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ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

Years after being cleared of a heinouscrime and leaving an Italian prison,Amanda Knox is intent on telling herstory, on her terms. PAGE 10

SUNDAY STYLES

Unwanted Fame Follows HerThe arrest of a small religious group’sleader in Siberia shows that repressionreaches even far-flung areas. PAGE 10

INTERNATIONAL 4-12

Long Arm of Russian LawYoung lawyers are finding that being inthe office makes a big difference in therace to get ahead at work. PAGE 1

SUNDAY BUSINESS

Showing Up Matters

Over four days in Montana, members ofthe Blackfeet Nation honored Chief EarlOld Person, who had led the tribe forover 60 years before he died. PAGE 13

NATIONAL 13-28

Farewell to the Chief

Thousands of Afghans who were inIndia when the country collapsed arenow desperate to return. PAGE 4

The Difficulty of Going HomeGrace Congregational Church wants toredevelop its building. A new historicdistrict stands in its way. PAGE 1

A Dilemma in Harlem

Byron Lewis founded an ad agency tospeak to Black audiences and set thetemplate for a media empire. PAGE 1

METROPOLITAN

He Saw the Overlooked

The children’s publisher Scholastic hadbeen a family empire until an executive,Iole Lucchese, was given control. PAGE 1

Surprise Ending

Maureen Dowd PAGE 7

SUNDAY REVIEW

Col. Wang Yaping is a pilot in thePeople’s Liberation Army’s AirForce. She is a space veteran, nowmaking her second trip into orbit.She is set in the coming weeks tobe the first Chinese woman towalk in space as China’s space sta-tion glides around Earth at 17,100miles per hour.

And yet, as she began a six-month mission last week at thecore of China’s ambitious spaceprogram, official and news mediaattention fixated as much on thecomparative physiology of menand women, menstruation cyclesand the 5-year-old daughter shehas left behind as they did on heraccomplishments. (No one askedabout the children of her two malecolleagues.)

Shortly before the launch, PangZhihao, an official with the ChinaNational Space Administration,let it be known that a cargo cap-sule had supplied the orbitingspace station with sanitary nap-kins and cosmetics.

“Female astronauts may be inbetter condition after putting onmakeup,” he said in remarksshown on CCTV, the state televi-sion network.

At 41, Colonel Wang is a modelof gender equality in a countrywhere Mao Zedong famously said

She’s a PioneerIn Space. ChinaSent Cosmetics.

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

Continued on Page 12

WASHINGTON — Two monthsafter the evacuation of 80,000 Af-ghans fleeing the Taliban take-over, most have cleared subse-quent vetting for admission intothe United States. Some initiallyraised possible security issues —like evacuees who shared a namewith terrorism suspects — butwere absolved on closer scrutiny.

But several dozen have beenred-flagged, despite havinghelped the United States duringits 20-year war in Afghanistan, be-cause screenings uncovered ap-parent records of violent crime orlinks to Islamist militants that fol-low-up evaluations have notcleared, officials said. The deroga-tory information has raised thequestion of what to do with them,leaving them in limbo.

The military transferred mostof the still-flagged evacuees —some with relatives — to CampBondsteel, a NATO base in Koso-vo, which agreed to let Afghans behoused there for up to a year ifthey stayed on the base. They aredesignated as requiring furtherinvestigation, and no final deci-sion has been about whether theywill receive permission to enterthe United States, officials said.

But in an acknowledgment thatmany are likely to be barred from

Vetting Flagged Dozens FleeingRule of Taliban

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

Continued on Page 8

Sixteen months before lastNovember’s presidential election,a researcher at Facebook de-scribed an alarming development.She was getting content about theconspiracy theory QAnon within aweek of opening an experimentalaccount, she wrote in an internalreport.

On Nov. 5, two days after theelection, another Facebook em-ployee posted a message alertingcolleagues that comments with“combustible election misinfor-mation” were visible below manyposts.

Four days after that, a companydata scientist wrote in a note to hisco-workers that 10 percent of allU.S. views of political material — astartlingly high figure — were ofposts that alleged the vote wasfraudulent.

In each case, Facebook’s em-ployees sounded an alarm aboutmisinformation and inflamma-tory content on the platform andurged action — but the companyfailed or struggled to address theissues. The internal dispatcheswere among a set of Facebookdocuments obtained by The NewYork Times that give new insightinto what happened inside the so-cial network before and after theNovember election, when thecompany was caught flat-footedas users weaponized its platformto spread lies about the vote.

Facebook has publicly blamedthe proliferation of election false-hoods on former President Don-ald J. Trump and other social plat-forms. In mid-January, SherylSandberg, Facebook’s chief oper-ating officer, said the Jan. 6 riot atthe Capitol was “largely organizedon platforms that don’t have ourabilities to stop hate.” MarkZuckerberg, Facebook’s chief ex-ecutive, told lawmakers in Marchthat the company “did our part tosecure the integrity of our elec-tion.”

But the company documentsshow the degree to which Face-book knew of extremist move-ments and groups on its site thatwere trying to polarize American

MisinformationTripped AlarmsInside Facebook

By RYAN MACand SHEERA FRENKEL

Continued on Page 20

“Hamilton” has restaged“What’d I Miss?,” the second actopener that introduces ThomasJefferson, so that the dancer play-ing Sally Hemings, the enslavedwoman who bore him multiplechildren, can pointedly turn herback on him.

In “The Lion King,” a pair oflongstanding references to the

shamanic Rafiki as a monkey —taxonomically correct, since thecharacter is a mandrill — havebeen excised because of potentialracial overtones, given that therole is played by a Black woman.

“The Book of Mormon,” a musi-cal comedy from the creators of“South Park” that gleefullyteeters between outrageous andoffensive, has gone even further.The show, about two wide-eyedwhite missionaries trying to save

souls in a Ugandan village con-tending with AIDS and a warlord,faced calls from Black members ofits own cast to take a fresh look,and wound up making a series ofalterations that elevate the mainBlack female character and clar-ify the satire.

Broadway is back. But as showsresume performance after thelong pandemic shutdown, some ofthe biggest plays and musicals are

Racism Protests Change the Script on BroadwayBy MICHAEL PAULSON

“The Book of Mormon” was revised after Black actors, including Kim Exum, expressed concerns.SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page 24

WASHINGTON — Joe Biden’spitch during the 2020 campaignto unseat President Donald J.Trump was simple: Trade in astubborn, immovable leader forone with a proven record oftaking half a loaf when a full oneis out of reach.

That approach appears to havebrought Mr. Biden to the preci-pice of victory on a $2 trilliondeal that could begin to definehis legacy as a successful OvalOffice legislative architect, onewho is reshaping governmentspending and doing so by thenarrowest of margins in a coun-try with deep partisan and ideo-logical chasms.

But the bill is certain to be farsmaller than what he originallyproposed, and far less ambitiousthan he and many of his allieshad hoped. It won’t make him theone who finally secured freecommunity college for everyone.Seniors won’t get free dental,hearing and vision coveragefrom Medicare. And there won’tbe a new system of penalties forthe worst polluters.

“Look — hey, look, it’s all aboutcompromise,” Mr. Biden said at aCNN town hall meeting onThursday, shrugging off thedoubters as he sought to closethe deal with lawmakers and thepublic.

But accepting less and callingit a win has its limits — andconsequences.

By spending the last severalmonths pushing for an evenlarger and more ambitiousagenda, knowing that he wouldmost likely have to pare it back,Mr. Biden has let down somesupporters who believed he

Biden FindsEven VictoryHas Its CostsThe Consequences ofPolitical Compromise

NEWS ANALYSIS

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

Continued on Page 16

Eric Adams could not resist thestory.

In a 2019 commencement ad-dress, Mr. Adams complained thata neighbor’s dog kept befoulinghis yard — no matter how polite hewas to the owner, no matter hisstanding as Brooklyn’s boroughpresident. Then a pastor gave himan idea. Mr. Adams slipped on ahoodie and Timberland boots,rang the neighbor’s doorbell andreintroduced himself a little less

politely, he said. After that, the dogstayed away.

“Let people know you are notthe one to mess with,” he advisedthe predominantly Black graduat-ing class at Medgar Evers Collegein Brooklyn. He closed with a pre-diction for those who said hewould never be mayor: “I’m goingto put my hoodie on, and I’m goingto make it happen.”

That electoral prophecy mightwell hold up. The story does not.

It was the pastor, Robert Water-man, who actually had the neigh-bor with the dog and the con-frontation at the door, both men

said in interviews. Mr. Adams justliked how it sounded. “It was agreat story I heard,” he told TheNew York Times recently. “I heardhim preach, and I told him, ‘I’mgoing to tell that story.’”

With Mr. Adams, 61, now poisedto become New York City’s nextmayor, the episode at once reflectshis political superpower andgreatest potential vulnerability: a

comfort with public shape-shift-ing that would make him the big-gest City Hall wild card in dec-ades. He propagates and discardsnarratives about himself, rarelysweating the details.

His highest principle can ap-pear to be the perpetuation of theEric Adams story, one that hehopes will deliver him from astreetwise childhood in Brooklynand Queens to the seat of power inLower Manhattan. He speakswith almost spiritual zeal abouthis personal evolution — he is ameditating, globe-trotting, vegan

Who Is Eric Adams? No One Knows, but He’s Probably a Winner.This article is by Matt Flegen-

heimer, Michael Rothfeld and Jef-fery C. Mays.

A Political Wild CardWho Says ‘I Am You’

Eric Adams at an event in Midtown on Thursday. The former police officer has run a disciplined campaign and is on the cusp of becoming New York’s next mayor.ANDREW SENG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page 22

UNPOPULARITY Behind PresidentBiden’s low approval ratings is apessimistic electorate. PAGE 16

Vanessa Bryant was questioned in herlawsuit over images of remains fromthe crash that killed Kobe Bryant andtheir daughter Gianna. PAGE 35

SPORTS 32-35

Recalling a Day of Loss

Late Edition

VOL. CLXXI . . . No. 59,221 © 2021 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2021

Today, some sunshine, then increas-ing clouds, seasonably cool, high 60.Tonight, intervals of rain, low 56. To-morrow, milder, showers later, high66. Weather map is on Page 26.

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