hamstrung by work rules. These rules, negotiated by the unions and accepted by Port Authority management, are a particular problem when it comes to security because they restrict the agency’s ability to deploy its police effectively.The police force’s woes can’t be separated from those of the scandal-prone Port Authority and its growing politicization. Political patronage infuses the agency—ironically, in that the Port Authority was born in the Progressive era and intended by its architects to exemplify expert nonpolitical governance. (See “The Port Authority Leviathan,” Winter 2016.) New Jersey governor Chris Christie, for instance, initially won the loyalty of the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association (PAPBA) early in 2013 by promising to ensure that Authority police, and not the NYPD, would be in charge of security at the World Trade Center’s new Freedom Tower. The Port Authority has long viewed Ground Zero as an iconic part of its domain, since 37 of its cops died there on 9/11, almost twice as many as the NYPD lost. But Christie’s pledge also assured the creation of hundreds of new jobs and dues-paying members for the union, which now represents some 1,500 of the Port Authority’s 1,900 cops. (The main contract, expired since 2010, continues in force.)The governor’s vow, following the union’s endorsement, that he would “never—not ever on my watch” let the NYPD protect the Trade Center site set off a bitter turf war with then-NYPD commissioner Raymond Kelly, who refused to accept a marginal role for his officers at the complex. The two police departments eventually hammered out a “memorandum of understanding,” calling for shared policing authority and spending. Relations improved further after Kelly retired and was succeeded by William J. Bratton (who has just himself retired). But New York cops’ dislike of their Port Authority counterparts continues to simmer, reinforced by a historical rivalry and by resentment of the Authority force’s far more generous compensation and retirement benefits and less demanding working hours.Patronage also played a role in a scandal in which the Port Authority police union has been implicated—Bridgegate, which arose from a decision by Christie’s aides to order lane closings and cause massive gridlock at the George Washington Bridge, the nation’s busiest motor-vehicle crossing, to punish Fort Lee’s mayor for refusing to endorse the governor’s reelection. David Samson, the chairman to whom Rubin complained and Governor Christie’s highest-ranking appointee, resigned in disgrace in 2014 and pleaded guilty in July to bribery charges. Chertoff, to whom he had awarded the sole-source, $1.3 million contract to review the Authority’s operations, nonetheless served as his lead attorney. Governor Christie’s other senior appointee, Bill Baroni, the Port Authority’s deputy executive director, went on trial in September for Bridgegate-related charges.PAPBA head Paul Nunziato initially defended the lane closures, telling the press that he had come up with the idea to study new traffic patterns at the bridge. But the subsequent discovery of e-mails by Christie deputy chief of staff Bridget Kelly calling for “some traffic problems in Fort Lee” demolished Nunziato’s story. He wound up under investigation, suspected of having helped facilitate the closures to curry favor with the governor. Neither he nor anyone from the union has been accused of wrongdoing, but a key witness in the Bridgegate trial testified that Nunziato offered to lie to protect Christie’s appointees.Recent security breaches, including at the World Trade Center site, raise alarms about the effectiveness of public-safety functions at the Port Authority. In 2013, four men, one of whom worked in construction at the World Trade Center site, BASE-jumped off the Freedom Tower and filmed their stunt. Soon after, a 16-year-old fascinated by the tower donned a hard hat, scrambled through a hole in the fence, and rode to the 88th floor with the help of a construction-elevator operator, though he had no ID. Other incidents arouse concern. In 2014, nine rookie Port Authority police, celebrating their police-academy graduation, were fired, and three of their supervisors disciplined, after getting drunk and disorderly at an infamous Hoboken bar.Even deeper problems were evident in August, when a stampede at John F. Kennedy Airport was triggered by false reports of a terrorist attack in Terminal 1 and Terminal 8, the latter staying closed for several hours. Despite the Port Authority’s frequent drills and training—its police must get live-fire training each year, which even the NYPD doesn’t mandate—the agency’s reaction seemed dysfunctional. While senior NYPD and Port Authority police praised their own officers’ response, calling it “textbook,” the police union and several of those caught up in the melee strenuously disagreed. There was “no addressable signage; police had no access to public address systems, or cell phone alert systems to alert patrons or tell them where to go,” Nunziato said in a press release. In a separate letter provided to City Journal, he blasted the Authority for having no plan to communicate with the public and for allowing information from social media—“wrong, misdirected and without confirmation”—to fill the vacuum.Other observers, however, blamed the Port Authority police for the fiasco. A senior NYPD official told the Daily News that the PAPD needed “a lot more preparation on procedures.” The union said that part of the problem was that not enough officers were on duty, but the average cost for employing a Port Authority cop has risen so much that hiring new employees has become exorbitant; regional airport budgets have come under fire for their bloat. United Airlines filed a complaint with the FAA, which singled out police compensation as a key factor.Others have complained about the cost and effectiveness of the PA police. In the 2013 New York mayoral race, Republican candidate Joe Lhota said that he had long had reservations about the PAPD’s competence. He later apologized for calling them “mall cops.”Relations between the agency and its police union have been contentious for decades, as official correspondence from the early 1990s, provided by a former Port Authority official, reveals. As far back as the 1960s, unions were contesting the agency’s efforts, over a 15-year transition period, to let civilians perform such nonspecialized duties as collecting tolls and manning tunnel catwalk booths. In a 1990 memo to Stanley Brezenoff, then the agency’s executive director, Louis LaCapra, the human-resources director, grumbled about the unions’ successful pushback, starting in 1978, against civilianization. LaCapra noted that the unions had blocked the creation of new civilian guard posts at the World Trade Center and at Port Newark and had forced the Authority to stop civilians from abandoning cars at Pier 40. Arbitration decisions had given police “the exclusive right to drive ambulances at Newark airport,” he added, which police had never before done there. The union also claimed on behalf of its members the responsibility for “making first contact with homeless persons at Authority facilities, to the exclusion of social workers or anyone else.” These measures increased costs and lessened efficiency.Relations between the agency and its police union have been contentious for decades, as official correspondence reveals.In a memo to the commissioners from July 1990, Port Authority executive director Stephen Berger observed that it was apparent “for some time” that the agency’s police unions had a “radically different view of themselves and their mission than does the management of the Port Authority.” A consultant hired to assess what was then known as the Public Safety Department agreed that the “loyalties of many of our police officers are to the unions, not to the Port Authority” and that the police saw themselves as “on a mission to enforce federal and state criminal laws, rather than to protect life and property at, and to facilitate the operations of, Port Authority facilities.” If there was a “justification for our having a separate police force,” Berger wrote, it was to meet the agency’s specific needs. The police’s focus on “catching bad guys,” he argued, “diverts police attention and resources away from the areas in which they could actually contribute most effectively to the safety and security of people using our facilities.” The emphasis on arresting large numbers of people for minor offenses at the bus terminal, for instance, often left “inadequate numbers of officers patrolling the building.” This, in turn, prompted a “general impression of disorder” and of “insecurity among travelers, tenants, and others at the Terminal,” he wrote.Police unions, Berger lamented, had taken a “remarkably insular view” of such issues. Berger’s effort to defuse tensions by meeting with union leaders to explain their “conflicting visions” had failed. “Predictably, but unfortunately,” he wrote, “the immediate reaction has been resistance.” During the next few months, Berger intended to “re-establish management control of police functions in a number of critical areas,” including routine security functions at the World Trade Center, patrolling airport parking lots, abandoned-car duty, and contacts with the homeless. If the police union refused to compromise and relinquish such “minimum basically civilian functions,” he concluded, he would urge the commissioners to consider whether the agency’s police “could and perhaps should be part of the general policing obligations” of the NYPD and the New Jersey State Police. Other functions, he argued, could “clearly be performed with equal or greater effectiveness, at lower cost by civilians.” But based on his experience with the Authority’s police unions, he concluded, he could not be “optimistic about our ability to secure a satisfactory outcome.”Others share that skepticism. Current commissioner Kenneth Lipper said that he did not know whether it would be possible to dissolve the PAPD and have local and state law enforcement and private contractors ensure security: “Is the NYPD willing to take over these functions? Does the contract permit it? Would we get the same coverage and protection? Would both governors permit it?”Today, Port Authority management missteps and union victories continue to shape staffing assignments for PAPD officers—most dubiously, for the Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting (ARFF) “cadres.” Thanks to a decades-old contractual obligation between the Authority and the union that requires police officers to perform firefighting and rescue duty at airports—an arrangement in effect at no other U.S. airports—cops who fight fires and do rescue work at Authority airports have been trained for double duty. As a result, they’re paid a lot extra—up to $144,000 per year. But in 2012, the FAA fined the Port Authority for misreporting training and for failing to assign police who were trained as firefighters to the airports. The federal agency also barred those assigned ARFF duty at airports from doing patrol duty and other police work. Some Authority officials hoped to assign fire and rescue personnel who were paid much less than expensive cops. But the union got wind of this, and in a 2013 settlement got the Authority to agree to assign cops to these posts, though they could no longer go on patrol.The result has been a dramatic rise in total security expenditures, including overtime and new police to replace those lost to ARFF. According to public documents, the aviation budget department containing the ARFF team was responsible for $154 million of the $211 million hike in Authority-wide security spending planned between 2009 and 2016—or roughly 70 percent of the increase. The union blames Port Authority management for running afoul of the FAA. “This was management’s fault for losing months of firefighting training records,” said Robert Egbert, the union’s spokesman. If management wanted to take the jobs away from the union, it was obligated to enter a negotiation. “This was yet another terrible management mistake,” he said. But the union has fought to hang on to its expensive prerogatives.The burden of the police department’s costs weighs heavily on the Port Authority. A detailed report of what Port Authority police earn, compared with what neighboring police departments earn (prepared by the Citizens Budget Commission, a New York City–based public watchdog group), concluded in late 2012 that the Port Authority Police Department, then about 1,700 strong, was already one of the country’s largest and most richly compensated law-enforcement units. At the time, the commission estimated that payments to police constituted about $372 million of the Port Authority’s $406 million public-safety budget. Within New York and New Jersey, only the Nassau and Suffolk County police were paid more. Port Authority senior officers received hourly pay 25 percent to 48 percent above that of senior officers at neighboring municipal police forces. Excluding overtime, pensions, and health benefits, average salaries for rank-and-file police topped $108,157 after six years of service and rose to $117,884 in their 25th year. And unlike officers in New Jersey, Port Authority police don’t contribute to their health insurance, a benefit that can add an amount comparable to 50 percent of their base salaries to their compensation, the CBC reported.Supplemental pay made compensation disparities even more pronounced. Port Authority police earned from as much as 14 times the compensation of Jersey City cops to double that of senior NYPD officers. Senior Port Authority police earned 23 percent more than federal agents, and between 32 percent and 57 percent more than New York and New Jersey state troopers. Yet Port Authority police worked fewer hours a year than officers in other police forces, with more days off and shorter tours.A consistent factor in this pay gap, according to an analysis of Port Authority compensation between 2008 and 2014 obtained by Open the Books, a watchdog group pressing for greater government transparency, is overtime. “Overtime work for police at Port Authority has been out of control for years,” says Adam Andrzejewski, the group’s founder. Overtime costs at the agency over the past seven years have averaged roughly $300,000 a day, $2 million a week, and more than $100 million a year, much of that earned by the police. City Journal’s Steven Malanga describes a typical example, culled from Open the Books data. Thanks largely to overtime sweeteners provided by the Port Authority, one police lieutenant who retired in 2013 with an annual salary of $129,000 began collecting the following year a lifetime pension of $172,000, or one-third above his base pay. (See “Bloated, Broke, and Bullied,” Spring 2016.) According to the Open the Books database, public-safety employees are extremely well compensated, even within Port Authority ranks. Between 2008 and 2014, seven of the top 15 most highly compensated Authority employees worked in security: three police sergeants, two police lieutenants, and two rank-and-file police officers. Their total compensation—which includes base pay, overtime, comp-time cash-in, longevity bonus, shift-differential payments, time-off pay, unspecified retro-payments and one- time payments, FICA pickup payments, and “all other payments”—ranged from $324,000 to $403,000.Containing overtime was a priority for Joseph Dunne, the Authority’s first security chief. “Oscar Tango,” Dunne said in an interview in the spring of 2014, using police jargon for overtime, “has a lot to do with what gets done. That’s just a fact of things.” The same was true for the NYPD, he added, but his former employer’s overtime costs per capita are far lower than those of the Port Authority. Dunne confirmed that the PAPD’s overtime costs were growing rapidly as he came on board: $80 million in 2011, $107 million in 2012, and $139 million in 2013.To get overtime under control, Dunne and his then-deputy, Thomas Belfiore, another NYPD veteran who succeeded him in the PA’s top security post, hired the two largest police recruit classes in recent Port Authority history, adding up to 450 new officers. Between 2012 and 2016, they also hired 18 law-enforcement officers from outside the force to fill senior ranks. Only one of the rank-and-file police represented by Nunziato’s PAPBA applied for promotion, since it would mean the loss of overtime.Overall, Belfiore says, the Port Authority and its security department have made significant progress in reining in overtime and other expenses—but the Port Authority’s proposed budget documents, found on its website, suggest a different story. Though the PAPD overtime budget was briefly curtailed in 2015 to 738,000 hours—and overtime through March, Port Authority officials say, is below its projected level—the planned overtime budget for the entire year has risen to 1,041,000 hours—higher than in 2014, despite the employment of hundreds of new cops who were supposed to “right-size” the department. Commissioner Kenneth Lipper, from New York, noted: “Overtime costs are largely police-related. And that’s because of contractual issues and a culture within the police department.”Lipper added, “When junior people are offered overtime, they tend not to take it and leave it for the senior police, where it’s embedded in their pensions. That really drives up costs.” The agency’s security budget continues to grow, increasing from $454 million in 2009 to $645 million in 2015. The projected security budget for 2016 is $662 million, or 22 percent of the proposed operating budget.The Port Authority Police Department’s 400-page contract contains onerous work rules that interfere with performance and drive up costs, including a stipulation that K-9 officers must get a paid hour each day to play with their dogs.The Port Authority Police Department’s 400-page contract contains onerous work rules that interfere with performance and drive up costs, including a stipulation that K-9 officers must get a paid hour each day to play with their dogs.Some counterterrorism experts say that the Port Authority’s police will never be reformed until management wrests control from the union, a view echoed by several top security officials who know the police force best. Belfiore and Dunne, for instance, point to specific examples of contractual terms that limit the force’s productivity. The Authority, said Dunne, has yet to control unpredictable, unlimited sick time, which is guaranteed by union rules. Another problem is management’s limited ability to control police deployments. Under the union contract, rank-and-file police bid on assignments, which, with few exceptions, get awarded according to seniority. So “you won’t always get the people best suited for an assignment,” Belfiore says.To take another example of onerous rules, the contract provisions governing the Authority’s K-9 unit, composed of some 28 dogs and handlers, reduce the number of functional hours that officers work. The dogs, Belfiore said, must be transported to and from a handler’s home to his assignment at a transport hub or the World Trade Center, or, in the event of vacation or rest time, to one of the Authority’s kennels. In addition to getting the standard 75 minutes a day for meals and other breaks, moreover, K-9 handlers get a special “K-9 hour,” usually the last hour of every day, to care for their dogs. While the Transportation Security Administration offsets some of these expenses, it doesn’t cover all of them, Belfiore says. The union’s Egbert defends the K-9 provisions. Unlike people, he said, dogs cannot work an eight-hour shift. “They must be hydrated, fed, and get rest,” he said. “A dog is a being.”Overturning such prerogatives is difficult at the Port Authority, its officials complain, because of the union’s power. Port Authority police enjoy numerous protections, including a provision of the bylaws, known as Rule 3, that gives them the right to refuse to cooperate with internal investigations. The agency’s inspector, Michael Nestor, recently told the Bergen Record that the PAPBA is “a consistent roadblock to investigations and to disciplinary actions,” adding that “officers routinely refuse to cooperate with investigations, including disciplinary matters.” Earlier this summer, the Bergen Record reported, the union persuaded friendly New Jersey legislators to kill a bill that would have eliminated Rule 3. The union, for its part, says that Rule 3 has never stopped a criminal investigation and that the right to refuse to answer questions in a disciplinary interview exists for all Port Authority employees, unionized or not.Port Authority officials and independent terrorism experts say that Chertoff and his team oversaw the last sustained effort to wrest management control of the Port Authority’s police force from its many contractual obligations. Dunne confirmed that Chertoff’s group had warned him that the Port Authority police suffered from a lack of senior management. “Some of our senior officers were running two or three commands,” he said, “and you just can’t do it. It’s impossible.”Two sources said that the Chertoff report, though lengthy, did not contain written recommendations. Rather, they explained, Chertoff conveyed his findings in meetings with senior Port Authority officials. After reviewing the police force’s union contracts, as one source reported and another confirmed, the Chertoff team lawyers unanimously called them, from a management standpoint, “the worst they had ever seen.” Mike Delikat, a partner at Orrick, Herrington, and Sutcliffe; Daniel Murphy, Jr., a partner at Putney, Twombly, Hall & Hirson; and Robert W. Lynn, now New York City’s commissioner of the Office of Labor Relations, called the contracts “massive giveaways.” They reportedly also agreed that the contracts should be renegotiated to bring them more in line with those of comparable police departments. The Chertoff team formulated a substantial reform plan, along with a resolution to implement it, which Chertoff discussed with several commissioners.It was this resolution that Rubin tried, once more, to persuade the Port Authority’s governing board to adopt. In his letter, dated October 18, 2012, he informed Chairman Samson that Baroni, then the deputy executive director of the agency, had told him that no Christie-appointed commissioners who were members of his security committee would even agree to discuss the resolution. “I regret that,” Rubin wrote. “Every week we delay empowering the new CSO [chief security officer], we are delaying the actions our consultants say are necessary to keep our facilities safe.” Four years later, the Port Authority police force remains the weak link in the New York metro area’s public-safety profile.