Holbrooke mentioned Afghan war before surgery - Washington Post

As friends and colleagues from four decades of diplomatic life reflected on the intensity of Richard C. Holbrooke's dedication, many were not surprised to learn that concerns about the Afghanistan war were apparently among his final thoughts.

After Holbrooke's death Monday, The Washington Post, citing his family members, reported that the veteran diplomat had told his physician just before surgery Friday to "stop this war."

But Tuesday, a fuller account of the tone and contents of his remarks emerged.

As physician Jehan El-Bayoumi was attending to Holbrooke in the emergency room at George Washington University Hospital, she told him to relax and asked what she could do to comfort him, according to an aide who was present.

Holbrooke, who was in severe pain, said jokingly that it was hard to relax because he had to worry about the difficult situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

El-Bayoumi, an Egyptian American internist who is Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's physician, replied that she would worry for him. Holbrooke responded by telling her to end the war, the aide said.

The aide said he could not be sure of Holbrooke's exact words. He emphasized Tuesday that the comment was made in painful banter, rather than as a serious exhortation about policy.

Holbrooke also spoke extensively about his family and friends as he awaited surgery by Farzad Najam, a thoracic surgeon of Pakistani descent.

Holbrooke's statement was seized upon quickly by critics of the Afghan war debate, some of whom interpreted it as a clarion call to end the conflict. Others viewed his comment as a last-breath disavowal of the Obama administration's war policy, which has involved a troop surge - which Holbrooke publicly supported - to combat the Taliban. But State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley cast Holbrooke's words simply as "humorous repartee."

Crowley said the comment "says two things about Richard Holbrooke in my mind. Number one, he always wanted to make sure he got the last word. And secondly, it just showed how he was singularly focused on pursuing and advancing the process and the policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan to bring them to a successful conclusion."

Holbrooke's deputy, Frank Ruggiero, has been named to fill his post as special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan in an acting capacity, Crowley said, adding that no significant move had been made to select a permanent replacement.

chandrasek@washpost.com deyoungk@washpost.com

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IBM's 'Watson' Computer to Air on Jeopardy in February - eWeek

IBM?s ?Watson? computer will finally make its appearance on ?Jeopardy? in February, taking on two of the show?s all-time winners over a three-day span.

The game will test Watson?s abilities to think in a human-like way, not only being able to retrieve information when requested?as is done with a normal Google search request?but also to go through its vast database of information, make the necessary connections and pick up on the subtle nuances, puns and riddles necessary to answer questions in Jeopardy.

IBM?s goal in building Watson?named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson?is to create a system that can answer questions posed in natural language, and to do so quickly and correctly, according to company officials. IBM over the past few months have been running Watson through a series of 50 or so mock Jeopardy games at its Hawthorne, N.Y., research facility against some former game show participants. The question-answer machine reportedly has won some games and lost others.

?After four years, our scientific team believes that Watson is ready for this challenge based on its ability to rapidly comprehend what the Jeopardy clue is asking, analyze the information it has access to, come up with precise answers, and develop an accurate confidence in its response,? David Ferrucci, the scientist leading the IBM Research team that has created Watson, said in a Dec. 14 statement. ?Beyond our excitement for the match itself, our team is very motivated by the possibilities that Watson's breakthrough computing capabilities hold for building a smarter planet and helping people in their business tasks and personal lives." 

The Jeopardy challenge echoes the chess match in 1997, when an IBM computer called Deep Blue beat chess champion Garry Kasparov. At the time, IBM officials said Deep Blue could calculate 200 million chess moves per second based on a fixed problem.

Watson will have to work differently, however. IBM researchers want it to be able to hear the question posed in natural language and?using massively parallel processing capabilities to understand the complex questions?figure out the subtext of the request, zero in on exactly what its being sought and then find the answer.

Competing against Watson will be Ken Jennings, who broke the Jeopardy record for most consecutive games played with 74 during the 2004-2005 season and won more than $2.5 million, and Brad Rutter, who won more than $3.2 million, the most ever by a contestant. The winner will take $1 million, with second place earning $300,000 and third place $200,000. Rutter and Jennings will donate half of their winnings to charity; IBM will donate all of its winnings.

While the Jeopardy show?which will air Feb. 14-16?will be entertaining, IBM researchers say question-answer systems like Watson will have real-life impacts on business in a variety of fields, including health care, online self-service desks, and tourism, according to IBM. The computer?s ability to quickly sort through vast amounts of data and return precise answers?and then rank the confidence in those answers?also will be key to IBM?s ongoing Smarter Planet initiative, which is driving to improve the world?s infrastructures?from roads to waterways to electrical grids?by putting more intelligence into the systems.

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Air Force Limits Access to Web Sites Over Secret Cables - New York Times

When Air Force personnel on the service’s computer network try to view the Web sites of The Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, the German magazine Der Spiegel, the Spanish newspaper El País and the French newspaper Le Monde, as well as other sites that posted full confidential cables, the screen says “Access Denied: Internet usage is logged and monitored,” according to an Air Force official whose access was blocked and who shared the screen warning with The Times. Violators are warned that they face punishment if they try to view classified material from unauthorized Web sites.

Some Air Force officials acknowledged that the steps taken might be in vain since many military personnel could gain access to the documents from home computers, despite admonishments from superiors not to read the cables without proper clearances.

Computer network specialists within the Air Force Space Command last week followed longstanding procedures to keep classified information off unclassified computer systems. “News media Web sites will be blocked if they post classified documents from the WikiLeaks Web site,” said Lt. Col. Brenda Campbell, a spokeswoman for the Air Force Space Command, a unit of which oversees Air Force computer systems. “This is similar to how we’d block any other Web site that posted classified information.”

Colonel Campbell said that only sites posting full classified documents, not just excerpts, would be blocked. “When classified documents appear on a Web site, a judgment will be made whether it will be blocked,” she said. “It’s an issue we’re working through right now.”

Spokesmen for the Army, Navy and Marines said they were not blocking the Web sites of news organizations, largely because guidance has already been issued by the Obama administration and the Defense Department directing hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors not to read the secret cables and other classified documents published by WikiLeaks unless the workers have the required security clearance or authorization.

“Classified information, whether or not already posted on public websites or disclosed to the media, remains classified, and must be treated as such by federal employees and contractors, until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. Government authority,” said a notice sent on Dec. 3 by the Office of Management and Budget, which is part of the White House, to agency and department heads.

A Defense Department spokesman, Col. David Lapan, in an e-mail on Tuesday night sought to distance the department from the Air Force’s action to block access to the media Web sites: “This is not DoD-directed or DoD-wide.”

The Air Force’s action was first reported on The Wall Street Journal’s Web site late Tuesday and underscores the wide-ranging impact of the recent release of secret State Department documents by WikiLeaks, and five news organizations, including The Times. It also illustrates the contortions the military and other government agencies appear to be going through to limit the spread of classified information that has become widely available in the public domain.

“It is unfortunate that the U.S. Air Force has chosen not to allow its personnel access to information that virtually everyone else in the world can access,” said a spokeswoman for The Times, Danielle Rhoades Ha. A senior administration official said Tuesday that the administration’s policy contained some leeway, for instance, to allow certain employees to download information in order for them to be able to verify that classified information was leaking into the public domain, and to assess damage to national security and potential danger to sources.

Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, a secrecy specialist, said dozens of agencies, as well as branches of the military and government contractors, had issued their own policy instructions based on the Office of Management and Budget memo.

“It’s a self-defeating policy that will leave government employees less informed than they ought to be,” Mr. Aftergood said.

William J. Broad contributed reporting from New York.

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