Prior to Jonathan Pollard's failed attempt to seek refuge in the Israeli Embassy in Washington on November 21, 1985, the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not suspect that he may have been spying for Israel.

In fact, even though he was a civilian analyst for U.S. Naval Intelligence, the FBI did not even know that Pollard was Jewish. This, according to a new book, "Capturing Jonathan Pollard" (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2006) by Ronald J. Olive, the retired officer from the Naval Investigative Service, a branch of Naval Intelligence, who interrogated Pollard.

According to Olive, up until the moment Pollard approached the Israeli Embassy, he was suspected of spying for another country, possibly several countries, among them Pakistan, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and others. Even after his arrest, had Pollard not admitted that he was spying for Israel, the FBI would have focused on other possibilities.

One of the country's leading war historians has amassed disturbing evidence that German troops trying to surrender during the First World War were "frequently executed" by Canadian soldiers gripped by fear or hungry for revenge.

In a lengthy article that appears in the latest Journal of Military History, the field's top scholarly publication, Canadian War Museum historian Tim Cook explores the complex and volatile "politics of surrender."

He found, in a startling number of cases, "unlawful" killings of Germans after they had given up the fight, laid down their guns and thrown up their hands.

"Becoming a prisoner was one of the most dangerous acts on the battlefield of the Great War," Cook writes.

His essay is filled with detailed accounts of prisoner killings unearthed from letters, diaries and postwar interviews or collected from previous writings.

"The pleading of mercy and the downing of weapons did not always stop the bloodshed," he observes. "The moment of capitulation for a potential prisoner was of crucial importance: Would the surrender be accepted or would it result in a bayonet thrust?"

In one example Cook highlights as "an inexcusable act of cruelty," a Canadian soldier escorting a group of German prisoners to the rear lines is described as having "casually dropped a Mills No. 5 grenade into the greatcoat pocket of one of the prisoners, which dismembered him seconds later."

He notes that "the desire for revenge was the most common reason why a prisoner might be executed."

Cook quotes an August 1918 letter from Lt. R.C. Germain to his parents in Canada that describes the grim aftermath of a bloody battle for a strategic ridge:

"After losing half of my company there, we rushed them and they had the nerve to throw up their hands and cry, 'Kamerad.' All the 'Kamerad' they got was a foot of cold steel thro' them from my remaining men while I blew their brains out with my revolver without any hesitation.

"You may think this rather rough, but if you had seen my boys go down you would have done the same and my only regret is that too many prisoners were taken."

Cook describes the war as one of "nearly unparalleled brutality" and stresses that Canada's infantrymen from the 1914-18 war are not being "condemned for their actions almost a century later by a historian comfortably employing hindsight and gathered material from the safety of an archives."

But he does target earlier generations of war historians for largely "burying this harsh reality of Western Front war-fighting."

And he challenges mythic portrayals of Canada's First World War soldiers as inherently more humane than their German enemies, or as patriotic innocents sacrificed to the seemingly senseless trench-to-trench holocaust that consumed millions of men on all sides.

"How does the execution of prisoners fit into this view of innocent victims caught in war's vortex?" Cook asks, concluding that "the Great War soldier was as much an executioner as he was a victim."

In an interview, he said the question of how soldiers deal with prisoners at the moment of surrender is still a controversial issue in the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq.

That's why, he added, it remains important to analyze and understand from history the dangerous "grey area" between trying to kill an adversary one minute and, after he drops his weapon, "holding his life in your hands."

Cook's foray into one of the darkest corners of Canadians' wartime experience has garnered praise from fellow military historians, including one of the deans of the discipline, McGill University professor Desmond Morton.

"Canadians, in my experience, including veterans, wish to keep their distance from that part of their history and I don't blame them," Morton told CanWest News Service.

"However, I don't see the point of denying a familiar reality. I think that once soldiers have screwed up their emotions to kill, it is easier to continue than to stop.

"It is a time of acute mental disability, and a predictable consequence of sending armed men into harm's way."

University of Calgary historian Pat Brennan said Cook's "fascinating" study sheds light on the "emotional inferno" that engulfed soldiers of the First World War.

"The real insight in most of these cases is about what combat is really like, what fear is like and how difficult it is to turn that off in an instant."

Added University of Western Ontario historian Jonathan Vance: "What would surprise me is that it didn't happen more often."

Cook writes that much of the evidence of Germans being killed while or after surrendering came from interviews conducted with aging veterans in the 1960s for a special CBC radio series about the First World War.

"Dozens of Canadians testified to the execution of German prisoners," Cook said of the 600 interviews. But "none of these grim accounts found their way into the final 17-hour script."

Cook argues that some cases of Canadian troops stabbing or shooting unarmed enemies were the result of battlefield confusion.

"We don't have the adrenaline coursing through us," he said in an interview. "I'm not passing judgment on these guys 90 years later."

He adds Canadians were by no means the only troops committing such acts, pointing to "ample evidence" of British, German, Australian and "likely all soldiers" executing prisoners on the battlefield.

And he notes examples of Canadians intervening to prevent the killing of some prisoners, including one case in which an officer ordered a group of surrendered Germans shot because "there were too many discarded rifles" lying around - before a soldier saved the lot by suggesting they be used as stretcher bearers for wounded Canadians.

But Cook dismisses sentimentalized depictions of trench warfare, including the famous "Christmas Truce" of 1914 that saw enemy soldiers at one battlefield temporarily suspend shooting to mark the holiday.

Cook writes that the "cruel accounts" of prisoner slayings that he collected "are far different from our cigarette-swapping, football-kicking soldiers at Christmas, and to date there are few, if any, books, documentaries, short films or choir songs devoted to the killing of prisoners."

In the pantheon of Founding Fathers, John Adams is usually considered an also-ran. There is no memorial to him in Washington, no portrait of him on US currency, no singular achievement that is drilled into the heads of schoolchildren from Maine to California.

But opening today at the Boston Public Library is the first public exhibition of the second president's vast personal library, a priceless collection of 3,802 works whose breadth helps show why this Braintree farmer is gaining recognition as one of the true American giants.

Not only will the public be able to see the entire collection for the first time, but dozens of Adams's books have been laid open in glass cases to display the notes, musings, and commentaries he wrote in the margins of nearly everything he read. The free exhibit will continue until April, but the library already has embarked on a years-long project to digitize the books for public study on the Internet.

"God bless the man," said Beth Prindle, curator of the John Adams collection. "It seems that a thought never trickled through his mind that he didn't write down."

Scholarly and scathing, catty and conversational, Adams's writings show strong opinions on many of the great events, leaders, and debates of his day.

"Not one of the Projects of the Sage of La Mancha was more absurd, ridicu lous or delirious than this of a Revolution in France," Adams wrote in 1812 in the margins of Mary Wollstonecraft's "Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution." In that book, whose author Adams alternately called "a Lady of a masculine masterly Under standing" and "this foolish Woman," the former president penned 10,000 words of analysis.

There's a forensic map, drawn by Paul Revere, that Adams used at trial in his defense of British soldiers in the Boston Massacre. And there's his personal atlas, published in Paris in 1778, that shows his native Massachusetts in careful, stunning detail.

David McCullough, the historian who wrote a Pulitzer Prize- winning biography of Adams, said the exhibit is of great national importance.

"John Adams was the most widely and deeply read American of his day, and there are his books!" said McCullough, who used the Boston Public Library, which has held the Adams collection since 1894, to research his biography. "This is one of the most important Americans in our history, a man who was never wealthy, who believed in education, who was himself transformed by education, and who never lost his love of learning."

From his personal copy of the first printing of the US Constitution to the first Koran printed in the United States, the books show the staggering scope of Adams's intellectual interests and his impact on the nation's democratic experiment. The notes from Adams's pen are vivid evidence of that mind at work.

"His marginal notes are not the kinds of notes that most of us would make," McCullough said. "They are conversations with the author, and there are some 50 different figures from the 18th century of huge consequence with whom he's having these conversations. . . . It's thrilling to sit there and listen to that conversation, to that effect."

Before this exhibit, the Adams library was kept largely out of public view in the rare books collection, accessible only to researchers willing to review individual books in near-seclusion. The researchers also had to know what to look for.

Now, with 30 volumes digitized from the Adams collection, an ambitious project has been launched to put as many of the president's books on the Internet as funding and technology will allow. The plans also include an electronic cross-referencing of Adams's reflections. .

Vivian Spiro, chairwoman of the board of directors of the Associates of the Boston Public Library, hopes the exhibit will kindle a love of learning for learning's sake in the public.

"I hope they will be inspired . . . by the fact that a man of modest origins, whose mother was illiterate and whose father was a laborer, went on to become one of the writers of the Constitution," Spiro said.

September 22nd marks the 100th anniversary of an infamous 1906 race riot in the southern U.S. city of Atlanta, Georgia. Mobs of white men killed dozens of African-Americans during the 4-day rampage. The violence received worldwide newspaper attention at the time, but has now been largely forgotten. Still, many believe the legacy of the 1906 Atlanta riots continues to influence race relations in the city. A group of Atlantans is preparing to mark the centennial and use the occasion to open a new dialogue on race.

It was a warm Saturday night when a crowd of about 5,000 white men gathered in Atlanta's downtown and began randomly attacking African-American men, boys and women, pulling them from trolley cars and dragging barbers from their shops. June Dobbs Butts, now 78 years old, remembers her father talking about the riot. "As a child I thought they must have done something very bad," she admits. "I could not think that this rage came from the mayor, the governor, people running for governor. So when we tried to find out what bad things did the black people do, he said, 'nothing.' Like if you are going to be punished, what did you do wrong? I couldn't believe it was jealousy, anger, venom, what else?"

A century later, it's still not certain what caused the riots.

In 1906, Atlanta was a rapidly growing city, and the economic capital of the new South. Just 50 years after the end of the American Civil War and the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, Atlanta was a center of change. And it was home to a growing community of educated, affluent, and often-assertive African-Americans whose presence posed a threat to many whites within the city.

Cliff Kuhn, a professor of history at Georgia State University, says the summer of 1906 was a season of mounting racial tensions in Atlanta. Those tensions came to a head on September 22, 1906. "Thousands of men gathered that Saturday afternoon and early evening," Kuhn explains, adding that the afternoon newspapers had published 'extra editions' reporting new purported black on white assaults. "A guy gets up on a soapbox and waves one of these newspapers, saying, 'Are we going to let them do this to our women? Come on boys!' And the mob surges down Decatur Street. The mob scatters throughout the downtown area, attacking hundreds of black men and women -- a pitched battle in the heart of downtown Atlanta that lasts for over 4 hours."

The violence continued for 4 days, and in the end, at least two dozen blacks and two whites were dead. In Europe, newspaper reports compared the Atlanta riot to the anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia. In the weeks after the riot, at least 1,000 African-Americans moved from Atlanta, never to return. Many black businesses moved out of the downtown area. And although black and white community leaders held meetings to repair Atlanta's image, most Atlantans -- both black and white -- went about their business.

Memories of the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot seemed to fade quickly. It wasn't taught in Georgia history classes. Blacks who passed the story on to their children, did so as a cautionary tale. Others never discussed it.

But some Atlantans believe the unspoken memories of the riot have subtly influenced the city's race relations. "How is it that something so seemingly graphic and disturbing could have occurred in my home town, and I had no knowledge of it?" wonders Atlanta native Saudia Muwwakkil, a public information officer at the

Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site. She first
learned about the riot just 10 years ago and thinks she knows why it had been forgotten. "The story of the riot was buried because it would have inflicted serious damage on the city's image as racially progressive."

But Muwwakkil adds there are lessons to be learned. "As we look back to 1906, what happened in our city, in Atlanta, at that time, we look for opportunities to learn and apply those lessons to our lives today."

Now, on the centennial of the riot, a group of civic leaders, historians, genealogists, and educators has formed a coalition to explore the riot's roots, document what happened, and use the story as a way to open a contemporary dialogue about race and race relations in Atlanta.

The coalition has organized a new exhibit at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Site. Along with news clippings and magazine stories from the period, it features life-sized models of a trolley car and barbershop, like the ones from which the angry mob dragged African American victims.

June Dobbs Butts plans to visit the exhibit. She hopes to learn the truth about the riot because, as she observes, "Uncovering lies is always useful." She says that after 100 years, it is more than enough time to find the truth and discover unwritten legacies.

A 1938 diary written near the end of Pope Pius XI’s papacy confirms his opposition to fascism was hardening as the outbreak of World War II grew closer, a historian said Tuesday, Sept. 19, after examining documents in the Vatican’s just-opened secret archives.

The diary quoted Pius as saying, “I won’t be afraid. I prefer to beg for alms” than to give into pressures from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime, said French historian Philippe Chenaux.

The diary was written by Monsignor Domenico Tardini, a top aide who served as Pius XI’s foreign minister, and was based on Tardini’s private conversations with the pontiff in September 1938. That was just before the Munich conference, which became a symbol of Western Europe’s futile attempt to appease Hitler.

The Vatican opened the archive Monday to scholars, allowing them access to millions of documents from Pius XI’s pontificate, which lasted from 1922 to February 1939.

Chenaux said Tardini quoted Pius XI as uttering the alms quote after being informed that Mussolini’s regime had prohibited Italian newspapers from reporting on articles in the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.

The diary also indicated that Pius XI was determined to oppose the 1938 anti-Jewish laws enacted by Mussolini’s regime, Chenaux said in a telephone interview.

Entries “showed the great firmness of Pius XI. He wasn’t afraid” to oppose both fascism and Nazism, said Chenaux, who is a professor of church history at the Pontifical Lateranense University in Rome and a biographer of wartime Pope Pius XII.

Many scholars and researchers had predicted the archives would yield fresh evidence that Pius XI took a harsher stance against the German and Italian regimes at the end of his papacy.

It took more than half a century to fulfill Theodor Herzl's dream of a Jewish state. But it would take Israel even longer to meet Herzl's more intimate last wishes: to have his children buried next to him.

On Wednesday, more than seven decades after their deaths, the bodies of two of Herzl's children were laid to rest here near the grave of the famed Zionist leader, whose public legend left little room for the unhappy saga of his troubled children.

The solemn ceremony for Paulina and Hans Herzl, attended by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other top officials, was in many ways an act of atonement by a Jewish establishment that once gave Herzl's children financial support but snubbed them after their deaths in 1930.

"We have come here today to do justice -- Jewish justice, historical justice, Zionist justice and, above all, human justice," said Zeev Bielski, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, which for years let the pair remain in a Jewish graveyard in France.

Theodor Herzl, a journalist who during the 1890s led the movement for a national home for Jews, made it clear in his last testament that he and immediate family members should be buried in Israel once a state was founded.

Herzl died in 1904 in Vienna and was buried there. Soon after Israel's creation in 1948, the young government transferred his body to Jerusalem, where it was buried on a hilltop that now bears his name. Herzl's parents and sister also were buried there.

But Paulina and Hans were not. Both battled depression for years. Paulina was 40, broke and homeless when she died in Bordeaux, France, possibly of a morphine overdose. Overcome with grief over his sister's death, Hans, 39, killed himself the next day. They were buried side by side in a Jewish cemetery in Bordeaux.

The third Herzl child, Trude, died in a Nazi concentration camp in the former Czechoslovakia in 1943; her remains were never located. Her only son committed suicide in the United States a few years later, ending Theodor Herzl's bloodline.

Despite Herzl's wishes that his children be buried near him, the bodies of Hans and Pauline remained in Bordeaux, largely ignored by Jewish leaders who saw them as an embarrassment.

Religious authorities in Israel deemed Hans ineligible to be moved here as a Jew because he had converted to Christianity during the 1920s and committed suicide, said Ariel Feldestein, an Israeli historian. Suicide is a violation of Jewish law.

In addition to the religious objections surrounding Hans, he said, Jewish leaders who had crafted a heroic mystique around Theodor Herzl wanted no part of his family's untidy story.

"They wanted to shape a myth about Herzl and they didn't want us to read the truth," said Feldestein, who attended Wednesday's service and was credited by Olmert and others for bringing attention to Herzl's last testament not being fulfilled.

The effort to transfer the Herzls' remains to Israel meant getting Hans officially declared a Jew.

Several weeks ago, Israel's chief Sephardic rabbi, Shlomo Amar, ruled that Hans, who had returned to Judaism before his death, was Jewish because he was deemed so by the French rabbi who had approved his burial in Bordeaux.

The transfer was opposed by ultra-Orthodox leaders, who viewed the move as an erosion of Jewish law.

Theodor Herzl might have appreciated the muted pomp of Wednesday's ceremony, during which the wooden caskets, each draped with an Israeli flag, were carried to the graves by cadets from a preparatory academy.

The Hungarian-born Herzl made Zionism an all-consuming project, and he envisioned his children as future members of a Herzl political dynasty in the making.

According to historical accounts, the children lived in privileged isolation, educated by tutors and in the best schools.

Herzl spent the bulk of his personal wealth on the campaign for a Jewish homeland, and his family was left destitute after his death at 44. Friends and allies raised money to support the surviving family members. His wife, Julie, died three years after him.

All three Herzl children battled mental illness.

Paulina and Trude had rocky marriages and checked in and out of mental institutions.

Hans veered among religious beliefs, becoming a Baptist in 1924, then a Catholic, Unitarian and Quaker, according to an Israeli news account in 2000.

The impoverished Hans was living in London when he learned of Paulina's death in Bordeaux. He went to the French city and wrote a suicide note in which he held himself responsible.

"I have lost my beloved sister," he wrote.

He then shot himself.

Seventy-six years later, the siblings took their places a short distance from the squat monument that marks the burial site of their celebrated father. The new graves are side by side, next to those of Herzl's father, mother and sister -- last in a neat row marking a dynasty that would never be.

Clinton's concern with his reputation came up again last week, when his aides reportedly helped persuade ABC to re-edit a miniseries about the run-up to 9/11. How concerned is he with shaping how he's remembered?

He told me that he liked a biography by John Harris, "The Survivor," that is not entirely complimentary, but he thought it was quite good and accurate and fair. So he's not interested in only his own hagiographies, although no one resists his hagiographers. But he is very interested in making sure people get things right where his Administration is concerned, as he sees it. And, sometimes, he's right. When it comes to this docudrama, the behavior ascribed to Sandy Berger and Madeleine Albright is wrong, scandalously wrong. Even John Podhoretz in the New York Post this morning wrote that, and he's hardly a fan of Bill and Hillary Clinton's.

The Clintons believe in fighting back, and fighting back quickly and effectively and forcefully. If one thing unites Bill and Hillary Clinton it's their frustration, and even disgust, with Democratic candidates who fail to fight back. Clinton says he just can't understand the phenomenon of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth tarring a guy like John Kerry, who was a real war hero in Vietnam, and getting away with it, with all the tacit encouragement of the Republican national campaign. It's beyond his imagining.

Because Clinton would never have let that happen to him?

No. That was the whole purpose of the so-called "war room" in 1992. It was filled with political tough guys who act that way in the service of winning so that they can then do good. That's the way they see themselves. If you are too polite and hesitant, you never get the chance to do good because you don't win.

Four hundred and fifty cartoonists and comic book creators from around the world have signed a petition urging a Polish museum to return eight portraits to the elderly California artist who painted them in Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp. The petition is the latest development in an ongoing international conflict over the paintings.

Mrs. Dina Babbitt, 83, now of Fenton, CA, was deported to Auschwitz as a teenager in 1943, but her life was spared after the war criminal Dr. Josef Mengele learned of a mural of Snow White that she had painted in the children's barracks. Mengele ordered her to paint portraits of some of the victims of his savage medical experiments. In the 1970s, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, a Polish government institution on the site of the former death camp, acquired eight of the paintings, but refuses to give them back to Mrs. Babbitt.

Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which organized the cartoonists' petition, said: "Holocaust survivors have a right to reclaim their belongings. Four years ago, Congress declared that the paintings belong to Mrs. Babbitt, and instructed the State Department to intervene. Yet Poland refuses to budge, and the State Department has not acted. This must change."

The Congressional resolution (Section 705 of PL 107-228) was sponsored by Rep. Shelly Berkley (D-Nevada), who has been the leader of Capitol Hill efforts for return of the paintings.

After the war, Mrs. Babbitt worked in Los Angeles for major animation studios, illustrating such well-known cartoon character as Wile E. Coyote, Speedy Gonzalez, Cap'n Crunch, Daffy Duck, and Tweety Bird.

Now her fellow-cartoonists are mobilizing on her behalf. The 450 signatories on the Wyman Institute's petition include Stan Lee of Marvel Comics (co-creator of Spider-Man, the Hulk, and the X-Men); DC Comics president Paul Levitz; Pulitzer Prize winners Art Spiegelman and Michael Chabon; and the creators of such popular newspaper comic strips as "Beetle Bailey" and "For Better or For Worse."

Although most of the artists are from the United States, there are also many signatories from Italy, France, Spain (including the president of the Spanish Comic Authors Association), Argentina, Brazil, Norway, Israel, Canada, England, and other countries.

Their petition, addressed to museum director Dr. Piotr Cywinski, declares in part:

"The fundamental principle that art belongs to the artist who created it is recognized everywhere except in totalitarian countries. One would hope that Poland, having been liberated from totalitarian rule, would not revert to the mentality that regards everything as the property of the state.

"We agree that the display of Mrs. Babbitt's artwork is of great educational value, and we are pleased that the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum recognizes their importance. But that educational purpose could just as easily be achieved by displaying high-quality reproductions of the paintings, while returning the originals to their creator and rightful owner. Mrs. Babbitt has suffered enough. We implore you to do the right thing and give her back her paintings."

The petition was spearheaded by veteran DC Comics artist and editor Joe Kubert, whose acclaimed graphic novel "Yossel," features a teenage artist whose life is spared by the Nazis so he can draw cartoons for them; his son Andy Kubert, the current artist on the "Batman" comic book; and his son Adam Kubert, the current artist on "Superman."

Other signatories include:

* Joe Quesada, editor in chief of Marvel Comics; Nick Meglin, coeditor of MAD magazine; and Rick Stromkowski, president of the National Cartoonists Society.
* The artists and writers on numerous newspaper comic strips, including Beetle Bailey, For Better or For Worse, Family Circus, Hagar the Horrible, Mutts, Big Nate, Brenda Starr, Alley Oop, The Phantom, and Flash Gordon.
* Animators from such hit movies as "The Little Mermaid" and "The Ant Bully."
* Legendary comic book artists Neal Adams and Jim Steranko.
* Famed science fiction writers Harlan Ellison and Michael Moorcock.

To arrange with interviews with Stan Lee or other signatories, contact the Wyman Institute at 202-434-8994 or by email: rafaelmedoff@aol.com.

For the text of the petition and the complete list of the 450 signatories, contact the Wyman Institute at 202-434-8994 or by email: rafaelmedoff@aol.com.

The director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Dr. Piotr Cywinski, can be reached by calling (+4833) 843 21 33; by fax at (+4833) 843 22 27; or by email at: muzeum@auschwitz.org.pl The Museum's web site is: www.auschwitz.org.pl

Mikhail Gorbachev's battle to push through far-reaching reforms in the Soviet Union is revealed in notes from key Communist Party meetings.
The book "Inside the Communist Party Central Committee Politburo" includes heated discussions about the Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

It covers the period from 1985, when Mr Gorbachev launched the perestroika reforms, to the USSR's fall in 1991.

The notes were made by Gorbachev aides on their own initiative.

"Nobody instructed us to do this, but nobody stopped us either, although all Politburo members knew perfectly well that since Stalin's time it was forbidden to record anything," one of the aides, Anatoly Chernyayev, told the BBC Russian service.

"We made notes of everything, apart from trivia, and tried to give a lively picture of events. They argued, swore at each other, roughed each other up," he said.

Perhaps you've never heard of Henry Timrod, sometimes known as the poet laureate of the Confederacy.

But maybe you've heard his words, if you're one of the 320,000 people so far who have bought Bob Dylan's latest album, "Modern Times," which made its debut two weeks ago at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart.

It seems that many of the lyrics on that album, Dylan's first No. 1 album in the United States in 30 years (down to No. 3 last week), bear some strong echoes of the poems of Timrod, a Charleston, South Carolina, native who wrote poems about the U.S. Civil War and died in 1867 at the age of 39.

"More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours," the 65-year-old Dylan sings in "When the Deal Goes Down," one of the songs on "Modern Times." Compare that with these lines from Timrod's "Rhapsody of a Southern Winter Night":

A round of precious hours

Oh! here, where in that summer noon I basked

And strove, with logic frailer than the flowers.

"No doubt about it, there has been some borrowing going on," said Walter Brian Cisco, who wrote a 2004 biography of Timrod, when shown Dylan's lyrics. Cisco said he could find at least six other phrases from Timrod's poetry that appeared in Dylan's songs. But Cisco didn't seem particularly bothered by that.

"I'm glad Timrod is getting some recognition," he said.

Henry Timrod was born in 1828 and was a private tutor on plantations before the Civil War. He tried to enlist in the Confederate army but was unable to serve in the field because he suffered from tuberculosis. He worked as an editor for a daily paper in Columbia, South Carolina, and began writing poems about the war and how it affected the residents of the South. He also wrote love poems and ruminations on nature.

New Haven, Conn. — Yale has just established the first university-based institute in North America dedicated to the study of antisemitism.

The new center, the Yale Initiative for Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism, will be directed by Charles Small and based at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS), 77 Prospect St.

“As an institute that has a long-standing commitment to the scholarly exploration of inter-group conflict, ISPS takes special pride in hosting the first center in North America devoted to the study of antisemitism,” says Donald Green, director of ISPS and the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of Political Science at Yale. “The interdisciplinary scope of the topic and magnitude of the policy questions it raises are sure to attract top scholars and generate valuable discussion and research.”

Experts* sent to Lebanon by UNESCO to assess the state of the country's cultural heritage sites have called for urgent measures to clean up the oil spill from the World Heritage edifices along the Byblos shore line. However, they found that major components of Lebanon's cultural heritage had been spared by the recent conflict. The experts' findings were presented at a press conference at UNESCO this morning by the Organization's Assistant Director-General for Culture, Françoise Rivière, and Mounir Bouchenaki, Director-General of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), who led the mission, 10 - 15 September.

Despite the limited extent of war damage to cultural heritage, the mission found several areas that require attention to safeguard and revitalize that heritage.

Washington, DC, September 20, 2006 - On the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination of former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt, the National Security Archive today called on the U.S. government to release all documents relating to the role of General Augusto Pinochet in the car bombing that brought terrorism to the capital city of the United States on September 21, 1976.

Hundreds of documents implicating Pinochet in authorizing and covering up the crime were due to be declassified under the Clinton administration but were withheld in the spring of 2000 as evidence for a Justice Department investigation into the retired dictator's role. After more than six years, according to Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Archive's Chile Documentation Project, it is time to release them. "If there is not going to be a legal indictment," Kornbluh said, "the documents can and will provide an indictment of history."

The Archive today released a declassified memo to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger reporting on a CIA approach in early October 1976 to the head of the Chilean secret police, Manuel Contreras, regarding U.S. concerns about Operation Condor assassination plots. The secret memo, written by Kissinger's deputy for Latin America, Harry Schlaudeman, noted that Contreras had denied that "Operation Condor has any other purpose than the exchange of intelligence." While the car bombing in downtown Washington, D.C. that killed Letelier and Moffitt took place on September 21, 1976, the memo contains no reference to any discussion with Contreras about the assassinations--even though DINA was widely considered to be the most likely perpetrator of the crime. In 1978, Contreras was indicted by a U.S. Grand Jury for directing the terrorist attack.

The document was obtained by Kornbluh under the Freedom of Information Act.

The memorandum to Kissinger adds to a series of documents that have been obtained by the National Security Archive that shed light on what the U.S. government knew about Operation Condor--a collaboration of Southern Cone secret police services to track down, abduct, torture, and assassinate opponents in the mid and late 1970s--and what actions it took or failed to take prior to the Letelier-Moffitt assassination.

The Archive also released a second memo from Schlaudeman to Kissinger reporting on a cable from U.S. Ambassador to Uruguay Ernest Siracusa voicing his concerns on presenting the Condor demarche. Siracusa, the memo suggests, feared that he would become a target of Operation Condor if he followed his diplomatic instructions, and recommended that Schlaudeman approach Uruguay's ambassador to Washington instead. In his memo to Kissinger dated August 30, 1976, Schlaudeman spelled out the U.S. position on Condor assassination plots: "What we are trying to head off is a series of international murders that could do serious damage to the international status and reputation of the countries involved."

Kornbluh noted that neither the CIA memorandum of conversation with Contreras nor the Sircusa cable has been declassified and urged the Bush administration to release all records relating to Operation Condor and the Letelier-Moffitt case. "Amidst today's ongoing effort against international terrorism," he noted, "it is important to know the full history of the failure of U.S. efforts to detect and deter a terrorist plot in the heart of Washington, D.C."

Depending on the availability of financial resources and the approval of the National Park Service, as many as 15 archeologists may converge upon Roanoke Island next month, in hopes of finally finding the exact sites of the Sir Walter Raleigh colonies.

Excavations will be led by Eric Klingelhofer, of Macon, Ga., and Nick Lucetti, of Jamestown, Va., co-vice presidents of the First Colony Foundation.

Phil Evans, Foundation president, of Durham, said the objectives are to “find out where the site exactly is, what it looks like, how big is it and what has been lost to erosion and the ravages of time.”

Australia is to be part of a major three-nation archaeological survey of the Gallipoli battlefield, researchers say.

Associate Professor Chris Mackie from the University of Melbourne says the survey will combine conventional mapping with electromagnetic surveying to produce the most comprehensive historical and archaeological study ever conducted there.

"Most of the attention in the post-war period has been on the cemeteries," he says about studies of Turkey's Gallipoli Peninsula.

"One of the things we'll be spending a great deal of time on is the mapping of the trenches to see how they cohere with surviving maps of the trenches and exploring what lies beneath."

Mackie says there's a "distinct possibility" that a wealth of material dating back to the days of antiquity lies buried beneath the battlefield, perhaps the most historically significant military site in Australia's history.

LONG before the incessant trill of mobile phones and the modern addiction to 24-hour e-mail, Britain's entire telecommunications network was contained in a single, four-page directory of only 248 names, and not a single number. Yet the country's slimmest telephone book, first issued on Jan 15 1880 and available on the internet with its descendents today, not only offers a direct line through history to "Alexander Bell & Co'' but now represents a breakthrough for family historians.

For the first time, aspiring genealogists can electronically search for forgotten relatives among 72 million telephone directory entries between 1880 and 1984. Experts say this will bridge a frustrating gap between the 1901 census and living memory, providing clues that lead to more traditional researches through the electoral roll and census.

Nick Barrett, a genealogist on BBC2's Who Do You Think You Are? and The Daily Telegraph's family detective, said: "This is a major breakthrough and will make research so much easier. You can search for lost grandparents by typing in a name or place.''

The first records to appear today on the website ancestry.co.uk are for London, Surrey, Herts, Essex, Kent and Middlesex, with the rest of the country following next year, with 250 million entries.

Tony Robinson, the actor and a spokesman for the site, which draws three million visitors a month, said: "[Directories] were always seen as either boring or so large and useless that strong men tear them apart.

"But I believe they will have enormous ramifications for how we see ourselves in the world . . . they will reveal our own small family dramas. We are at the birth of a brand new science.''

The resurrection of Britain's 19th and 20th century directories also offers a fascinating glimpse of an age before cold-callers, 11-digit numbers and the vogue for going ex-directory.

In 1910 Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, was proud to be listed at Victoria 1436, and in 1925 callers wishing to contact Sir Winston Churchill simply called Paddington 1003, although they probably had to contend with a butler.

Almost anybody could track down the escapologist Harry Houdini in 1911, by calling Gerard 1312; Ivor Novello was to be found on City 1667 and Laurence Olivier was at Kensington 6505. Sigmund Freud and Marie Stopes were listed, as were Virginia Woolf, Benjamin Britten, Noel Coward, Lytton Strachey and Ian Fleming (call Tate 2300).

Viscount and Lady Astor had a number each, both in St James's Square, in 1920, while Sir Oswald Mosley was at Sloane 3395 in 1950. In 1961, before the Christine Keeler scandal broke, John Profumo could be called on Welbeck 6983.

But it is the apparent listing of the spy Kim Philby, in 1943, that shows how Britain was once a country where even those with most to hide need not be ex-directory.

"There is just something so exciting about finding the telephone numbers of famous and infamous people who would not be listed now, as well as relatives,'' said Josh Hanna, the managing director of ancestry.co.uk, which is believed to be paying BT pounds 25,000 a year for the right to use the directories.

"This is important and fascinating 20th century information that has been very difficult to find until now.''

The first telephone exchange opened in London in 1879, to be followed a year later by the first four-page directory, which listed names rather than numbers because so few people had a phone.

Callers hoping to contact the Royal Bank of Scotland, for example, just told the operator to whom they wished to speak and the call was connected.

By 1883, businesses were already being offered the opportunity to be ex-directory. But the idea was slow to catch on, with 588,000 people and businesses listed in the national directory by 1910 and 250,000 in London alone by 1924.

Telephone-owners are now more timid, with 60 per cent choosing not to be listed in the phone book this year, up from 37 per cent in 1997.

A BT spokesman said: "People seem to value their privacy more. I would be surprised to find a modern Kim Philby listed now.''

What do the struggles of 15th-century Venice have to do with America's troubles in Iraq? A lot, in the view of a group of old-guard Washington conservatives who sponsored a conference last week to discuss the lessons for today of La Serenissima, as the "serene republic" of Venice was known.

The sponsors of the conference, about whom more later, began with a question: How did the Venetians maintain their far-flung Mediterranean empire and also prosper as a free republic for over five centuries? Was their model of empire -- heavy on mercantile trading relationships, lighter on military intervention -- an example for the United States in the era of globalization? Did Venice practice a version of "Empire Lite" that America might emulate?

The conference organizers had gathered a retinue of professional historians, so the answers were far more hedged than the questions. The scholars described a Venetian republic that was far from democratic, vesting political power in a small circle of aristocratic families. The imperial ambitions of the city-state were founded on a carefully cultivated myth of Venice's divine right to power, backed by the strongest fleet in the Mediterranean.

But compared with America's current imperial troubles, Venice was serenity itself. One secret was that its empire sought trade, not territory. "The Venetians tried to keep local people and institutions in power. It was very much a hands-off model," explained Edward Muir, a professor at Northwestern University who spoke at the conference.

The Venetians' imperial difficulties came on dry land -- "Terrafirma," as the island state called the territories it administered in northeast Italy. But even there, says Muir, the Venetians sought to extend their power through a system of laws and patronage, rather than military occupation. "The Venetian empire was a judicial network, more than an economic or political one," he argued.

John Martin, a history professor at Trinity University in San Antonio, suggested a comparison between Rome and Venice. If the Roman Empire was about hard military power, imposed by the Roman legions, Venice was "soft power," to use the term popularized by Harvard professor Joseph Nye. It survived so long because it recognized limits to its ability to impose its will abroad.

The canny mercantilism of Venice's ruling families was another advantage for La Serenissima. The merchant families protected their republican form of government at home, even as their trading empire expanded. In contrast to imperial Rome, whose senate became a shell, Venice maintained its system of a non-hereditary ruler, known as the "doge"; its Great Council, where every adult male aristocrat was represented; and its secretive Council of Ten, which supervised a vast intelligence network. A far-flung empire required a strong executive, but Venetians resisted the temptation to turn their doge into an emperor or king, noted Martin.

Now, who might be inquiring into the contemporary lessons of an empire that died more than 200 years ago? The answer is as intriguing as the conference itself. The sponsor was a little-known group called the Committee for the Republic, which was formed back in 2003 by a group of establishment Washingtonians -- paleoconservatives, one might call them -- who were concerned about neoconservative enthusiasm for foreign interventions. The group briefly got into trouble in 2005 after it sponsored a discussion of the Palestinian issue that riled pro-Israel groups in Washington.

A leading member is C. Boyden Gray, former White House counsel in the Bush 41 administration and a longtime amateur historian of Venice. Gray, now the U.S. representative to the European Union in Brussels, wasn't able to attend the gathering. Presiding in his place was William Nitze, the son of former arms negotiator Paul Nitze.

Gray explained his interest in the Venetian model in an e-mail to other members of the group: "Whenever Venice won a naval battle, it asked not for territory, taxes or tribute but free-trade zones," he noted. "As part of its commercial empire, Venice had to rely on extensive intelligence in order to avoid foreign troop basing. As a result, its intelligence service was unmatched and its diplomacy unrivaled."

The quirky Venice conference is important less for any precise parallels it may offer for contemporary America than as an example of the debate that's growing among both liberals and conservatives in the wake of the Iraq war about the limits of American power. It raises the big strategic questions that too often get overlooked in Washington's endless round of seminars: How does a nation maintain a far-flung network of commercial interests without subverting its values at home? How does a nation have the benefits of imperial reach without the ruinous costs of empire? It's a debate that will widen as America moves toward its post-Iraq introspection.

Each year we look forward to reporting on the historians and humanists who have been honored with one of the coveted MacArthur Awards ­ a $500,000 prize that each fellow receives courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. This year, however, we are sorry to report that of the twenty-five named fellows (of which twelve are academics), not one is an historian.

Each year, the MacArthur Foundation awards an unrestricted fellowship to talented individuals who have shown “extraordinary originality and dedication to their creative pursuits and marked capacity for self-direction.” The cash prize is given in the hope that recipients will pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations.

This year’s winners include 25 individuals of which 15 are scientists, doctors, and astronomers. Of the remaining ten winners, there are two musicians; five writers, playwrights and journalists, and three artists/sculptors. When the history coalition contacted MacArthur Foundation to ask “where are the historians?” a spokespersons stated that “that there has not been a shift” in fellowship priorities or emphasis. According to the spokesperson, “over the 26-year trajectory, there have been many historians and there undoubtedly will be others in the future.”

The names of those people who nominate candidates for the fellowship remains a secret. According to the foundation website, each year over a hundred nominators are approached by the foundation to nominate the most creative people they know within their field and beyond. The nominations are then evaluated by a Selection Committee (the deepest kept secret list) composed of about a dozen leaders in the arts, sciences, humanities professions, and for-profit and nonprofit communities. Recommendations are then made to the President and Board of Directors of the foundation. Typically, 20 to 30 fellows are named; to date over 700 individuals have received the award, including over 70 historians.