MiamiHerald.com

HOTEL COPIES: A copy of The Miami Herald will bedelivered to your room. A credit of US$0.25 will beposted to your account if delivery is declined. INTERNATIONAL EDITION MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 2011

108TH YEAR I ©2011 THE MIAMI HERALD

U.S. copter downed in deadliest day of Afghan War BY RAY RIVERA, ALISSA J. RUBIN AND THOM SHANKER New York Times Service

KABUL — In the deadliest day for U.S. forces in the nearly decade-long war in Afghanistan, insurgents shot down a Chinook transport helicopter, killing 30 U.S. soldiers — including Navy SEAL commandos from the broader unit that killed Osama bin Laden — and eight Afghans, U.S. and Afghan offi cials said.

The helicopter, on a night-raid mission Saturday in the Tangi Val-ley of Wardak province, to the west of Kabul, was most likely brought down by a rocket-propelled gre-nade, one coalition offi cial said.

The Taliban claimed responsi-bility for the attack, and they could hardly have found a more valuable target: U.S. offi cials said that 22 of the dead were Navy SEAL com-mandos from two different special teams, including SEAL Team 6. Other commandos from that team conducted the raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed bin Laden in May. The offi cials said that those who were killed Saturday were not involved in the Pakistan mission.

Saturday’s attack came during a surge of violence that has accompa-nied the beginning of a drawdown of U.S. and NATO troops, and it showed how deeply entrenched the insurgency remains even far from its main strongholds in south-ern Afghanistan and along the Afghan-Pakistani border in the east. U.S. soldiers had recently turned over the sole combat outpost in the Tangi Valley to Afghans.

Gen. Abdul Qayum Baqizoy, the police chief of Wardak, said the at-tack occurred around 1 a.m. Satur-day after an assault on a Taliban compound in the village of Jaw e Mekh Zareen in the Tangi Valley.

TURN TO AFGHANISTAN, 2A•

THEY ARE FEWER, BUT TUSKEGEE AIRMEN STILL FLYING HIGH

BY AVIS THOMAS-LESTER Washington Post Service

WASHINGTON — They came from as far away as Hawaii, silver-haired heroes converging on their nation’s capital to cel-ebrate their place in history.

But the fact that there were so many fewer of them this year was painfully obvious to the heroes.

They once numbered 15,000 — 992 pilots, 200 navigators, bom-bardiers and administrators, as well as legions of crew members and support and medical person-nel who came to be known as the Tuskegee Airmen.

Seventy years later, their ranks have fallen precipitously. Only a few more than 100 of the “originals” from the Tuskegee

days were among those who came to Washington this week for the 40th annual convention of Tuskegee Airmen Inc. at Na-tional Harbor’s Gaylord hotel.

“We are losing so many that it is hard to keep track,” said Col. Charles E. McGee, 91, of Bethes-da, Md., whowas inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in July for fl ying 409 com-bat missions in three wars: World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

McGee and the rest of the Tuskegee Airmen were pioneer-ing aviators who broke the color barrier for black pilots in the U.S. military during World War II.

This week, they moved a lit-tle slower and stood a little less tall, but the response of the men,

women and children who crossed their paths demonstrated their continuing rock-star status.

On Thursday, in a poignant annual tradition called the Lone-ly Eagles Ceremony, the airmen paid tribute to those who have died since last year’s convention. As they sat in rapt silence, the names of 33 of their comrades were called out as a bell tolled.

They stood as they heard the name of a friend or loved one. Included was Charles Flowers, 92, of Glenarden, Md., who died in January. Charles Flowers High School is named in his honor. Most of the room was standing when the last name was called.

Then McGee spoke up. “George Fulton Walker III,” he

called out. Three others added names of people who also had been left off the list.

“For me, the ceremony isn’t sad, but a reverent moment,” McGee said. “You have to realize that one day it will be your name on that list.”

William Broadwater, 85, of Upper Marlboro, Md., a for-mer lieutenant who trained at Tuskegee as a bomber pilot and later served as president of the local and national chapters, ex-pressed concern about the dwin-dling numbers.

“We were able to locate 380-some remaining members who were mobile enough to come to

TURN TO AIRMEN, 2A•

Christopher Platte, great-nephew of Tuskegee Airman Claude Platte, shares a laugh with Tuskegee Airman, retired Lt. Col. Leo R. Gray, near the Spirit of Tuskegee, a World War II-era plane, at Andrews Air Force Base, Md.

JAH

I CH

IKW

END

IU/W

ASH

ING

TON

PO

ST S

ERVI

CE

INDEXTHE AMERICAS .........4A U.S. NEWS ....................5AOPINION ........................7A COMICS & PUZZLES ...6B

EURO CENTRAL BANKERS HOLD DEBT CRISIS TALKS, BUSINESS FRONT

U.S. WIDENING ITS ROLE IN MEXICO’S DRUG WAR, 3A

SCOTT WINS 1ST WORLD TITLE, WITH WOODS’ CADDIE,SPORTS FRONT

SYRIAN TROOPS ACCUSED OF KILLING AT LEAST 52, 6A

U.S. Coast Guard has ‘fruitful’ contacts with Cuban officialsBY JUAN O. TAMAYO jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

The most effective offi cial in the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana may well be a U.S. Coast Guard offi cer who’s technically a counter-drug specialist but is sometimes approached by the Cu-ban government for some back-channel diplomacy.

Cuban offi cials have contacted the Coast Guard offi cer on sensi-tive issues like migration negotia-tions and Washington offers of aid in the wake of hurricanes, accord-ing to U.S. diplomatic dispatches obtained by WikiLeaks and shared with McClatchy.

Contacts between the Drug Interdiction Specialist (DIS) and Cuba’s Interior Ministry are “gen-erally viewed as one of the more fruitful and positive between the U.S. and Cuban government,” not-ed one of the dispatches.

That doesn’t surprise retired Coast Guard Cmdr. Randy Beard-sworth, who fi rst proposed basing a DIS in Havana and negotiated the terms with Cuba in 1998, when he was the chief law enforce-ment offi cer for the Coast Guard’s Miami-based 7th District.

“Both sides have discreetly and quietly used this relationship to communicate . . . It’s in our national interest to understand their bureau-cracy. In chaos, who do we talk to?” Beardsworth told El Nuevo Herald.

Five decades of U.S.-Cuba ten-sions have led both countries to impose tight controls on the oth-er’s diplomats. The countries do not have diplomatic relations and maintain only “interests sections” in the other’s capitals, formally as attachments to other countries’ embassies.

In the United States, Cuban offi cials are not allowed to travel more than 25 miles from their bas-es in Washington or at the United Nations in New York without prior approval. U.S. offi cials in Havana are banned from leaving the city, and can meet only with Cuban foreign ministry offi cials.

But the DIS often travels out-side Havana on drug and migra-tion-related trips accompanying offi cials from the Foreign Ministry, known as MINREX, and the Inte-rior Ministry (MININT), which is in charge of counter-narcotics, migration and domestic and for-eign intelligence operations.

“They certainly had unique ac-cess, insights into people that we could not even see,” said James Cason, a career diplomat who was the top U.S. diplomat in Cuba from 2002 to 2005. Now retired, he was recently elected mayor of Coral Gables, Fla.

During a 2009 visit to a Cuban port for the repatriation of several

TURN TO CUBA, 4A•

Medical devices vulnerable to hacking BY JORDAN ROBERTSONAssociated Press

LAS VEGAS — Even the hu-man bloodstream isn’t safe from computer hackers.

A security researcher who is diabetic has identifi ed fl aws that could allow an attacker to re-motely control insulin pumps and alter the readouts of blood-sugar

monitors. As a result, diabetics could get too much or too little insulin, a hormone they need for proper metabolism.

Jay Radcliffe, a diabetic who experimented on his own equip-ment, shared his fi ndings with The Associated Press before releasing them Thursday at the Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas.

“My initial reaction was that this was really cool from a tech-nical perspective,” Radcliffe said. “The second reaction was one of maybe sheer terror, to know that there’s no security around the de-vices which are a very active part of keeping me alive.”

Increasingly, medical devices such as pacemakers, operating room monitors and surgical in-struments including deep-brain stimulators are being made with

TURN TO HACKING, 2A•

ISAAC BREKKEN/AP

Jay Radcliffe wrote a program to attack an insulin pump, taking control of the device wirelessly.

U.S. downgrade raises fear, if not interest rates BY PAUL WISEMAN Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The real danger from the downgrade of U.S. government debt by Standard & Poor’s isn’t higher interest rates. It’s the hit to the nation’s fragile economic psyche and rattled fi -nancial markets.

S&P’s decision to strip the Unit-ed States of its sterling AAA credit rating for the fi rst time and move it down one notch, to AA+, deals a blow to the confi dence of consum-ers and businesses at a dangerous time, economists are saying.

The agency is “striking at the heart of what makes the global

economy tick,” said Chris Rupkey, chief fi nancial economists for the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.

The timing could hardly be worse for the United States. The economy added 117,000 jobs in July, more than expected.

TURN TO DOWNGRADE, 2A•

08PGA01.indd 108PGA01.indd 1 8/8/2011 4:31:41 AM8/8/2011 4:31:41 AM