At War: Clues About Qaddafi’s Forces

 C.J. Chivers/The New York Times

MISURATA, Libya — As the forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi fled Misurata’s airport and its environs on Wednesday, they left behind signs of both how they survived and how they fought during their weeks working against the city that expelled them.

One set of clues was evident just outside the airport’s gates. The runway is surrounded by stands of olive and almond trees, and many farms. Near one traffic circle, the Qaddafi soldiers had taken shelter inside an opaque green plastic greenhouse.

From a fast-moving car on the nearby road, and likely from the air, the greenhouse looked innocuous enough. But the trash heaps nearby gave it away — someone had been drinking hundreds of liters of bottled water, and had thrown away many ammunition cans, and then, had ditched uniforms and even military boots.

A stop revealed more. Inside the tent, shielded from view, were a few grubby mattresses and cardboard sheets, where soldiers had been sleeping. Many of their blankets had been left behind, too.

C. J. Chivers/The New York Times

And at one end of the greenhouse was a large pile of crates telling more of the war and of how Colonel Qaddafi armed his forces for it. The crates had contained 125-millimeter high-explosive fragmentation rounds for the main guns of T-72 tanks.

Rebels and medical officials in Misurata have said the T-72 tanks at the city’s edge had been firing randomly into the city. Sometimes at night, when the wind died down and noise carried, it seemed they could be heard. A distant boom would sound — the report of an outgoing round. And then an explosion would be heard in the city, often very fast — within four or five seconds.

This was faster than artillery and mortar rounds, which fly in a high, looping arc that consumes time. Tank rounds fly in a much flatter trajectory, and can cover many kilometers in four seconds, though not exactly precisely.

And here were scores of a round that were not designed to fire at other tanks, but at bunkers, structures and people.

The official designation of this round is 3VOF36. It contains a projectile with a high-explosive charge surrounded by a steel case. When it detonates, the projectile breaks into hundreds of what its seller calls “anti-personnel fragments”; in other words, flying bits of jagged steel designed to kill.

The stenciling on the crates, and the paperwork within, told of their provenance. They had been exported from Oktyabrsk, Russia, in late 2002 under a 1999 contract between Rosoboronexport, the Russian state arms-trading agency, and the Libyan government. Under this contract, the Qaddafi military has bought 8,126 cases — a quantity corroborated by both the paperwork and the stenciling on the crates.

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Who they were intended to be used against no one can say from the evidence available in the tent. But the empty canisters told the rest. They had been used in Misurata, and perhaps for the shelling of the city, by a force that put a greenhouse to a novel new use.

C.J. Chivers/The New York Times

Follow C.J. Chivers on Facebook, on Twitter at @cjchivers or on his personal blog, cjchivers.com, where many posts from At War are supplemented with more photographs and further information.

 

Sarasota Police Seek Clues After Tourists Are Killed

Police officials are investigating how the young men, James Cooper, 25, and James T. Kouzaris, 24, got from the bar in downtown Sarasota to the public housing project, where they died on a narrow, one-way street. The police found the men after receiving a 911 call.

The two British tourists did not have a rental car and were staying with Mr. Cooper’s parents in a condominium on nearby Longboat Key on the Gulf Coast.

Shawn Tyson, a 16-year-old dropout, was charged Sunday with two counts of first-degree murder. The shooting took place one day after Mr. Tyson was released from a juvenile facility after his arrest on charges of aggravated assault with a handgun, police officials said. Mr. Tyson was accused of shooting out a car window and spent eight days in detention.

Mr. Tyson, who last year dropped out of the eighth grade in a school for children with special needs, lives two blocks from the murder scene. Prosecutors said they intended to try him as an adult.

“From what I can pull together in the past few days, I don’t think we have ever had a tourist murdered, much less two at the same time,” Kelly Kirschner, the mayor of Sarasota, said Tuesday. “It’s critically tragic.”

The Sarasota police chief, Mikel Hollaway, said at a news conference that he believed Mr. Cooper and Mr. Kouzaris were in the neighborhood voluntarily. No drugs or weapons were found on them. The police are circulating photos of the men in Smokin’ Joe’s bar in downtown Sarasota, where they went for drinks, in the hopes that someone will recognize them and come forward with information.

As the police pieced together details of the killings, Mr. Cooper’s parents flew home to Britain.

Mr. Cooper and Mr. Kouzaris graduated from the University of Sheffield together. A tennis coach, Mr. Cooper, or Coops as he was called, was a leader in Sheffield, his friend Alex Porter said in an e-mail. “He was possibly the funniest and most quick-witted person I have had the pleasure of knowing,” Mr. Porter said, adding that the two had plans to go to Wimbledon this summer.

Mr. Kouzaris, a rugby player and would-be urban planner who was called Jam, was no different. His Facebook page is studded with Web sites for rough road, high-mountain biking. He had studied town planning at the university and had recently moved from Taiwan and joined Mr. Cooper for a three-week vacation. “Amazing” was Mr. Kouzaris’s favorite word and his outlook on life, Mr. Porter said.

Facing a blizzard of harsh British press coverage, Sarasota officials are trying to dispel notions that the city is blighted by crime. These are the first two murders this year in the city of 55,000.

“The British media is portraying this as crime run amok, and that is not true,” Mr. Kirschner said, adding that the city has worked to address the higher crime rate on Sarasota’s north side. “It doesn’t matter where you are in 26 square miles of the city of Sarasota, you should have every expectation you and your family should be safe.”

 

Sarasota Police Seek Clues After Tourists Are Killed

 

Police officials are investigating how the young men, James Cooper, 25, and James T. Kouzaris, 24, got from the bar in downtown Sarasota to the public housing project, where they died on a narrow, one-way street. The police found the men after receiving a 911 call.

The two British tourists did not have a rental car and were staying with Mr. Cooper’s parents in a condominium on nearby Longboat Key on the Gulf Coast.

Shawn Tyson, a 16-year-old dropout, was charged Sunday with two counts of first-degree murder. The shooting took place one day after Mr. Tyson was released from a juvenile facility after his arrest on charges of aggravated assault with a handgun, police officials said. Mr. Tyson was accused of shooting out a car window and spent eight days in detention.

Mr. Tyson, who last year dropped out of the eighth grade in a school for children with special needs, lives two blocks from the murder scene. Prosecutors said they intended to try him as an adult.

“From what I can pull together in the past few days, I don’t think we have ever had a tourist murdered, much less two at the same time,” Kelly Kirschner, the mayor of Sarasota, said Tuesday. “It’s critically tragic.”

The Sarasota police chief, Mikel Hollaway, said at a news conference that he believed Mr. Cooper and Mr. Kouzaris were in the neighborhood voluntarily. No drugs or weapons were found on them. The police are circulating photos of the men in Smokin’ Joe’s bar in downtown Sarasota, where they went for drinks, in the hopes that someone will recognize them and come forward with information.

As the police pieced together details of the killings, Mr. Cooper’s parents flew home to Britain.

Mr. Cooper and Mr. Kouzaris graduated from the University of Sheffield together. A tennis coach, Mr. Cooper, or Coops as he was called, was a leader in Sheffield, his friend Alex Porter said in an e-mail. “He was possibly the funniest and most quick-witted person I have had the pleasure of knowing,” Mr. Porter said, adding that the two had plans to go to Wimbledon this summer.

Mr. Kouzaris, a rugby player and would-be urban planner who was called Jam, was no different. His Facebook page is studded with Web sites for rough road, high-mountain biking. He had studied town planning at the university and had recently moved from Taiwan and joined Mr. Cooper for a three-week vacation. “Amazing” was Mr. Kouzaris’s favorite word and his outlook on life, Mr. Porter said.

Facing a blizzard of harsh British press coverage, Sarasota officials are trying to dispel notions that the city is blighted by crime. These are the first two murders this year in the city of 55,000.

“The British media is portraying this as crime run amok, and that is not true,” Mr. Kirschner said, adding that the city has worked to address the higher crime rate on Sarasota’s north side. “It doesn’t matter where you are in 26 square miles of the city of Sarasota, you should have every expectation you and your family should be safe.”

 

Seeking Clues in Goldman’s Succession Plan

The speculation may be more than idle gossip for bored bankers. Two friends of Mr. Blankfein, 56, say he has told them since last summer that he is exhausted from leading the company through the financial crisis and that he would consider stepping down when he could do so gracefully, without the move appearing to be anything but voluntary.

The choice of Goldman’s next chief could signal the firm’s direction and influence the broader thinking on Wall Street, where Goldman often sets the tone.

For decades, Goldman’s leaders came from its investment banking unit, which provided business strategy and merger advice to blue-chip companies. Mr. Blankfein, in contrast, was a commodities trader, and his ascension furthered the company’s makeover as a trading powerhouse.

To be sure, Mr. Blankfein may decide to stay a while, despite the chatter to the contrary. And as far as Goldman is concerned, Mr. Blankfein is not going anywhere. A spokesman for the firm, Lucas van Praag, declined to comment other than to note that Mr. Blankfein “says he has never felt so energetic and has no plans to retire.”

Even with its reputation tarnished by a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit last year, Goldman remains the world’s most powerful investment bank, with its own mystique on Wall Street. It is a training ground for government officials and hedge fund managers alike, and its powerful alumni network extends its influence.

While other eminent financial companies, like Merrill Lynch, were crushed by the collapse of housing prices and lost of tens of billions with a wager on subprime mortgage debt, Goldman actually spotted the threat early and made a bet against the housing market, racking up sizable gains.

Even as its traditional archrival Morgan Stanley struggles with a stagnant stock price, Goldman shares are up more than 20 percent over the last two years. When Goldman reports earnings Tuesday, analysts expect a profit of about $443 million, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters, although the latest results will be depressed by the bank’s plans to repurchase Warren E. Buffett’s $5 billion investment.

Like George Steinbrenner in his stewardship of the New York Yankees, whoever is at the top of Goldman cuts an outsize figure among peers. Two recent chiefs — Robert E. Rubin and Henry M. Paulson Jr. — went on to become secretary of the Treasury, and another, Jon S. Corzine, later was a senator from New Jersey, and then governor of the state.

What is more, Mr. Blankfein, who assumed the top job in 2006, is one of only two chief executives of major banks who were at the helm before the financial crisis and remain in charge today. Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase is the other.

The top candidates to succeed Mr. Blankfein, according to three people briefed on the situation, are all company veterans, and they illustrate Goldman’s global reach.

One of them, Michael S. Sherwood, is British and oversees a broad swath of the firm’s international business from London. Another, J. Michael Evans, a Canadian and winner of an Olympic gold medal in rowing, is chairman of Goldman’s Asian business. (Mr. Sherwood and Mr. Evans are both vice chairmen of the firm.)

The final contender, Gary D. Cohn, Goldman’s president and chief operating officer, is Mr. Blankfein’s top deputy in New York.

No favorite seems clear, but that is not unusual at Goldman. Several former partners and analysts said they would be surprised to see an outsider selected. And whether or not Mr. Blankfein leaves soon — his urgency seems to have faded with the passing of the storm around Goldman, two people close to him said — he has been there long enough to justify focusing on a succession plan, analysts said.

Roger Freeman, a financial analyst at Barclays Capital, said Mr. Blankfein might wait to see his firm through the final negotiations with Washington over new regulatory rules for the banking industry in the second half of 2011, before handing Goldman to a younger team in 2012. “This has been an exhausting period,” Mr. Freeman said. “It would not be a surprising time to see a change.”

As the economy stumbled, Goldman’s success brought harsh public criticism, as lawmakers and even some clients complained that Goldman was no longer putting clients first.