Student’s family says no to autopsy
CINCINNATI — A cause of death hasn’t been determined for a 22-year-old college student who was detained for nearly a year and a half in North Korea before being sent home in a coma, an Ohio coroner’s office said Tuesday.
Hamilton County’s Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco’s office released a statement saying Otto Warmbier’s family objected to an autopsy, so only an external exam was done. It said his medical records from an air ambulance service that brought him to Ohio and from the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where he was hospitalized until his death Monday, have been reviewed, and the treating physicians have been interviewed.
“No conclusions about the cause and manner of Mr. Warmbier’s death have been drawn at this time as there are additional medical records and imaging to review and people to interview,” the coroner’s statement said.
The public funeral for Warmbier will be held at 9 a.m. Thursday at Wyoming High School, where he was an athlete and salutatorian of his 2013 class.
Wambier’s parents did not cite a specific cause of death but blamed “awful, torturous mistreatment” by North Korea. Doctors last week described Warmbier’s condition upon his return June 13 as a state of “unresponsive wakefulness” and said he suffered a “severe neurological injury” of unknown cause.
Warmbier had planned to study in China in his third year of college and heard about Chinese travel companies offering trips to North Korea. He was leaving North Korea on Jan. 2, 2016, when he was detained at the airport. The University
of Virginia student was accused by North Korea of trying to steal a propaganda banner while visiting with a tour group and was convicted of subversion. He was sentenced in March 2016 to 15 years in prison with hard labor.
His family said it was told he had been in a coma since soon after his sentencing. North Korea said Warmbier went into a coma after contracting botulism and taking a sleeping pill. Doctors in Cincinnati said they found no active sign of botulism or evidence of beatings.
The doctors said Warmbier suffered extensive loss of brain tissue and “profound weakness and contraction” of his muscles, arms and legs. Unresponsive wakefulness is a medical term for persistent vegetative state.
Warmbier’s path home came after North Korean diplomats at the United Nations urgently requested a face-to-face meeting with U.S. officials in New York. During the June 6 meeting, Washington learned of Warmbier’s condition.
Some observers think North Korea became worried because Warmbier’s condition suddenly worsened.
“North Korea sent him back to the United States before he died because more questions would have been raised about his death and the situation would have gotten worse if it had returned his dead body,” said Cheong Seong-jang, an analyst at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea.
Or maybe North Korea concealed his medical condition for so long in the hopes that he’d recover.
Outrage in the United States means that more pressure, not dialogue, is the more likely course in dealing with North Korea. But some analysts believe negotiations could happen because of U.S. worries about the safety of the three other Americans still detained in North Korea.
Some analysts think South Korean President Moon Jae-in could offer talks with the North as a way to get other detainees out of North Korea.
John Delury, an Asia expert at Seoul’s Yonsei University, said the Trump administration may try to pressure China to cut its large numbers of tourists to
North Korea until the North apologizes and releases the other Americans.
But President Donald Trump on Tuesday appeared to lose faith in China’s ability to pressure North Korea. Trump called the treatment of Warmbier “a total disgrace” and suggested he has given up hope that Beijing could exert meaningful leverage on Kim Jong Un.
“While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out,” Trump wrote in a tweet. “At least I know China tried!”
Trump’s souring views on China’s influence with North Korea could affect economic policy, including a pending decision on whether to impose new restrictions on steel imports, which could spark a trade war with China.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis are scheduled to meet with Chinese officials in Washington to resume economic and securityrelated talks.
WASHINGTON — Senior officials across the government became convinced in January that the incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had become vulnerable to Russian blackmail.
At the FBI, the CIA, the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, career officials agreed that Flynn represented an urgent problem.
Yet nearly every day for three weeks, the new CIA director, Mike Pompeo, sat in the Oval Office and briefed President Donald Trump on the nation’s most sensitive intelligence — with Flynn listening. Pompeo has not said whether CIA officials left him in the dark about their views of Flynn, but one administration official said Pompeo did not share any concerns about Flynn with the president.
The episode highlights another remarkable aspect of Flynn’s stormy 25-day tenure in the White House: He sat atop a national security apparatus that churned ahead, despite its own conclusion that he was at risk of being compromised by a hostile foreign power.
The concerns about Flynn’s vulnerabilities are at the heart of a legal and political storm that has engulfed the Trump administration. Many of Trump’s political problems, including the appointment of a special counsel and the controversy over the firing of the FBI director, James Comey, can be ultimately traced to Flynn’s tenure.
Pompeo sidestepped questions from senators last month about his handling of the information about Flynn, declining to say whether he knew about his own agency’s concerns. “I can’t answer yes or no,” he said. “I regret that I am unable to do so.”
His words frustrated Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“Either Director Pompeo had no idea what people in the CIA reportedly knew about Michael Flynn, or he knew about the Justice Department’s concerns and continued to discuss America’s secrets with a man vulnerable to blackmail,” Wyden said in a statement. “I believe Director Pompeo owes the public an explanation.”