VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,550 © 2019 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, MONDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2019

C M Y K Nxxx,2019-12-23,A,001,Bs-4C,E2

U(D54G1D)y+\!$!#!=!;

In late November, the modera-tor of three highly trafficked web-sites posted a message titled“R.I.P.” It offered a convoluted ex-planation for why they were leftwith no choice but to close.

The unnamed moderatorthanked over 100,000 “brothers”who had visited and contributedto the sites before their demise,blaming an “increasingly intoler-ant world” that did not allow chil-dren to “fully express them-selves.”

In fact, forums on the sites hadbeen bastions of illegal content al-most since their inception in 2012,containing child sexual abusephotos and videos, including vio-lent and explicit imagery of in-fants and toddlers.

The sites managed to survive solong because the internet pro-vides enormous cover for sexualpredators. Apps, social mediaplatforms and video games arealso riddled with illicit material,but they have corporate owners —like Facebook and Microsoft —that can monitor and remove it.

In a world exploding with theimagery — 45 million photos andvideos of child sexual abuse werereported last year alone — theopen web is a freewheeling ex-panse where the underdog task ofconfronting the predators fallsmainly to a few dozen nonprofitswith small budgets and outsize de-termination.

Several of those groups, includ-ing a child exploitation hotline inCanada, hunted the three sitesacross the internet for years butcould never quite defeat them.The websites, records show, wereled by an experienced computerprogrammer who was adept at

staying one step ahead of his pur-suers — in particular, through theservices of American and othertech companies with policies thatcan be used to shield criminal be-havior.

But the Canadian hotline devel-oped a tech weapon of its own, asophisticated tool to find and re-port illegal imagery on the web.When the sites found the tool di-rected at them, they fought backwith a smear campaign, sendingemails to the Canadian govern-ment and others with unfounded

claims of “grave operational andfinancial corruption” against thenonprofit.

It wasn’t enough. The threesites were overwhelmed by theCanadian tool, which had sentmore than one million notices of il-legal content to the companieskeeping them online. And lastmonth, they were compelled tosurrender.

“It’s been a wonderful 7 yearsand we would’ve loved to go foranother 7,” the sites’ moderatorwrote in his final post, saying theyhad closed because “antis,” shortfor “anti-pedophiles,” were “hunt-ing us to death with unprecedent-ed zeal.”

The victory was cheered bygroups fighting online child sexu-al abuse, but there were no illu-sions about the enormous under-taking that remained. Thousandsof other sites offer anybody with aweb browser access to illegal and

How Child Sex Sites EludeShutdown Efforts for Years

Despite Rare Win by Foes, Predators OftenStay a Step Ahead With Tech Savvy

By GABRIEL J.X. DANCE

EXPLOITED

An Epic Battle

Continued on Page A12

WASHINGTON — Whether in-vestigating charges of torture bythe C.I.A., rolling up an organizedcrime network or prosecutingcrooked government officials,John H. Durham, the veteran fed-eral prosecutor named by Attor-ney General William P. Barr to in-vestigate the origins of the Russiainquiry, burnished his reputationfor impartiality over the years bykeeping his mouth closed abouthis work.

At the height of the Boston mobprosecution that made his name,he not only rebuffed a local news-paper’s interview request, but healso told his office not to releasehis résumé or photo.

That wall of silence cracked thismonth when Mr. Durham, servingin the most politically chargedrole of his career, released an ex-traordinary statement question-ing one key element of an overlap-ping investigation by the JusticeDepartment’s inspector general,Michael E. Horowitz.

Mr. Horowitz had found that theF.B.I. acted appropriately in open-ing the inquiry in 2016 intowhether the Trump campaign wit-tingly or unwittingly helped Rus-sia influence the election in Don-

Surprising Turn By InvestigatorOf Russia CaseBy ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON

Continued on Page A17

Michael R. Bloomberg was notentirely picky.

By the late 1990s, financiallymegasecure and professionallyrestless, the billionaire business-man had told friends that four jobson earth could tempt him awayfrom his company: president ofthe United States, secretary gen-

eral of the United Nations, presi-dent of the World Bank and mayorof New York.

And several months before Mr.Bloomberg announced his 2001bid to fill the looming vacancy at

City Hall, some of those friendswere worried about him. One ofthem, Senator John McCain, sentword to the sitting mayor, RudolphW. Giuliani, asking him to talk Mr.Bloomberg through the grim re-alities of what even some aidesviewed as an electoral suicidemission.

Mr. Giuliani agreed. “You’re go-ing to lose,” he told Mr. Bloombergflatly during a meeting at the

Bloomberg’s First Race as a Billionaire UnderdogBy MATT FLEGENHEIMERand MAGGIE HABERMAN

In 2001, Stumbling butLearning to Run

Continued on Page A16

BILL INGALLS/NASA, VIA REUTERS

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft landed in White Sands, N.M., after a shortened mission. Page A15.A Space Capsule’s Safe Return

DARA SAKOR, Cambodia —The airstrip stretches like a scarthrough what was once unspoiledCambodian jungle.

When completed next year on aremote stretch of shoreline, DaraSakor International Airport willhave the longest runway in Cam-bodia, complete with the kind oftight turning bay favored byfighter jet pilots. Nearby, workersare clearing trees from a nationalpark to make way for a port deepenough to host naval ships.

The politically connected Chi-nese company building theairstrip and port says the facilitiesare for civilian use. But the scale ofthe land deal at Dara Sakor —which secures 20 percent of Cam-bodia’s coastline for 99 years —has raised eyebrows, especially

since the portion of the projectbuilt so far is already moldering inmalarial jungle.

The activity at Dara Sakor andother nearby Chinese projects isstirring fears that Beijing plans toturn this small Southeast Asiannation into a de facto military out-post.

Already, a far-flung Chineseconstruction boom — on disputedislands in the South China Sea,across the Indian Ocean and on-ward to Beijing’s first militarybase overseas, in the African Horn

China Builds Airstrip, and Toehold, in CambodiaBy HANNAH BEECH Suspicions of Military

Outpost for Beijingin Remote Jungle

The home of Ban Em’s family will be razed to make way for a Chinese-built military port, her husband, Thim Lim, said he was told.ADAM DEAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A6

WASHINGTON — It is billed asan easy and secure way to chat byvideo or text message with friendsand family, even in a country thathas restricted popular messagingservices like WhatsApp andSkype.

But the service, ToTok, is actu-ally a spying tool, according toAmerican officials familiar with aclassified intelligence assessmentand a New York Times investiga-tion into the app and its develop-ers. It is used by the governmentof the United Arab Emirates to tryto track every conversation,movement, relationship, appoint-ment, sound and image of thosewho install it on their phones.

ToTok, introduced only monthsago, was downloaded millions oftimes from the Apple and Googleapp stores by users throughoutthe Middle East, Europe, Asia, Af-rica and North America. While themajority of its users are in theEmirates, ToTok surged to be-come one of the most downloadedsocial apps in the United Stateslast week, according to app rank-ings and App Annie, a researchfirm.

Emirates PlantsSecret Spy ToolsIn Popular App

This article is by Mark Mazzetti,Nicole Perlroth and RonenBergman.

Continued on Page A9

After a loss to the Eagles severelydented Dallas’s playoff hopes, JasonGarrett’s future with the team will nodoubt come up for review. PAGE D1

SPORTSMONDAY D1-5

The Cowboys and Their Coach

When the Nigerian government wentafter a prominent detractor in the midstof a broad crackdown on free speech, itdid not expect to stir resistance 5,000miles away in Haworth, N.J. PAGE A4

INTERNATIONAL A4-9

Faraway Cries for Freedom

Despite a growing health crisis that haskilled more than 50 people, vaping hasbecome an irresistible part of life formany college students. PAGE A15

Hit After Hit on Campus

The advertising industry has publiclyembraced doing more to empowerwomen, even as it continues to sidelineand stereotype them. PAGE B1

BUSINESS B1-8

Still a ‘Mad Men’ World

Jersey City residents gathered at thekosher market where three bystandersdied in an anti-Semitic attack. PAGE A19

NEW YORK A19-21

An Emotional Hanukkah

“Marriage Story” is about a breakup,but also full of hope, Scott Tobias writes.Below, Adam Driver, Azhy Robertsonand Scarlett Johansson. PAGE C1

The Silver Linings of Divorce

David Leonhardt PAGE A23

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23

In a tense, private meeting lastweek in Washington, the head ofthe Federal Aviation Administra-tion reprimanded Boeing’s chiefexecutive for putting pressure onthe agency to move faster in ap-proving the return of the compa-ny’s 737 Max jet.

This was the first face-to-faceencounter between the F.A.A.chief, Stephen Dickson, and theexecutive, Dennis A. Muilenburg,and Mr. Dickson told him not toask for any favors during the dis-

cussion. He said Boeing should fo-cus on providing all the docu-ments needed to fully describe theplane’s software changes accord-ing to two people briefed on themeeting.

It was a rare dressing-down forthe leader of one of the world’s big-gest companies, and a sign of thedeteriorating relationship be-tween Mr. Muilenburg and theregulator that will determinewhen Boeing’s most importantplane will fly again.

The global grounding of the 737Max has entered its 10th month,after two crashes that killed 346

BOEING’S LEADERDEEPENS A CRISIS

Lapses Anger Regulators,Airlines and Families

By NATALIE KITROEFFand DAVID GELLES

Dennis A. Muilenburg, Boe-ing’s chief executive.

MICHAEL REYNOLDS/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCK

Continued on Page A14

That’s what Jimmy Kimmel, StephenColbert and the other kings of late nighthave been joking about this year. Butthey did manage to sneak in somenon-presidential material too. PAGE C1

ARTS C1-8

Trump, Trump and More Trump

A Cuban waiting for asylum in theUnited States has become the onlyfull-time physician at a border encamp-ment of 2,500 in Mexico. PAGE A10

NATIONAL A10-18

A Doctor Among the Migrants

Late EditionToday, mostly sunny, dry, warmer,high 51. Tonight, dry, mainly clear,low 38. Tomorrow, plenty of sun-shine, remaining dry, not as warm,high 46. Weather map, Page D8.

$3.00