Pilot Dave Weldon told The Associated Press on Thursday that he saw state firefighting planes on a nearby airstrip as he approached the mountains at 110 mph. He called down for help because his dispatcher had relayed reports of smoke in the area, but he got no response.

That was around 5:45 p.m. A few minutes later, he spotted smoke from the fire, then only about 50 yards on each side and not spreading.

As he steadied his helicopter against wind gusts, Weldon's concern mounted. Just before landing, he called for backup, asking another county helicopter to speed to the scene with its 120-gallon water dump bucket. And he urged the dispatcher to contact state firefighters and renew his request for air tankers.

The problem was that under state safety guidelines, no flights can go up into waning daylight. On Saturday, the cutoff was 5:36 p.m., said California Department of Forestry Capt. Ron Serabia, who coordinates the 12 tankers and 10 helicopters now battling the 272,000-acre blaze.

The sun set that day at 6:05 p.m.

The helicopter with the dump bucket flew within five miles of the fire, before state officials told it to turn back, Weldon said. The air tankers never took off. Weldon was told crews would attack the fire in the morning.

"We were basically just offering our assistance fighting their fire, and they turned it down," said Weldon, who with his partner delivered the hunter to law enforcement officials who cited him for setting an unauthorized fire. "I was frustrated about it, but I wasn't surprised."

Weldon said the county helicopter wouldn't have been allowed to drop water after dark and said that it alone couldn't have done the job, but he thought a well-placed drop from the air tanker might have extinguished the flames.

• To have told Bush about the 9/11 attacks months before they occurred.
  
• To have claimed to warned NASA about the problems with the shuttle fleet that resulted in the loss of the Columbia.
  
• To have known that Lee Harvey Oswald was going to assassinate JFK weeks before it occurred.
  
• To have known Saddam Hussein had no WMDs when he bombed Iraq in 1998.
  

THE President of the United States lied.

That was Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's latest riposte in the continuing exchange over whether he was ticked off by the American leader over his remarks that Jews ruled the world.

"It's the biggest lie. If he had rebuked me, I'm quite sure I would have rebuked him also," the combative Malaysian leader told reporters here after arriving home from Papua New Guinea yesterday.

Smear tactics aside, the thrust of the attacks was that because anti-Semitism is evil, anyone who tries to understand why politicians foment anti-Semitism — and looks for ways other than military force to combat the disease — is an apologist for anti-Semitism and is complicit in evil.

Yet that moral punctiliousness is curiously selective. Last year the Bush administration, in return for a military base in Uzbekistan, gave $500 million to a government that, according to the State Department, uses torture "as a routine investigation technique," and whose president has killed opponents with boiling water. The moral clarity police were notably quiet.

Why won't it give moderate Muslims a better argument against the radicals by opposing Ariel Sharon's settlement policy, when a majority of Israelis think that some settlements should be abandoned, and even Israeli military officers have become bitterly critical of Mr. Sharon?

The answer is that in these cases politics takes priority over the war on terror. Moderate Muslims would have more faith in America's good intentions if there were at least the appearance of a distinction between the U.S. and the Sharon government — but the administration seeks votes from those who think that supporting Israel means supporting whatever Mr. Sharon does.

While putting most of the blame for the breakdown on Palestinian terrorists, Powell also criticized the Israeli bombings even as he called them "self-defense activities."

"To kill one Hamas leader but to wound nine children or 10 children in the course of this, who will grow up to become Hamas leaders or Hamas killers later - they have to consider the long-term consequences," Powell said on ABC.

3. POWELL, RICE CRITICIZE ISRAELI ATTACK… Two senior officials of the Bush Administration have criticized Israel’s failed attack on Hamas leadership. Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice both called the strike “counterproductive.” Powell told a Sunday news program that Israel “will have to consider the long term consequences of this policy [of targeted assassinations].” Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told the newspaper Yediot Aharonot on Sunday that the policy would continue and that terrorist leaders are “marked for death.” Powell also made it clear that the Administration opposes the expulsion of Yassir Arafat from the region as a number of members of Sharon’s cabinet --including the Foreign Minister -- are calling for. But he reiterated that the U.S. will not deal with Arafat.

Israel suffers its worst terrorist act in the current spate of violence — 20 youths killed at a beachfront Tel Aviv disco. Secretary of State Colin Powell urges Israel not to retaliate and continues to criticize Israeli settlements.

• Cedar fire: 206,664 acres burned
  
• Paradise fire: 30,000 acres burned
  
• Otay fire: 45,291 acres burned
  
• 881 homes destroyed (San Diego County only)
  
• 12 deaths
  

• At least 11 dead
  
• 250,000 acres burned in Southern California
  
• 800+ homes destroyed in So. Cal
  
• Up to 300 homes destroyed in San Diego County
  
• 11,000 homes countywide without power
  

• 10 12 people dead
  
• 4 separate fires
  
• 100+ 250+ structures destroyed
  
• I-15 is closed
  
• Highway 52 is closed from I-15 to Route 125
  
• Several electricity transmission lines down
  
• 800+ firefighters fighting the fire
  
• 96,000 acres burned
  

Mr. Sulzberger wrote that the newspaper did not have Mr. Duranty's prize, and thus could not "return" it. While careful to advise the board that the newspaper would "respect" its decision on whether to rescind the award, Mr. Sulzberger asked the board to consider two things. First, he wrote, such an action might evoke the "Stalinist practice to airbrush purged figures out of official records and histories." He also wrote of his fear that "the board would be setting a precedent for revisiting its judgments over many decades."

In an interview last night, Bill Keller, the newspaper's executive editor, said he concurred with Mr. Sulzberger.

"It's absolutely true that the work Duranty did, at least as much of it as I've read, was credulous, uncritical parroting of propaganda," said Mr. Keller, who covered the Soviet Union for The Times from 1986 to 1991.

And yet, Mr. Keller added, "As someone who spent time in the Soviet Union while it still existed, the notion of airbrushing history kind of gives me the creeps."

The effects of the embargo are widespread. There are fewer nurses trained, there are fewer doctors trained, and the medical equipment shortages obviously a problem in his eyes. So we obviously need to address those things.

In the end, what was striking was how little Democrats seemed inclined to dig into the actual questions involved in the cases Brown has decided; each time Brown delivered a crisp defense of her reasoning, Democrats simply moved on to another sound bite. It was as if Durbin and his colleagues had chosen to make a series of short-form attacks, get the hearing out of the way, and then move on to the more serious matter of filibustering Brown's nomination.

The San Diego County Democratic Party had scheduled a "fund-raising" visit to the station, on the campus of San Diego State University, for late yesterday afternoon.

For $25 a head, local Democrats would get a tour of the station, enjoy some refreshments and meet with Gloria Penner, host of KBPS [sic] radio's "Editor's Roundtable" and KBPS [sic] television's "These Days Special Edition."

Democratic Party Chairman Kennan Kaeder said no political candidate would benefit from the proceeds, but the money – in addition to paying for refreshments – would go for overhead at the party's Kearny Mesa headquarters.

KPBS canceled the tour after hearing it had been touted as a fund-raiser.

In another interview, a former prisoner, a 66-year-old grandmother, identified as "Detainee #24" to protect relatives still perhaps alive in North Korea, describes being assigned to help in the delivery of babies who were thrown immediately into a plastic-lined box to die in bulk lots. The report notes: "The interviewer had difficulty finding words to describe the sadness in this grandmother's eyes and the anguish on her face as she recounted her experience as a midwife at the detention center in South Sinuiju"--one of the sites shown in detail in the accompanying satellite photos.

"For well over half a century we have fought over Palestine. What have we achieved? Nothing. We are worse off than before," he said. "If we had paused to think, then we could have devised a plan, a strategy that can win us final victory."

It's worth reading the rest of last week's speech, beyond the offensive 28 words. Most of it is criticism directed at other Muslims, clerics in particular. Mr. Mahathir castigates "interpreters of Islam who taught that acquisition of knowledge by Muslims meant only the study of Islamic theology." Thanks to these interpreters, "the study of science, medicine, etc. was discouraged. Intellectually the Muslims began to regress." A lot of the speech sounds as if it had been written by Bernard Lewis, author of "What Went Wrong," the best-selling book about the Islamic decline.

We must build up our strength in every field, not just in armed might. Our countries must be stable and well administered, must be economically and financially strong, industrially competent and technologically advanced. This will take time, but it can be done and it will be time well spent. We are enjoined by our religion to be patient. Innallahamaasabirin. Obviously there is virtue in being patient.

But the defence of the ummah, the counter-attack, need not start only after we have put our houses in order. Even today we have sufficient assets to deploy against our detractors. It remains for us to identify them and to work out how to make use of them to stop the carnage caused by the enemy. This is entirely possible if we stop to think, to plan, to strategise and to take the first few critical steps. Even these few steps can yield positive results.

When times are tough, Mr. Mahathir also throws the Muslim majority rhetorical red meat.

And that's what he was doing last week. Not long ago Washington was talking about Malaysia as an important partner in the war on terror. Now Mr. Mahathir thinks that to cover his domestic flank, he must insert hateful words into a speech mainly about Muslim reform. That tells you, more accurately than any poll, just how strong the rising tide of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism among Muslims in Southeast Asia has become. Thanks to its war in Iraq and its unconditional support for Ariel Sharon, Washington has squandered post-9/11 sympathy and brought relations with the Muslim world to a new low.

And bear in mind that Mr. Mahathir's remarks were written before the world learned about the views of Lt. Gen. William "My God Is Bigger Than Yours" Boykin. By making it clear that he sees nothing wrong with giving an important post in the war on terror to someone who believes, and says openly, that Allah is a false idol -- General Boykin denies that's what he meant, but his denial was implausible even by current standards -- Donald Rumsfeld has gone a long way toward confirming the Muslim world's worst fears.

Somewhere in Pakistan Osama bin Laden must be enjoying this. The war on terror didn't have to be perceived as a war on Islam, but we seem to be doing our best to make it look that way.

Woman: What he is really doing here is intelligence gathering.

Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio: “Now they’ve got this guy who’s head of the intelligence section in the Defense Department who’s being quoted as telling various groups, while he’s in uniform, that this is a Christian crusade against Muslims. I mean this is terrible, this is seriously bad stuff.”

Colbert King, Washington Post editorial writer: “The other thing about Boykin, he got it wrong. He said God put George Bush in the White House. The Supreme Court did it.”

Totenberg: “The Supreme Court put George Bush in the White House.”

Charles Krauthammer, syndicated columnist, joked: “It was 5,000 yentas in Palm Beach who couldn’t read the ballot. If that was not an act of providence, nothing is.”

Gordon Peterson, host: “By the way, he was showing pictures of Somalia, Mogadishu and there’s a black mark in the sky and he said 'these are demons who controlled this thing.’”

Totenberg: “Well, I hope he’s not long for this world because you can imagine-”

Several voices reacted in unison, drowning her out, including Peterson: “You putting a hit out on this guy or what?”

King: “Are you Reverend Pat Robertson?”

Totenberg: “No, no, no, no, no, no!”

Peterson: “What is this, the Sopranos?”

Totenberg: “In his job, in his job, in his job, please, please, in his job.”

The candidates also need to tell Americans where they stand on the larger issue of preventive war. The prewar intelligence failures in Iraq and the failure, so far, to find threatening unconventional weapons strike at the basic premises of Mr. Bush's alarmingly novel strategic doctrines. What alternative ideas do the Democratic contenders have for handling threats like North Korean, and possibly Iranian, nuclear weapons programs and for dealing with countries that give aid and sanctuary to international terrorist groups? And what would they do to keep Afghanistan, the scene of America's first post-9/11 war, from falling back into chaos with a revived Taliban?

It is in the nature of modern campaigns to offer sound bites rather than substance. But voters have a right to ask for more and to press the Democratic candidates to present real alternatives to Mr. Bush's policies in Iraq and beyond.

Last week Congressional Democrats challenged Mr. Bush's request for $20 billion for reconstruction in Iraq. One of their leading demands, converting some of the money into loans, picked up enough Republican support to prevail in the Senate. Unfortunately, it's a terrible idea. Turning aid into a loan dumps more debt on a country that is already sinking in it. It's also the worst kind of election-oriented pandering that only serves to hide the true costs from voters.

After the war, the White House said the African uranium claim was false, and shouldn't have been in the president's address.

RICE: When we got to the State of the Union, there were -- first of all, a lot of time had passed, several months. There were reports in the [National Intelligence Estimate] about other African countries. There was the British report that talked about the efforts to get uranium in Africa.

The British, by the way, still stand by their report to this very day in its accuracy, because they tell us that they had sources that were not compromised in any way by later -- in March or April -- later reports that there were some forgeries.

Now, we have said very clearly that the information went in on the basis of a number of sources, but we have a different standard for presidential speeches, which is that we don't just put in things that are in intelligence sources. We put in things that we believe the intelligence agency has high confidence in, and that's why we have a clearance process.

BLITZER: They didn't have high confidence in this ... That's why we had to pin it on British intelligence, as opposed to U.S. intelligence.

RICE: The British intelligence report, as far as we knew, was a report that was underpinned by reporting that was solid. We sent it out to the agency for clearance, said, "Can you stand by this?" They said, apparently, that's inconsistent. I'm understanding now that the sentence is accurate.

As George Tenet has said, accuracy is not the standard. Of course, the sentence was accurate. But we were asking about confidence. And George Tenet rightly says that the agency cleared the speech, it should not have been cleared with that sentence in.

So Krugman hand-picked a "model" that confirmed his prejudices. But does it? After spending a few minutes playing the role of Joseph Wilson IV and "drinking sweet mint tea," I found that Krugman had sexed-up his hand-picked "model." First I downloaded the Lehman press release Krugman cited. It turns out that Lehman never claimed to have "appl[ied] the same model" to the United States. It only stated that "the developed countries...are exhibiting large economic imbalances." Nothing whatsoever was said to the effect that the US's "imbalances" are any worse than those of any other country. Rather, the US is "conspicuous" only because "any financial crisis could cause considerable spillover effects to the rest of the world." I obtained the full September 1 2003 report on Damocles -- no different.

Next I called Lehman's UK-based Chief International Economist Russell Jones, the author of the report on Damocles. He'd seen Krugman's column -- I could hear the sound of his eyes rolling all the way from London. He told me "Krugman can be somewhat twisted and bitter on occasion. This analytic tool was not intended to be applied to developed countries. Damocles gave him an in to write a piece he wanted to write. He's making a career out of this kind of thing."

Strong words from Jones, who told me at the same time that Krugman is not wrong, in principle, to be concerned about the US's "rapid accumulation of debt," and that indeed the US scores poorly by Damocles' standards. But he firmly admonished, "to apply this to the US is not that relevant."

Still, there's no question that the U.S. has the resources to climb out of its financial hole. The question is whether it has the political will.

Krugman half-jokingly claimed he feels safe challenging the administration in his columns because he can retreat to his academic career.

"I can always go back to just being a college professor, in England, if necessary," he said.

KRUGMAN: What it is peculiar is that, when I arranged my column with the New York Times in Fall 1999, I actually thought I would provide good-tempered comments on the specifics of the New Economy. Instead of that, I find myself once again the lonely voice of truth in an ocean of corruption. I sometimes think that I will end up one day in one of those cages in Guantanamo Bay [laughter]. But then I can always seek asylum in Germany. I hope you'll take me in case of emergency.

Krugman ended his lecture on a more hopeful note, asserting the strength of the American economy can pull the nation through prolonged financial strain.

"The U.S. has the resources," he said. "The budget deficit is not large compared to the overall national economy."

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late.

Rockefeller: Tony, if you listen to that as an average American person would, you, at least myself included, that is talking about the danger of an immediate attack. And in fact, the intelligence committee, the one thing they did not say was that there was, we were in danger of being attacked in this country.

Snow: I'm sorry. We've done a lot of research on this, and the president never said, and we've been looking for it, because a lot of you and your colleagues have said he talked about an imminent threat. And he never did. As a matter of fact, the key argument, was it not, that you can't wait for it to become an imminent threat because then it's too late.

Rockefeller: No. The argument, Tony, was based upon, I was there and I heard the speech, very close, and he was talking about weapons of mass destruction -- biological, chemical and nuclear -- and that was more or less signed off on by the intelligence community. Which raises a whole 'nother set of questions. And the whole problem was that there was a danger of attack. If the word "imminent threat" wasn't used, that was the predicate, that was the feeling that was given to the American people. And to the Congress whose vote the president clearly was trying to argue, or to convince during the course of that State of the Union message.

There has also been some debate over how "imminent" a threat Iraq poses. I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat, but I also believe that after September 11, the question is increasingly outdated. It is in the nature of these weapons, and the way they are targeted against civilian populations, that documented capability and demonstrated intent may be the only warning we get. To insist on further evidence could put some of our fellow Americans at risk. Can we afford to take that chance? We cannot!

Snow: What made you change your mind?

Rockefeller: That's correct. And that's what I felt at the time I cast that vote based upon the intelligence community's analysis of the situation. Particularly weapons of mass destruction. And what the president said in his speech. But the situation turns out not to have been quite like either the intelligence community or the president indicated. And that would be a vote that I would probably not make today based upon the revelations that there don't appear, at least to this point, to be any weapons of mass destruction. I've heard David Kay a number of times now. He has not indicated that. He's talking about perhaps they were all burned up or gotten rid of.

But this isn't just a future threat. Saddam's existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America now. Saddam has used chemical weapons before... He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East.

Snow: And that, indeed, is what David Kay reported to Congress last week, is it not?

Rockefeller: No. It is not. David Kay did not report that degree of possibility at all to the Congress. And he actually was very clear in his public statements, forget his intelligence committee statements, he was very clear about that. He was not certain about it. He said we had a lot more work to do. It's going another six to nine months to find out if he had these weapons of mass destruction or not.

* A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.

* A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.

* Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.

* New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.

* Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).

* A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.

* Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.

* Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km - well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.

* Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles --probably the No Dong -- 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited military equipment.

On Thursday, SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs said the company plans legal action and is considering both criminal and civil suits. He said it may charge the student with maligning the company's reputation and, possibly, with violating copyright law that bans the distribution of tools for breaking through digital piracy safeguards.

"We feel we were the victim of an unannounced agenda and that the company has been wronged," Jacobs said. "I think the agenda is: 'Digital property should belong to everyone on the Internet.' I'm not sure that works in the marketplace."

SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs acknowledged his threat to file a lawsuit was a mistake. "I felt the researcher has an agenda, which he does," he said. "But that's not relevant, and I learned that...The long-term nature of the lawsuit and the emotional result of the lawsuit would obscure the issue, and it would develop a life of its own."

Jacobs refused to divulge the reasons for his change of heart, saying only that "when the original firestorm cleared and we had a chance to poll the different organizations (including customers, advisers and shareholders) I started to have a different picture on how to resolve the issue."

But conservatives are distressed because those liberals are so angry and rude. O.K., they admit, they themselves were a bit rude during the Clinton years — that seven-year, $70 million investigation of a tiny money-losing land deal, all that fuss about the president's private life — but they're sorry, and now it's time for everyone to be civil.

• Number of Whitewater related convictions: 15 (including the sitting governor of Arkansas)
  
• Number of times Hillary Clinton said "I don't recall" or its equivalent in a statement to a House investigating committee: 50
  
• Number of times Bill Clinton said "I don't recall" or its equivalent in the released portions of the his testimony on Paula Jones: 271
  

Indeed, angry liberals can take some lessons in civility from today's right.

Consider, for example, Fox News's genteel response to Christiane Amanpour, the CNN correspondent. Ms. Amanpour recently expressed some regret over CNN's prewar reporting: "Perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News." A Fox spokeswoman replied, "It's better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than as a spokeswoman for Al Qaeda."

Still, some would say that criticism should focus only on Mr. Bush's policies, not on his person. But no administration in memory has made paeans to the president's character — his "honor and integrity" — so central to its political strategy.

A Princeton University student has published instructions for disabling the new anticopying measures being tested on CDs by BMG--and they're as simple as holding down a computer's Shift key.

The technique was confirmed by BMG and SunnComm Technologies, the small company that produces the anticopying technology. Both companies said they had known about it before releasing the CD, and that they still believed the protection would deter most average listeners' copying.

"This is something we were aware of," BMG spokesman Nathaniel Brown said. "Copy management is intended as a speed bump, intended to thwart the casual listener from mass burning and uploading. We made a conscious decision to err on the side of playability and flexibility."

For the first time in the United States, BMG Music will release a music CD that's loaded with anticopying protection, a move that opens a new round of technological experimentation for record labels. [emphasis added]

For example, suppose I were to say, "We should abolish the minimum wage. That would increase employment and enable more people to climb out of poverty."

There are two types of arguments you might make in response. I call these Type C and Type M.

A hypothetical example of a Type C argument would be, "Well, Arnold, studies actually show that the minimum wage does not cost jobs. If you read the work of Krueger and Card, you would see that the minimum wage probably reduces poverty."

A hypothetical example of a Type M argument would be, "People who want to get rid of the minimum wage are just trying to help the corporate plutocrats."

Paul, my question for you is this:

Do you see any differences between those two types of arguments?

"We conclude that the public does have strong privacy and expectation interests that weigh in favor of granting this stay," the three-judge panel wrote. It added that the justifications for the registry -- to prevent abusive and coercive sales practices and protect privacy -- are substantial interests appropriate for government action.

"We find it relevant that the national do-not-call list is of an opt-in nature, which provides an element of private choice," the panel wrote. "The list is not invoked until the homeowner makes a private decision to invoke it."

Myth: Many of the paid circulators were convicted criminals bused here from out of state.

Fact: None of the circulators were bused to California by the campaign. A few who do this kind of work for a living came from other states, as they do for any major ballot initiative. Two of the petition circulators had criminal records, but they worked only briefly for the recall campaign before quitting to go to work for the Davis campaign, gathering signatures on petitions supporting the governor. [emphasis added]

But any serious deficiencies (in collecting needed racial data) would likely be completely remedied by paragraph (b) of the initiative - the mother of all exemptions. That provision permits the collection of racial data whenever the legislature determines that to do so serves a compelling state interest and the governor and two-thirds of the legislature approve of such collection. If a deficit of racial data causes a significant health risk, the legislature will quickly determine that collection of the necessary information is a compelling state interest. Indeed, while the prudent inclusion of the "compelling state interest" exception in Prop. 54 makes good sense, it may eventually become the exception that swallows the rule: If Prop. 54 passes on October 7, on October 8 the hundreds of special interests that oppose the measure will be in Sacramento lobbying for their pet compelling-state-interest exceptions - and since Gray Davis, the leading candidates to replace him (excepting Tom McClintock) and virtually all Democrats in the state assembly oppose the initiative, it's a safe bet exceptions will proliferate.

Norman G. Finkelstein first accused Dershowitz of plagiarism last Wednesday, when both professors were on a talk show called “Democracy Now!” to debate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The charge has also surfaced in the October edition of The Nation, in a column called “Alan Dershowitz, Plagiarist,” which cites Finkelstein’s research.

In an interview this weekend, Finkelstein accused Dershowitz of “wholesale lifting of source material” from Joan Peters’ book, From Time Immemorial, in which she argues that Jewish settlements predated the arrival of Palestinians in what is now Israel.

Finkelstein wrote a book contesting Peters’ argument—which he dismisses as a “monumental hoax”—and says he is therefore very familiar with her text.

He said that when he read Dershowitz’s book he recognized a lot of material—more than 20 quotes cited to primary and secondary sources—which mirrored the quotes Peters selected for use in her 1984 book.

Finkelstein argues that even though Dershowitz attributes those passages to their original sources, he should not have relied so heavily on Peters’ work.

When he (Dershowitz) spoke on MSNBC’s radio earlier this month, he pledged $10,000 to the Palestinian Liberation Organization if someone could “find a historical fact in my book that [one] can prove false.”