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U(D54G1D)y+$!%!#!=!_ MELNIK, Czech Republic — Working at his computer, as he does most weekends, on an anti- Western diatribe for a Czech web- site, Ladislav Kasuka was not sure what to make of the mes- sages that began popping up on his Facebook page, offering him money to organize street protests. “Do you need help?” read the first message, written in Russian, from a person he did not know. This was followed, in a mix of Rus- sian and garbled Czech, by gush- ing encouragement for street demonstrations and increasingly specific offers of cash. An initial payment of 300 euros ($368) was offered for Mr. Ka- suka, a penniless Czech Stalinist, to buy flags and other parapher- nalia for a protest rally in Prague, the Czech capital, against the NATO alliance and the pro-West- ern government in Ukraine. Later, he was offered €500 ($558) to buy a video camera, film the action and post the video online. Other small sums were also proposed. “It was all a bit unusual, so I was surprised,” Mr. Kasuka recalled in a recent interview at a shopping mall north of Prague where he works on security and mainte- nance. He decided the cash “was for a good cause” — halting the spread of NATO and capitalist Western ways into the formerly commu- nist lands of Eastern Europe — so he accepted. The strange relationship that followed, consisting of passionate social media exchanges about politics and a total of €1,500 in cash transfers, was one of many forged across Eastern and Central Eu- Foot Soldiers in Shadowy Fight Between Russia and the West By ANDREW HIGGINS Continued on Page A7 Juan Fermin was anxious that he might be assaulted because of his job — selling tickets for sight- seeing cruises of New York Har- bor. Approaching tourists at Man- hattan’s southern edge hardly seems dangerous. But it places Mr. Fermin in the midst of an esca- lating and at times dangerous turf battle over — of all things — the Statue of Liberty. The Statue of Liberty belongs to all. But being on an island, it be- longs most of all to the boat com- panies that carry millions of tourists on sightseeing trips around the harbor each year. The competition to pack those boats is fierce — and likely to grow fiercer with the arrival of summer. Mr. Fermin, 30, is part of a swelling army of street hustlers who can earn around $20 for each tourist they steer onto a particular boat. Wearing brightly colored shirts and vests, they are a loud, in-your-face presence around Bat- tery Park and, often enough, in po- lice reports. There have been reports of a slashing; beatings, including one so severe a tourist suffered a frac- tured skull; and most recently, in April, a shooting that wounded two. The victims include other ticket sellers as well as tourists, the police and others say. “I worry about it,” Mr. Fermin said of the potential for violence. “You don’t want to be caught up in those cross hairs.” The police and politicians have a variety of explanations for the violence. Some point to ticket sell- ers recently released from prison or jail. Others place responsibility on the boat operators, saying they refuse to clamp down on ag- gressive sales practices. Jessica Lappin, the president of the Alliance for Downtown New York, a business improvement district, said the men selling boat tickets seem “to be engaging in gang warfare over their turf.” “They make a lot of money down there,” Ms. Lappin added, “and they’ll defend it with knives and guns if they need to.” It is not the first tourist-centric Center of a Violent Turf War in Manhattan: The Statue of Liberty By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN and NATE SCHWEBER The Statue of Liberty is a big draw for tourists, whose interest in seeing it up close is being fought over by pushy street hustlers. VINCENT TULLO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Continued on Page A19 PARACHUTE EVENT TURNS DEADLY A Navy team member plunged into the Hudson River after his para- chute failed to open fully. Page A16. AGUAS BUENAS, Puerto Rico — Federal agents with body ar- mor and assault rifles stormed a small house in this hillside town on a dark October night two years ago, intent on arresting a retired National Guard captain suspected of an elaborate scheme to defraud the military. But in a sign of larger problems to come in the investiga- tion, they raided the wrong house. Twice. That night, scores of agents from the mainland stormed houses all over the island, arrest- ing at gunpoint 25 current and for- mer National Guard soldiers whom authorities accused of claiming hundreds of referral bo- nuses for recruits they had never met. They included Ángel Perales Muñoz, the captain whose ad- dress they could not find. He eventually learned about the raids and turned himself in a few hours later. “That they couldn’t bother to correctly figure out where I live shows everything about this in- vestigation,” Mr. Perales said in an interview this winter, weeks be- fore a federal trial in which he faced up to 20 years in prison. “They never wanted to under- stand what was going on; they just wanted to show they were making arrests.” The raids in Puerto Rico were part of Task Force Raptor, a na- tionwide antifraud operation run by the Army’s Criminal Investiga- tion Command that has grown Small Fish Caught in Wide Net In an Erratic Army Crackdown By DAVE PHILIPPS Ángel Perales Muñoz was ac- cused of fraud connected to a recruitment incentive plan. DENNIS M. RIVERA PICHARDO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Continued on Page A15 JES AZNAR FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES The family of a soldier killed in World War II says he is buried in this Manila grave and sued the Army, which disagrees. Page A10. Who’s Buried Here? A Hero or an ‘Unknown’? BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Europe’s most influential leader, has con- cluded, after three days of trans- Atlantic meetings, that the United States of President Trump is not the reliable partner her country and the Continent have automati- cally depended on in the past. Clearly disappointed with Mr. Trump’s positions on NATO, Rus- sia, climate change and trade, Ms. Merkel said in Munich on Sunday that traditional alliances were no longer as steadfast as they once were and that Europe should pay more attention to its own interests “and really take our fate into our own hands.” “The times in which we could rely fully on others — they are somewhat over,” Ms. Merkel add- ed, speaking on the campaign trail after a contentious NATO summit meeting in Brussels and a Group of 7 meeting in Italy. “This is what I experienced in the last few days.” Ms. Merkel’s strong comments were a potentially seismic shift in trans-Atlantic relations. With the United States less willing to inter- vene overseas, Germany is be- coming an increasingly dominant power in a partnership with France. The new French president, Em- manuel Macron, has shown a will- ingness to work with Germany and to help lead the bloc out of its troubles. And Ms. Merkel sees Germany’s future more and more with the European Union of 27 na- tions, without Britain after its vote to leave the bloc. “This seems to be the end of an era, one in which the United States led and Europe followed,” said Ivo H. Daalder, a former United States envoy to NATO who is now the director of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “Today, WARY OF TRUMP, MERKEL DOUBTS U.S. IS SOLID ALLY DISMAYED BY MEETINGS A Call for Europeans to ‘Take Our Fate Into Our Own Hands’ By ALISON SMALE and STEVEN ERLANGER Continued on Page A8 A BORROWED COAT OF ARMS The emblem used by the Trump Organization in the United States had to be changed in Britain. PAGE B1 DEFENDING KUSHNER John F. Kelly, the home- land security secretary, played down reports of a secret channel to Russia. And the president resumed using Twitter as a weapon. PAGE A12 WASHINGTON — As the Pen- tagon prepares to conduct its first test in three years of the multi- billion-dollar effort to intercept a North Korean warhead, it hopes to demonstrate that it has fixed a system that has worked in fewer than half of its previous nine tests. But just as the Defense Depart- ment seeks to prove that it can strike a speeding target launched over the Pacific — in this case, an interceptor rocket is set to lift off from the California coast on Tues- day to try to smash a mock war- head — the North Koreans have delivered a new challenge. The North has recently test- fired a series of missiles based on a technology that would give the United States little warning of an attack. The new generation of mis- siles uses solid fuels, enabling them to be rolled out from moun- tain hideaways and launched in minutes. That makes the job of in- tercepting them — already daunt- ing — far harder, given that the American antimissile system works best with early alerts from satellites that a launch is immi- nent. Even more worrisome is that these missiles actually seem to be functional, unlike older missiles that kept exploding or falling pre- maturely into the sea in past tests. Recent major tests were clearly successful, teaching the North Koreans a lot about how to fire missiles into space and drop war- heads on distant targets. While the North has not yet flight-tested an intercontinental ballistic mis- sile capable of crossing the Pa- cific, it has repeatedly claimed that it can strike the United States with a nuclear warhead. Evidence suggests that Ameri- can intelligence missed signals last year that the North was mov- ing quickly to adopt the solid-fuel technology, leaving Washington scrambling to catch up, according to current and former American officials. One former official who closely tracked the intelligence on North Korea said that while it should not be called an intelligence failure, the American government had North Korean Tests Add Urgency For U.S. to Fix Flaws in Defense By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD Continued on Page A14 The stylish Melania Trump occasionally stole the spotlight from the president during their first trip abroad. PAGE A6 INTERNATIONAL A4-9 First Lady Exudes Star Power The Taliban’s targeting of scholars has been a reminder of the weight the insur- gents give to religion. PAGE A4 Killing Scholars of Islam Senator John Kennedy, a freshman Republican from Louisiana, is starting his Washington tenure as a low-key throwback in turbulent times. PAGE A13 NATIONAL A10-15 Famous Name, Folksy Touch “Kayaktivists” on the water and other demonstrators made noise at the Senior P.G.A. Championship. PAGE A13 Protest at Trump Golf Course John Severson, an artist and magazine founder, likened surfing to a beautiful dance in nature. He was 83. PAGE B6 OBITUARIES B4-6 Pioneer of Surf Culture A Pentagon breach suggests how easily people can be duped. PAGE B1 BUSINESS DAY B1-4 Hacked via Social Media The waterway’s odd and oversize cargo includes 12 fermentation tanks. PAGE A16 NEW YORK A16-19 Beer Flotilla in the Erie Canal Robert Pattinson has put “Twilight” behind him for indies like “Good Time,” a hit at this year’s film festival. PAGE C1 ARTS C1-8 Ex-Vampire Reborn at Cannes Nello Ferrara cobbled together a decade-long professional career with 19 minor league teams. PAGE D1 Candy Heir as Hockey Bruiser Takuma Sato held off the three-time champion Hélio Castroneves to win the 101st Indianapolis 500. PAGE D4 SPORTSMONDAY D1-6 A Duel, Then the Milk Toast An 18th-century painting stolen by the Nazis will go to auction after a family’s 70-year effort to recover it. PAGE C1 Resolution Over Long-Lost Art WASHINGTON — The most successful deal of Jared Kushner’s short and consequential career in real estate and politics involves one highly leveraged acquisition: a pair of adjoining offices a few penny-loafer paces from his fa- ther-in-law’s desk in the White House. Over the past week, Mr. Kush- ner, who at age 36 occupies an ill- defined role somewhere between princeling and President Trump’s shadow chief of staff, has seen his foothold on that invaluable real es- tate shrink amid revelations he is under scrutiny in a federal investi- gation into whether there was col- lusion with Russian officials dur- ing the presidential campaign. Mr. Kushner, an observant Jew, spent the Sabbath in fretful seclu- sion with his wife, Ivanka Trump, at his father-in-law’s resort in Bedminster, N.J., unplugged, per religious custom, from electron- ics. But he emerged defiant and eager to defend his reputation in congressional hearings, accord- ing to two of his associates. What is less clear is how Mr. Kushner’s woes will affect his hard-won influence on a mercurial father-in-law who is eager to put distance between himself and a scandal that is swamping his agenda and, he believes, threat- ening his family. Some Democrats are calling on the president to revoke Mr. Kush- ner’s security clearances. Repre- sentative Adam B. Schiff, Demo- crat of California and a chairman of the House committee investi- gating Russian efforts to sway the 2016 election, suggested in an in- terview on Sunday that the recent news reports about Mr. Kushner have brought the investigation from the periphery of the Trump campaign and transition teams into the Oval Office. “If these stories are accurate” in their description of Mr. Kushner and Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s ousted national security adviser, “were they acting at the behest of Mr. Trump, then-candidate, or President-elect Trump? But Kushner’s Role In White House Is Under Strain Family Ties Tested as Russia Case Grows This article is by Glenn Thrush, Maggie Haberman and Sharon LaFraniere. Continued on Page A12 Paul Krugman PAGE A21 EDITORIAL, OP-ED A20-21 Late Edition VOL. CLXVI . . . No. 57,612 © 2017 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, MONDAY, MAY 29, 2017 Today, morning rain and thunder, af- ternoon sunshine, high 68. Tonight, cloudy, low 58. Tomorrow, clouds and sunshine, afternoon showers, high 74. Weather map, Page A18. $2.50
